Ozmodan : the first few games can seem boring, but you need to give it a little more time to grow on you. Once you know the heroes well, the tactics... it's like chess with team dynamics : you don't complain it's always the same map, each game becomes deeper and deeper.

LoL : from a former HoN player (HoN copied Dota completely), I must say I like very much what Riot did there. They innovated very cleverly and made a game fun and accessible to casual pvpers (HoN and Dota werent), as well as very competitive for the more dedicated players. That's probably the key of its success. The game still misses important features like replays though, and their lobby can be very laggy (I guess that last point is the result of too much success...)  LoL is a great game, and a step forward in the series of the MOBA games.

Just my opinion :)

Combat animations are the weakest part of Rift for me. I found out it also depends on classes. For some souls they were fine to me though not exceptionnal, for others they just turned me down from playing the soul.

Hi and welcome in Rift,

the Warrior class looks like the natural choice to pair with a healer (cleric). Unfortunately you disliked the animations. I felt the animations, while not exceptionnal, were ok with a Paragon (dual wield spec). You could maybe try that one. It has great dps, fine mechanics with a bit more levels, and could use a pocket healer. (Paragon/Champion/Riftblade if you don't want a pet is a good combo).

On the powerhouse side, a Reaver is a really great AoE tank, with some really nice self healing while necessary, and an healing partner could help him make even bigger pulls. But it's 1h+shield and I agree here the animations get a little bland. (Reaver/Paladin/Riftblade or Reaver/Riftblade/x are strong pairings). Still you can check this.

A Riftblade is a very fun warrior soul. You basically get an instant slow with 6 sec cd, and can destroy mobs from range by kiting them : more effective than a mage. It unfortunately doesnt need much of an healing partner (but it could if you pull some adds), anyway it's a lot of fun to play with. You can also melee and AoE with it if you want. (Riftblade/Reaver, Riftblade/Champion are strong pairings).

For a rogue, if you go range without a pet (Marksman), you'll end up wanting to kite alot (with some Ranger or Saboteur slows). In this case a healer can still be useful, but certainly less than with a melee character. Riftstalker/Bladedancer (more tankish) or Bladedancer/Riftstalker (more offensive) are good melee rogues to pair with a healer, they play a bit like warriors actually with some dual wielding (better animations than 1h+shield for my taste).

Concerning Cleric's souls I don't know them well, so I wouldn't want to give you any misinformation. Following the game's descriptions could help her to go toward something more offensive or defensive, range or melee. Anyway you can unlock new souls at lvl 13 once you join the capital city and respec alot almost freely from there if you don't like your first choices. If she's set on a cleric, there is really no undoable build mistake or soul choice she can make from that point.

Have fun in Rift :)

Necro/lock is very strong from what I could try (especially after level 16 and Soul Purge in the Necro tree). But the other pairings I tried were a bit disappointing. Not bad and still very playable, but I felt overall I could do better on my warrior on almost every aspect. It's a bit odd for example that my Riftblade is better at kiting mobs and burning them down fast (yes a range kiting warrior !) than any mage's soul because of its instant slow on a low cd.

Mages really lack an instant slow and have often to rely on pets to tank for them, turning them more into warlocks than mages if you use WoW's terminology. Anyway, they may become much stronger in late levels, I havent got there already so I really cant say.

As people said, Rift is a good pick if you're still have fun in games like EQ2, WoW, Lotro... etc, but you just need a change of atmosphere.

If you got bored in the first places by those games, Rift may have the same effect on you relatively fast, because even if well done, it's very similar in its form and content. Then it would be better to look for games offering different styles of gameplay : EVE, Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes, Darkfall... etc.

Hi, and welcome in Rift.

You mix 3 souls to build your class in Rift, but you won't be able to max the 3 of them. Most of the time people have one main soul they try to max during the leveling, put the remaining points in the second, and keep the 3rd at 0 choosing the one that will give a small buff, bonus or pet.

From what you're looking for, you have the following specs to try :

- WoW's Fury warrior is a Warrior in Rift that chooses the Paragon's soul. This one has a good mix with Champion as 2nd, and Beastmaster as 3rd (just for the pet), in my experience. But there are many other possibilities.

- WoW's Arms warrior is known in Rift as a Warrior with the Champion's soul. Many good pairings here too, you can follow the game advices there to start with. I didn't play much with that one.

- WoW's Rogue, is a Rogue with the Assassin's soul. I didn't try that one long, many good combos possible, one would be Bladedancer as a second pick for sustained dps (Bladedancer = Combat Rogue while Assassin would be more a subtelty rogue). And Bard or Ranger are good third choices.

- WoW's Hunter would be a Rogue with the Ranger's soul, or the Marksman one. But Ranger gives the pet + some range attacks, while the Marksman gives mainly range attacks. They can make a good mix too.

- Also you have alot of fun souls to try, like the Riftblade (a range warrior that can kite mobs better than most Mages oddly), or the Bard (dps/healer/buffer Rogue with a musical instrument), or the Saboteur (a Rogue using mainly traps).

Yes you can respec almost freely by talking to a trainer and eventually you'll have 4 different builds at hand. You can switch from one to another as much as you want (think about WoW's dualspec, here it's a quadspec). So you'll be able to try almost everything inside one calling (or main class). The only thing to know is you need to complete some Rift quests to unlock the other souls which arent from the 3 ones you chose in the beginning (you get those quests at lvl 13+ when you reach the Capital City of your faction). This soul system is one of Rift's main strenght with the dynamic content.

But at the creation you must choose your Calling between Warrior and Rogue (also Mage and Cleric available). That means if you choose Warrior you will never be able to develop the Rogue's souls on the same character. Basically to try out all the styles you talked about you would have to make 2 characters and check which one you prefer (you start to get a decent idea about your class/souls choices by level 15+). And most of the picks we talked about level very well. Even if they wouldn't, when your character have a hard time in Rift, you can always pick a pet soul as your 3rd choice that helps alot offtanking adds (Beastmaster, Ranger...).

Have fun in Rift :)

Originally posted by Xasapis

A couple of things:

• You get bonus exp when you kill mobs grouped
• The quest items that drop from a mob, drop for the whole team.
• You get solo quest items even if you're in a raid group (we did that with our guid for the first levels until we had the money to make the guild)

Really, there is little reason not to group with others and quest. It's only benefits and no penalties.

I understand that, and thanks for the clarifications.

But that wasn't exactly my point. The OP as well is not saying he doesnt group with other people times to times to complete a Rift or a quest. I do that too. He's saying he can't reliably team with the same 2 friends most of the time to play the quest content. And I have the same observation.

If you want to quest level your way with your little group of friends you need to have the exact same playtimes each day, because people need to be on the same quests. I have experienced that so many times in other games like WoW, that is waiting for each other, and it always ended up being more frustrating than anything else.

And it's nothing against Rift, it's just that nowadays the mainstream leveling system in most MMOs has many advantages, but it quite discourages fixed grouping when it comes to quest leveling.

I play on a RP server, and while the community is really nice I still have to read a single "roleplayed" line in the chat. Most of the Roleplaying is done in closed groups of dedicated RPers nowadays and they don't do it with "strangers". That's fairly understandable. But I'm sure that if you join a RP server on Rift and look for a dedicated RP guild you'll find what you're looking for.

Originally posted by mmoluva

I play Rift solo with my three friends in ventrillo.  We want to play together but grouping would slow our leveling.

I really hear you. And exactly the same for me has happened in WoW, Aion, WAR... etc. I play with my friends on teamspeak, everyone leveling alone. All the games who use an open world quest grind leveling have the same issue : those quests are calibrated to be soloed, and even if you can duo or trio them it's sub optimal and you lose time redoing quests you have already done, or waiting for people to catch you. Of course there are dungeons you can do together, but they're not the majority of the leveling content and most of the time you'll be solo.

I didnt have this issue in CoH, or DDO for example, because they're more team centric games, much more instanced also.

But it seems that the majority like open world solo questing when it comes to MMOs nowadays and devs listen to them. So we all end up playing alone together :)

Rift is a balanced mix of WoW, EQ2 and WAR, took many good things from those 3, added a little bit of its own flavour. I'd say it's fairly simple, if you're not bored already with this style of game and want a new setting, new atmosphere, new start then definitely go for Rift because it's a very well done game. But if you stopped playing those 3 games because you can't take anymore of this type of gameplay, then don't buy Rift, because there won't be anything that new that will make you keep playing it.

Rift's PvE is not that different from WAR's PvE, just much more polished, with more content, and more builds possibilities. If you really enjoyed the PvP's part of WAR, you won't find that in Rift. You can queue for the equivalent of Scenarios, but there are less of them. And there is no open world RvR you can level with.

Also the class/soul system is probably not really balanced/conceived having PvP in mind at the moment. Doesn't mean it can't be fun though.

Originally posted by Wraithone

So, how much PvP content did WoW LAUNCH with?... 

This is maybe relevant if you want to start an MMO's study from an historian perspective, but it isnt from a basic player/customer point of view. People won't choose to play Rift because it brings at least as much than other MMOs when they released several years ago, they will instead put it into balance with what else they can play right now.

And no, I'm not saying Rift fails in terms of content if it doesn't equal some other big name, far from it, because there is no way a new released MMO can have the same content as an old 6 years MMO. Most recent MMOs must instead introduce new and compelling mechanics to attract and keep players, otherwise once the novelty effect has passed they fly back to their older games. And I wish Rift the best in this way :)

Originally posted by 5ubzer0

I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.

This made me laugh. So "subjectively" speaking the queues weren't that bad for you :)

Yep exactly. Vanguard was the closest thing I played those last years that felt like "a world" you were free to explore and not rails with some decor put around.

When I played Rift beta, there were rails, but also sometimes it could feel like there was a world, past the 20s I had this VG feel once or twice. I didnt go far enough to see if it persists or not, because I'm not big on betas where your toon gonna be erased. So now we'll have to wait and check by ourselves how everything plays out.

But sure the dynamic part is very welcome. During beta it felt generic though (Rifts I participated were basicly always the same PQ recycled). But I hope it has more under its sleeve and they gonna use this dynamic part to surprise us later.

Yea those guys are fun to watch, and they also seem having fun doing their show. I guess that helps :)

I agree that CoX has recently improved alot, from stamina inherent at level 2 (making the 1-20 gameplay much more fun), to the possibility to level any AT both sides (hello hero brutes !), and of course the alpha slot and the new endgame content.

But don't come back to CoX for PvP, you'll be disappointed. They never reverted the catastrophic i13 changes and it's pretty much dead (and boring anyway). On the other hand for PvE and team dynamics it's still a wonderful game and surprisingly even more active now than when I left just after GR release.

I agree with the above posters that CoH and DC have very few in common, except from being both superhero MMOs.

I like the action/gameplay of DC alot, but in terms of RPG mechanics and char building CoH is far superior. I leveled a few different toons in DC and ultimately they all play almost the same, while in CoH you have so many different playstyles from one build to another (sometime even in the same AT). Just my subjective feeling though.

But for me DC is much more a MMOAG (MMO Action Game) while CoX is a true MMORPG. And there is definitely a place for both.

Originally posted by Zefire

The game is awesome but it's not polished.

I have a lvl 30 character and u dont want to start describing what ive seen from this game.

I just give it time because the gameplay is just awesome,it has room for many many more and because it is only fewdays from release.

If the game dont improves in the upcoming 2 months then alot of players will start running away.

I second that. I think the gameplay is awesome too. But it still needs alot of work, and was probably not ready for a release. It's nothing you notice at first, it doesnt have that many major bugs or gamebreaking issues, but once you start looking into its mechanics, the powers, their synergies you sometime wonder if they really took some time to test that. Not even talking about the terrible descriptions you get in game for your powers.

Otherwise, it's true also that the game is alot of fun ;)

If you ask to be convinced, that means you probably gonna buy it anyway, am I right ? ;)

My only grip with the game if that they didnt offer a free trial, and I had to buy it without even testing it that I usually dont. I've been also relunctant since the last MMO releases, so I'm definitely in the same category as you for that matter. Anyway this time I'm glad I did and I'm having a blast.

As some other posters said, this is a fast action game, not in the same category as CoH at all. I would add, you shouldnt look at it as a classic MMO with grinding, housing, banking... etc like the other titles in the genre. Think more of it as a very good and very fast paced super hero multiplayer game that will offer you some MMO perks also. Time will tell if it deserves a sub or not, but the first month is free anyway ;)

Hi masked,

a little hard to answer your poll, I wish the answers would be a little more nuanced than "massive success" or "massive failure". Even if I dont think DCUO will be a "massive" success I still voted A anyway because I enjoy the game tremendously and it caught me totally by surprise. Opinions on this game have been very divided also, as you noted, and it shows us that not everybody will like this title. Still it should be able to be a fair enough success to allow them to work on it and improve it even more in the months to come.

And in my opinion they have had the basics very very right in this game + it's different from the rest of the market. Unless it turns to be boring and repetitive for many of us in a month or two (and that we cannot be totally sure about yet), I really see it keeping a good base of players and fans. There are many things there for either casuals or hardcore, PvErs and PvPers, solo or multiplayer fans in this game. Let's see how it turns out :)

Anyway cheers to other MMORPGers who enjoy this title and see you guys in game :)