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What makes Rift unique?
I see many posts asking what is unique and different about Rift. Here are my thoughts.
1. Trion contends it will release with an actual endgame. They say 1/2 to 2/3 of the devs have been assigned to endgame work for the last 2 months of Alpha. They plan to release with close to 10 expert lvl 50 group dungeons and 2 raid dungeons. if they can accomplish this they will release with more endgame content than any game has ever released with by a very large margin. I love 1-50 content but I will spend 95-100% of my time at endgame. Endgame is what matters. Almost all new games have failed because of lack of PvE Endgame.
2. Rift actually has full 1-50 content already in game. Or at least Trion claimed they had the entire 1-50 gameplay already implemented back around October. if you can believe them, they will be the 2nd MMO ever to release with full 1-50 content. Quite a remarkable achievement. Almost every MMO struggles to add in the 1-50 content during live and then struggles even more with the lack of endgame content. As you can see the game has content for many different playstyles for soloers, for group players, PvP players, casuals and hopefully for raiders.
3. Trion actually talks to its playerbase. It remains to be seen if they will do this after release. But they have been very open and accessible with its playerbase. According to Abigale they invited most of the long term fans into Alpha as a reward. They seem to care about their players. It is quite remarkable. Hopefully they will be able to do this when the masses of crying and whining ADHD children descend upon them post release.
4. Rift does not try to innovate Rather than wasting its dev time on gimmicks and claims of innovation they have taken what they believe works from other games and made a solid playable and polished game. Innovation is nice in theory but it generally means very bad gameplay.
5. Rift will release with a solid foundation that can grow horizontally. It has the foundation for a solid game. Rather than promising to much and trying to go "Big" with features they have limited what they do and shined and polished it. Knowing that after release if the game has a healthy subscription base they can grow horizontally and add more zones, continents, races, souls and miscellaneous additions like possibly housing.
6. Rift has the architecture for some dynamic/story telling gameplay. They tested and demonstrated their events the last two Betas and it was surpassingly successful. These type of events if well received will likely only get better and more involved. I have never really believed the dynamic gameplay hype. But maybe they were not blowing smoke at us. the two events opened my eyes to the possibilities of massive invasions over all zones and at endgame. The possibilities exist for many facets of gameplay to be included in these events including crafting. For Gm led events and all kinds of interesting fun. It is something that can certainly be developed over time as more and more zones get added along with expansions and the possibility of entering each of the 6 different planes.
7. The team Rift has many amazing Devs. They have Hartsman and people from EQ2. Many devs from Warhammer like Gersh who was behind Warhammers PQ system. They also have devs from EQ1, Daoc and Vanguard. They have Avarem who designed APW in Vanguard. The Dev team is quite distinguished. It has many hardcore raiders who understand raiding and what its like to play MMO's. They also have many PvP devs and bring a mix of ideas from the EQ1/EQ2/VG philosophy with that of the DAOC/warhammer philosophy. Quite an interesting mix.
8. The class system is truly unique. It may not deliver on its promise of complexity with a large amount of builds. But its quite fun, flexible and different. My guess is the amount of builds will be somewhat limited and we may eventually be limited to what is essentially 4 classes with a small number lof different builds. But it certainly does offer us many options and is a good foundation that trion can use to make raid encounters and gameplay fun and interesting. what i like is the flexibility to shift between different playstyles depending on the role needed. Players who play classes that are considered weak or not needed suddenly have options. Guild recruiting will be much easier as guilds will not need to recruit OP rarely played classes. My hope is that they are able to develop and flesh out the classes with time where there will be many viable builds.
9. What makes Rift unique to me is that its a solid game with full content and with a promise of focus on endgame. This is really unheard of in MMOs. I know in the present I want it all MMO generation, expectations are completely unrealistic. People expect games to not only be 100% innovative but they expect games to be made solely for their own pleasure. There is no game or MMO that will ever be close to what anyone wants in terms of design and philosophy. But Rift certainly delivers far far beyond my expectations in terms of what I would expect in quality and quantity of content. Plus there is a promise of endgame and a foundation to grow. I would never have expected Rift to be as good a game as it is now. While it may not in many ways be the game I would want or design it is far beyond my expectations. Maybe i am bit jaded from playing so many bad games. Or maybe I am just a bit shocked that it actually delivers a polished, fun and playable game.
Comments
Game also has collections! I was obsessed with those in EQ2. Also the achievment system is already in the game which will keep me busy for a long time.
I feel like I am getting deja vu looking at this game. O wait....
Seriously there is not one aspect of this game not directly cloned from WoW. (yes yes WoW didnt invent mmo's I get it)(yes yes WoW should not be used to reference other games)
Quest givers, skills, classes, THE FREAKING FONT, every damn aspect of this game I could copy a screenie from WoW and a screenie from this game and play that game where you gotta find the differences.
Has the human imagination fallen this far? O look you gotta kill a mob and use a quest item on it to drain its life.
Seriously have they introduced quest helper to the game yet?
What? Achievements this is new age right here. Maybe they will actually add some stats to achievements to make em worth more then just wasting your life on em.
This just looks absolutely horrendous.
the whole comparing everything to WoW thing is lazy
I agree with you if say 10% of this game looked like WoW but come on over 90% of this game is the same damn thing.
People just get mad because there tired of waiting for a new mmo. So they get excited about rift and since there in denial about the fact that it looks like WoW they get angry.
I personly think its looks more like eq2 than WoW but people use WoW for everything , its just a lazy way to make them feel better about WOW and takes no thought or effort.
I have described Rift to folks as bits and pieces from a number of other games. WAR, EQ2, WoW. So what? So far it works. If people like it, so be it.
Funny how everyone freaks out about the mention of WoW and that isnt even the point. The point is that maybe not everyone but I am sure a lot of us want something new and original. Can companies be this ignorant?
Guess its just proof its all about the money and not about the game.
people dont freak out on the use of WoW its just lazy and requires no critical thinking whats so ever. you use the same old argument for everything.
I tried hard to find at least one unique feature in RIFT. Still looking with no success.
Rifts? PQs from WAR.
Char development? Talents from WoW with few tweaks.
The same old argument would be why do these games always look alike and lack originality.
The fact that people get emo that I said WoW and not EQ2 or other various games is very comical to me.
Whats even more lazy is the amount of people that reply in almost every post in reference to WoW using the word "lazy"
Well then we can laugh at each other because it’s just as funny from my side to see someone respond to a forum with no creativity or original thoughts, but choose to regurgitate the same old junk over and over while thinking that there smart and creative.
Can you come to a more natural association then using WoW? If you can I would truly love to hear it.
Is it more logical to use the illogical choice for simply charming someone on the other side of the screen?
Please don't be "lazy" give it your best effort.
your the one using the WoW refrences, I can simply compare everything in game to 20 other games that more accuratly portray the game itself instead of painting it with the WoW brush
Listen ill break it down for ya. Since you seem to be missing the fact.
Yes it looks like many other games EQ2 etc..
But it only resembles those games to certain degree's
The reason for using WoW is because this game looks almost 100% like it from colors used to fonts used.
If you haven't gotten it yet just lay off the weed. It really does not make you smarter just an fyi.
@pauly: Well, the reason people are saying you are lazy is because you could basically switch out WoW with any other sword and sorcery mmo and your post will say the exact same thing. That in turn means your post isn't saying much at all, besides that you don't like the game because it resembles other games of the same genre, that you have played.
It's a fantasy MMO, of course it will have similarities to other fantasy MMO's.
I understand that. That is not my point. When a fantasy game comes out they generally are similar. We all know this. But I am saying Rift literally took a copy of WoW and put there title on it.
They didn't even try to change some things to make it there own.
This is what games have come to. And people do nothing more then defend this.
Lol the use of personal attacks shows that your thought is limited and have to resort to insults, it still means your lazy for not giving any examples to your argument other than it’s a Wow clone.
This game doesnt deserve an original reply.
So your theory is that by supplementing the word WoW with EQ2 it is no longer lazy?
I fail to see your rationalization here.
you can ussually tell who is on the short end by who resorts to insults to bully there point home.
In this case you can substitute 'lazy' for 'works', 'highly functional', 'tried and true' etc. Why reinvent the wheel if the current wheel works? If there are a bunch of 'working' wheel types and you can borrow from them to make a 'new' type that sells the numbers you want/need...well in that case I call lazy 'success'.
Wether Trion will shakes the industry and make changes for the future or not (I tend to think not) time will tell. Really though all it has to do it makes the required (by the folks in backrooms hunched over calculators) numbers and keep it's player base happy. Based on preliminary results and overall commentary it seems to have a possibility to do that.
Not bullying bro its just frustrating that someone could lack such common sense.
I was in the last beta, and allthough I haven't played WoW since TBC, I can't really say that I was thinking "Damn, this game is the exact same thing as WoW/insert other fantasy mmo" when playing it.
Yes, it is of course like other games to a certain degree and they probably took more from WoW than some other games, seeing as it is so successful.
Still I think it plays good, no fanboi or anything but I can see myself playing it for a bit 'till ToR comes out.
If you are sick of WoW/fantasy themepark games, Rift is probably not for you though.
Lol, ok it was you who used the woW clone argument, while I was asking for specific illustrations, but you couldn’t do anything but say it was Wow and unoriginal.
I only said it looked more like eq2 than WoW, not that it actually did look like eq2, so I wasn’t replacing the wow brush with a eq2 brush.
I also was looking for you to break down the game and be able to compare aspects of it to the appropriate systems that would best describe the game instead of a wide brush that you decide to use.
I know now that you know nothing about the game itself, looked at a couple screenshots and started to troll the forums and resorted to personal attacks when you couldn’t think for yourself or use another talking point.
Well you got me bro I am a sad panda you a truly far superior