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RIFT lite trial experience
a short review of a trial players experience in Rift. i leveled 2 characters to 20, 2 characters to 10 - basing my experience on this and from what i gathered from the higher levels i met and spoke with in length. going for a brief summary. MMO experience is 11 years. played on Seastone PVP server.
Character Creation:
fun. pretty varied for a western MMO. nice amount of sliders to appease most designers.
Character Development:
WoW clone with a twist. seriously copied a bunch of WoW skills and passed them around to different classes. pretty blatant. ex, warriors start with a charge skill, a heroic strike. rogues get evasion and poisons, etc... names of skills are even nearly identical in some cases. skill tree system with a twist but generally cloned from WoW with a blend of passive and active skills inspired by WoW and other predecessors.
Graphics:
nice looking gameworld and monsters.... I'm not a graphics nut and its usually one of the lesser items on my priority list of enjoyment but the polygon count is sufficient to get the warm and fuzzy fantasy brewing. armor
Performance:
fine. i have a mid-high level system. i7 2600k, ATI 6950, 8gb ram. all settings maxed except for supersampling which for some reason dropped my FPS by 15. i averaged like 60fps solo. 45 in groups and high population areas.
Art style:
mid-fantasy realism. basically a mix between AoC's grittier realistic armor with some occasional high fantasy flair as seen in WoW and the like. matter of opinion. there was decent bit of model diversity and overall i thought it matched the gameworld and lore well. i liked it.
Animations:
poor. badbadbad. very amateurish looking. like it was the animators freshman college project. sorry to be harsh but theyre just very very bland and in some cases kinda messed up. some characters dual wield but attack mostly with 1 hand... some 2 hand weapons attack with 1 hand as well.. some animations poorly sync with effects and combat animations of the target... generally awkward feeling and was distracting. maybe the worst aspect of the game. again, im no graphics nut but in a game were combat is 90% of what you do, you better enjoy the animations. kinda ruined the nice modelling of the game world and particle effects of the spells and skills.
Interface:
WoW clone. which is fine cuz i think WoW's UI is excellent. Rift's was also fluid and responsive and intuitive. includes addon support.
Quests:
standard. the Rift events were fun but quickly turned somewhat stale. still, id prefer this staleness much more than WoW's current snoozefest.
PVP:
good (only low level). seems to be balanced around team pvp which is far more interesting to me than 1 v 1 or arena style so i like that. the many character designs make it varied and unpredictable. World PVP is always more interesting to me as well and there is a healthy amount. i wont comment on balance cuz of course i was limited to lvl 20 but overall i didnt notice anything blatantly OP or UP. some classes i havent tried seemed more dependent on teammates though like i imagine the bard class would be.
Group Dynamics:
awesome. different classes can temporarily take over multiple roles depending on situation. well done and adds alot of interdependance and teamwork. keeps your character fresh and interesting. the shining feature of the game IMO.
Thrill Factor/Challenge:
meh. until level 10 the game is ridiculously easy. really made playing hard for me to care or continue at first. by level 20 there is some challenge and monsters start to do more interesting things. Death penalty is WoW clone so no sense of real risk though. difficulty begins to increase and from what ive been told by high level friends, the raids are fun and challenging. I have no personal experience but i felt i had reliable sources for that opinion.
OVERALL:
meh. wont subscribe. if the Trial Experience of a MMO is meant to hook new players, i think Rift's somewhat fails. atleast for us of course. (btw, i was doing this trial with 5 of other WoW/Eve refugees and we all kinda agree on this overall newbie experience). still, the game has strong points that elevate it, in my mind, over games like WoW, EVE, AION, EQ2, SWOTR. although i really struggled to find interest in the game after i leveled my second character, i think this game is an admirable addition to the MMO universe. definitely worth a download.
Comments
Animations poor compared to WoW's? Really? REALLY?
Currently bored with MMO's.
I would say a good, solid, fair review. I'm on my second go at Rift (first char at release I got to 39) up to lvl 12 currently and I feel the same.
It's a little fun, a little boring and kinda meh. Definitly something to check out if your bored though since its F2P up to 20.
I htink he is right in saying animations are worse then wow. Now while wow may not have realistic or spot on animations, they feel more fluid. Rift animations are a little stiff sometimes and at other times awkard.
The truth is WoW did up the bar in a few catagories, even if people hate the game, and that was in interface response, animation and even custimization. After playing wow a lot of games, even Rift (though not nearly as bad as others) seem to be unresponsive or clumsy in terms of interacting with the UI or game world.
I agree with the rest of the review. I played from beta until about 6 months ago, and the only reason I left was because I stopped playing MMO's in genreal for the most part and because the en-game was turning into another WoW for me, with usless dailies the only thing to keep me going until the next raid.
Over all, a good game with lots of customizaion for classes, but brought down at the end by the same stagnation I think any MMO will have. The only reason I played WoW as long as I did was because I was in a guild that raided a lot, but when I started playing without that guild, and was not able to raid as much, I got bored.
oh most definitely. trust me - im a WoW hater; i think Blizz steered that game right into a barrel of easymode crap (not that i would notice cuz i would be bored to sleep when i hit it...) but i think the animations are superb. They are varied and interesting and sync PERFECTLY with combat events and sound. really well done. my dual dagger wielding Rift rogue by comparison looked like she was hammerfisting a single dagger in an awkward windmill motion. you play the same postures and poses and animations repeatedly. i did like the headtracking though. but pretty bland overall. i can say the same for my warrior and clerics as well. i played all Defiant races so maybe the guardians are better? didnt seem to be from what i saw. even the jump animations just seem so EQ 1999...
i cant be alone on this.. in fact, prior to downloading the trial i read about the poor animations repeatedly while researching the game. unfortunately i couldnt agree more.
The game is decent. I bought the game but only ended up playing for 2-3 months. But overall, it's one of the better games on the market, just not good enough to want me to be a long-term subscriber.
animations are not poor compared to wow, but still a bit inferior to animations in wow. No matter how much people dislike or try to dislike WoW these days The truth has not changed. WoW is still the smoothest mmo
I thought character creation was one of the weaker parts. Only four races to choose from, 3 per side. The customization is etter than WoW/SWToR, but not as nice as EQ2 (which has 4 times as races to choose from) and pales in comparison to games like swg.
The rest of the review echoes my sentiments exactly. They should have focused more enregy iinto the sub 50 game. No reason not to have IAs accros all levels.
I would add that RotF is a very nice starter dungeon and the last part is one of the more unique experiences in the game. The defiant side dungeon is kind of weak though, but you can run both.
if IA was avaliable at level 1, not many would quest/dungeon/pvp to level up.
Rift
I think that your wrong in your review. You only have 4 classes to choose from but did you ever heard about combinations ? With almost anyclass you can do anything, if you choose to be a rogue, with that class you can be a melee, a ranger,tank or a healer also. Its not like most MMOs out there that to fully appreciate the whole game to choose what you want to be you need to create 8-10 characters and I think thats great on this game. If you want to write a review about a game I think that first you need to do some research first before posting.[Mod Edit.
I think you might have looked at this with a bit of a biased eye. One soul of the eight possible has a Bull Rush which is a charge. That same soul has an attack (Power Strike) which shares the word "strike". Not really comparable to call all character development a WoW clone by saying 1 of the 19 possible zero level skills is a charge and the other is an attack with a weapon. Strike and Blow are common terms for melee attacks across all games.
It would be more appropriate to say that it is similiar to ALL of the existing MMO melee classes.
There are several other items in this review that might bear a bit more perspective to give an equal review. It being your opinion you are of course entitled to it, no matter how biased :P
Alright, I admit it, I couldn't help it. Rogue Evasion and poisons = WoW? REALLY?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
well sure... you can trace WoW's influences easily and empires build upon other empires. but its more appropriate and affective for me to compare MMOs rather than a MMO and a pen and paper RPG. but overall if you look at Rift's soul attunement system (fancy talk for "Talent Tree") really is a pretty similiar blend of passive and active bonuses that WoW "popularized", if you will. D&D had a class system and Blizz kinda pioneered the modern skill/talent tree. i think Rift's is a tad more flexible and actually i like talent tree systems and i have no problem with Rift's but you gotta agree when you read many of them they are very similiar and obviously derivative from WoW.
and of course i do admit to only playing the Lite version up to 20 and only 4 classes overall so i admit to limited knowledge. but if i cant play through the rest of the tree, i can still look at them and thus i noticed the similiarities. which is fine cuz if you are gonna be influenced by WoW than i think the talent system is a fun system to adopt. i also enjoy sandbox skill systems so w/e works and fits is fine wiht me. i think Rift's fits fine. i guess im just letting other new players what to expect. thats all i intended with the post in the first place.
Only going to find so many variations on the idea of run up and hit it with a stick, do X dmg + weapon. The strength of Rift's Soul system is that you can literally combine from any of the 8 souls at your whim (following prereqs of course) and come up with a huge variety of builds. The same can't be said for anything else. To let people see exactly what I mean http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cAmg.-5 select any soul from the options and look at the associated skills, combine them how you like. You can have upto 6 premades you can switch to any time you aren't in combat.
Heck, if you guys wanna get right down to it, WoW's Talent Tree system is just the Feat system from D&D, but with a display. The only real differences are they WoW's system ramps differently and actually has more defined limitations. Rift's Soul System would more more closely related toward D&D's model in the aspect of choice than WoW's current model, leastways in my opinion.
btw, wanted to ask how big is the RIFT download in gigabyts?
and how much do they charge monathly fees?
~10 gigs. And price per month depends on subscription think its near $10. If you order the $5 game from online you'll get your first 30 days free too.