I chuckled at the fact the David Allen was the reviewer. I guess that's his new job? Wasn't a bad review or anything, just odd that it's him who's writing it. Especially after the fiasco with Alganon and what he wanted that game to be.

Edit: I take it your David Allen... hmmm

Assassin/BladeDancer will be what I go with. Heavy in Assassin for improved stealth, and slip away which is fun to play with and such a useful skill. I know I pissed off quite a few warfronts when I would come in behind the pack and drop thier casters instantly. Just for them to turn around and find I had vanished. Light in BladeDancer so far, as I only got to level 35, but did get dex bonus. Plus, soloing with the class is a breese when your mowing down your targets and can get item pickups with ease. I might make a paladin-ish character somewhere down the line.

Originally posted by zaxtor99

 

---

No comment needed.

{Quickly hammers a sign and holds it up for COMAF to see as he runs for his next shiny, gold question mark spinning over the head of an NPC..}

World of Warcraft {this way, not here.} ------>

 

- Zaxx

I won't comment on what you quoted, just what you stated. Regardless of his opinion, it doesn't make yours any better, especially with stuff like this. It doesn't matter if there is a shiny ? mark, or some brilliant hidden text scheme where you have to actually talk to the quest giver to get him to give you anything. It's about enjoying the game you play. Try debating your subject, and quit getting people to troll your threads. Sorry to go off-topic here, but this crap needs to stop. Cmon Zaxx, just cmon. Your also not helping state your case, if you have one that is.

To me, a lot of this sounds like instant gratification. Something that plagues this genre and our society. People just want things handed to them instead of working for them. And before someone quotes me and says, "Games shouldn't be a job", working for something doesn't have to be considered a job if what your working for is fun. The grind is how you want to see it and accomplish it. With RPG's, you can use it as roleplaying. Thats kind of what has gotten lost in games today. No one wants to use there brain a little and try making things up on the fly. Take that grind, use your brain, and create an adventure out of it. Take it this way, everyday I make around 200+ calls to some of the same people, which some would find truly boring. But I make it fun by changing my voice, talking in different languages, doing the repeater, and tons of other stuff. It makes what seems boring, something enjoyable. I think what more people need to do, especially the young generation, is put to use that thing that sits inside your cranium.

Just want to comment on the OP. When I played beta 6, all I did was the RIFT system. Sure some of the RIFTS were the same but not all. Me a level 30 rogue, and a level 22 cleric were RIFT jumping and found several different types of rifts. Take for instance the fire RIFTS. We encountered 4 diff versions varing from all solo, ones that started out solo but spawned elites at the end, to ones that only spawned elites, to ones the spawned a named mob and solo mobs at each level. The dynamics isnt in were they spawn, but how they spawn. Also noted that higher level ones can spawn raid mobs and raid invasions as stated by the developers. Some of it has to do with the amount of people in the area and the level. So in fact they are dynamic. Just wanted to point that small little fact out to you. Cheers!

You can attack wardstones, and the side with the wardstone can also level them up via new quests. If it's not working, it's probably a bug. You can read the patch notes on the forum, they state they should be attackable and upgradable. It also states that this starts in Scarlet Gorge, so maybe the lower level ones got removed from being attackable. You should post this information on the RIFT forums, you wont get much developer information from here. With the way they fix things, I wouldn't doubt they already have a patch about to be deployed.

Hmm, sounds pretty cool. Nice to see two great companies come together for some deals.

Game lobbys also are applied to the 500+ count. So if the game has a lobby, aka Battle.net that can hold more then 500+ people, or if the game has a central area that consists of more than 500 people then it's on here and considered a MMO.

There will be more than two raids persay, Trion stated RIFTS will spawn raid mobs at higher levels and also invasions could spawn a raid boss which was seen during the end of each beta. I think this game will offer the best for soloists and group play. With both sides having plenty to do.   

I will state this again, IPod Touch man, not the IPhone is Apple's gaming platform. Apple has already stated they want to branch away from the IPhone being game centric and be more about enterprise and daily phone usage. And we don't really know what the 6th generation IPod Touches will offer GPU or even tech wise other than rumors. Sony has already showed that they lack common sense when it comes to delivering the goods, hence the abysmal PS3 and PSP numbers and there profits. You may want to calm down before you eat your words. And I also mentioned Andriod is about to make a huge blast at gaming on handheld phone devices with NVidia, just watch. Read up on Tegra and check the roadmap for NVidia in this field. Then lets have this discussion.

Also to note, the PSP2 will be able to play old PSP games through thier store which won't fully launch when the PSP2 does. And no ones really knows how the whole 3g will work with carriers and who will support it, since you have to have a carrier to get the 3g service, which is dumb because WIFI is alot faster than 3g and LTE tech is about to launch which will make 3g useless.

Someone apparently can't read. That is that announcement of the PSP2 which is rather just okay. Only thing I thought was cool is it does have quad cores in it. Sadly the store it's going to use isn't going to be fully launched till most likely Q3, same with the PS Phone. Nintendo's 3DS will do fine and I'm not sure why you mentioned the IPhone as they are marketing a different crowd. I'm sure you meant the IPod Touch, which is more of thier gaming platform, but they are in talks about possibly making a console. Sad thing is, just like with Apple and Windows, Apple will always fall off, it's just a matter of when. If you want to talk about gaming on phones, then look toward Andriod and Tegra2-Tegra2.5-Tegra3. All of which blow any Apple GPU out the water. Qualcomm also has a GPU coming out at the end of this year which they say compares to the PS3 graphics wise. OP, before you make titles with a bunch of CAPS, do your homework, it helps.

btw, this does work. cheers!

No reason for a game yet to be released to be on that list. Maybe someone needs to read over the term in the dictionary! :P You can't appreciate something that has no substance, or better yet nobody has played.

You can find your answer here! Also located at the bottom of this site.

Does it meet our requirements?

1. Make sure that the game isn't already on our list. We know that this sounds simple, but there are a lot of them and sometimes they get overlooked.
2. The game should have the capability to support at least 500 congruent users on a single server. This is not a reflection of the game's current subscriber count, but rather reflects the capabilities of a game's technology.
3. The game must include some form of common area where players can interact with one another inside of the persistent game world. This excludes lobby and chat room based interaction. Exceptions are made where logical (such as sports MMOs) that still fit within the spirit of what an MMO is.
4. The game must make use of persistent characters. This means that you should be able to log in after logging out and find your character as advanced as you left them (or more).
5. The game must contain some form of advancement.

Originally posted by Zekiah

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by kingtommyboy

This thread is only for people who play rift in beta. I've never been a rift fanboy. I also never really followed it. But I'm getting curious about this game when I see the screenshots. So my question is, what is rift like? Is it a good game? Did you liked it while you were playing the beta? What are the pro's and con's? What do you think about the game? Please only answer when you actually played the beta, I want to read real opinions.

 

Rift is like playing the most sub par and generic mmorpg in existence and having a small twist to give the illusion its deep.

The illusion pays off with its class system. 

 

Here's what you need to know:

 

Class System:  It is not a real multi-class system. Very few people actually look at it and see what they did. There are really only 4 independent classes in the game. Each class has 8 skill trees (excluding the pvp tree, which isnt really a full on tree). These trees are called souls to help cover up the fact they are just skill trees. So where WoW has 10 classes and 3 trees per class.... Rift does something similar but changes it to 4 classes with 8 trees, though only 3 trees at any given build. In essence they are not much different. 

Furthermore, Rift's skill trees are not really deep and or varied. Many skills in one tree will be nearly identical to another tree, just with a different name and perhaps different element attached to it. 

In addition to that, 60% of the trees are DPS oriented. Most have dps, but 60% are more "high end" & "constant" dps oriented. 

A developer posted this awhile back in the Beta forums. (NDA has been lifted) It shows the trees and their focus in case anyone wanted to protest my "60% claim". 

So far the over all opinion on the forums is that the trees and classes are way too imbalanced at the moment. Right now theres no reason to not play a cleric who can dish out massive dps, heal, get a pet, tank and be a caster (both aoe, cc and direct damage). Cleric will be the most played class, playing anything else in a PvP and even PvE environment will be silly unless they make changes.

 

Rifts: Despite what some try to claim, Rifts are not random. Not in the sense you are thinking. They all have the same spawn points. This means Rifts will only appear at pre-set spawn points. Eventually you can start seeing  where they will spawn before hand, and thus make your rounds. Invasions and NPC scouting parties are really just mobs spawned that run along a preset path. Thus you will know where they are going to go, in addition the map tells you where they will go. Kind of defeats the purpose. During rifts, players rush to "tag" as many mobs as possible in order to get the loot and points for the leader board, thus cheapening the effect of "working together."

 

Quests: Take the word "generic" to a whole new level. They absolutely suck. Even many f2p games have better quests. I had to argue with some numb nut over on the beta forums about this issue. He defended quests as being great because the "quest text box was interesting". He actually tried to call the generic text in the text box as being the quest game play. Quests are a constant Kill 10 wolves, and collect 10 mushrooms.  There is very little scripting at all in the quest system, its as if they just copied and pasted the quests over and over and over and just changed the mob to kill or the item to pick up.  PvE quests are just bad!  To make matters worse, you dont even need the text box as the moment you "accept a quest" from a generic NPC standing in one spot with an little icon above their head, you get a large yellow circle on your map telling you exactly where to go and what to kill. Its a fairly brainless ordeal.

 

Crafting: So minimal and badly done, it makes WoW's crafting system look genius and deep. The general feedback on the beta forums is that crafting is dumb, boring, and essentially pointless at this point and time. Unless they redesign the entire process, I doubt it will be better later on.

 

Leveling: You spend more than 1/3 of the entire leveling process in one small linear zone. Yes, over 1/3!  The max level is 55 and you finally leave the starter zone (not tutorial zone) at lvl 20.  Each side will have their linear progression of zones after that. Defiant with the southern zones, Guardians with the northern zones, and the contested zones around Port Scion which is in the very middle.

 

Dungeons: Not nearly as well made as dungeons found in other games. They are mostly uninspired, pointlessly hard generic npcs. Very little is done in the way of scripting.  Currently if you die on a generically placed boss after a tunnel filled with elite mobs just standing around, you can rez and come back to the boss and their damage taken will still be the same. There is no real penalty right now for dying in a dungeon. 

 

Conclusion & Final Thoughts: After playing in all 3 beta events as well as being present at their E3 booth and seeing it first hand.... I find the game underwhelming, uninspired and really sloppy. Its as though they had a great concept but couldnt actually execute it in a manner that would really impress. 

For starters they went with the GameBryo engine, which is just bad. It has the GameBryo visual feel to it as well, which is why its getting a lot of "warhammer" comparisons. They clearly didnt invest their time and money into designing a well rounded game.  This means, crafting, PvE, Quests... everything not part of their "npc rifts" was just slopped together. It feels like they didnt even try to do a better job than the competition. This wouldnt surprise me since they are also developing another mmorpg at the same time. My hypothesis is that Rifts is just a means to get some early revenue while they work on something they probably care more about. The mmorpg in question is the SyFy channel mmo they have licensed.

Keep in mind Rifts are just Player Quests ala WAR, though without much of the well crafted scripted events. Tabula Rasa did a lot of the things Rifts do, and they came across as doing a better job at it. Games like Dark and Light had mobs who actually migrated and dwindled dynamically based on player involvement. So dynamic gameplay isnt all that "new", we are just waiting for someone to do a really good job at it.

The world is full of hostile mobs. You cannot take two steps without running into another generic mob that for some reason has a grudge against you. Get within its radius and it will make its sound fx and charge at you. This not only helps break what little immersion might be present, but really makes riding around on a mount a pain in the arse. Freemarch (defiant starter)  is a lot more open and slightly better to navigate than say Silverwood (guardian starter). Cities really were a let down. They are a couple of huts with a few NPCs standing around them and perhaps one big building in the center. You will be disappointed in the size and scope of your faction city, as its more of a faction hut.

I believe Rift is trying to sell itself on being a next gen AAA title without actually adding next gen AAA content across the board. Their marketing department is running in over time really trying to sell the image of the game and hide its simplistic and below average design. Right now, this game wont be able to keep a large player base past the 3 and then 6th month mark. It will have its small niche of loyal fanatics but it will be hard pressed to do better than Aion much less WAR. 

The good is that the dev team seems responsive and they come across as a very likable bunch. I just wish I could say the same for their product.

I actually loved what I saw at E3 and followed the game closely. This response is completely neutral, and comes from playing all 3 beta's extensively. Conclusions are neutral and fair. Just being honest.

My best advice is, dont hype yourself up over this game. Sadly, it is not worth it.

^ Truth

Well said, pretty much sums up my thoughts from beta.

Sadly, once I got to were he stated they used the gamebyro engine I stopped reading. Do people not know what the gamebyro toolset is? Clearly some people don't and think this is a problem with rift. Here is a little insight straight from wiki:

A Gamebryo license can be purchased as either binary (headers, libraries and tools) or with full source code, so developers can debug the engine (and use it as reference for any customizations).

RIFT uses the toolset, not the engine and have stated they used it for clientside things and most of it has been written out. Even still the engine is a good engine if they were to use it. Game engines get updated all the time, look at crysis and hero engine and even AOC's engine. Just because they were made light years ago doesn't mean they are aged. The rest of what he stated is pure opinion in my eyes. I like RIFT, I enjoy the quests, and enjoy the multi class system. What people need to stop doing is this though:

My best advice is, dont hype yourself up over this game. Sadly, it is not worth it.

Quit invoking your opinion on others, just debate the subject at hand. It's fine to be negative about something and debate that or post it. But theres simply no need to over do it and start telling your readers what they should or shouldn't do. So my best advice is to not give my advice and just debate. I'm not god, you want advice, seek out a counsler.

Also once you pick your first soul, it shows you at the bottom in green what souls work better with. One thing I can't stand though is balance. I think there shouldn't be balance in any class at all, period. Balance to me only dumbs down the gameplay and effects to many classes overall. So what if some builds are to powerful, in the end some skills will be involved. And if you want to base it off reality, no single fight has ever been balanced. Fightning and War's have always been about how to get an advantage over an opponent. When you, lets say, prepare for a UFC fight, you try to find advantages like does the person have ground game? Does the person have injuries? And what not and use that against your opponent. Why people think everything should be fair and balanced kinda shocks me. I don't need nor want to go into a fight thats going to last 6-8 hrs because we are equally balanced. I go into fights wanting to finish you instantly, if I can. I do understand that we are playing a game though so reality doesn't exist nor should it. But balance to me just sounds to equal. And if people want true balance, then your going to end up having every class have the same talents and skills, meaning generic. If you don't then you will always have imbalance. And do we all really want to be the same, or do people actually want to be different. Can't really have it both ways.

Put it this way, if you want true balance your going to end up with a game where your always fighting a clone of yourself. Does that sound even remotely fun? Me, I like suprises. If you beat me, im going to do one of two things.

A. Find a way to beat you if possible or

B. Move on to the next opponent.

What I won't do is complain why your more powerful then me, mostly because it's not a bad thing. You had something I don't and you were the better man on that given day. If anything I may congratulate you.

Sadly this thread has been derailed again by a few people who don't know how to stay on topic. This is about the business side of things, and it was a good read for me. To you others, stay on topic or post your opinions in the right thread, nuff said.

Wow, what a nice CE! A USB drive and a mousepad plus all that other stuff, definitely the way to do CE's. =)

Heh, I still don't get it. I understand people are familar with World of Warcraft and all. But why do people keep saying this game is just another clone. Lets put it this way, what RIFT has most other games also have. Questing, the grind, instances, crafting and the like. All these things are what make up almost any mmo you see now, and will see in the future. Every game is going to try to bring something new. It's not a clone, it's called the traditional RPG model for mmorpg's. World of Warcraft didn't make this model, they just refined it. And it's really not a bad thing. This is how mmorpgs are going to continue to be created and played, its a model that works. People looking for dynamic's are going to be hurt. While the technology is there, it's just not feasible in an online environment. Well it is, but your talking about having servers capped at the bare minimum. I'm talking at most probably like 100 people per server for it to work right and run right while allowing even the most aged computers to run the game. Thats the thing right there also. People like us are what hold games back from being really dynamic. And no game company or investor would put 300 million into a game just to watch 100 people play it.

People need to quit being couch developers and start being consumers and realize that it's going to take a long time before you see the standerd model change. SWTOR, RIFT, GW2 and any other game isn't going to change it. You won't see a drastic change for quite sometime. Like I stated, the tech is there, we just aren't. Not everyone has 3 grand to drop on a top of the line computer. And developers don't have one global system they design for like consoles do. You want innovation, your 360 or PS3 is it. I know it's hard to swallow, but once you get past that, maybe you can start to enjoy what you have. And if what you have is not good enough for you, then maybe its time to move on. I enjoy RIFT very much so, not because it's a clone but because the world has some life in it. It may not be the most dynamic game, but it does things right by giving me the standerd model plus some and offering me some dynamic events on top of it. I also enjoy the storyline and what it has to offer. Cheers and Merry Xmas!!!

Sounds good, and I wish the best for you guys too.