Rift MMORPG

[DanGWanG]

I didn't see a major thread dedicated to Rift, so I figured I'd make one.

Just started a few days ago and was wondering if there were other GHers out there playing.

Here's my all around summation of everything, not particularly organized or thought out:

- Char: Dreaming, Tearfall PVP server, Defiant Faction (Currently Lv22, Riftblade/Reaver/Warlord)
- The game, to me, appears to be almost identical to WoW in terms of the questing, UI, and mechanics.
- I come from an FFXI background (the only MMO I ever played prior) where the grind was just ridiculous.  Given that, I really enjoy the pace of the game that Rift offers and it doesn't feel so grind heavy.  You can get experience points from a variety of methods.  (Grind, quests, PvP!, instance raids, etc.)
- I love playing the game with my Model M, Cherry Blues and Cherry Browns.  It's just terrible with a Realforce, I wouldn't recommend it.
- The graphics are truly beautiful, and everything is extremely fast to respond.  Though, most of the time you're probably just spamming keys.
- The game doesn't seem that resource heavy, and isn't very harsh on your computer.  The programming seems to be utilize your system hardware very efficiently.  I can play this game on my 3 year old machine (Q6600, 4GB DDR2 RAM, GTX 460, Dell) with no issues at all, but I suspect that's probably because of the GTX 460 doing all the leg work.
- The class/subclass system is very unique and reminiscent of FFXI.  There are 4 main classes: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage.  Within each class, there are 9 subclasses.  You are given the ability to choose up to 3 subclasses in combination using a point system to define how focused you want to get.
- The game is quite expensive compared to FFXI.  $50 for game and $15/month ad hoc.
- Max level is currently at 50, with not much end game content yet.
- Crafting seems cool, but haven't even had time to try that yet.

More info at www.riftgame.com

[.XL]

My brother is trying to get me into this...do you think it's worth it? I come from a WoW background, for 1.5 years after release I played heavy raiding with top level guilds. Once they came out with Burning Crusade the game was just ruined for me...too easy. And it's been getting progressively easier.

Since it seems like you've dabbled in WoW, would you (or anyone else here that's played vanilla and Rift) think Rift is similar to vanilla WoW?

[DanGWanG]

Actually, I hate everything that is WoW.  So, it took me a long time of convincing from my roommates to play.  I couldn't really give you a comparison between vanilla WoW and Rift.

On the topic of difficulty, however, FFXI has been known to be one of the most difficult MMORPG's due to the system it integrates.  It's very group oriented (Japanese cultural mindset), competitive, and frankly speaking, tiring.  Coming from that, this game is certainly more lax to play and offers an arsenal of ways to earn exp.  It's easy for the first few levels, and quite linear as far as the storyline and side quests go, but definitely very skill oriented later on in group scenarios (PvP, dungeon raids, and "Rifts")

That being said, Rift does a lot of small things that make the game complex, yet efficient and logical.  It may come as easy to start, but there are just way too many things to learn and explore.

I would say if you enjoyed WoW, in its infant stages, you would appreciate a game like this especially since it's also in it's infant stages.

[Ekaros]

I have history with Anarchy Online, one of the more complex MMOs...

I got in Beta of Rift, nothing special, but still well polished game, but 50€ box price is bit steep to stomach...

[JelinaNU]

I too played AO. It was the gateway to my MMO addiction, and probably represents the best of what I'm chasing in newer games. While AO had many flaws, I think that Funcom ace'd the system, an facet that almost all of it's contemporaries fail to polish.

World of Warcraft consumed a great deal of my time for a few years. It was not the greatest game that I had played, but I got involved in raiding (close to the bleeding edge of content) and that kept me logging in daily for the duration of my subscription.

Now, my time for games or any other hobbies is throttled by my full-time job and the overtime it requires me to work in order to pay for culinary school on the weekends. I've bought Rift, am playing it casually, and am enjoying it. Trion got a great deal more "right" than "wrong."

[JelinaNU]

I'm currently playing a mage and a rogue on the Silkweb server. The mage was created solely to bot my tank friend with a Chloromancer. He's since out-leveled me by a large margin and I've switched to Pyromance/Warlock/Dominator simply because it's extremely fun to play while being difficult to solo with. In fact, soloing with mages in Rift is far harder than other games in which I've tried it, pet classes notwithstanding. (I detest pet classes.)

The rogue is my sandbox character. I couldn't pass-up the opportunity to play a highly mobile (read: teleporting), evasion-based tank while still having access to a pure DPS spec on the same character. Healing for four years cured me of any desire to perform that role (long term) for some time yet to come.

[.XL]

Sooo...I've been watching some videos, and though it DOES look quite interesting, it's still $50! That's really steep IMO, seeing as the monthly is $15.

How is the PVP? This is big for me. I was huge into the world PVP scene in WoW back right after release. I don't think I've ever had more fun than that in any video game!

[Ekaros]

Sooo...I've been watching some videos, and though it DOES look quite interesting, it's still $50! That's really steep IMO, seeing as the monthly is $15.

How is the PVP? This is big for me. I was huge into the world PVP scene in WoW back right after release. I don't think I've ever had more fun than that in any video game!

Idea is wait 3-12 months for priced drop if it fails

[.XL]

Idea is wait 3-12 months for priced drop if it fails

I'll be in Shanghai from Sept - January, so I either get it now or in a year

[DanGWanG]

I am Shanghainese!  I love Shanghai, wish I was there right now.

But the PvP is pretty awesome from what I'm seeing.  My roommates love the system, but I don't know how it compares to WoW.

For large PvP, you basically sign up to join a 'Warfront' and when the queue is ready to accept you, you will be teleported to the battleground along with many others.  The PvP is cross server!  That part alone is pretty awesome.  Right now, Warriors and Rogues are known to be easy classes to use in large scale PvPs.  But there's quest/exp incentive for every class to participate in PvP, so there's balance from that perspective.

From a 1v1 standpoint, you can challenge anyone on the spot, anywhere.  There are areas that are contested zones, so both factions will share common territory and people will start killing eachother...a lot lol.

Honestly, I don't know much about PvP since FFXI was mainly PvE and I haven't really participated in any PvP matches yet in Rift.

[Lanx]

$50 is cheap for the hours of entertainment acrued from any mmo. A game like dragon age 2 for $50 bucks is 30hours long, 60hours if you want to replay it 2x (figure you'd get faster at it) then what? wait for the 6months of nothing until they releases a 14$ DLC to play another 8hours?

when i played eq2 i was the server best, so i put in 30hours a week, conservatively speaking, my fiancee actually put in more because she liked playing with our guild. so that's 120hours a month for a game you pay 50$ one time and 15$ a month.

some of these rift programmers are also eq2 programmers that left, i think they were the good ones? idk but a lot of old eq2 guildmates were telling me to get in the game for like 6months, so far it seems to be the only plausible "wow killer" around.

[DanGWanG]

A veteran WoW friend was over the other day and was just messing around on my character for like 15 minutes.  He looked at the tech tree for like 2 minutes, and went off on his journey, pressing buttons on the keyboard and clicking around like he's been playing for years.  I walked away, came back and saw him fighting a  group of equal-level mobs, using AoE burst and DoT techniques...

Needless to say, I think it's a pretty straight forward transition from WoW into this game.  These guys certainly didn't re-invent the wheel, but they innovated on the better parts of all other popular MMO's to date.

[xbb]

Don't play WoW and any game who tries to copy from it, you will just lose your time, spend it elsewhere, really anything else is better!

[DanGWanG]

Just bumping this to see if there are any other GHers out there playing this game.  A few more weeks into this game now, and I've got to say...it's quite fun and addicting.

[shako]

I played the BETA version of this game. I got up to level 25 or 26. I chose rogue, and the souls I took was Marksman, Ranger and something else, trap-ishy type one. It was fun to play, especially the kiting. I also tried a cleric, forgot the soulnames though! I did think this class was much cooler.

The game itself looks pleasent and clean, the graphics in it were outstanding, compairable to other mmo's. The game play was similar, but enjoyable. I really liked the instances in Rift they were somewhat challenging, until I found that tank rogues were completely overpowered and made instances a walk over.

I have played World of warcraft since beta and played it until recently when I decided to cancle my subscription and just quit it once and for all. The game is compairable to Rift in a lot of aspects, I don't want to make this a wow vs rift comment, but they are very similar. I chose not to buy Rift mainly because I didn't think it was worth to pay per month - it has everything other MMO's have but nothing really that exciting that it would make me play it more than others.

As you say Rift is addictive, no doubt! Every MMO game that's out has the addictive feel about it - WoW, Aion, Rift etc. Watch you don't get sucked in too much and waste a lot of time (like I did with WoW!) I don't have regrets though, well... maybe some

P.S. Starcraft 2 is where it's at!

[Vittra]

I've been playing since beta. I'm on Deepstrike playing a Rogue named Skepticism (Defiant).

Had my first taste of Greenscale Blight yesterday, downed the 2nd and 3rd boss.

It's a decent game. It borrows a lot of aspects from other games, EQ, Warhammer, and especially WoW, but it does have it's own nuances (the soul system and ability for multiple classes to actually fill different roles, specifically).

The game engine is awful by the way. It's based on Gamebyro which is terrible and just runs poorly. When you have a low end system and are using low settings, it isn't an issue. When you have a high end system like mine and start cranking settings is when you start to quickly become annoyed. It's been improving slowly though. Hopefully they get some DX11 implementation in at some point, that would certainly help.

The graphics themselves are quite good however, and the environments are excellent. There is nothing in WoW that compares to the scope and feel of zones like Gloamwood, Searing Gorge, etc. The gameworld itself is fairly small, but the attention to detail and veritable tons of mobs around make it feel rather large.

Anyways, it's a solid game that has seen a fairly stable and polished launch. No other game can boast the amount of content it provides on release (WoW beats it by being a 7 year old game folks), nor how smoothly the launch went overall.

It remains to be seen just how much staying power the game has however. At 50 it becomes the typical "grind factions, grind dailies, raid" that raiders in general are accustomed to and since it is so easy an quick to level, you reach this point faster than you would expect. Actually, the severity of the faction grinds along with the dailies which attempt to be more interesting (and sadly simply end up more tedious) is a notch above WoW's rep grinds, and you're hit with 3 all at once upon hitting 50.

I'd really like to see a MMO that focuses on the experience of reaching max level than end game. It took forever to hit the cap in EQ1, but it was an enjoyable experience.

[DanGWanG]

I've been playing since beta. I'm on Deepstrike playing a Rogue named Skepticism (Defiant).

Had my first taste of Greenscale Blight yesterday, downed the 2nd and 3rd boss.

On our server (Tearfall..or as some us call it, QQfall), there's 1 primary guild that runs GSB routinely.  Our guild, on the otherhand, don't have the numbers or gear to go routinely yet, so we have to pick up some public people that we know to be good.  Still stuck on the 2nd boss unfortunately, not enough well geared DPS yet.

It's a decent game. It borrows a lot of aspects from other games, EQ, Warhammer, and especially WoW, but it does have it's own nuances (the soul system and ability for multiple classes to actually fill different roles, specifically).

The game engine is awful by the way. It's based on Gamebyro which is terrible and just runs poorly. When you have a low end system and are using low settings, it isn't an issue. When you have a high end system like mine and start cranking settings is when you start to quickly become annoyed. It's been improving slowly though. Hopefully they get some DX11 implementation in at some point, that would certainly help.

The graphics themselves are quite good however, and the environments are excellent. There is nothing in WoW that compares to the scope and feel of zones like Gloamwood, Searing Gorge, etc. The gameworld itself is fairly small, but the attention to detail and veritable tons of mobs around make it feel rather large.

I definitely hear you on this one.  On lower settings, my friend plays with no issues.  I actually have to lower some of my system settings just so I can see things properly without lagging (thinking of eLH Queen poison gas).  While, I don't come from a WoW background, I did come from FFXI.  The FFXI engine focused primarily on a single core CPU with the graphics card coming 2nd in priority.  Talk about some annoying implementations.

Anyways, it's a solid game that has seen a fairly stable and polished launch. No other game can boast the amount of content it provides on release (WoW beats it by being a 7 year old game folks), nor how smoothly the launch went overall.

It remains to be seen just how much staying power the game has however. At 50 it becomes the typical "grind factions, grind dailies, raid" that raiders in general are accustomed to and since it is so easy an quick to level, you reach this point faster than you would expect. Actually, the severity of the faction grinds along with the dailies which attempt to be more interesting (and sadly simply end up more tedious) is a notch above WoW's rep grinds, and you're hit with 3 all at once upon hitting 50.

I'd really like to see a MMO that focuses on the experience of reaching max level than end game. It took forever to hit the cap in EQ1, but it was an enjoyable experience.

Comparing the launch to FFXIV, this was definitely a lot smoother than I had expected it to be.

With regards to your views on the leveling, I'm actually quite glad it wasn't too much of a grind to getting to 50.  As many others would say, the game beings at level 50.  I didn't care about doing anything other than hitting 50 when I started, only because FFXI (like EQ), it took months to get to max level.

It's also nice that you can level from doing PVP.  I've had my fair share of really fun PVP lately, and had wished that I participated during my exping stages.

[Keymonger]

I'd really like to see a MMO that focuses on the experience of reaching max level than end game.

*cough* Guild Wars 2

[Vittra]

Oh I'll be playing it, don't you worry.