Originally posted by zigmund

Stiff... I'm not too impressed with the next gen combat at all.

I'm playing DC Universe this week instead of playing Rift.

I logged into Rift for 20 minutes, played and promptly logged out.

Rift is a "better" game, but DC Universe is more "fun", DCU movement and combat feels more fluid and alive.

The combat in Rift is almost as fast paced as DCUO.  However, DCUO is a button-masher "twitch" combat game.  Rift is a more traditional mmo.

That being said, Rift has far more going for it than DCUO.  There is more to do, the soul system leads to over 250 combinations of souls for the classes.  DCUO everyone has a ranged and melee attack, they change the graphic but functional wise my sorcery villain was no different from my superman-themed hero.  Quests in Rift are wide, varied and with many dailies.  Quests in DCUO are the same for both sides with just reworded text.

DCUO is basically a console game, that happens to be pretending to be an mmo.  Rift is a mmo that is not trying to be a console game.  Apples and Oranges.

Originally posted by smitty0356

I had a good run with this game, and I highly reccomend it, because I definately got my moneys' worth.  Unfortunately, this game does not suit my mmo-style.

Here are a few constructive pro's and con's

Pro's:  Great detail, and nice world size.  Not too easy or hard to get around, and there are tons of extras and easter eggs to be had.

Artifacting is cool, but not overly important.

Crafting is good, but a little simple.  Would prefer more specialties, and I think that is on the horizon.

Instances are pretty fun, and I like the new add on's for finding a group

Instanced pvp is fun

 

Con's:  Character imbalance, especially against healers.  (hit for 600, heal for 200 repeat until dead)

Most zones constrict to one path, which makes wandering or open world pvp hard

Events are cool, but they are a month of a grind followed by 30 mins of excitement

 

That's about it.  Don't be a cleric, and you'll love the game, got all the way to 50 with a warrior, cleric, mage, and I can say that the mage was the most fun.  Enjoy the game, and I may be back some day, just not soon.

Never actually played a cleric did you?  There are tank and dps specs of clerics too, so they aren't all "just healers".  Though I have to say that a good healer makes the best person to hold the fang in Black Garden.

There is no "grind for a month" events that I am aware of.  The current patch has dailies that everyone can do, granting various rewards.  The only "grinding" would be acquiring the golden egg shells to turn in and you get them from (1) fire rifts, (2) earth rifts and (3) a daily quest.

Rift is a well made mmo, Trion delivered on the hype surrounding the game.

Originally posted by fallonfallon

Rift....the wow killer right here guys!

Hows that Queen song go?

Another One Bites the ?

Ok guys ..everyone back to Azeroth!

Yeah tell that to the ghost towns of Stormwind and Orgrimmar and the 600k subs that bailed on WoW.

Seriously though, Rift is doing quite well and already about to release its 3rd content patch.  Something that Blizzard, despite with vastly larger resources, seems to be unable to do.  Anyone who raced to 50 in Rift in the 1st week then went screaming "game sucks I'm bored" really has no one to blame but themselves.   The expression "getting there is half the fun" really applies to mmos, regardless of who makes them.

Originally posted by Ceridith

The MMOs going free is due to them doing poorly as P2P games. Not because P2P is an unpopular payment choice, but because the games themselves are so lackluster that most gamers can't see the justification for paying a monthly subscription.

I hate to stereo type F2P games as being lower quality, but the industry itself is proving exactly that.

Not all pay games were doing poorly.  After DDO was about to go under, they went F2P and then it started turning a proft by a wide margin.  So Turbine, being no dummy, decided to take LOTRO and see if they could up the profits by changing it to F2P, even though it wasn't suffering and in no danger of being canned.

Even Age of Conan is going F2P despite the last xpac increasing the subscriptions.  Why?  Simple, just like how when the Avatar 3D movie made so much money, you see a lot of 3D movies coming out as a result.  DDO went from near server shutdown to making a profit, so of course other companies decided to "go with the flow" and try and cash in on that market.

A lot of the F2P games look great, no "cheap" graphics.  So I would think the time when a game that was F2P had a stigma against it is pretty much gone.

I am subbed to more than one at a time too.  Actually 3 total, but only actively playing 2 right now. 

Usually I had one fantasy mmo and city of heroes.  Occasionally I needed a break from the hack n slash, elves n dwarves, sword n sorcery genre so CoH filled that role nicely.  CoH has been my longest subscribed mmo, the fantasy "alt" has changed over the years.  Currently Rift is occupying my playtime when I'm in the mood for a more traditional fantasy game.

Another nice part about crafting is each profession has the ability to break down items of the same type.  So my mage outfitter (cloth/leather armor) gets a green leather drop she can't wear.  No problem I can salvage it and break it down into parts.  Kinda like disenchanting in WoW. 

Keep a security suite going.  If it has data protection, you can add your password (with the onscreen keyboard) so that if your password goes out unsecured, the suite should block it.  Connection to Trion's servers are encrypted so the suite would let it pass legitimately.

Don't download 3rd party mods/addons.  This is why WoW has so many problems, people download several mods from different sites then wonder why their account got hacked.  The standard UI is fine, worry about dps charts later.

Change your password at least every 2 months.  I usually change mine on every odd month (jan, march, may, etc).  Plus if you have another mmo account, don't use the same password for Rift.

Originally posted by qombi

Below are some questions I hope some people could answer for me that have played this game to help with my decision to purchase this game.

 

1. Is there a virtual item shop in this P2P game?

2. How is instancing used in the world?

3. How is travel handled?

4. Are dungeons an AOE fest or is there strategy such as crowd control?

 

Thank you.

1. NO (thank the gaming gods)

2.  For dungeons and such, the rifts themselves are dynamic and can appear anywhere at any time with litle warning.

3.  Mounts mostly, though in the main city you can portal to and from certain areas, if you been there before.  If you have the coin, or bought the CE can get a mount soon as you leave starter area.

4.  CC will come it to play later I assume, haven't had much use for it yet though (only 19).  If you don't watch you dps, you'll die but that is pretty much the golden rule of any mmo dungeon.

Originally posted by TacBoy

Had Mythic delivered the goods, it wouldn't have been too many. Rift delivers the goods...

I have to agree.  Mythic, which was really just an office of EA at that point really blundered WAR.  It wasn't the number of servers, but the quality of WAR that made people leave.

So far, Rift is delivering on the promises Trion made.  Certainately, the launch went as planned as no servers crashing, no queues, no framrate issues or "stuck while looting" bugs that plagued other mmo launches.

Rift from a tech standpoint is doing very well.  Often at launch there are numerous issues that have to be dealt with.  I'm not talking minor stuff, like the hotfix this week to fix a crafting exploit.  Servers are stable, in fact they added more already to keep populations from causing a queue.  Once you're ingame, I haven't found any glitches or lag that have detracted from my gameplay.   Game is well optimized as even with 40+ people fighting a major rift, I noticed no hit in framerate.

Their class system will take some getting used to.  People who came from WoW, and never played any other mmo, are going to be a bit confused to start off as the soul system is rather different that what they are used to.  Luckily, you can preview the souls before you get them so you can get an idea of what one you want to have.  Graphic wise it it is more on the high-end of eye candy without it being so high that your video card cries for mercy. 

Can't comment on Trion's support as I haven't found any need to contact them as of yet.

The open beta I participated in is what sold me on this game.  It's a refreshing take on the other fantasy mmo's out there with the dynamic content.  Just make sure you're careful where you log out at.  That friendly town may not be friendly when you log back in.

Probably the best thing about AoC was the combat system.  Many games say "innovative" a lot, but AoC was truly fun and a change of pace.  No auto-attack, so I actually have to pay attention to the fight.  No more "head rolling on the keyboard" like those other games.  Fatalities are more than just an "oh cool" moment, but actually give you a short duration buff when you perform one.

Also liked how no class was really gimped.  Some games if you pick Class A Spec B you couldn't solo for diddly and were horribly group dependant OR could be a solo fiend but didn't offer much to a group.  This isn't the case in AoC.

The realism was a nice touch after so many games with "cartoony" graphics.  Motion capture everywhere even down to the animals.  They even took the time to show how men and women would hold certain weapons differently.

Lore-wise they held pretty good to Howard's stories.  Even had a nod to the movies in Ymir's Pass with an easter egg.  Since Hyboria is supposed to be the "real" world only in the distant past, they modeled armor and buildings consistant with ancient times.  That was a nice touch on Funcom's part.

WoW doesn't have the population to warrant any more servers.  Years ago I remember seeing them open up several at a time, but right now there are so many low pop servers that if anything they'll just do free moves if need be.

If this was asked and answered previously, apologies I didn't read the entire threat.  :)

I keep hearing so much about the 1-60 experience, but what about the 60-80?  I would be severely disappointed if I dinged 60 and had to do the same Outland quests over again then the same Northrend quests to get to 80.

No single game will kill WoW. However, you will see multiple mmos chip away at the subscriber base. WoW's subs have stagnated for over 2 years.

The "big" announcement that they broke 12 million only came since Wrath was finally released in China. Now you have a country with 1 billion people, the largest online gaming market in the world and you gain less than 0.1% growth there? Not exactly encouraging numbers.

There will always be a core group of players that will never leave WoW. Mostly these will be people that WoW was their 1st mmo. I know that EQ1, my 1st mmo, was the hardest to leave. They don't want to give up all their accomplishments, friends and familiarity for a new mmo. Probably the game that takes the biggest chunk out of WoW will be The Old Republic. Unless Bioware Epic Fails, that game has the potential to be a multi-million subscription game as well.

Well CCP (makers of EVE Online) have already acquired a license from White Wolf to make an mmo.  White Wolf is better known for Vampire the Masquerade storytelling games.

Originally posted by seabeast

Originally posted by Panther2103

Well if something is wrong with something, you don't leave it like that, you change it as you go. That's kind of a better idea than having a broken system.

 In short, you can not keep all the players happy all the time.

They haven't been doing that very well either.  No gain in subscriptions in 2 years, even with Wrath released.  Ghostcrawler said only 30% of those doing the free trial end up subscribing.  Umm, 30% success rate is good in baseball not in an MMO.

WoW needs two things to break the stagnation.

First, new classes.  Nearly 6 years old and only 1 new class added (that starts at 55) does not encourage rerolling.

Second, they need to listen to their players.  Their current attitude is they do what they want, when they want and how they want it.  Then try to convince everyone they should like it too.  I mean, in patch 2.2 they added voice chat.  This was absurd, since by then anyone that wanted voice chats already had teamspeak or ventrilo.  That was a complete waste of time coding this that could of better went to other areas.

Originally posted by tank017

Yep,

My account has been inactive for 4 months(as far as me using it) and I just got a "your account has been suspended for using a 3rd party hack" email from Blizzard.

someone obviously took my account for a joy ride..

My account been inactive since Oct 2009.  Last week I got an email saying the account was compromised and to follow this link to verify login information.  Now, Blizzard would never ask for login information.  They already know it.  So after playing email tag with an inept guy from Blizzard Support, I finally just called them up.  After a 75 min hold, the CSR sent me a password reset in 5 mins.  Apparently My account went active in March 2010 and got suspended same month for "questionable actions".

I donn't use any mods or addons for any mmo... ever.  So how did it happen? I have no idea, my email accout is set to make my password expire after X days and the CSR said they got access to the WoW account via my email. 

After all this the GMs "investigated" and couldn't verify when the account got compromised.  Even though the CSR and I knew it was in March.  So their "solution" was to say "sorry you lost all your stuff but we gave your 80's an even 800g each to buy new gear".  Yeah cuz all their heroic/10man gear is just sitting on AH suddenly not BoP anymore.  Way to encourage me to resub Blizz. 

Sheesh.

If Blizzard follows their original plan, they said SC2 xpac 1 in 2011 and xpac 2 in 2012.  Course, that's not in stone and they could change their minds at any time.  :)

I will be waiting for when the game is complete.  Releasing 1/3 of the game now and charging me full price, reeks of Activision greed.  The original SC and Broodwar, each had 3 campaigns for the 3 races.  Limiting this to just 1 I feel sells the franchise short.

Course the fact there is no LAN support also sucks.

My issue with SC2 is the fact that although Blizz dropped RealID from the WoW forums they apparently still want to use it elsewhere.  So if you want to multiplayer in SC2, you must logon to Battlenet there is no LAN support even if your friends are sitting next to you.

Not sure why Blizz is getting so obsessive about this RealID thing.  It's like they just have to share your personal information with as many people as possible.   I understand the whole online accountability thing, but using real names and personal information is not the way to do it.  Especially with indentity theft such a problem and WoW having so many issues with hacked accounts.

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by Talgen

The only thing I find unbelievable in this is that NCSoft stock will be worth millions in 10 years :)

Thing is, prior to TR and other NCsoft management/game failures, they would have been a sure bet. Nowadays, not so much. They'll be lucky to be in business in 10 years.

ER...you should take a look at recent NCSoft financials, they are riding pretty high these days on the success of Aion and there upcoming games should continue to carry them just fine.

From what I've seen, AION ( in the NA ) has done nothing but decline. Profitable maybe, but hardly successful now. City of Heroes is on it's last legs pretty much.  This is after they had to shut down how many mmos now, 3-4? The only games left are the Lineages.

So perhaps I'll rephrase: they'll be lucky to be in business outside of the asian market in ten years.

Aion is doing extremely well in asia, though not so much in the West.  That's not surprising as it IS an asian-styled mmo after all.  The game as a whole, is doing very well.

City of Heroes is probably going to see a spike in subscriptions after the expansion releases.  With Champions being a bit disappointing they still have a lock on the superhero genre, at least until DC Universe comes out.   If the turnout for the various Cons is any indication, CoH is doing just fine.

Tabula Rasa's fall I blame squarely on Mr Garriott.  It had his name but he suddenly vanished from supporting it.  Instead ran off to space to live out some fantasy.  Probably why NCSoft fired him, or at least one of the reasons.