Why are you posting about this here?  Go here: http://forums.riftgame.com/forumdisplay.php?33-Beta-Event-Discussions

That's where you're supposed to submit this kind of feedback.  Posting it here means that they may not be made aware of your problem.  You don't want to encounter this again, do you?  No, of course not, so make sure that it gets fixed by posting it in the beta forum.

Originally posted by xKingdomx

thats why I'm not playing anything past 25, and only the two dungeons, and Warfront :)

This, but I've skipped the dungeons up to this point as well. :)

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by Fibsdk

I have a feeling a good percentage of those criticizing the game now, will end up buying it anyway from lack of better options in 2011.

- Guild Wars 2

- Star Wars the old republic

- DC Universe

- Tera Online

- Secret World (late 2011 eta)

- Jumpgate Evolution

- Earthrise

- The Agency

- Diablo 3 (late 2011, not exactly mmorpg)

- Gods & Heroes

- Firefall

 

Hmm... yeah totally a lack of choices. By the way, I am being sarcastic. Here's my prediction, a large portion of Rift's population after lauch will leave due to boredom at the dreaded 3 month mark, and another large chunk around 5-6 months.

There are some very good choices here, and some of them I had forgotten about.

I'd just like to mention that the release date for some of these is not 2011, but probably early 2012.

Tera's Korean producers have said that a Western beta isn't scheduled until late 2011.  If that game does manage to release in the West this year then it's going to be right toward the end of the year.

Guild Wars 2 is anybody's guess, but most people are guessing that it will probably be 2012. I'm not sure what they're basing their guess on, but this seems to be what most articles are suggesting.

SW:TOR is always reported as having a long way to go, so I suspect early to late-early 2012 for that one as well.

Let's not get our hopes up.  Me, I'll be looking forward to seeing what The Secret World is actually like, and I'm keeping my eyes on a couple of others.  Why can't World of Darkness be finished this year? :D hah!

I suspect that it's not going to be one extreme or the other.  We do have some very good MMOs that will come out, but there is - as usual - a lot of hype and expectation around them.

You would think that people would know by now to not get hyped up about a MMO, but they always seem to find a reason to do it.

Anyway, in 2010 (and perhaps prior) we had a lot of hype surrounding certain games which, on release, proved to be very bad products.  That's a painful way to smash peoples expectations and it's a good way to earn the year itself the "greatest let down" award that it very much earned.

Of course 2011 will also see crushed expectations.  People build up mistique and project their own ideas onto the products, and those ideas then take on lives of their own on various forums.  This is partially the fault of the developers for either egging it on through vague statements (perhaps for the publicity) or by building up hype without releasing any real information.  We're seeing the studios do that again.  It's kind of an amusing cycle to watch, in a twisted sort of way....

Yet a fair share of the blame rests at the feet of the people who eat it up and give it life.  As I said, they should know better by now and yet they continue to do it.

The point is, it seems like the MMOs that will release this year (or early 2012) will be of better quality than what we saw in 2010.  We also have more options this time around:  Standard MMO gameplay with a dash of dynamic content, which is good for those who want something familiar but different (Rift), a unique method of making combat action-oriented and require some player skill (Tera), and a strong story-based experience with an otherwise familiar MMO frame work (SW:TOR).  Then there's the promise of "something different" from GW2.  All with beautiful visuals.

2011 - early 2012 holds actual promise.  Not a promise of delivering the golden egg, but one of choices and quality; two things which we have been lacking, IMO.

edit: quick typo fix

Originally posted by supremeaaron

Originally posted by Stealthman06

About time ! Now could someone else please make a good MMO in the Stargate universe, thank you.

What constitutes good in your eyes? Remember SGW was no where near release so for all we know it could have being good. But at this rate we will never know. I'm just waiting to read the announcement (likely a confirmation that the games are dead).

You make a good point.  However, the company has had a reputation for being.. questionable.  Feel free to look into the mess around the company.  It's doubtful that their product was any good or was going to be any good.

Anyway, I don't know if we need a Stargate MMO.  I watched the show for 8 to 10 years, then Atlantis, and some SG:U.  Even I wouldn't be quick to jump on a Stargate MMO.

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

To continue my rant. RIFT might be a great well polished traditional MMO and I think that is great but from a GAME perspective its FAR from next generation.

Next Gen? Arche Age (although to be frank even Darkfall or EvE for that matter).

skill system only, seige mechanics, naval combat, craftable homes cities and strongholds, farms, clan controlled regions, group crafting, dynamic lore, dynamic mobs. That is the new standard.

In short, if your game is not a FPS view of you as a character in an RTS game, its not next gen as far as I am concerned.

 

Arche Age

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6g82AupNM0&feature=fvwrel

 

 I will not leave darkfall until arche age or WoD online comes out.

I checked out some other videos of AA. I hadn't heard of it before, but it looks very promising.

The last time that I tried to buy something through SOE I had my card blocked and flagged as participating in possible fraudulent behavior.  The error on the SOE website was identical what people are reporting here, but I didn't know about the rest of the mess until I tried to buy something at the book store the next day.

Long story short, the bank told me that they had such a large amount of fraud through SOE that they got tired of it and automatically black listed any card that tries to make a purchase through SOE.

Have fun & good luck. ;D

Originally posted by RespyShunt

i actually just exchanged a few emails with them and got my account back.  Im still deciding on whether or not i should re-sub, but i can if i want to now

This is my position, too.  I discovered yesterday that my dormant account had been banned due to the spammers cracking the password.  I need something to do until Rift releases, so I've considered Aion but.. eh.. it was a boring game and I have LoTRO and EQ2 Extended, so I dunno.  Probably won't pick up Aion again.

AionSource - wasn't it? I think it was them - had their database cracked awhile back.  If you used the same password on the fan sites that you used in Aion then that's one potential vector that was used to gain access to your account.  NC Soft has pretty weak security though, so who knows.

The really cute thing is that my WoW account has been cracked as well.  I went through the account recovery feature and discovered that the "Security question" is now written completely in Chinese.  That old WoW account is gone now unless I can find the old CD key, which I can't.  Heh.

At least I could recover one of the two accounts back.

What I took away from this is that a diplomatic class was introduced to the game by being told to go kill 15 flesh eaters.

Obscene amounts of money, and this is what they do with it.  Bravo, Bioware.

I've given some opinions of the game here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3983811#3983811

and here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3993090#3993090

I've been in Betas 1 - 4.  Played a caster in beta 1 and an assassin in 2 through 4.

Originally posted by terroni

I also don't see this as having any lasting value. That being said I figure it can occupy my time for a few months till I have something else to play.

^ Exactly.  This is the way that I look at it, too, and the $10/mo price point that I jumped on makes it much easier to swallow.

and to the OP, good post.  Rift is a simple MMO that ultimately doesn't have a lot to make it unique.  I look at it as a potential stopgap between the WoW style MMO and what may be a new approach.

For that we'll have to wait and see if the MMOs in development will deliver on their promises or not.  A lot of us are... skeptical.

Originally posted by godzilr1

any i'll tell you what, those where some serious invasions....  It wasn't just kill the 300mobs here at point X.  Their were patrols that set up camps along major highways, then had patrol points/routes, they had waves of stuff spawning.   I really felt like this was an important thing.

Picture your running down the road minding your own business.  Horns and trumpets blare, the sky goes dark you can't see more then about 100ft in front of you, "text appears to let you IT"S ON zone wide!".   It was awesome.

Hah yeah, that was something.  I was with a group when the words "It's time to get real" came up on screen.  We were all, "uh.. uh oh". ;D

I had my visuals set to "ultra" and things got real interesting. Sky goes dark, swirls of green energy (plane of life) began going up to the sky, music changed, and that was before getting near the rifts.  The rifts had the usual bolts of lightening that came down and their other effects.  It was pretty obvious that the event was going to be no walk in the park.

Unfortunately the hundreds of players and tons of mobs on the screen at the same time eventually forced me to set my visuals to "medium" and I lost a lot of the really nice effects.  It's the first time in a long time that I've considered upgrades for my PC, though I doubt that I'll go that far. :D  DxDiag here if anyone's curious.

The raid event was much more interesting than "go kill boss, end raid".  There were sub-goals. You had to defeat one type of mini boss before you could begin to take out a larger boss, and you had to close the rifts to weaken something else.  I forget what closing the rifts did because there was just too much chaos going on and I was focused on the mobs.

...and yeah, there were tons of mobs.  We had wave after wave come at our raid group, which prevented us from reaching the boss mob for a bit.

My only regret was that I wasn't playing a class that I found to be more interesting, but that's all part of the experimentation.

Originally posted by Silacoid

I played the beta, but stopped playing at a pretty low level because it felt like a lot of other games I've already played.  People seem to be loving it as its hype is jumping, so what am I missing that is new and unique?

As they said, Rift is your standard MMO but with rifts.

The strength and frequency of the rifts and their invasions spawn according to the zone population, with the possibility of a zone-wide event being triggered by currently unknown criteria - although the level and number of players in the zone is known to be a part of that criteria.

So what you have is your a standard "kill 10 whatever" MMO with the rift system layered on top of it.  The rift system can throw things at the players at any moment, thus providing an interesting game mechanic to break up the standard MMO game play.  In addition to this, the aforementioned zone wide events do not need to be triggered (nor ran) by GMs, so they're always a (probably uncommon) possibility.  The devs have said that every map will have its own zone wide event that can be triggered.

In addition to that you have some decent, but imperfect soul trees that allow for a reasonable amount of customization for your character. The system helps to alleviate the feeling of the "me-too" cookie cutter characters, and if you're into PvP it will definitely add a twist to that game play.

PvP is optional on the PvE servers, though the system was bugged in Beta 3 and people managed to get other players flagged +pvp.  That sucked, but should be fixed prior to release.  Most PvP on the PvE servers should be done in war fronts (aka "battle grounds").

That's the gist of it.  Rift is not a bad MMO and it has some very cool elements, but it's not entirely ground breaking either.  For those who want a certain level of familiarity but also want something new, Rift is the game for them.  For those who want something completely new - totally unique - then Rift is not the game for them; they'll probably have to wait for either GW2 or Tera, assuming that they can deliver on most of their promises.

I have pre-ordered Rift and I will do the six month sub.  Not because I think that it's such a great game, but because there's enough here to keep a cynical 'ol fart like me entertained until something else is released (I'm keeping on eye on GW2, Tera, and Blade & Soul).  The $10/mo price tag was also a major deciding factor, in addition to how responsive the devs have been.

See ya 'round the planes infested lands.

edit: quick typo fix + quick pvp mention

Originally posted by terroni

I think Rift is a decent game. If they dropped their self-proclaimed "next gen" marketing people wouldn't have anything to complain about.

This ^.  There's really nothing different about the game.  The rifts and their "invasions" are distractions; they're a fun way to break up the otherwise simplistic monotony of counting to 15 goblins or whatever.

It's not a terrible MMO as far as MMOs go - it's rock solid, there are great options for character progression, the world and graphics look pretty darn good, the dev team is responsive so far - but it's just another MMO.

It's a MMO with wandering mob packs that can interrupt what everyone's doing.. but it's usually fun when they do.

Trion will have shot themselves in the feet with their marketing.  Anyone who enjoys MMOs as they are today and just wants something a little different is likely to really enjoy Rift.  Those of us who very much want something different are likely to be disappointed when they try it.

What I don't expect to see is the massive exodus that was witnessed with Aion.  I expect there to be plenty of people who are disappointed and quit, but I would be surprised if it doesn't maintain a fair subscription base.

It's possible that they created alts to use for their stories, but why release the names of their characters at all if they're not going to play those particular characters?  Perhaps those characters would be buffed by SE for the purpose of a PR event in the game.

However, I would have to agree with the OP.  The bottom line is that SE's own tool appears to have caught them in the act of an advertising stunt and it apperas that the fans here are attempting to explain the situation away.  However, the fact that this sort of thing happpens is no real surprise.  Companies have been using celebs for endorsement for a long time.

I wouldn't expect truth in advertising.  That this all appears to be fabricated, especially by female celebs who are popular with SE's target audience, probably should not be a surprise.

You're far too optimistic.

Going by Cryptic's past, what I expect is:

a.) Shallow story.  Just look at Star Trek Online.  They have this massive IP with a past of great characters and good story and they somehow birth STO from it. It's foolish to expect anything else from the same company.

b.) They'll charge for everything. Big deal that it's not a "MMO". If "OMG" doesn't scream "PR", then I don't know what does. I would not be surprised to come across a chest with a gold-colored item flagged with text, "1,000 points to gain access to this item. Recharge now!"

b2.) They're releasing with only the most basic classes. They WILL charge for anything else. You can count on it.

c.) Highly repetitive, monotonous game play.

c2.) Unfinished and uninspired, with the game described in reviews as "tries to do {THIS} that other games in the series have already done better."

d.) A price tag on accessing player made maps.  I'm not sure how this will be implemented but I fully expect it to happen.  Not on the maps themselves, of course, but on access to the map database, or a limited access to the maps with a charge for full access, or a charge to upload the maps to the server.   I fully expect one (or some) of these to happen.

As far as I'm concerned some or all of the items here will happen, with points A and C practically a given.  I'll fall over and do cart wheels if I'm wrong.

I've taken the time to poke around a bit and have discovered that NoScript is a useful tool for trimming back some of the ads.  As a result I let some of them display and block some of the others.  This is probably better than blocking every single ad on the site.

I'm still not against the idea of a donation of sorts to remove the ads, at least for a time.  I don't expect it to be much. Somewhere between $1 - $5. That's probably better or about as much as you get from me via ads considering that I have a number of them blocked and was previously blocking all of them.

Love the Zatanna artwork, but rather dislike DC in general. :|

Originally posted by Admin

Regarding AdBlock.  I just want to say that setting MMORPG.com aside for a moment - this is a trend that is going to kill the free Internet as we know it.  Over the past 3-5 years we have seen ad blocking rise from 10% to what appears to be 35% or more just on MMORPG.com. 

edit: see post below

-------------

Truth, and I agree with it, and I used to insist that ABP was evil.  From the blog that I used to have I noticed essentially a 100% drop in ad revenue after the then-new ads that I used were added to the ABP filter.  The $10/mo hosting account that I had could only just barely support its own monthly subscription price, and I killed each of my blogs once the ad revenue was only a few bucks above the $10/mo that my hosting cost me.

Here's where I'm not going to win any friends, though.  I have it enabled on MMORPG.com.  This used to not be the case ("Disable on ..." was used) because I use the site so much.  The reasons why I have it enabled are:

1.) First and foremost, all of the Flash-based ads.  While there's no audio (thank goodness!) there is plenty of animation and they're very distracting.  Flash is also notoriously greedy of one's CPU and mmorpg.com is kind of sluggish on its own.

2.) There are many, many advertisements.  One or two in the side, one in the article, one at the top, and so on.  The fact that most (if not all) are Flash-based simply add to the irritation that they cause (and to the general browser slow down).

If I can disable ABP while still using Element Hiding Helper to trim back on the number of advertisements that apear on a single page then I'll do that, but I don't think that's possible(?).  Honestly I don't mean for that to sound as cocky as the text probably makes it seem.

The cycle that I see happening is that people begin to use ABP and websites respond by using more ads and/or by using advertisements that are more attention-getting, such as Flash advertisements.  This irritates those who had not yet used it into doing so, and the cycle snowballs until basically everyone is using it.  Personally I don't mind an advertisement here and there, but there's only so much that I can deal with before they drive me crazy.

ABP is a too-powerful option, I'll admit.  I used to selectively block ads but that eventually required too much micromanagement so now it simply kills everything everywhere.  An odd twist of fate considering my own experience of lost revenue.

Honestly I'm surprised that there's no Pro / Premium feature.  I wouldn't mind a small donation to get rid of the ads.

I don't have any solid suggestion to address the issue.  If the number of advertisements are dropped back then you run the risk of losing a considerable amount of revenue.  If you don't - or at least don't chill on the Flash ads - then you're probably looking at more and more people using ABP.  That's not a happy cycle, and in a way I'm glad that I don't need to worry about it any more.

For the record, I don't mind text based ads so long as they're not those god awful in-context things that spawn a pop-up on mouse over.  Those are worse than Flash.

Urgh, I hate this.  The guy burned tens of millions of dollars out of NCSoft creating a complete failure, and then somehow fully expects to get tens of millions more.

I'm no fan of NCSoft, but Garriot is a complete slime ball.