I loved Vanilla Rift. Was so much fun until they added more level grinding. I would if Rift had a sequel with better engine, maybe custom engine, with Guild Wars 2 level animations, also better Dynamic Event system. Love the faction instanced PvP modes. But would love ssomething closer to 40vs40 long Old AV type a battle mode.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Designing and then building an mmo with intent for it to last for years is naive at best as well as challenging (content wise) as well as expensive.
We all want new games new content so why maintain one title forever when you can say just keep releasing new games as rounded whole. Leave old burdens behind, add new content and rework classes or whatever and you have new title. Players who dislike new can stay with the old and vice versa.
When server pop drops below certain threshold pull the plug on said title and move on.
Most often than not new content comes in a form where it overrides or completely invalidates all the previous work so it really is nothing more than dead weight on a server a remnant from the past.
Well my 2cp on the matter anyhow.
1) The endless rebalancing. Every time I found a class combination that "worked" it was nerfed. Eventually everything was bland and equal.
2) The artificial required stats for the endgame treadmill. I had very good items with the stats stacked very well for my class. They forced you to play the class in exactly the way they wanted you to, with no ability to customize yourself even with items.
3) Them making the rifts themselves pretty much worthless once you started that treadmill. I enjoyed the rifts, quite a lot (especially before being nerfed into the ground), but the rewards became nil.
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The actual thing Rift did best was bringing the blue shinies to the level of an art form. I got into so many practically inaccessible areas, and in the enemy realm as well, to get my rare collectables.
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It is hard to believe that rift is now over 5 years old and needing a sequel.
Unfortunately I just don't see a Rift 2 every happening.
I would play it immediately because I actually quite liked the world/lore of Rift, but, again, just don't see it ever happening.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no reason for them to start working on Rift 2 until they feel they have exhausted the potential of Rift, which is obviously not the case due to the above.
What may be more likely is an upgrade to some of the graphics and animation of Rift once they have the 64-bit client in place, and a continued release of purchased expansions to drive forward enhancements to the game to bring it closer in line with more recent titles.
Not true for WoW or Everquest anyway. Either BC or Wotlk for the former; RoK, SoV, or for some even PoP for the latter
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
For me personally and not that it matters, I enjoyed Vanilla WoW the most of any games that have a "vanilla". It was challenging, it wasn't over inflated with gear that was given out on a silver platter, world pvp actually existed, you had your own server community that you grew to know players unlike now, you didn't pull entire dungeons and AoE everything down, you had to use CC, I mean I could go on and on and on. I mean.. pulling packs of mobs in "mythic" dungeons and mass AoE'ing with ease.. come on. I will be the first to admit that I LOVE AoE's but being able to do such things on the hardest difficulty of dungeons is rather lame and goes to show how much Blizz has watered down their game
I hope the new X-Pac keeps me having fun until something such as Pantheon becomes available to play. The rest of the MMO's out there are not as enjoyable to me.