The problem for GW2 is, if I understand right,  there is no progression at endgame.  Unlike DAOC there is no PvP character progression and there is no PvE gear progression.  While I love the idea of taking keeps DAOC style people need the carrot.  They need to be able to progress their character whether its through PvP, PvE or gear progression.  Without that carrot there is no progression and many will simply lose interest.

There is little to no reason to play either game once you hit max level.  Warhammer was fine 1-40.  But it lacked a PvE progression endgame.  Consequently it quickly failied.  ToR is a bit different in that it has the peices in place for an endgame but the game is simply not appealing enough to keep people playing.  Plus the endgame was completely untested and its amazingly buggy and poorly done.  But ToR does have a big advantage over Warhammer in that it has a progression endgame.  But  there are already games that do this endgame much better than ToR.  Sadly ToR looks to be going down the Warhammer path.  People are bored to death and leaving in droves.  Servers are empty.  People are clamoring for server merges.  EA's stock is dropping rapidly and it is quickly becoming clear the game is a sinking ship with not enough lifeboats.

Originally posted by Emeraq

I have only seen one video of hers before, and it was also Tera and folks were giving her a bad time about her tone of voice and sounding bored.

I didn't mind the commentary on this one, her voice reminded me of Megan Webb for some reason. But with that said, her voice seemed a little more forced and "put on" to be professional for this preview.... I have to say do prefer her bored voice though, because it seems more real to me. And I say that without caring about whether she sounds overly enthused or not. 

They were giving her a hard time in the other thread because she was playing terrible.  She was in a Tera beta group and kept dying over and over because she kept walking blindly into a tailwhip.   She could not even understand why she kept dying.  When she was alive all she did was hop around and contributed nothing to her group except squeel in vent  She was crtiticized for being a pretend player who knows little to nothing about MMOS .  If you listen closely to her podcasts there is little to no substance or knowledge.  But in all fairness the mainstream MMO media routinely lacks substance and knowledge.  Is she any worse than the repetition of developer talking points we see called game previews and reviews?  I don't think so in terms of content or lack of content.

What I think makes her high on the annoyance factor is she comes off a bit arrogant with to much self praise especially considering that she appears clueless as to whats going on in game.

What I found really annoying was when they were in the 10 minute elite fight was not that that she kept dying because of her stupidity.  Its what she did after she died.  Rather than just being dead she spammed vent while dead with useless info about how she died.  She did this everytime she died.  If anyone has ever been in a raid guild they know what a serious no-no this is and how annoying it is when people who are dead are spamming vent and taking away everyone elses focus.  This simply told me she has no clue and sends out a big red flag that indicates that Pokket is likely only about Pokket.

I have not been a fan of gW2 or GW1 but this article may make me change my mind.  I loved DAOC and I love this idea of servers fighting over keeps and castles.  It sounds quite amazing.

While Tor may have had the most unique hits those hits are not very positive as we can see from its game ranking.

Tor is also the first new AAAgame I have seen on MMORPG.com to so swiftly drop out of the number one ranking.  Almost all new AAA mmos stay number here after release until the next big game is released.  It is now ranked number 27.  Which is quite an amazing fall.  Which illustrates how unliked ToR is to many players.

We can also see this on the servers which have gone from all full  to heavy to almost all light. Causing Bioware to change how they rank the server load so all do not appear light.  But they have lost even more players and they are all light again.  Likely the game is under 1 million now and plummeting in population.  Servers are already ghost towns and players are already asking for server merges.  Given the lack of replayability how long will it be until the mass exodus and ToR is deemed a sinking ship?  It seems just a matter of time.

Overhyped

Dissapointment

McDonalds

Cheap

Fake

Childish

Coaster

Bust

I did like Rift's events but I wish they were more epic in difficulty and scale.  It is a tough balancing act to make them difficult and make people want to do play them over and over. To do so I think diffcult invasions/events that require an entire server to defeat need to be  rare or it simply will not work.  But Archeage being primarily an eastern game that has an audience with a longer attention span maybe can get away with greater difficulty than  game targetted at western adhad audiences.   I wish Rift would implement diffcult rare events with consequences and benefits for failure and success.

Originally posted by MacroHard

Are you insinuating that the majority of the MMO community are nothing more than whiny, bratty children who criticize things MMOs offer before completely understanding what it is they react to?

*O and Calvin and Hobbes rox sox.

I will second that and go so far to say a majoirty of the people who post here simply do not play MMOs.  They only play them on the forums.  They hype games up in their minds and on the forums but once they actually play them they don't have the patience or attention span to play a MMO.  So they quickly end up hating the game they hyped and move on to hyping another game which they will soon dislike.

These players have no idea what they want in a MMO or even how to play a MMO.  They are pretend players and they dominate these forums.  They have helped dumb down games as companies have tried to make games accessible and apealing to them.  But they don't have the attention span to last more than a month or two in any game.  The only thing are good for is box sales.  They help fund games so real players can actually play them.

Rift's new raid dungeon, Hammerknell,  was released in july.  5 months later in December their were only 6 guilds that had completed the dungeon beforen the Akillyos nerf along with even more HK nerfs.  It was an extremely well done and difficult raid dungeon.   Many people argue it was the hardest raid dungeon since EQ2.  Having played Vanguard, rift raiding is many time more difficult and complex.  It makes Vanguard look very much like easy mode.

But if your looking for a raiding game your options are limited.  There are only 3 supported raiding games.  Rift, EQ2 and WoW.  I guess a 4th if you count ToR but itdoes not sound like the raiding is very serious or well done at least yet.

Rift has a new 20 man raid dungeon coming out in March or April.  The question is will it be as good and difficult as HK.  HK broke a lot of casual and bad guilds.  Mty guess is it will be a bit easier but not signifigantly.  But I hope its just as difficult.  There are plenty of raiddungeons for casual and bad guilds.

It is sad to say butSkyrim has mroe content, more replayability, better quality and less buggy.  There is not a question which is a better game.  Both are single player gmes but Skyrim feels much more like a MMO.

The population has been going up now on Rift Status for about 4-5 weeks.  When the server merges happened.  The closed serevrs stayed at 1 and all the others serevrs had substantial increases.  

My guess is ToR has been doing Rift a lot of favors.  Many disatisified ToR players have suddenly found Rift looking a lot prettier.

But this last weeks increase I bet is from Rift Lite.  The previous increases since the end of Decemeber were all in addition to the trial servers.  But this weeks increase I would bet is mainly from Rift Lite.  If you look at the numbers you can see all the trial servers getting crazy bumps.  i can;'t believe those are accurate.  The rest of the servers are getting mild increases.  I would imagine thats a lot of the lite people.  I would not be surpised if Rift has actually dropped this last week.  After 4-5 straight weeks of increases it would only make sense that a number of the new people will have not stuck and likely hav dwindled a little bit.  Not  mention 1.7 just came out which likely sparked a quick jump in players which will level out the next few weeks.

My guess is the next few weeks will show a decline as  it levels out from the lite players, the returning 1.7 players and some of the ToR people move on.  But I think its fair to say the population has stabilized the last few months and seems to be on a slow rise.  Rift seems to have the model of EQ2 which is not surpising with Hartsman running the show.  EQ2 bottomed out after a bad release and dropped down close to 100k subs then slowly rose back up to over 200k by adding lots of new content and improving the games rep.  Rift has the same focus on gaining players by having a good rep.  At some point I would expect the population to start to slowly rise like EQ2 did a couple years after release. As new games fail to meet hype Rift will always be an alternative for those that relaize the grass is seldom greener.

There has not been a game with as many exploits and bugs in its endgame than ToR in quite some time.  Basically they released a completely untested and unfinished bugged endgame.  People have been exploiting it for a month now.

Originally posted by FuryV

I'm sick of Rift getting the attention & praise that it's been getting.  I like to consider myself able to tell certain aspects of a game, and literally all I found when I was playing Rift was an unbelievable amount of WoW type gameplay.  Rift just felt like a complete WoW copy, and also felt totally F2P like.

IMO, it's complete crap.

For a guy who is so good being "able to tell certain aspects of a game" you are not very good at articulating your argument or for that matter even making an argument.

But since you are unwilling or unable to make an argument let me try to make the  argument for you.  Rift is made in the traditional style of EQ1/ EQ2/ WoW and is basically the sequal to EQ2 with Hartsman running the show.  While Rifts offers activities for many different playstyles at endgame it is designed mainly as a raiding gear based game.  Many people will say they do not like theis game play as it requires them to grind gear.  But I do not understand what else they expect?  Gear to be given to people simply because they show up?  A  FPS style game where there is no gear differences?  Both are pretty unrealistic if a game wants people to keep players playing.

The second argument against Rift is its narrow design.  The 1-50 design is very narrow and limited.  WIth 2 leveling paths,fast leveling and somewhat limited content.  Hartsman addressed this many times pre-release when he said a game develeper has 2 choices to go "big" or go "small."  One can go big like in Vanguard and have lots of horizintal content 1-50 but content will be not be polished and the quality will be poor because there simply is not the time or the money for any game to go big and offer polish and quality.  Unless you have a budget the size of ToR and we can see how that turned out.  Trion decided to focus their game on endgame not the journey. They spent their resources on developing a polished, tested and finished endgame at release.  Which they did quite well releasing 10 level 50 dungeons one raid along with 2 other raids to be released a month after release.   The endgame was tested for 6 months prior to release.

The problem with wanting more is a designer is limited in time and money they can only offer so much at release.  To make a bigger game one would have sacrifice a lot.

The Third argument against Rift is its not a sandbox.  Its a valid argument.  Freedom is limited.  There is no construction. no building no open world elements.  While I do not think a AAA Sandbox can be made and be released with quality and polish I do believe there is a strong demand for one.  The problem is people do not have the patience or understanding to wait around for a compnay to finish one. Essentially a sandbox game will be released half finished and people will leave and it will never get finished.  Which is why we only see independent cheap sanbox games.  Who do you blame?  I blame the players.  I certainly do not blame Trion.  Why invest $50 million into a game they may like but that will likely lose them money.

There is not reason anyone has to like Rift.  Its a fine game for what it is a raiding game.  It is one of 3 supported raiding games on the market with EQ2 and WoW being the other two.  Tor will likely be a 4th but at this point it does not seem to be a serious raiding game.  Rift has a very loyal, stable  and happy player base.  If one does not like to raid then I can see Rift losing a lot of its appeal.   Thats fine.  But for what it is its a fine game and very well made.

Originally posted by sardonespa

So, bottom line is - playing for the 1-20 free game is a waste of time?

 

No problem.  Thanks for saving me the trouble.

As a sode note, in Turbine's DDO and LOTRO,  there is basically nothing you cant do on F2P..albeit requires a lot of grinding to earn DDO points to buy the additional content.  Nonetheless, THAT is the F2P model games like WoW and RIFT should follow.

IMHO,

Sardo

Whether or not its a waste of time depends on what you are looking for. if your looking for a F2P game then maybe it is.  If you are  potentially looking at subscribing then its a good idea.   The 1-20 trial is a marketing program that is designed to give people a taste of the game in hope they will subscribe.

In terms of content 1-20 is less than 1% of the total content.  Rift is a game that is about endgame not the journey.  I know very few people in game who have less than 50 days played.  1-20 takes 2-10 hours.  Now you can reach 20 try out different souls, run the two dungeons, chat with people and even accumulate wealth (assuming there is no cap on what you can earn).  One can make a lot of money collecting and selling artifacts in Freemarch and Silverwood.  If you have friends its a good way to stay in contact.

Regardless best of luck.

Dwarf Area in EQ1.   I loved the chessboard. It was such a dangerous and unfrogving starter zone.  I don't recall if that haunted area in the teens was still in the same zone.  But I loved that place as well.  At release it was hard not to fall in love with EQ1.  Suhc an amazing and scary world.

Gnome area in WoW -  The first game to really offer fun content at low levels.  Until WoW people always said wait until level 20 then the game will be fun.  I loved the foot prints in the snow.

Dwarf Area in Vanguard -  The Dwarf city was simply amazing.  Especially considering most people would never see it except as a low level Dwarf.  Some of the 14 or starter areas were quite hit and miss in terms of quality.  But the Dwarf area was my favorite.

SWTOR  I am not a fan of Tor but I thought the starting areas were well done.  Mainly because of the story.

Tortage - AoC -  IMO one of the worst games ever released.  A complete sham of a game.  But Tortage was well done.  Its to bad the rest of the game was completely unfinished.

Rift -  Both starter zones.  Both Freemarch and Silverwood are extremely well done starter zones.  Offering exploration, tons of quests, a starter dungeon, capital city and much more.

The Shire -LORO -  Just a wonderful zone if you like hobbits.  It really brought the books to life to me.  There were lots of the characters from the books, buildings and some amazing views.  If one grew up reading the books its almost a must to play lotro to expereince the Shire.

[quote]At level 5, my character is a “Duelist” with six points in both Finesse and Might.  You can spread the wealth to all trees, or focus on one, or just two.[/quote]

Grats on leve 5 Bill.  Is that the highest you ever gotten in any game?  I am always amazed how you can write so much about a game you only play for 30 minutes.  Nice job again, that is a special talent. But one day I would love to see you actually play one of these games you pretend to write about.

You are forgetting AO.  Your title should be "Fool me twice, Shame on me, Fool me a third time and I am a complete idiot,"

Remember before AoC's release Funcom said hey don't worry we have learned our lesson from AO.  It turns out the only lessons they learned from AO's release was to hide the game from potential players prior to release and to lie to their beta testers saying the game they were playing is way behind the build they would be releasing along with a long list of promised features they knew would neve be in at close to release.

Now Funcom is saying hey we learned our lesson from AoC.  We won't make that mistake again.  Which makes me wonder what new way have they learned to lie and steal peoples money.  It should be quite entertaining to watch this upcoming disaster unfold.  I am sure they will hire and pay someone to post their spin on these forums like they did with AoC.  Cough cough AmazingAvery maybe you need work again.  I am sure the fanboys will come out doing their best DnL impression and defend the game as the greatest game ever made and call everyone vile names who dare to question their undying faith.  TSW has all the makings of a great  horror film ready to unfold before our eyes.  I have my popcorn.

The game was already made for the ultra casual non MMO player.  How much easier can they make it?  I don't think its possible to dumb it down even more.

The first WoW clone actually released 2 weeks prior to WoW releasing.  It was EQ2 which completely redesigned its game in beta to copy WoW's quest directed gameplay. 

Originally posted by echolynfan

Originally posted by dimmit77

Originally posted by Pintaphilly

Im enjoying the game so..... yeah..... a lot of the problems you guys list, i haven't experienced at all. And most of them are shared with other MMOs. You guys expect WAAAAY TOO MUCH from MMOs, get a sense of god damn reality for once. SWTOR is a great game (I played both WoW and Rift, raided hardcore in both). IF you did your research, your expectations wouldn't be as exaggerated as it was. DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH! I knew what to expect from the game, and enjoy it greatly. 

Not to mention, these type of threads pop up FOR EVERY SINGLE MMO when they get released. Can you see the pattern? Nothing new here, just the same old whining from idiots who expect too much from MMOs.

 

I keep seeing random dudes posting how bad this game is and really wait to see them post what game they are actually PLAYING so we have a point of reference . But no one does. 

It would increase my laugh factor by a 100 when someone posted " Game is bland , boring compared to WoW or Darkfall  or Guid Wars that I currently play . " 

Or at least tell us that they don't really play ANY MMO , and they just wait for the next big one that will blow us away . 

I read these posts and seriously wonder if these people have ever understood how an MMO works . 

This random dude bought two Deluxe copies of the game - one for myself and for my wife. My wife said the game sucked by level 15...I got to level 50 and realized that BW spent all of it's money on VO and forgot to add the game. Hamster wheel grinding Raids and broken PVP for gear is the same crap that's been churned out for the last 7 years

300 Mil and BW and EA couldn't even release the game with a UI you could move or other basic features you would expect from ANY new MMO. BW's answer to end game content is to roll an Alt if you're bored. LOL

Fact is SWTOR is a single player game being sold as an MMO - plain and simple. So I packed up and went back to EQ2 - an old but very solid, fun game and will be there until the "next big game" happens.

We should all expect more from these companies and you should see a trememdous drop in subs over the next couple of months when slower players start figuring out there's no game after 50 either :)

It has a traditional EQ/WoW/EQ2/Rift raid endgame but its an untested poorly done very buggy endgame.  I have no idea why anyone would want to bang thier heads against the wall playing ToR's endgame when there are much better and more developed versions of  it in EQ2, Rift and WoW. Not to mention the audience that Tor has targetted is very casual meaning it will be very hard to sell them on any difficult endgame raiding.  Very few top raiding guilds have commited to ToR and I doubt any will.  They will stay in EQ2/Rift and WoW where they know the quality and difficulty of the raid content will be much superior.