Take any server and start going around to other areas. What you find that same lvl 9 rift just 20,30 blah blah and empty there is no one doing them. Oh there are tons of people my server is high yet no one doing high lvl rifts. Please dont take anyones, my word for it go look. This was told to TRION in beta over and over that if they dont fix it rifts will just get very very boring.
I really like the game and I hope they can fix it. I dont see how but.. who knows.
Open grouping is as much a bane as it is a boon for the reasons Mr Murphy mentioned.
I am not convinced by the class system, there is simply too much flexibility, which will limit continued playability of the game through alts.
The Invasions are first rate.
PvP has been fun, better than say AoC mini games, not as good as WAR mini games.
Mounts at level 4+ to be correct was plain silly and points to problem with Rift, it is simply to easy to achieve everything.
Over all it is a good game, but there are problems. The ultra fast leveling and the lack of replaybilty with alts (I know some people who have 7 alts on other games for example) will cause players to feel there is a lack of content.
Well actually, here is a quote from the first paragraph of the article:
"You’re completely free to disagree, and I encourage you all to discuss the merit of this content below."
Hence people could comment. Now I'm going to comment.
1. Open Grouping
I see nothing wrong with open grouping, in fact I can imagine many ways in which it can be a blessing to a game and improve it. I don't see this with Rift because all I see open grouping doing in Telara is hiding the fact that the social side of the game has gone amiss. To me grouping means socialising and working with others to achieve something. In Rift you do not need to work with others to finish a painfully easy solo quest or join in a mass gank-fest on a rift or invasion.
Rift has this great and beautfully developed mechanic that would have aided PUGs beyond all belief. That mechanic is the soul system. The ability to build a class of your choosing and to have different builds that you can swap on the fly. There would never be the situation again wher a group suffers because they can not find a crowd controller or they don't have enough heals or DPS. Someone just swaps over to a build that supports that and everything is fine again. To make a game that so ignores truly social grouping but have such a unique soul system is a travesty.
Imagining the Rift soul system in a game such as EQ, Vanguard or EQ2 fills me with wonder. It would have been great, but Trion missed such a great opportunity. In early beta there wasn't even an open grouping system. I can only assume they hoped the Rifts would support people making groups, but they didn't. It was just a lot of people soloing together. It was only after people, such as myself, suggested having some mechanic to aid getting groups together at Rifts that it was included. Yes I, the person that hates Rift with a passion, actually was one to suggest open grouping in beta 1.
2. Ascended Soul System
I touched on my thoughts on this mechanic above, but I'll say again that I thought it was a great idea and was something that would really aid a game with PUGing. It has become like a fish out of water and merely a complicated AA system that starts from level 1. The soul system is lost in a game of soloing, hand holding and simplicity. There may aswell be four classes.
3. Invasion as content
This was a good idea but it is a far cry from what I have heard was being spoken of when the game was Heroes of Telara. Back then they were looking at something more similar to what GW2 are doing; truly dynamic content with invasions taking over towns.
There is so much promise in the invasion mechanic but it faIls to deliver. I see a gang of invaders approach a quest hub and they manage to beat back the defenders and take it over. Then a gang of players fight back and beat the invaders. Why do the invaders not reinforce and hold their position? These creatures are trying to conquer Telara. If an army gains a foothold they do not just give it up without a fight.
In the end the invasions play out like one of WAR's PQs over and over. The only difference here is WAR had a number of different PQs with different stories. Rift has one. It was fun the first few times, but soon got repetitive. The dynamic content is yet another of Rift's could have been so great but failed to achieve ideas.
4. Levelling through PvP
I can not disagree that this is a great idea, but it is far from innovative and has been done before, as people have said.
5. Mounts at Level 1
This is where I can not help but feel the author of this article is clutching for number five. He even goes on to say that players can just give money to their alts so they can get a mount. What is this rewarding? A player's ability to transfer money or use the mail feature?
I can't help but agree with a point someone else made earlier in this comments section. If everyone has easy access to a mount then what difference does a mount make? You can all get somewhere fast, so when does it become the case that someone feels a need to go even faster? You may aswell have everyone walking fast for all the achievement there is in gaining a mount.
~~~
I've said before that I feel Rift had great potential. I wouldn't have followed the game so avidly for 6 months of my life had I not felt that way. I joined the forums very shortly after they opened and became one of the most active posters in the early months. I watched with interest as what was a talented development team was gathered together, and as great ideas were unfolded regularly. I nearly fainted with glee when Russ Brown told an Italian MMO site, interviewing him at Gamescon, that Trion did not want to be party to serious handholding of the lieks that we have seen in other games. It made me think challenge was going to be a reasonable part of Rift.
How wrong I was. All that promise flew out of the window when I got invited to beta test. So much potential was wasted with lacklustre zones, dull quests and hand-holding of a level greater than ever seen in any MMO before. Rift is a great MMO with it's heart torn out. A team like which Trion assembled could have made the most inspired and innovative MMO out there. But I suppose it's not about that anymore, is it? It's about making a quick buck, and they've done that.
I wanted to like Rift, I really did. I tried so hard to like it in beta. I slogged through dull solo content for hours and hours in the hope that I might find something I really liked. There were moments when I thought I might have found it, but I soon realised it was short lived. Rift is a missed opportunity for something really great.
I don't think anyone would write that Rift was a bad game or that you couldn't make a list of positive features, Bill. I would just look at the USA and Euro games sales for the past weeks and that will tell you where people have put there money. This year only Cataclysm has been a sure fire hit...though SW:TOR and GW2 seem to have enough interest/hype to maybe be a hit. I am betting, like Aion, we will see another high review score here, but in the end it is players numbers that make or break a game and Rift seems to be doing niche business for one reason or another.
It copied WoW extensively. I.e. casual, linear, quest driven, class based, themepark and pointless PvP. Even the UI is very similar.
World is way too small. When the game world can be traversed in minutes rather than hours then it ceases to be a world and becomes a (theme)park.
Uses a dated engine. Now that games are released in Crytek and Unreal 3, then Rifts engine is way too dated and looks sub-par in comparison.
Limited the Rifts. Instead of allowing the Rifts to actually take over and hold locations in the world, they are simply on a timer or so weak that they will always be pushed back. So there really is no urgency to take them down as they will take them down themselves, eventually.
Didnt offer anything new besides Rifts. Same old quest driven, Fed Ex tasks and single player story lines that makes no sense in the context of a persistant virtual world.
I give it 6 months before it join WAR and others as dying MMORPGs.
For me RIFT gets more right than it gets wrong . I'm enjoying it at the moment but you see I don't expect perfection from a game . I also play WoW at the moment for its pvp but I find the questing and majority of the raid content to be far too tediously easy for me . I think most likly next month I will switch over to RIFT totally as it offers the pvp I like but also the raid and quest content offers a bit of a challenge . When I get fed up with RIFTS content I'll move on again but at the moment its the best bet in the mmo genre for a game I might play for more than a few months .
1. Open grouping. Great mechanic, players get the job done. Does not add in any way to the social aspect tho. Actually my feeling is that it makes people interact less, not more.
2. The soul system, yea, the core of the game. I love it. Until they will change things around for "balance" reasons.
3. Invasions as content - everything concerning rifts, invasions, strongholds becomes dull and boring after 1-2 weeks of playing. They become annoying, as the only thing "dynamic" is the fact that they randomly spawn. There is no reason to do them, the rewards are terrible (at cap level, almost no one is doing rifts / invasions). I would LOVE IT if players would actually have an incentive to do the Rifts, the so called "dynamic content" is what bought me to the game. Unfortunately, that content is just terrible, and all that's left to do is expert dungeons/warfronts/raids... sounds familiar? I want to get AWAY from that, not INTO that again...
4. Leveling through PvP - Bill, you're far away here. "PvP gives decent XP" should be the title, there is no way you can level by only PvP. There are almost no gold rewards. You cannot even buy the next level skills. I have tried leveling a Cleric through instances/PVP/Rift content, no way, not enough gold by far. Practically, everyone is forced to quest for gold.
5. Mounts at level one - nice but not game breaking for me
Im just gonna say that mounts or lvl 1 are just actually for ppl who preordered and got that degeneric ugly turtle with two heads lol, others cant afford it on lvl 1....
Thats more fail then good thing, and makes more bad feeling to players then if it was made to have on min lvl 20, till which u can get money to buy one.
So you're saying people who join a new MMORPG should try to make friends to get a leg up. Herasy I say, how dare you force people to socialize with each other, goes entirely against the spirit of MMORPG gaming. Oh...wait......
I remember when some friends and I joined DAOC many years ago. We were collectively a broke bunch of SOB's and the game did not make it easy to earn gold back then at lower levels. One of my group befriended an experienced player who gave him about 200 gold, which my friend promptly shared with us giving me about 15 gold (he kept about 100 for himself, greedy bastard)
Well let me tell you, 15 gold was a small fortune at my level and in the terms of the games economy and was just the sort of kickstart I needed to get off and running and I spent many enjoyable years (2.5) playing the game and on occasion, paying it forward by sharing gold with new players.
But back on topic, getting a mount early (I pre-ordered, duh, it was 10 bucks extra) was a huge plus for me and I really appreciated it. No, it didn't cheapen the experience, but I don't have the mentality that mounts are status symbols like a Lexus or something, they are a utility feature and one I appreciate.
And no, it doesn't make everyone go the same speed, you can be dehorsed so easily that you have to be very careful to thread your way through areas (or stick to the roads) and frequent are the times that I know its not worth mounting because I'll have to fight my way through the npc's to reach my destination.
So there still is a strategic element to the mounts and I enjoy how they implemented. For those trying to "work" for a mount, hey, you still have to save up the plat and get to level 40 to get a 100% run speed mount like many other games, so there's still a carrot out there for those who see this as something they must achieve.
And speaking of achievement mounts, I guess they have one, a guildmate last night asked for any artifacts that we might spare him because he was very close to having turned in enough of them to get a special mount for it.
As to the rest of the points in the OP, I actually agree with all of them. Not saying Rift invented them, or perfected them, but I do enjoy Rifting (especially on a PVP server which adds a new level of challange/opporunity, basically to chose to cooperate with the other faction, or just kill them.) and I do like the soul system. (I"m not a balance freak, its fun to mix and match different combos, almost overwhelming). And I like Tab 1-2-3 combat, its what defines MMO's and why I play them, you want twitch combat/targeting, FPS games are over that way.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Level cap is still 120-150 hours of pure gameplay. When you make comments like level cap in under a week you give the impression that an average joe will level this fast. While the reality is that you'll only manage it if you dedicate 20 hours per day of your life for a week.
I happen to like all the things he brings up. Yes, Rift copied ideas from other games. These were the things they thought that particular game got right. If you notice they took a little from many different games and polished it up. While Rift isn't for everyone, It happens to be what alot of us were looking for. Not sure why anyone is comparing it to a game that isn't even in beta yet. I like having alts for crafting so having the mounts available in the second area is good when you can start gathering. Cuts down on the travel time from node to node, even if everyone can travel at teh same speed. Personally, if you don't like having a mount at level 7 then don't take it out of the mailbox. Want sandbox? Find another game. Rift never said it was a sandbox title. Like all instanced questing with your own grouping like GW? Go back to it. No one is making you stay in Rift. Are there things they did wrong/haven't fixed yet? Yes, bit that is next weeks column.
People complain about Rifts getting repetitious. It is an Added element, something added to mix it up. ANYTHING done solely over and over, Yeh gets repetitious.
Why go after the WOW community?
DUH! That IS the MMO community.
Numbers talk. Like WOW or not. It is a Juggernaut.
Really? Who wants’ to make Millions when they can make the Sandbox Nitch crowd happy? What were they thinking?
Level cap is still 120-150 hours of pure gameplay. When you make comments like level cap in under a week you give the impression that an average joe will level this fast. While the reality is that you'll only manage it if you dedicate 20 hours per day of your life for a week.
That 120 to 150 hrs is probably an estimate that Trion has made based on Alpha and internal testing. Like just about any other traditional fantasy mmo it is possible to beat this by grinding mobs as a group and questing without that much effort, i.e. could probably hit cap in about 80 hrs.
Great game! I love the Rifts and invasions as they break up the typical quest grinding. I can be out completing some quest and all of a sudden I see a RIFT in the distance, hmmm take a break head over there bust some heads, meet some people, then go back to questing, awesome! I was also awe struck for the first time in a MMO in a looooooong time when I completed my first IT run and just the epicness of downing this huge boss that does not even fit on my screen. I also ventured into a new area last night (can't remember the name) it's in the mountains with trolls everywhere and the landscape really felt huge. There was an invasion going on and a bunch of players were bottlenecked down in a valley taking on hordes of NPC's and I just ran in joined the public group and had a blast!
I dont understands whats with the sooo many positive reactions from mmorpg.com do rift pays u or something ?
Cuz this game is not that perfect as u depict it
Yeah, it's almost as if there's a companion article coming that presents the other side of things. it's ALMOST as if the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH makes that about as clear as would be humanly possible.
Without dissecting ... I could not care less for "innovation" if what we got works very (but very) well. Never understood that impressive urge some have to reinventing the wheel or discover how water. I'm not psychologist however. :-)
I do not see it as wow killer where I have been returning fast after numerous fast detours .... but game is great. Has its problems, but is great, love it. And have impression will stay for long in.
Is not all flowers, but among good things:
incredibly good graphics with miracle to not impacting performance at all; all maxed out, all completely fluid
not been at very start, but bugs ... what are they? :-)
immersive, realistic environment
underwater world (hoever did only 1 underwater quest so far)
for the first time in some UI I'm actually not missing anything
I love the RIFT events... it's awesome! Little boss events spawning made this game for me. Never the same, it's so much better than other grind quest titles!
I, myself enjoyed the Rifts during the beta, but I can definitely see it become incredibly boring when you've done them 500+ times before.
This. I enjoyed the first few betas, but after that it got too old and repetative. Teach me to play betas anymore, kinda ruins the release experience for me.
As for the pluses...mounts at lvl 1?...Why not just allow the characters to have a faster average run speed.
Open grouping was good in warhammer for OPEN world pvp, and Public Quests, but other than that, the same thing happened with little socialization or random group removal.
Leveling through PvP is a good idea if the PvP is good, and well, I found it very boring and lackluster. People hit the nail on the head with 1,2,3,4,3,3,3,4,3,2,1,1,2,3,4. But so many mmos are that way that I guess it is like beating a dead cow.
Rift is good in the way that it is capturing a large number of Subs, lets just hope it will last. (I don't play, but would like to see people actually stick with a game, not hop from the new flavor of the month to the new flavor of the month)
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
And forgot this about not being sand box. I really really hate this word sand and "sandbox" game. Usually are just that, box full of sand and nothing else. And I'm very happy Rift is not that kind of game.
Very good list, all of which were the things I enjoyed while playing, especially the invasions. Though I have to laugh a little with all this attack on Rift, by saying they are not innovating.
What about the game most of the Rift players came from, namely WoW. In what way was that game innovating, other than being the gateway mmo for alot of people, and raising the popularity of mmo games up from where it once stood.
But the features it holds are all in other games, just polished up and put on display, and it's still the number one mmo, (if you don't count browser mmo's) no one, other than the people who still debate which game is best and why it's hardcore to play this, more than that etc; actually care about what features a game has, as long as it's polished, plays good, and their friends play it.
Rift, a really great game, even played well in beta.
agreed. I think if you are bored of this type of game (mmo's) then Rift will not convince you but if you still love mmo's then you will probably love Rift for what it is and not what it isnt.
It's not that people are bored of MMOs. I despise Rift but I'm not bored of MMOs. I am thoroughly enjoying EQ revisited at the moment and if SOE were to open a classic SWG server then I would bite their hands off. I enjoyed EQ2 but the population and developer insistence to promote raids and solo activities conspired to zap the point of being there.
What I am bored of is the same old, same old of every MMO out there. Rift does nothing that MMOs in the last 6 or 7 years haven't done, and most of that it simmers down to its lowest common denominator. Rift has shrunk the mechanics of MMOs to their simplest form, to stuff that favours not having to work to get results or achievements. The mounts at level 1 is a perfect example of this. There is no work, especially if, as William Murphy says, you can just send an alt the money needed. As for why you'd need a mount to navigate the alarmingly small world...well I won't go there.
Ok I feel the need to address this once again. I say once again because I see this argument made a lot about the world of Rift. Listen. Look at the world map. The entirety of the game at the moment takes place on the far east coast of one continent. There is nearly unlimited room for expansion and I have to assume that this was done on purpse and for that reason.
Why must it always be assumed that people are bored of MMOs because they don't like Rift? It's a cheap throwback to many, many well thought out posts that detail excellent criticism of Rift and the narrow path that MMOs appear to be following.
I for one am seriously looking forward to GW2 now. Maybe it won't be a huge challenge, maybe they will reward players for little effort and maybe it won't be everything I want. One thing it will do, though, is change the formula. ArenaNet are changing the fundamentals of MMOs and making them new again. Something development teams such as Trion were not willing to do. They just trod old ground and it's actually painful to watch journos struggle to come up with what Rift does great. It's like draining the last remnants of water from a tank when you could just walk a mile to get more water. Make some effort and get something new.
We're not bored of MMOs. Stop saying this. We just want originality.
Comments
Take any server and start going around to other areas. What you find that same lvl 9 rift just 20,30 blah blah and empty there is no one doing them. Oh there are tons of people my server is high yet no one doing high lvl rifts. Please dont take anyones, my word for it go look. This was told to TRION in beta over and over that if they dont fix it rifts will just get very very boring.
I really like the game and I hope they can fix it. I dont see how but.. who knows.
Open grouping is as much a bane as it is a boon for the reasons Mr Murphy mentioned.
I am not convinced by the class system, there is simply too much flexibility, which will limit continued playability of the game through alts.
The Invasions are first rate.
PvP has been fun, better than say AoC mini games, not as good as WAR mini games.
Mounts at level 4+ to be correct was plain silly and points to problem with Rift, it is simply to easy to achieve everything.
Over all it is a good game, but there are problems. The ultra fast leveling and the lack of replaybilty with alts (I know some people who have 7 alts on other games for example) will cause players to feel there is a lack of content.
Well actually, here is a quote from the first paragraph of the article:
"You’re completely free to disagree, and I encourage you all to discuss the merit of this content below."
Hence people could comment. Now I'm going to comment.
1. Open Grouping
I see nothing wrong with open grouping, in fact I can imagine many ways in which it can be a blessing to a game and improve it. I don't see this with Rift because all I see open grouping doing in Telara is hiding the fact that the social side of the game has gone amiss. To me grouping means socialising and working with others to achieve something. In Rift you do not need to work with others to finish a painfully easy solo quest or join in a mass gank-fest on a rift or invasion.
Rift has this great and beautfully developed mechanic that would have aided PUGs beyond all belief. That mechanic is the soul system. The ability to build a class of your choosing and to have different builds that you can swap on the fly. There would never be the situation again wher a group suffers because they can not find a crowd controller or they don't have enough heals or DPS. Someone just swaps over to a build that supports that and everything is fine again. To make a game that so ignores truly social grouping but have such a unique soul system is a travesty.
Imagining the Rift soul system in a game such as EQ, Vanguard or EQ2 fills me with wonder. It would have been great, but Trion missed such a great opportunity. In early beta there wasn't even an open grouping system. I can only assume they hoped the Rifts would support people making groups, but they didn't. It was just a lot of people soloing together. It was only after people, such as myself, suggested having some mechanic to aid getting groups together at Rifts that it was included. Yes I, the person that hates Rift with a passion, actually was one to suggest open grouping in beta 1.
2. Ascended Soul System
I touched on my thoughts on this mechanic above, but I'll say again that I thought it was a great idea and was something that would really aid a game with PUGing. It has become like a fish out of water and merely a complicated AA system that starts from level 1. The soul system is lost in a game of soloing, hand holding and simplicity. There may aswell be four classes.
3. Invasion as content
This was a good idea but it is a far cry from what I have heard was being spoken of when the game was Heroes of Telara. Back then they were looking at something more similar to what GW2 are doing; truly dynamic content with invasions taking over towns.
There is so much promise in the invasion mechanic but it faIls to deliver. I see a gang of invaders approach a quest hub and they manage to beat back the defenders and take it over. Then a gang of players fight back and beat the invaders. Why do the invaders not reinforce and hold their position? These creatures are trying to conquer Telara. If an army gains a foothold they do not just give it up without a fight.
In the end the invasions play out like one of WAR's PQs over and over. The only difference here is WAR had a number of different PQs with different stories. Rift has one. It was fun the first few times, but soon got repetitive. The dynamic content is yet another of Rift's could have been so great but failed to achieve ideas.
4. Levelling through PvP
I can not disagree that this is a great idea, but it is far from innovative and has been done before, as people have said.
5. Mounts at Level 1
This is where I can not help but feel the author of this article is clutching for number five. He even goes on to say that players can just give money to their alts so they can get a mount. What is this rewarding? A player's ability to transfer money or use the mail feature?
I can't help but agree with a point someone else made earlier in this comments section. If everyone has easy access to a mount then what difference does a mount make? You can all get somewhere fast, so when does it become the case that someone feels a need to go even faster? You may aswell have everyone walking fast for all the achievement there is in gaining a mount.
~~~
I've said before that I feel Rift had great potential. I wouldn't have followed the game so avidly for 6 months of my life had I not felt that way. I joined the forums very shortly after they opened and became one of the most active posters in the early months. I watched with interest as what was a talented development team was gathered together, and as great ideas were unfolded regularly. I nearly fainted with glee when Russ Brown told an Italian MMO site, interviewing him at Gamescon, that Trion did not want to be party to serious handholding of the lieks that we have seen in other games. It made me think challenge was going to be a reasonable part of Rift.
How wrong I was. All that promise flew out of the window when I got invited to beta test. So much potential was wasted with lacklustre zones, dull quests and hand-holding of a level greater than ever seen in any MMO before. Rift is a great MMO with it's heart torn out. A team like which Trion assembled could have made the most inspired and innovative MMO out there. But I suppose it's not about that anymore, is it? It's about making a quick buck, and they've done that.
I wanted to like Rift, I really did. I tried so hard to like it in beta. I slogged through dull solo content for hours and hours in the hope that I might find something I really liked. There were moments when I thought I might have found it, but I soon realised it was short lived. Rift is a missed opportunity for something really great.
.
Counter with Five things that Rift DiD Wrong:
It copied WoW extensively. I.e. casual, linear, quest driven, class based, themepark and pointless PvP. Even the UI is very similar.
World is way too small. When the game world can be traversed in minutes rather than hours then it ceases to be a world and becomes a (theme)park.
Uses a dated engine. Now that games are released in Crytek and Unreal 3, then Rifts engine is way too dated and looks sub-par in comparison.
Limited the Rifts. Instead of allowing the Rifts to actually take over and hold locations in the world, they are simply on a timer or so weak that they will always be pushed back. So there really is no urgency to take them down as they will take them down themselves, eventually.
Didnt offer anything new besides Rifts. Same old quest driven, Fed Ex tasks and single player story lines that makes no sense in the context of a persistant virtual world.
I give it 6 months before it join WAR and others as dying MMORPGs.
My gaming blog
For me RIFT gets more right than it gets wrong . I'm enjoying it at the moment but you see I don't expect perfection from a game . I also play WoW at the moment for its pvp but I find the questing and majority of the raid content to be far too tediously easy for me . I think most likly next month I will switch over to RIFT totally as it offers the pvp I like but also the raid and quest content offers a bit of a challenge . When I get fed up with RIFTS content I'll move on again but at the moment its the best bet in the mmo genre for a game I might play for more than a few months .
1. Open grouping. Great mechanic, players get the job done. Does not add in any way to the social aspect tho. Actually my feeling is that it makes people interact less, not more.
2. The soul system, yea, the core of the game. I love it. Until they will change things around for "balance" reasons.
3. Invasions as content - everything concerning rifts, invasions, strongholds becomes dull and boring after 1-2 weeks of playing. They become annoying, as the only thing "dynamic" is the fact that they randomly spawn. There is no reason to do them, the rewards are terrible (at cap level, almost no one is doing rifts / invasions). I would LOVE IT if players would actually have an incentive to do the Rifts, the so called "dynamic content" is what bought me to the game. Unfortunately, that content is just terrible, and all that's left to do is expert dungeons/warfronts/raids... sounds familiar? I want to get AWAY from that, not INTO that again...
4. Leveling through PvP - Bill, you're far away here. "PvP gives decent XP" should be the title, there is no way you can level by only PvP. There are almost no gold rewards. You cannot even buy the next level skills. I have tried leveling a Cleric through instances/PVP/Rift content, no way, not enough gold by far. Practically, everyone is forced to quest for gold.
5. Mounts at level one - nice but not game breaking for me
Im just gonna say that mounts or lvl 1 are just actually for ppl who preordered and got that degeneric ugly turtle with two heads lol, others cant afford it on lvl 1....
Thats more fail then good thing, and makes more bad feeling to players then if it was made to have on min lvl 20, till which u can get money to buy one.
{mod edit}
So you're saying people who join a new MMORPG should try to make friends to get a leg up. Herasy I say, how dare you force people to socialize with each other, goes entirely against the spirit of MMORPG gaming. Oh...wait......
I remember when some friends and I joined DAOC many years ago. We were collectively a broke bunch of SOB's and the game did not make it easy to earn gold back then at lower levels. One of my group befriended an experienced player who gave him about 200 gold, which my friend promptly shared with us giving me about 15 gold (he kept about 100 for himself, greedy bastard)
Well let me tell you, 15 gold was a small fortune at my level and in the terms of the games economy and was just the sort of kickstart I needed to get off and running and I spent many enjoyable years (2.5) playing the game and on occasion, paying it forward by sharing gold with new players.
But back on topic, getting a mount early (I pre-ordered, duh, it was 10 bucks extra) was a huge plus for me and I really appreciated it. No, it didn't cheapen the experience, but I don't have the mentality that mounts are status symbols like a Lexus or something, they are a utility feature and one I appreciate.
And no, it doesn't make everyone go the same speed, you can be dehorsed so easily that you have to be very careful to thread your way through areas (or stick to the roads) and frequent are the times that I know its not worth mounting because I'll have to fight my way through the npc's to reach my destination.
So there still is a strategic element to the mounts and I enjoy how they implemented. For those trying to "work" for a mount, hey, you still have to save up the plat and get to level 40 to get a 100% run speed mount like many other games, so there's still a carrot out there for those who see this as something they must achieve.
And speaking of achievement mounts, I guess they have one, a guildmate last night asked for any artifacts that we might spare him because he was very close to having turned in enough of them to get a special mount for it.
As to the rest of the points in the OP, I actually agree with all of them. Not saying Rift invented them, or perfected them, but I do enjoy Rifting (especially on a PVP server which adds a new level of challange/opporunity, basically to chose to cooperate with the other faction, or just kill them.) and I do like the soul system. (I"m not a balance freak, its fun to mix and match different combos, almost overwhelming). And I like Tab 1-2-3 combat, its what defines MMO's and why I play them, you want twitch combat/targeting, FPS games are over that way.
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I will have to respectfully disagree with the things rift got right.
I will add my 2 cents worth with what they did wrong.
(1) Level cap in under a week
(2) tab 1,2,3 monster dead boring
(3) Were not in azeroth anymore. Going for the wow community enough said.
Level cap is still 120-150 hours of pure gameplay. When you make comments like level cap in under a week you give the impression that an average joe will level this fast. While the reality is that you'll only manage it if you dedicate 20 hours per day of your life for a week.
I happen to like all the things he brings up. Yes, Rift copied ideas from other games. These were the things they thought that particular game got right. If you notice they took a little from many different games and polished it up. While Rift isn't for everyone, It happens to be what alot of us were looking for. Not sure why anyone is comparing it to a game that isn't even in beta yet. I like having alts for crafting so having the mounts available in the second area is good when you can start gathering. Cuts down on the travel time from node to node, even if everyone can travel at teh same speed. Personally, if you don't like having a mount at level 7 then don't take it out of the mailbox. Want sandbox? Find another game. Rift never said it was a sandbox title. Like all instanced questing with your own grouping like GW? Go back to it. No one is making you stay in Rift. Are there things they did wrong/haven't fixed yet? Yes, bit that is next weeks column.
People complain about Rifts getting repetitious. It is an Added element, something added to mix it up. ANYTHING done solely over and over, Yeh gets repetitious.
Why go after the WOW community?
DUH! That IS the MMO community.
Numbers talk. Like WOW or not. It is a Juggernaut.
Really? Who wants’ to make Millions when they can make the Sandbox Nitch crowd happy? What were they thinking?
That 120 to 150 hrs is probably an estimate that Trion has made based on Alpha and internal testing. Like just about any other traditional fantasy mmo it is possible to beat this by grinding mobs as a group and questing without that much effort, i.e. could probably hit cap in about 80 hrs.
I dont understands whats with the sooo many positive reactions from mmorpg.com do rift pays u or something ?
Cuz this game is not that perfect as u depict it
Great game! I love the Rifts and invasions as they break up the typical quest grinding. I can be out completing some quest and all of a sudden I see a RIFT in the distance, hmmm take a break head over there bust some heads, meet some people, then go back to questing, awesome! I was also awe struck for the first time in a MMO in a looooooong time when I completed my first IT run and just the epicness of downing this huge boss that does not even fit on my screen. I also ventured into a new area last night (can't remember the name) it's in the mountains with trolls everywhere and the landscape really felt huge. There was an invasion going on and a bunch of players were bottlenecked down in a valley taking on hordes of NPC's and I just ran in joined the public group and had a blast!
Yeah, it's almost as if there's a companion article coming that presents the other side of things. it's ALMOST as if the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH makes that about as clear as would be humanly possible.
Seriously, read the article or don't comment.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Without dissecting ... I could not care less for "innovation" if what we got works very (but very) well. Never understood that impressive urge some have to reinventing the wheel or discover how water. I'm not psychologist however. :-)
I do not see it as wow killer where I have been returning fast after numerous fast detours .... but game is great. Has its problems, but is great, love it. And have impression will stay for long in.
Is not all flowers, but among good things:
incredibly good graphics with miracle to not impacting performance at all; all maxed out, all completely fluid
not been at very start, but bugs ... what are they? :-)
immersive, realistic environment
underwater world (hoever did only 1 underwater quest so far)
for the first time in some UI I'm actually not missing anything
....
This. I enjoyed the first few betas, but after that it got too old and repetative. Teach me to play betas anymore, kinda ruins the release experience for me.
As for the pluses...mounts at lvl 1?...Why not just allow the characters to have a faster average run speed.
Open grouping was good in warhammer for OPEN world pvp, and Public Quests, but other than that, the same thing happened with little socialization or random group removal.
Leveling through PvP is a good idea if the PvP is good, and well, I found it very boring and lackluster. People hit the nail on the head with 1,2,3,4,3,3,3,4,3,2,1,1,2,3,4. But so many mmos are that way that I guess it is like beating a dead cow.
Rift is good in the way that it is capturing a large number of Subs, lets just hope it will last. (I don't play, but would like to see people actually stick with a game, not hop from the new flavor of the month to the new flavor of the month)
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
And forgot this about not being sand box. I really really hate this word sand and "sandbox" game. Usually are just that, box full of sand and nothing else. And I'm very happy Rift is not that kind of game.
Im not playing Rift, i did get to beta it, i can agree with those 5 points definitely.
The thing they did wrong was keeping the traditional combat.
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Very good list, all of which were the things I enjoyed while playing, especially the invasions. Though I have to laugh a little with all this attack on Rift, by saying they are not innovating.
What about the game most of the Rift players came from, namely WoW. In what way was that game innovating, other than being the gateway mmo for alot of people, and raising the popularity of mmo games up from where it once stood.
But the features it holds are all in other games, just polished up and put on display, and it's still the number one mmo, (if you don't count browser mmo's) no one, other than the people who still debate which game is best and why it's hardcore to play this, more than that etc; actually care about what features a game has, as long as it's polished, plays good, and their friends play it.
Rift, a really great game, even played well in beta.
You don't Agree, so they must be getting kick-backs. Makes sence...............NOT!!!!
Maybe...just MAYBE it's because this article was about 5 things did RIGHT?! Right, IMO, would imply well, good, positively.
And good write up Bill. Some interesting stuff here to read on Rift. Looking forward to the next edition so I can slam you for being too negative :P