This is a theme park MMO. There are a couple others that do it way better.

Looking for something with fresh and new ideas.

I've just resubbed to Rift. After seeing some demo videos of Dimensions on youtube, which looks like the best housing in any thempark.. ever) and the massive scope of the upcoming expansion I just couldn't resist. Expansions that increase the landmass by more than was given in the original game and offer as many new features as Storm Legion are very rare. Trion ain't messing about.

Get a year subscription and get Storm Legion for free (plus a couple other bonuses). There is no doubt that it's a great deal and I'm very tempted to get it. If I like what I see in the upcoming SL beta weekend then I'll be buying it straight away.

Just because the key strokes are the same, doesn't make it a clone. Those have become 'industry standards', imo.   Zone/rift events, instant adventures, chronicles, dungeons, raids..seem like standard faire for MMOs(for the most part), the implementation in Rift, I feel is superior to games that have come before it.  Content isn't dumbed down so every group of 12 year olds can roll through it by standing in the right spot and hitting a macro they pulled off the internet.

Questing in rift, the "story" line quests are fairly to even quite interesting if you bother to read them.  The lore, is unique and building, for a game just about to launch it's first expansion, it's ahead of 'the curve" set by 'the game' that several people think it's a clone of.

The comical part of a lot of the replies here;  your(several people that replied) basis for comparison..and game you seem to love to defend, "WoW",  hasn't really introduced all that much itself.  Hotbuttons, abilities bars, dungeons, raids, instances, macros ..were all done a long time before WoW launched...all blizzard did was dumb it down, so 'everyone' could be successful at every aspect of gaming. Throw loot at people and collect the subscription fees.

I guess, all I can say to people who would dismiss rift after level 20 because 'leveling is chore'..is, it was fun when there were a lot of level 20s to go with..NO GAME, maintains a population of players sub level cap after 2 years.  If you come late to the party, you put in the time to catch up..that's with ANY GAME.  RIFT/Trion has made it faster and easier, with Instant Adventures, mentoring, and the removal of things like questing for additional souls and whatnot(you can just train them now).  

As for why I view rift differently from other games..it's the class/calling system.  Every calling is extremely versatile.  Leveling one character to level 50, lets me heal one dungeon, dps at range the next..and melee on another.  On raids, I can assume roles of crowd control/hybrid dps, I can be pure support and buff everyone, while sacrificing my own performance, heal, or dps again at range or melee, and I can change roles whenever I'm not in combat and be ready-to-go in seconds.  Not only can I fill all those roles in a raid, most of the time, I have several viable builds/specs to do each one..and that will be even more variable in 4 weeks when the expansion launches.

I play rift because I have 16 ways to skin a cat...enjoy both of yours in your hamster wheel.

Originally posted by Calerxes
Why? I already played it and found it to be the most boring, easy, small, cookie cutter, bland, uninteresting, dull, uninspired, shallow, generic, craptastic MMO I've ever playedand and was even given a free copy by Raptr a few months ago so I thought I'd give it another go to see if it had changed and still felt the same, only this time there were only 3 men and their dog playing on a "medium" pop server. So someone coming to MMORPG.com and basically begging for us to play this humungously shitty MMO must mean its full of people playing right?

+1

For me Rift was the worst MMO experience in years.

The game is just boring from the ground and i played it from headstart on a few months and i even got a lvl 50 char. The lvling experience was boring and endgame is just an even more boring grind treadmill with things a lot of mmos have done better in the past.

And can somebody please go to Trion and tell them that PvP isn't Gear vs.Gear. Thanks.

I actually really enjoyed Rift.. The gameplay, fun abilities and nice animations made it quite nice for me/

every game has its lovers and its haters i guess. I dont play it anymore, but i really regret that. If it was a oncebuy for 150 dollar i would, but sadly enough i have an tendency to hate subscription;.. badly

The only think to get me to play Rift is a F2P model where I can at least level to the cap for free. <-- this

Originally posted by Aeonblades

 

EDIT: Also those saying the game is bland obviously never played past level 5, and if they did then they are wrong and just a fanboy of some other game.

Do the following things:

Describe the non-physical characteristics of Rift's races...their personalities, their motivations, etc

List your 5 favorite NPCs and say what it is about them that you like

Do the same for your five favorite quest lines

I cant go back to a supermacro fest like Rift or WoW again, there is just no challenge whatsoever.

Step 1: Gear grind

Step 2: Supermacro

Step 3: Profit!

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

Saying Rift offers a linear leveling experience with no options 

How many choices of zones do you have after the first one?

After the second?

After Scarlet Gorge?

Outside of outleveling a zone and being able to skip one possibly, you dont have a choice in where to go to level until you get to 35+.  That is the defintion of a linear leveling experience.  yes, you could do the PvP thing or the dungeon thing like other MMOs, or you could do Rifts/IAs...but Rifts and IAs dont solve the fact that you are in the same zone and for most people get boring/tedious after a short time doing them.

And the question is, with mentoring allowing people to drop down in level and get current rewards, why didnt Trion devote 1/3 of the new content to that 6-35 level range that needs it?

I really want to like Rift for all the effort their devs put into the IP. But my main problem other than alot of the anti-social behavior in the community, is how dependant that same community is on using macros.

Combat macros in Rift is just another way of allowing legalized botting. It is pure lazy gaming and I for one don't like being told I can't group with gamers in Rift if I don't use macros. 

Originally posted by Jebasiz1

 

I guess, all I can say to people who would dismiss rift after level 20 because 'leveling is chore'..is, it was fun when there were a lot of level 20s to go with..NO GAME, maintains a population of players sub level cap after 2 years.  

 

Um, WoW did for about 4.  EQ did for about 6.  Not uncoincidentally, both games showed long periods of growth.

Originally posted by sumdumguy1
Played for a month, then got bored as hell.  Same generic and trite MMO and nothing to distinguish itself from the others.  While not a bad game, you can play better and spend less.  Most of the people who I play game with look at Rift as a been there done that type of game.  Judging by the new expansion and what I've heard, not going back anytime soon.

There's just nothing there that I can't find somewhere else. 

If I wanted real three faction pvp, for example, I'd play Dark Age of Camelot.  At least there, you get to fight enemies that are actually different than you.

If I wanted a theme park, I'd play WoW.

If I wanted Battlegrounds in an instance I'd play WoW or GW2.

Like I said - it's not a bad game, but it's just another game on the shelf that hasn't had the creativity to do anything that is "EXPRESSLY" different.  They can patch this game to death, but it's still the same handful of races and classes pvp'ing each other in a BG and with the mercenary system, even that got more generic.  Another game with no real sense of US vs Them.

I like variety, like the stuff I read in fantasy novels.

Heres the link to a boss fight in the new expansion, where there will be great emphasis on open world. Further in that clip you'll see how realistic it looks when the big dood jumps on the bridge / crushes the wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3qGWyxG1tw

Originally posted by Comaf

Originally posted by sumdumguy1
Played for a month, then got bored as hell.  Same generic and trite MMO and nothing to distinguish itself from the others.  While not a bad game, you can play better and spend less.  Most of the people who I play game with look at Rift as a been there done that type of game.  Judging by the new expansion and what I've heard, not going back anytime soon.

There's just nothing there that I can't find somewhere else. 

 

If I wanted real three faction pvp, for example, I'd play Dark Age of Camelot.  At least there, you get to fight enemies that are actually different than you.

 

If I wanted a theme park, I'd play WoW.

 

If I wanted Battlegrounds in an instance I'd play WoW or GW2.

 

Like I said - it's not a bad game, but it's just another game on the shelf that hasn't had the creativity to do anything that is "EXPRESSLY" different.  They can patch this game to death, but it's still the same handful of races and classes pvp'ing each other in a BG and with the mercenary system, even that got more generic.  Another game with no real sense of US vs Them.

 

I like variety, like the stuff I read in fantasy novels.

The point you are trying to make can be made for every, and I mean very literally, every MMO out there. But let's be honest. If you want 3 faction PVP, you aren't going to play Dark Age of Camelot. Everybody wants 3 faction PVP, and everybody says the same thing during these discussions, yet the game's population sits where it's at. Have you even tried going back to play DAOC recently? The controls alone make me feel like I'm stepping backwards about 20 years a step.

Every MMO boasts literally the same features. RIFT shines where it shines. It's one of the few AAA themepark (I hate the term and use it loosely) WOW clones that does it right. It's content is fully fleshed out, there are no gaps, the tiers of progression make sense and are accessible. All at the same time it's polished, has the soul system (which regardless of what people stay, gives far more flexibility in terms of options, good or bad, than most titles out currently), the zone-wide events (which no other title comes close to on their dynamic event scale; even GW2 doesn't involve the entire zone map on an event that overrides smaller ones).

But the fact of the matter is it's not just all that. You can't get instant adventures anywhere else. The housing system is pretty exciting. The world map is (now) nothing to scoff at. There's quite a few innovative new combat systems and encounters in the expansion that are pretty exciting.

RIFT offers plenty of the old, and offers plenty of new takes on the genre. But man, going from the movement speed and action speed of GW2 and trying to play RIFT again seems like the entire experience is slow-mo.