'yes, Rift has indeed copied WoW as so many other games have, but Rift has done it where it counts'
No, I couldnt disagree with this statement any less. Rift 'cloned' a lot of stuff from WoW: Assign talent points into one of three trees upon leveling, barbones gathering/crafting, end game just a reputation/gear grind with recucled dungeons from leveling, extremely similar UI, the usual thempark stuff like quest giver icons and stuff thats more general than just wow, etc etc (all stuff NOT in EQ by the way, for those clueless people that call WoW an EQ clone).
Thats not the stuff that counts though. its the stuff they didnt copy. The interesting world, the interesting races. The love given to the WORLD, not just the quests and raids. The SOUL. hell, as on rails as the questing experience maybe in WoW at now, at least you always have MULTIPLE choices which zones to level in and which dungeons to run. Rift you have zero choice for most of your leveling time. one zone per range, one dungeon per range.. So also it failed to copy WoW's scope, which was only middle of the pack as it was.
They made a smaller, more hollow wow.
Oh and overall population is declining. Not as severely as the first month, but server population sites clearly show there is a decline in people playing. That is a terrible sign for a game wanting to be a big player, every single last big player in the entire history of the genre showed continuous growth for a couple years. None of them showed a decline after their first month, or several months.
Rift will likely have a long life, but it will be in eq2 range numbers, not 500k+
Yeah i have to agree this article didn't really compare WoW and Rift or talk about any talking points stating examples. All it did was talk about the dev and release process in early WoW and Rift to compare the DEV system of the games.
How anyone can say that cloning other games is a good idea is beyond me. Before WoW we had 4 major MMO's: UO, AC, DAoC, and EQ. These games were all very different from each other and I don't think anyone would dare say any of them were clones.
Let me tell you what we didn't have pre-WoW. No quest indicators above NPC's heads. No focus on endgame. No dailies. No raid tiers. No in game quest helpers.
Since WoW, we're being smothered with pointless and meaningless quests, that you can't walk a mile without having your eyes assaulted by a big shiny symbol above some guys head. Since WoW, most games follow the same formula. They have few classes, that have talent trees, that you can spend talent points in to specialize your character. You do quests, which 99% of them are solo, which number in the thousands, following them from quest hub to quest hub until you hit max level. Along the way, there are dungeons that are instanced, which require a group to complete. At max level, you have a choice of rerolling, doing BG's, or raiding.
Past games didn't follow any particular formula ad naseum. If you played WoW, you've already experienced the same gameplay found in LoTRO, AION, WAR, RIFT and most others released P2P since WoW came out. It's boring and I'm tired of playing the same type of game. People use the "They're all the same, because they are in the same genre," at which point you can tell they started playing MMO"s after WoW released, because all the MMO's weren't the same for the first 5-6 years of their existence.
So yeah, RIFT is a WoW clone, which is why I didn't last more than 2 weeks in that game. After playing WoW and it's clones for the past several years, I cannot stomach doing another lame as solo quest. Why can't these NPC"s take out their own garbage!
I think i love you
Yeah, this post nails it, and mostly, I just want an excuse to repost it.
..but as true as the above may be, Rift is even more of a WoW clone than most, when it comes to endgame. That's why it gets called on it even more than most, and its why we keep seeing posts like the OP, who don't get it, because they're not 50, yet. Which, incidentally, should only take another week or two, unless you're extremely casual.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Rift is a good game. It's smooth and its engine is a successful step forward from the 2004-2007 games. Its main issue is that Telara is a boring place. WoW, Lotro, TOR, these games have an established story to work from, with interesting characters and locations people want to see. Yes, GW and EQ built new worlds from scratch... but their worlds are interesting. Telara kinda sucks.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
I think Rift is a great game and Trion seems to be a company with their priorities in the right place. They have managed to do something that countless other mmo developers have failed to do, have a solid successful release.
That being said, Rift for me felt extremely similar to the last several years worth of mmos and left me uninterested. Call it a clone of another game or not, it didn't really do much to inspire a fresh feeling, but rather gave the immediate impression that I was continuing to do the same exact things I did in the past several games, but just in a different world.
I think the people who will get the most from Rift are those who are happy with more of the same, but set in a different world. Trion seems to be doing a great job updating and adding to the game. Again something few developers these days seem capabale of.
To those who are looking for something new, they will have to keep looking. That doesn't make Rift a bad game though.
In comparison to wow, the thing that really set wow apart from the crowd was that Blizzard examined the mmo market at the time to see what players liked, what they disliked, what worked and what was missing. Then they set out with the goal of making a game to address those points and really delivered something that at the time was very refreshing and played much different than what was available. Even though it borrowed most of its gameplay from previous games.
That doesn't seem to be what most developers are setting out to do anymore. Instead they are focusing on what has worked (mostly in the case of WoW) and how to add some twists or new mechanics to that.
Rift is a "wow clone" still a great game but its still just like all the other games that are out right now. Why cant we come up with a new UI because this one is getting old. That was the one thing I thought was cool about FF14 I think the world is ready for a game that isnt just questing to level. In Rift it was nice to PVP to level up but your just doing the same 3 until you get on a higher level. yea there is a lot of gear you can get at 50 but its like who cares I have to do the same stuff over and over again to get it all the gear shows is that you have a lot of time to waste. Dont get me wrong I think Rift is one of the best games that has come out within the last year but I got bored with it way too fast. And Star Wars olr will be awesome too we will just see how much it has to offer. I hope it has something to offer because I am beginning to lose faith in MMO's havent been playing one for 4 months. Not trying to piss anyone off I am just tired of the same game different story.
I think Rift is a great game and Trion seems to be a company with their priorities in the right place. They have managed to do something that countless other mmo developers have failed to do, have a solid successful release.
That being said, Rift for me felt extremely similar to the last several years worth of mmos and left me uninterested. Call it a clone of another game or not, it didn't really do much to inspire a fresh feeling, but rather gave the immediate impression that I was continuing to do the same exact things I did in the past several games, but just in a different world.
I think the people who will get the most from Rift are those who are happy with more of the same, but set in a different world. Trion seems to be doing a great job updating and adding to the game. Again something few developers these days seem capabale of.
To those who are looking for something new, they will have to keep looking. That doesn't make Rift a bad game though.
In comparison to wow, the thing that really set wow apart from the crowd was that Blizzard examined the mmo market at the time to see what players liked, what they disliked, what worked and what was missing. Then they set out with the goal of making a game to address those points and really delivered something that at the time was very refreshing and played much different than what was available. Even though it borrowed most of its gameplay from previous games.
That doesn't seem to be what most developers are setting out to do anymore. Instead they are focusing on what has worked (mostly in the case of WoW) and how to add some twists or new mechanics to that.
Personally for me, Rift really needs to add more content (almost more then doubling it), low to high level, for alts and just more things to do. Also the crafting system could be light years better. Player housing would also be nice. There are a lot of fun moments in Rift, but it can be hard to login when things are all to familiar. The addtion of some sandbox elements would also be nice.
Rift is more a clone of all the preceeding WoW clones imo.
Unfortunately for Rift, WoW does it better than all of them and ultimately, it's a better game than Rift.
SWTOR isn't really relevant here, but watch for the usual massive initial player numbers followed by a HUGE fall-off in the first 1-3 months, the same big IP flop we had in Warhammer, DCU, STO, LOTRO, DDO etc etc. It's boringly predictable.
The metal for games like Rift and SWTOR is lastability, surviving the initial overhyped expectations and concentrating on solid gameplay and enjoyment for their customers.
Rift, while an unremarkable game, launched with a pretty polished product, TOR must match this or suffer the predictable "It was released before it was ready" jubes.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
My only real gripe with Rift is the lack of content variety. The levelling path is the same for all races and classes on each faction, as someone that loves levelling alts this is disappointing.
Long live SWTOR!
I agree 100%
You have to do the exact same quests. That makes it very boring to me.
And you foolishly think swtor will be different?
Actually, yes it will be. Each class has their own, unique story. There is also two starting planets per faction, making four starting areas in total. Add in the fact that each story has you making choices that will affect your stories in different ways.
Meaning you could play through a class story as a darkside character, then play through it again as a lightside character and have completely different events transpire simply because your actions were different. Making it a different experience even though you're playing the same class and story.
EQ in it's current state is pretty close to a WoW clone. The main differences with the Original was a lack of quests, harsh death penalty, and only 8 spell slots as opposed to being able to use all of them at any time (minus the cooldown). Melee classes didn't even have skills in the way we think of them today. These differences alone made for completely different gameplay. That's what a clone comes down to really isn't it; whether or not the game feels the same when you play it? I suppose this is highly a matter of perspective. I thougth WoW was better than the original EQ for a long time, until almost every game that came out after it had hundreds of quests as the main focus of the game and soft death penalties.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
One of the things that I like about RIFT is that the different classes can fill different roles.
Rogues can tank
Clerics can tank
That's pretty cool!
What it really boils down to for me is that RIFT allows many more combinations of building a character the way YOU want to build YOUR CHARACTER. IMO this is a big difference from WOW, which pegs you into one of 3 talent trees, with nearly no choices whatsoever.
My biggest complaint with RIFT is that the system requirements are much higher than what my computer can run. Updating a graphics card and RAM can add up.
Er, surprised this wasn't published under the Devil's Advocate Column....because almost all of us know why Rift is accused of being a WOW clone.....
The author doesn't seem to grasp the concept of standard theme park MMORPG as typified by WOW and others of the genre.
It isn't the fact they have levels and classes, many MMO's that are not standardized have them such as Lineage 2 or DAOC.
Lot's of MMO's have quests, but when the character progression is tied going from one set of quests to the next in a mostly linear fashion you are starting to follow the standard model. (especially if they are really just a speedbump on the way to endgame)
Rift, like so many before copy many of the design and gameplay mechanics that Blizzard did with WOW and eschew the same set of mechanics that Blizzard chose not to incorporate.
Sure, there's some variation with the rifts, but basically the design of this game is level up a character quickly to 50, then raid, raid, raid for more and better gear. Despite what people believe, that wasn't always the "endgame" for MMORPG's, but it certainly has become that for many of them in the post WOW era.
It's true, Rift is very well made, and adds a few twists of its own, but the basic feature set mimics WOW, raiding, gear progression, dungeon finder, daily quests, standardized UI that any WOW player would easily recognize (go play EQ2 if you want to see a different sort of UI implementation).
If you've ever played the older MMO's such as DAOC, AC, AO, EQ1, UO, Lineage 1/2, Shadowbane or EVE you'd see there are so many other ways MMO's can be designed and played, however Rift and its many cousins are all far too close to WOW to not be labeled anything else but modern standard theme park MMO's. (aka WOW-clones)
This ^^
Played Rift from the beginning and cried aloud my "alleluja" for a game released (finally !) polished and ready to launch. And kudos again to Trion for this and for their ongoing effort.
Problem is: at its core, even with the well thought soul system, it's the same standard game (Wow-clone or everything-else-clone, take your choice). Sincerely I've had enough and left it.
In comparison to wow, the thing that really set wow apart from the crowd was that Blizzard examined the mmo market at the time to see what players liked, what they disliked, what worked and what was missing. Then they set out with the goal of making a game to address those points and really delivered something that at the time was very refreshing and played much different than what was available. Even though it borrowed most of its gameplay from previous games.
That doesn't seem to be what most developers are setting out to do anymore. Instead they are focusing on what has worked (mostly in the case of WoW) and how to add some twists or new mechanics to that.
I think you are wrong on that - Blizzard did not examine the market, they hired some eq1-raiders and let them design the raids. The quest-chains have been implemented by accident during the last stages of beta. Blizz added to that a single player GAME (they really know how to create games, kudos), but they decided not to add a WORLD (see http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=5610#764fa). That concept was sadly successful, mostly driven by the IP, the name "Blizzard" and a big marketing budget.
Now Trion (and all the other failing companies in the last years) "analyzed" the "market", and did what business man do - create a standard copy of something proven. Doh. Unfortunately mmorpg-players are not a market, but human beings. Unfortunately mmorpg-players can be fooled once or twice, but not ten times. Unfortunately mmorpg-players enter online worlds to become part of that world (i.e. social interaction is the main reason to play mmos over single player games), and not to get this blue sword with +3 str. Not very surprising to the community here at mmorpg.com Rift fell flat on its nose.
Hopefully the right people learn the right lesson from the story. I also disagree on "the market is saturated". This is not the case, not at all. Just the market for WoW is saturated.
EQ in it's current state is pretty close to a WoW clone. The main differences with the Original was a lack of quests, harsh death penalty, and only 8 spell slots as opposed to being able to use all of them at any time (minus the cooldown). Melee classes didn't even have skills in the way we think of them today. These differences alone made for completely different gameplay. That's what a clone comes down to really isn't it; whether or not the game feels the same when you play it? I suppose this is highly a matter of perspective. I thougth WoW was better than the original EQ for a long time, until almost every game that came out after it had hundreds of quests as the main focus of the game and soft death penalties.
Anyone saying WoW is an EQ clone in response to Rift is a WoW clone just does not get it, at all.
Tradeskill system: EQ: Combine items found in various ways together. can attempt any combine, but success rate determined by tradeskill level. difficult....WoW and rift: gathering skills gather mats. items are made by combining these, and chance of success is 100%. Easy and little investment required to level
Abilities: EQ you had 8 spells you could keep active. WoW/Rift: you can use all your abilities at any time with a global cooldown inbetween
Quests: EQ: search out quests, hail people and see what they say. At later levels quests are often epic in nature. WoW/Rift: NPCs clearly marked. Quests are almost always trivial, even at high levels.
Character customization: EQ: none at start, later added as additional exp system so you were always gaining exp towards something. Did not porivded much differentiation though. Your gear is what made you stand out most. Quite a bit of presitgious gear in EQ. WoW/Rift: Gain a level, assign a point into one of three trees. Rift lets you choose your three trees from a pool of 8, but tis still the idnetical system. Everyone ends up with very similar gear. Gear is not special, yet its the only endgame progression.
Dungeons: EQ complex and dangerous, non instanced. WoW/Rift: Instanced gear grinds
UI: WoW/Rift nearly identical, EQ completely different
and so on. Even if some of these things can be seen as innovations, Rift copied the system from WoW with little deviation.
In other terms, EQ is a VW Bus, WoW is a Lincoln Town Car, and Rift is a Mercury Grand Marquis. Yes, they are all 4 wheel motor vehicles, but two are extremely similar despite different brands. And the other is old but runs forever.
Well, considering the game is focused on the high end grind, that the poster is on the early 20s (lvl cap is 50) and that there are 2 factions. How much of the game has he experienced so far? My estimation is about a 15%-20%. And there goes a review.
It happens too often. Please reviewers, play the game properly, in depth, then review. Otherwise, I am sorry to say your posts have little relevance.
The real problems about the game show up when you are at level cap and there's nothing to do but joining the gear grind hamster wheel.
I'd have to say I disagree with the assertaion that Rift is a WoW clone where it counts. The parts of Rift that are cloned from WoW are the biggest critisisms of the game by the current player base and those that have left or refuse to join. The reason I feel the WoW clone statement is justified and not a positive is that the game like WoW eventually devolves into a gear grind raid centric game.
While Rift has added many unique things and some of which have made me ecstatic the constant gear grind detracts a great deal from the fun and having endgame devolve into nothing but raids and dalies just kills it for me. If I wanted that kind of game play I would have played WoW.
WoW clone for me has never been, well it's like every other MMORPG or well it's a themepark and not a sandbox. WoW clone means that the goal is to get gear so that you can get better gear so that you can eventually get better gear so that you can be geared like everyone else so that you can do raids for even better gear. What happens after you get the last of your gear? Whats the point of the game at that point? Roll an alt and do it all again or wait till the next expansion so that your existing chars have more gear to grind out and more raids to repeat to ad nasuem for no other purpose than just to have the gear?
Rift has it's own failings as well such as the repetitive nature of the Rifts, while fun at first they become stagnant and not very dynamic. I do like the open nature of them, but again with them all relatively feeling the same it becomes stale and boring fast.
The class setup though I love. I love that I can be a healer, tank or DD on my Cleric. I love that I have different setups for different things. I can flip over to my tank or healer setup when my party needs, flip to straight DD when I want to PvP and destroy, flip to my hybrid when the party needs a bit of both DD/Healer or Tank/Healer. The level of class customization is brilliant.
Sadly the rest of the game devolves into the same old song and dance. Fun up to about 40 then it's a bit blah.
Yes, it's a WoW clone. Not entirely, but in key areas that hurt the game.
Originally posted by Clywd Blizz added to that a single player GAME (they really know how to create games, kudos), but they decided not to add a WORLD (see http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=5610#764fa).
Actually, the link shows that the world was actually used as a foundation:
"Make a really deep game, in a really rich world, and then later, focus on, in the later stages of development, how can we make that as accessible as possible through smart user interface choices, and really sort of simple gameplay at first that introduces you to the more complex mechanics the more into the game you want to get."
So they built the world first, then added in the accessibility. Their main design was to make the game fun for people that didnt socialize as well as those who did. EQ if you didnt want to group, the game was just not nearly as fun. WoW you can have fun either way.
The class setup though I love. I love that I can be a healer, tank or DD on my Cleric. I love that I have different setups for different things. I can flip over to my tank or healer setup when my party needs, flip to straight DD when I want to PvP and destroy, flip to my hybrid when the party needs a bit of both DD/Healer or Tank/Healer. The level of class customization is brilliant.
# of classes that can only do one thing (dps):
WoW: 3, Mage, Rogue, Warlock 33%
Rift: None
#of classes that can do only two things, tank and dps
I loath these arguments. This is all Fan boy vs Fan boy crap.
Every game created in likeness is always compared to it's predaccessor. Like it really matters, they set out to make an mmorpg. Of course they used fundamentals from past games. Calling it a clone is a strawmans argument. It borders on saying Unreal is a Quake clone, Half-life was an Unreal clone and so on. Play the game and enjoy it. After 10 years you should be "glad" there is something other than WoW.. as for me it got really borring.
The class setup though I love. I love that I can be a healer, tank or DD on my Cleric. I love that I have different setups for different things. I can flip over to my tank or healer setup when my party needs, flip to straight DD when I want to PvP and destroy, flip to my hybrid when the party needs a bit of both DD/Healer or Tank/Healer. The level of class customization is brilliant.
# of classes that can only do one thing (dps):
WoW: 3, Mage, Rogue, Warlock 33%
Rift: None
#of classes that can do only two things, tank and dps
Rift: 1, Mage 25% <----- But always expected to be able to heal
#of classes that can do 3 things: tank, dps, offheal
WoW: none that can only off heal, 0%
Rift: Rogue 25% <---- but always expected to eb able to offheal (*yawn*)
#of classes that can do everything: tank, heap, dps
WoW: 2, Druid, Paladin 22%
Rift: 1, Cleric 25% <--- but always expected to be able to heal
No idea what your trying to say, but ok. Class system is nothing like rifts and is no comparison at all.
WoW has 9 classes with 3 tree's each limiting how much is customizable.
Rift has 4 classes with 9 tree's each increasing customization exponentially.
Not only is it about how many roles each class can fill but how they can fill them. You can litterally play how you want to play.
As far as whats expected from each class.... well you have people from WoW that expect a healer to heal, rouge to DD but experienced players know better lol. Clerics can top damage charts, Bards and mages can top healing charts,etc.
Every class in Rift can fill a minimum of 3 roles well. Rouges can fill 4. Support, Tank, DD and Healer. Not only that but they can do it in numerous ways. Your tank spec won't be like mine. My healing spec won't be like yours.
I agree with the statements about how pre-WoW games were all very different from each other. We had UO (which especially prior to the Renaissance patch, was phenomenal), EQ, AC, DAoC, and AO. Anarchy Online was a unique twist because it was one of the few SciFi MMO's at the time. But the thing that stood out is that each of these games had visibly different systems and approaches to the MMO industry. In recent years, yes, a lot of games seem to have taken a fair share of ideas from WoW. You can't really blame them though: WoW is obviously a very strong example of what works, although copying it won't beat it. It's just the same as all of the self-proclaimed "iPod killers" we saw over the years: their definition of killing the iPod was simply copying it and adding a few relatively insignificant features. That approach failed miserably, and the iPod is still safely sitting on top.
This isn't to say that I don't enjoy Rift, or even WoW for that matter. One of the first things I noticed during the Rift beta was the very familiar (to a WoW player) gameplay elements. I'm one of those people who has played pretty much all of the major MMO's at one time or another. None of them were perfect, but I've generally found enjoyable aspects of each. In recent years, WoW and EVE have been my two main picks (am I supposed to hate myself? we all know EVE players have no respect for WoW players :P).
Honestly at the end of the day, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a game that may or may not be a "clone" of another game. If you enjoy it, great. It's your money and your decision on how to spend it. The point of a game is to entertain people, so if it's doing that for you, then it sounds like you're making a good choice. You don't need to justify why it's OK to play the games that you play.
Exactly what the first poster said. I played Rift and got to level 21-22, I can't even remember at this point. However it dawned on me around that level that I didn't feel like playing a warrior through out the entire game again. I'm always a warrior in almost every MMO I play so I went back to make a rogue. I hit level 7, and just couldn't take it. I didn't want to go through that exact same, boring ass grind again. So I quit the game entirely and I'll never look back.
No idea what your trying to say, but ok. Class system is nothing like rifts and is no comparison at all.
WoW has 9 classes with 3 tree's each limiting how much is customizable.
Rift has 4 classes with 9 tree's each increasing customization exponentially.
Not only is it about how many roles each class can fill but how they can fill them. You can litterally play how you want to play.
As far as whats expected from each class.... well you have people from WoW that expect a healer to heal, rouge to DD but experienced players know better lol. Clerics can top damage charts, Bards and mages can top healing charts,etc.
Every class in Rift can fill a minimum of 3 roles well. Rouges can fill 4. Support, Tank, DD and Healer. Not only that but they can do it in numerous ways. Your tank spec won't be like mine. My healing spec won't be like yours.
Actually the class sytems are nearly identical. The only difference is WoW you are given a static three trees, but in Rift you are given a choice of 8 for your three trees. Yes, you have greater flexibility in Rift to an extent, but that flexibility comes at a price: people are expected to perform roles they dont like to, and a lot of the souls themselves arent very well developed or different from enough from the others.
Yes, there is a 4th type of role in Rift. Support. WoW instead of making a support class gave support abilities to all classes. You dont need a specific class for buffs and crowd control in WoW. That was a lesson learned from EQ, too much reliance on a support class that most people did not want to dedicate to being merely support.
And no, if you sign up for a group in WoW as a shadow priest you are NOT expected to have a holy or disc spec. In Rift, if you sign up as a cabalist you are expected to have some kind of healing spec to swap to because you are a cleric. yes, smart people know that expecting a cleric in Rift to have a healing soul is asininem but the majority of players in MMOs arent that smart.
Im not saying that Rift doesnt allow you more freedom, it does, but its not an amazing amount of freedom. And its hampered by the expectation to be diverse, which not everyone wants. Although that is 100% player design, not Trion's.
And with 28 main spec choices in Rift vs 28 main spec choices in WoW (counting feral druid as 2 as it should be), you can definitely play how you want to play in WoW similarly to Rift. You may need alts more to have more play styles, but hey at least theres multiple content paths for alts.
Comments
'yes, Rift has indeed copied WoW as so many other games have, but Rift has done it where it counts'
No, I couldnt disagree with this statement any less. Rift 'cloned' a lot of stuff from WoW: Assign talent points into one of three trees upon leveling, barbones gathering/crafting, end game just a reputation/gear grind with recucled dungeons from leveling, extremely similar UI, the usual thempark stuff like quest giver icons and stuff thats more general than just wow, etc etc (all stuff NOT in EQ by the way, for those clueless people that call WoW an EQ clone).
Thats not the stuff that counts though. its the stuff they didnt copy. The interesting world, the interesting races. The love given to the WORLD, not just the quests and raids. The SOUL. hell, as on rails as the questing experience maybe in WoW at now, at least you always have MULTIPLE choices which zones to level in and which dungeons to run. Rift you have zero choice for most of your leveling time. one zone per range, one dungeon per range.. So also it failed to copy WoW's scope, which was only middle of the pack as it was.
They made a smaller, more hollow wow.
Oh and overall population is declining. Not as severely as the first month, but server population sites clearly show there is a decline in people playing. That is a terrible sign for a game wanting to be a big player, every single last big player in the entire history of the genre showed continuous growth for a couple years. None of them showed a decline after their first month, or several months.
Rift will likely have a long life, but it will be in eq2 range numbers, not 500k+
Yeah i have to agree this article didn't really compare WoW and Rift or talk about any talking points stating examples. All it did was talk about the dev and release process in early WoW and Rift to compare the DEV system of the games.
Yeah, this post nails it, and mostly, I just want an excuse to repost it.
..but as true as the above may be, Rift is even more of a WoW clone than most, when it comes to endgame. That's why it gets called on it even more than most, and its why we keep seeing posts like the OP, who don't get it, because they're not 50, yet. Which, incidentally, should only take another week or two, unless you're extremely casual.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Rift is a good game. It's smooth and its engine is a successful step forward from the 2004-2007 games. Its main issue is that Telara is a boring place. WoW, Lotro, TOR, these games have an established story to work from, with interesting characters and locations people want to see. Yes, GW and EQ built new worlds from scratch... but their worlds are interesting. Telara kinda sucks.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
I think Rift is a great game and Trion seems to be a company with their priorities in the right place. They have managed to do something that countless other mmo developers have failed to do, have a solid successful release.
That being said, Rift for me felt extremely similar to the last several years worth of mmos and left me uninterested. Call it a clone of another game or not, it didn't really do much to inspire a fresh feeling, but rather gave the immediate impression that I was continuing to do the same exact things I did in the past several games, but just in a different world.
I think the people who will get the most from Rift are those who are happy with more of the same, but set in a different world. Trion seems to be doing a great job updating and adding to the game. Again something few developers these days seem capabale of.
To those who are looking for something new, they will have to keep looking. That doesn't make Rift a bad game though.
In comparison to wow, the thing that really set wow apart from the crowd was that Blizzard examined the mmo market at the time to see what players liked, what they disliked, what worked and what was missing. Then they set out with the goal of making a game to address those points and really delivered something that at the time was very refreshing and played much different than what was available. Even though it borrowed most of its gameplay from previous games.
That doesn't seem to be what most developers are setting out to do anymore. Instead they are focusing on what has worked (mostly in the case of WoW) and how to add some twists or new mechanics to that.
Rift is a "wow clone" still a great game but its still just like all the other games that are out right now. Why cant we come up with a new UI because this one is getting old. That was the one thing I thought was cool about FF14 I think the world is ready for a game that isnt just questing to level. In Rift it was nice to PVP to level up but your just doing the same 3 until you get on a higher level. yea there is a lot of gear you can get at 50 but its like who cares I have to do the same stuff over and over again to get it all the gear shows is that you have a lot of time to waste. Dont get me wrong I think Rift is one of the best games that has come out within the last year but I got bored with it way too fast. And Star Wars olr will be awesome too we will just see how much it has to offer. I hope it has something to offer because I am beginning to lose faith in MMO's havent been playing one for 4 months. Not trying to piss anyone off I am just tired of the same game different story.
~Knaple~
Haha beat me too it.
~Knaple~
Personally for me, Rift really needs to add more content (almost more then doubling it), low to high level, for alts and just more things to do. Also the crafting system could be light years better. Player housing would also be nice. There are a lot of fun moments in Rift, but it can be hard to login when things are all to familiar. The addtion of some sandbox elements would also be nice.
Rift is more a clone of all the preceeding WoW clones imo.
Unfortunately for Rift, WoW does it better than all of them and ultimately, it's a better game than Rift.
SWTOR isn't really relevant here, but watch for the usual massive initial player numbers followed by a HUGE fall-off in the first 1-3 months, the same big IP flop we had in Warhammer, DCU, STO, LOTRO, DDO etc etc. It's boringly predictable.
The metal for games like Rift and SWTOR is lastability, surviving the initial overhyped expectations and concentrating on solid gameplay and enjoyment for their customers.
Rift, while an unremarkable game, launched with a pretty polished product, TOR must match this or suffer the predictable "It was released before it was ready" jubes.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
Actually, yes it will be. Each class has their own, unique story. There is also two starting planets per faction, making four starting areas in total. Add in the fact that each story has you making choices that will affect your stories in different ways.
Meaning you could play through a class story as a darkside character, then play through it again as a lightside character and have completely different events transpire simply because your actions were different. Making it a different experience even though you're playing the same class and story.
So, yeah, I'd say it's a bit different.
When it comes to Rift there's so much apologizing going on I don't understand. What is it that I'm missing?
EQ in it's current state is pretty close to a WoW clone. The main differences with the Original was a lack of quests, harsh death penalty, and only 8 spell slots as opposed to being able to use all of them at any time (minus the cooldown). Melee classes didn't even have skills in the way we think of them today. These differences alone made for completely different gameplay. That's what a clone comes down to really isn't it; whether or not the game feels the same when you play it? I suppose this is highly a matter of perspective. I thougth WoW was better than the original EQ for a long time, until almost every game that came out after it had hundreds of quests as the main focus of the game and soft death penalties.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
One of the things that I like about RIFT is that the different classes can fill different roles.
Rogues can tank
Clerics can tank
That's pretty cool!
What it really boils down to for me is that RIFT allows many more combinations of building a character the way YOU want to build YOUR CHARACTER. IMO this is a big difference from WOW, which pegs you into one of 3 talent trees, with nearly no choices whatsoever.
My biggest complaint with RIFT is that the system requirements are much higher than what my computer can run. Updating a graphics card and RAM can add up.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
This ^^
Played Rift from the beginning and cried aloud my "alleluja" for a game released (finally !) polished and ready to launch. And kudos again to Trion for this and for their ongoing effort.
Problem is: at its core, even with the well thought soul system, it's the same standard game (Wow-clone or everything-else-clone, take your choice). Sincerely I've had enough and left it.
I think you are wrong on that - Blizzard did not examine the market, they hired some eq1-raiders and let them design the raids. The quest-chains have been implemented by accident during the last stages of beta. Blizz added to that a single player GAME (they really know how to create games, kudos), but they decided not to add a WORLD (see http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=5610#764fa). That concept was sadly successful, mostly driven by the IP, the name "Blizzard" and a big marketing budget.
Now Trion (and all the other failing companies in the last years) "analyzed" the "market", and did what business man do - create a standard copy of something proven. Doh. Unfortunately mmorpg-players are not a market, but human beings. Unfortunately mmorpg-players can be fooled once or twice, but not ten times. Unfortunately mmorpg-players enter online worlds to become part of that world (i.e. social interaction is the main reason to play mmos over single player games), and not to get this blue sword with +3 str. Not very surprising to the community here at mmorpg.com Rift fell flat on its nose.
Hopefully the right people learn the right lesson from the story. I also disagree on "the market is saturated". This is not the case, not at all. Just the market for WoW is saturated.
Currently playing: EverQuest
Waiting for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Anyone saying WoW is an EQ clone in response to Rift is a WoW clone just does not get it, at all.
Tradeskill system: EQ: Combine items found in various ways together. can attempt any combine, but success rate determined by tradeskill level. difficult....WoW and rift: gathering skills gather mats. items are made by combining these, and chance of success is 100%. Easy and little investment required to level
Abilities: EQ you had 8 spells you could keep active. WoW/Rift: you can use all your abilities at any time with a global cooldown inbetween
Quests: EQ: search out quests, hail people and see what they say. At later levels quests are often epic in nature. WoW/Rift: NPCs clearly marked. Quests are almost always trivial, even at high levels.
Character customization: EQ: none at start, later added as additional exp system so you were always gaining exp towards something. Did not porivded much differentiation though. Your gear is what made you stand out most. Quite a bit of presitgious gear in EQ. WoW/Rift: Gain a level, assign a point into one of three trees. Rift lets you choose your three trees from a pool of 8, but tis still the idnetical system. Everyone ends up with very similar gear. Gear is not special, yet its the only endgame progression.
Dungeons: EQ complex and dangerous, non instanced. WoW/Rift: Instanced gear grinds
UI: WoW/Rift nearly identical, EQ completely different
and so on. Even if some of these things can be seen as innovations, Rift copied the system from WoW with little deviation.
In other terms, EQ is a VW Bus, WoW is a Lincoln Town Car, and Rift is a Mercury Grand Marquis. Yes, they are all 4 wheel motor vehicles, but two are extremely similar despite different brands. And the other is old but runs forever.
Well, considering the game is focused on the high end grind, that the poster is on the early 20s (lvl cap is 50) and that there are 2 factions. How much of the game has he experienced so far? My estimation is about a 15%-20%. And there goes a review.
It happens too often. Please reviewers, play the game properly, in depth, then review. Otherwise, I am sorry to say your posts have little relevance.
The real problems about the game show up when you are at level cap and there's nothing to do but joining the gear grind hamster wheel.
I'd have to say I disagree with the assertaion that Rift is a WoW clone where it counts. The parts of Rift that are cloned from WoW are the biggest critisisms of the game by the current player base and those that have left or refuse to join. The reason I feel the WoW clone statement is justified and not a positive is that the game like WoW eventually devolves into a gear grind raid centric game.
While Rift has added many unique things and some of which have made me ecstatic the constant gear grind detracts a great deal from the fun and having endgame devolve into nothing but raids and dalies just kills it for me. If I wanted that kind of game play I would have played WoW.
WoW clone for me has never been, well it's like every other MMORPG or well it's a themepark and not a sandbox. WoW clone means that the goal is to get gear so that you can get better gear so that you can eventually get better gear so that you can be geared like everyone else so that you can do raids for even better gear. What happens after you get the last of your gear? Whats the point of the game at that point? Roll an alt and do it all again or wait till the next expansion so that your existing chars have more gear to grind out and more raids to repeat to ad nasuem for no other purpose than just to have the gear?
Rift has it's own failings as well such as the repetitive nature of the Rifts, while fun at first they become stagnant and not very dynamic. I do like the open nature of them, but again with them all relatively feeling the same it becomes stale and boring fast.
The class setup though I love. I love that I can be a healer, tank or DD on my Cleric. I love that I have different setups for different things. I can flip over to my tank or healer setup when my party needs, flip to straight DD when I want to PvP and destroy, flip to my hybrid when the party needs a bit of both DD/Healer or Tank/Healer. The level of class customization is brilliant.
Sadly the rest of the game devolves into the same old song and dance. Fun up to about 40 then it's a bit blah.
Yes, it's a WoW clone. Not entirely, but in key areas that hurt the game.
Actually, the link shows that the world was actually used as a foundation:
"Make a really deep game, in a really rich world, and then later, focus on, in the later stages of development, how can we make that as accessible as possible through smart user interface choices, and really sort of simple gameplay at first that introduces you to the more complex mechanics the more into the game you want to get."
So they built the world first, then added in the accessibility. Their main design was to make the game fun for people that didnt socialize as well as those who did. EQ if you didnt want to group, the game was just not nearly as fun. WoW you can have fun either way.
# of classes that can only do one thing (dps):
WoW: 3, Mage, Rogue, Warlock 33%
Rift: None
#of classes that can do only two things, tank and dps
WoW: 2: Warrior, Death Knight 22%
Rift: 1, Warrior 25%
#of classes that can do only 2 things: Heal, DPS
WoW: 2, Priest, Shaman 22%
Rift: 1, Mage 25% <----- But always expected to be able to heal
#of classes that can do 3 things: tank, dps, offheal
WoW: none that can only off heal, 0%
Rift: Rogue 25% <---- but always expected to eb able to offheal (*yawn*)
#of classes that can do everything: tank, heap, dps
WoW: 2, Druid, Paladin 22%
Rift: 1, Cleric 25% <--- but always expected to be able to heal
I loath these arguments. This is all Fan boy vs Fan boy crap.
Every game created in likeness is always compared to it's predaccessor. Like it really matters, they set out to make an mmorpg. Of course they used fundamentals from past games. Calling it a clone is a strawmans argument. It borders on saying Unreal is a Quake clone, Half-life was an Unreal clone and so on. Play the game and enjoy it. After 10 years you should be "glad" there is something other than WoW.. as for me it got really borring.
No idea what your trying to say, but ok. Class system is nothing like rifts and is no comparison at all.
WoW has 9 classes with 3 tree's each limiting how much is customizable.
Rift has 4 classes with 9 tree's each increasing customization exponentially.
Not only is it about how many roles each class can fill but how they can fill them. You can litterally play how you want to play.
As far as whats expected from each class.... well you have people from WoW that expect a healer to heal, rouge to DD but experienced players know better lol. Clerics can top damage charts, Bards and mages can top healing charts,etc.
Every class in Rift can fill a minimum of 3 roles well. Rouges can fill 4. Support, Tank, DD and Healer. Not only that but they can do it in numerous ways. Your tank spec won't be like mine. My healing spec won't be like yours.
I agree with the statements about how pre-WoW games were all very different from each other. We had UO (which especially prior to the Renaissance patch, was phenomenal), EQ, AC, DAoC, and AO. Anarchy Online was a unique twist because it was one of the few SciFi MMO's at the time. But the thing that stood out is that each of these games had visibly different systems and approaches to the MMO industry. In recent years, yes, a lot of games seem to have taken a fair share of ideas from WoW. You can't really blame them though: WoW is obviously a very strong example of what works, although copying it won't beat it. It's just the same as all of the self-proclaimed "iPod killers" we saw over the years: their definition of killing the iPod was simply copying it and adding a few relatively insignificant features. That approach failed miserably, and the iPod is still safely sitting on top.
This isn't to say that I don't enjoy Rift, or even WoW for that matter. One of the first things I noticed during the Rift beta was the very familiar (to a WoW player) gameplay elements. I'm one of those people who has played pretty much all of the major MMO's at one time or another. None of them were perfect, but I've generally found enjoyable aspects of each. In recent years, WoW and EVE have been my two main picks (am I supposed to hate myself? we all know EVE players have no respect for WoW players :P).
Honestly at the end of the day, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a game that may or may not be a "clone" of another game. If you enjoy it, great. It's your money and your decision on how to spend it. The point of a game is to entertain people, so if it's doing that for you, then it sounds like you're making a good choice. You don't need to justify why it's OK to play the games that you play.
Exactly what the first poster said. I played Rift and got to level 21-22, I can't even remember at this point. However it dawned on me around that level that I didn't feel like playing a warrior through out the entire game again. I'm always a warrior in almost every MMO I play so I went back to make a rogue. I hit level 7, and just couldn't take it. I didn't want to go through that exact same, boring ass grind again. So I quit the game entirely and I'll never look back.
Actually the class sytems are nearly identical. The only difference is WoW you are given a static three trees, but in Rift you are given a choice of 8 for your three trees. Yes, you have greater flexibility in Rift to an extent, but that flexibility comes at a price: people are expected to perform roles they dont like to, and a lot of the souls themselves arent very well developed or different from enough from the others.
Yes, there is a 4th type of role in Rift. Support. WoW instead of making a support class gave support abilities to all classes. You dont need a specific class for buffs and crowd control in WoW. That was a lesson learned from EQ, too much reliance on a support class that most people did not want to dedicate to being merely support.
And no, if you sign up for a group in WoW as a shadow priest you are NOT expected to have a holy or disc spec. In Rift, if you sign up as a cabalist you are expected to have some kind of healing spec to swap to because you are a cleric. yes, smart people know that expecting a cleric in Rift to have a healing soul is asininem but the majority of players in MMOs arent that smart.
Im not saying that Rift doesnt allow you more freedom, it does, but its not an amazing amount of freedom. And its hampered by the expectation to be diverse, which not everyone wants. Although that is 100% player design, not Trion's.
And with 28 main spec choices in Rift vs 28 main spec choices in WoW (counting feral druid as 2 as it should be), you can definitely play how you want to play in WoW similarly to Rift. You may need alts more to have more play styles, but hey at least theres multiple content paths for alts.