So, whats the verdict on RIFT?

[Slimez]

Now that the novelty has worn off a bit, how do you guys like the longevity of the game?

What are some of the pros and cons you guys see with it? I ask because I am considering going there, however i don't want to go if everything thinks it is going in the toilet.

Is there any Raid content? Is the combat system easily boxable by running your own group?

Look forward to hearing from you guys.

[Lyonheart]

Now that the novelty has worn off a bit, how do you guys like the longevity of the game?

What are some of the pros and cons you guys see with it? I ask because I am considering going there, however i don't want to go if everything thinks it is going in the toilet.

Is there any Raid content? Is the combat system easily boxable by running your own group?

Look forward to hearing from you guys.


Its going to take a few more months before most of us know anything about its potential long term. We have to get to 50, gear up etc.. I think Rift has one of the best Dev teams around atm. They listen to "legitimate" concerns the players voice, and take action right away. Rift has some growing pains ahead, with balance etc. But it will be a successful game for a long time.

That being said, I'm still unsure it will replace WoW from me long term, i need some more time and a few classes to max level. I know I enjoy it enough to stay long enough to level a few teams to 50. Most other MMOs that have come out since WoW have not kept me past lvl 20 or so. So that say a lot right there.

[Berserker]

The biggest concern I have atm, is the overall lack of content. I played most of the betas, so its a bit "been there, done that" for me right (plus I've been intentionally going very slow, as I don't think there is much to do, really, at lvl 50 yet). Don't get me wrong, I like Rift, and think Rift is fun, I'm just worried about being bored 10 days from now :)

I'm not sure I'm going to keep my billing plan active atm.

[Lyonheart]

The biggest concern I have atm, is the overall lack of content. I played most of the betas, so its a bit "been there, done that" for me right (plus I've been intentionally going very slow, as I don't think there is much to do, really, at lvl 50 yet). Don't get me wrong, I like Rift, and think Rift is fun, I'm just worried about being bored 10 days from now :)

I'm not sure I'm going to keep my billing plan active atm.

For a new game, i think Rift has more content than any other MMO had at release. It has all the same stuff( quests galore,dungeons and BGs, raids) Plus Rifts and invasions and Rift raids. It also has those Ancient wardstones at 50 that you can spawn a zone Boss. So it has some of the same ( but more of it) and the additional rift related content. With how well the Devs listen, I would wager that content will start pouring in very soon.

The stuff that is missing atm that i think should have been in from the start are simple things like guild banks, guild tabards and such. I'm sure that stuff will get in fast as well.

[ghonosyph]

I think they've got a long way to go before it becomes a long term game. I played beta but i wouldn't and couldn't be asked to pay another 250 bucks for an mmo just starting out. The beta was fun but i don't see me personally even sticking with the one copy my sister bought for me... i returned it to game stop and bought darkspore preorder instead.

The thing with rift is, out of the box the amount of rediculous balancing that needs to be done makes it a TON of fun.. but at the same time being overpowered for too long will get boring... it did for me in beta anyway. Either own or get owned, and too fast to even really matter. That on top of the no interact with target +click to move really got me... I'm too used to the convienience it has in wow. Also of note, i HAAAAAAAATE the character models... its hard to get hooked on a game when you just cant stand looking at the toon you're playing.. its so damned bland and boring its like looking at grass grow.... sure its amazing and the stuff around it is pretty cool, but at the end of the day you're still watching grass grow.

[Berserker]

For a new game, i think Rift has more content than any other MMO had at release. It has all the same stuff( quests galore,dungeons and BGs, raids) Plus Rifts and invasions and Rift raids. It also has those Ancient wardstones at 50 that you can spawn a zone Boss. So it has some of the same ( but more of it) and the additional rift related content. With how well the Devs listen, I would wager that content will start pouring in very soon.

The stuff that is missing atm that i think should have been in from the start are simple things like guild banks, guild tabards and such. I'm sure that stuff will get in fast as well.

I hear ya, and mostly agree, but...

If you think about it, there are 5-6 zones to max level (per side). That's not much content. Personally, I can't think of a game that had fewer zones at launch -- except maybe Star Trek Online. In vanilla Wow, you were what, lvl 20 when you hit the 5th zone? (I really don't remember :) I played Wow a loooooong time ago hehe) Plus each race had their own set of starting zones, etc.

Rifts are cool, yeah, but they are the same thing over and over. I'm already bored with Rifts just from beta. Instanced Pvp has bored me for years :)

[Velassra]

I'm having a great time so far. I'm enjoying the quests, rifts and dungeons. It's new and I feel it can keep me busy a long, long time. I'm not rushing through.

As for PvP, I've only done 2 of the maps: The first, Black Garden, seems whoever gets the fang first is most likely to win. The Codex, is like an AB w/ a different map, only done it a couple times so I don't have much of an opinion yet one 2 lost 2. (Though one was a 1000-33 loss, where we had no kills at all.....only 1 afkr that I could tell. damage looked ok, heals were great, but we were slaughtered, I really couldn't tell what happened.)

It's sometimes hard to tell exactly what is going on in pvp and whos doing what to whom. It's too chaotic and it does seem some classes just are way op.....like seemingly 1-2 shot op. I'm not much of a pvpr anyway, so overall doesn't really matter to me.

[Lyonheart]

What I mean by more content is more things to do than any other MMO.. including WoW ( at launch ). Yea it has less zones, but you have more choices of things to do at any given time. If you just quest, you will get bored.. if you just run instances or just do WFs..you get the point. There are more things to do and more ways to gear up. You can gear up from questing..Rifts..WFs or Dungeons and even crafting. If i get bored doing one thing, i do another. mix it up,

[Redbeard]

My verdict for the moment:

I like the game, i think it has great potential. I stepped away for about a week though and cant get up the urge to log back in.

But thats a problem with myself not the game, i think im going to go play some Eve for now.

[Littleburst]

I played beta because I was burned out on WoW. And for me, Rift is not an option when burned out on wow. It's to much alike for me.

Can't really comment on the gameplay constructively.

[keth]

I'm having a blast with it, only game that's really sucked me in in years. Just kept getting bored of wow fast after about the first year. Maybe this game's relations to DAOC (probably my favorite all time game) and the devs are what it is, but so far I don't see getting tired of it anytime soon. Granted I haven't rushed to 50 but most of my friends are 50 and seem pretty challenged and busy so far.

[psimoon]

I am done with it.

My sub runs out on April 3rd and I am not going to resub.

The game is ok once through but it is a grind that I did not have in WOW. I am talking about the replayability. Once you play through you have to do the exact same quest/zones. Then there is rep grind latter in the game.

Do not even get me started on the class imbalances. Mages need major love.

For full disclosure, I have a 50 mage.

So pretty much I am done, waiting for the next MMO, maybe they can get it right.

P.

[Duane]

I'm really liking it but I'm only playing one account casually. I love that you have a lot of variety in skills and class make ups.

[jinkobi]

I've been very bored in Rift and seriously doubt that I'll be resubbing. From the quests to the endgame content. It's just one gigantic grind without much reward.

Pretty graphics but the game is missing any surprises. They started making Rift when TBC came out and the similarities are just staggering. Even down to some of the major characters seem lifted right out of TBC. Really the game verges on plagiarism. Tidelord Brenin IS Illidian...Just kind of lame.

Not a shred of humor in the game either.

[Kicksome]

I think I'm done with it too - I canceled 4 accounts - and probably will cancel my main. I leveled 5 rogues up to level 50. They keep nerfing rogues, and the really OP classes, like warriors don't get touched. They let you pick all these different skill trees, but at the end of the day, they all suck except for maybe 2 out of like 256 possible combos. One warrior can kill all my guys if he's good and gets the jump. If not all, at least a few. In "Battle Grounds" people hate to see anyone but healers and warriors, because all other classes suck. They used to like bards, but they are nerfing their healing in raids by 75% - so they effect only 5 members vs 20.

[Lyonheart]

Well i just tried a Wf at 42, one warrior was killing my whole team of bards in a few attacks.. yea..w warriors are a tad op lol
full team of warriors would probably be insane!

[Flight]

Some Warrior skills are OP and are getting fixed.

Chloro and Bard healing is being 'addressed'.

[Zappy]

Hopefully this fixes warriors and gets them in line with other classes:

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?135656-Upcoming-Balance-changes-vs-Hot-fixes

At level cap, I'm still enjoying it overall. I haven't done a whole slew of dailies, but from what I've seen, the dailies appear to change which keeps them fresh. I have still yet to step into an expert dungeon and plan to start them soon. I know this game was really designed around the PVE aspect, so I want to experience more of that.

The pvp grind has gotten a little old, however it's going at a quick enough rate to where you do get useful upgrades rather quickly - I'm not quite rank 3, however this doesn't really leave much to do in the pvp scene after you hit cap. We'll see what they add in the future here. At my current play rate, I'm still a good month out before rank 6. Part of the fun to me in Rift is still some of the theorycrafting with various souls - especially now that I'm beginning to unlock some of the talents within the pvp soul.

One thing I have enjoyed and was surprised with is after rolling a new toon. The zones are still packed with people. I see players spamming for groups for all the various dungeons, which tells me that Rift will probably not die any time soon. The population seems smaller than launch, but it's nothing like going through zones like the barrens or Hyjal where you don't see that many people any more. I've been doing the dailies for apothecary, and they send you to various zones, where I still see a lot of people.

I find myself not nearly as immersed as I was with wow. This is more me though as I'm just tired of the wow type gameplay over all. Some of my other fixes just got released as well (HomeFront, Crysis 2, Assassins Creed Brotherhood, etc) which helps as I'll definitely be giving them a fair amount of time, and I'll likely continue to play Rift in the meantime.

From a boxing perspective, I don't think I could play Rift and get the same enjoyment as I did with wow as the synergy for the various class comps just doesn't seem to be there. Add this into the one sure factor -- CC in this game is a lot worse than wow and very imbalanced. In warfronts, it's not uncommon from me to go from full health to death while being CC'd the entire time. In Whitefall Steppes, I was chasing a mage carrying the flag, and I was polymorphed for a solid 12 seconds with absolutely no chance of catching up. I'm pretty sure if I was boxing it, I would become very frustrated rather quickly with it.

[kadaan]

I'm enjoying it. I'm playing a single account atm, not willing to jump into boxing this early. I have a level 50 cleric, and have done maybe half a dozen level 50 dungeons.

Compared to current WoW, it's missing a lot. Compared to classic WoW or any other just released game, it's got a lot to do and is very polished. At 50 there are a couple normal dungeons, and two tiers of expert dungeons (WoW heroics.) The t2 dungeons are kind of like ToC/ICC heroics vs the standard ones. The blues in T2 are about the same as the epics in T1. The 'gate' to T2 is your hit rating. 1 hit rating = 0.2% chance to hit and you need 100 rating to get 100% hit for T2 (so if you have 0, you have a 20% miss rate.) For raids, you need 200 (40% miss with 0.) I like this gating system better, as you don't need to put obscene amounts of rating on gear and you don't need to make npcs hit 10x harder and have 10x the life in each tier.

The Rift system was amazing at first, now I don't really care for them much. They're a nice break from questing when one spawns near you, and the blue/epic tokens you can get during an invasion can buy some decent gear, but at 50 there's no point doing any but the 5-man/raid rifts.

Dailies, rep grinding, instance farming for tokens for gear, all the same in Rift as WoW (except there's no cap the number of dailies you can do.)

At this point I think for myself (and many others) that we're simply MMO'd out. It's not that Rift is bad, it's just that it's another MMO. I can farm gold/achievements/gear/etc in WoW or Rift, and the only reason I know I'll go back to WoW is simply because I have more time invested in it and feel more attached to it. Rift is a great game, and if I wasn't playing WoW I would definitely be in Rift full-time.

[Vociferate]

I tried it. Bought the Collector's Edition because if I do ever go back to it, I'll have all the perks with it.

But I won't be subscribing too it.

[Lokked]

I'm dropping all Subs. I have spare time, but I've been spending more and more of it programming/developing, rather than playing Rift. That, and I'm spending more hours at the office these days.

I'll rejoin once I'm burnt out of my current project. I'm putting together a vision I had of MMO combat, and seeing if it's possible with current technology.

[TheBigBB]

Some of you guys are dumping the game too quickly. I hope no one is writing it off completely because of something they didn't like in the first month. I believe most of the complaints people have are being addressed. I won't go into that in specifics, but I am excited to see what they have in store.

Rift's class system is good because it lets you have 4 different specs, so you can have one for PVP, Raid DPS, Soloing and Tanking/Healing. There is also a lot of room for alternate builds. Balance is not something I'm worried about because as we've seen countless times in every other MMO, things get fixed with classes more often than anyone even asks for.

The invasions can get boring. I'd like to see a few more objectives to do in Rifts. I'm not sure if I have any good suggestions for what exactly, but I do think they get very predictable. Maybe some semi-scripted town-invasion rift events or something like that would be fun. On that note, it is amazing that your quest hub can and will be taken over by invasions.

There are fewer zones in Rift than WoW, but there's more content in the world itself. Every zone has artifact hunting, zone-wide events major boss events, rifts, invasion forces, quests, daily quests, tons of outposts, wardstone events (most zones) and a grouping system that easily lets you join with others without worrying about missing out. If the game didn't sort of funnel most people into the same zones, it wouldn't work out too well with all these events. I think the alternative leveling comes from doing PVP and dungeons. PVP seems like a pretty reasonable way to level as long as you still do some quests here and there for gear. Yeah you don't have as much variety in zones in Rift, but you don't get to the point where you leveled out of a town and you never visit it again. You may pass through later and save the town from an invasion as you help your friends, head to a dungeon, hunt for artifacts or materials, whatever.

For a young MMO Rift seems pretty good. If it doesn't add more good content I won't be staying past 6 months, but I think it has a good chance.

[Lokked]

Rift is a solid game. I quit because I'm generally tired of traditional MMOs, and have other interests which leave me with no desire to log on.

For me, the idea of selecting a target in 3D space, and then pressing keys in a homogenous way to produce an effect just isn't doing it for me anymore.

These games are targetted at a 13-30 audience, because the concept is still new to them, and not generalized. With time, your mind begins to generalize, as is the human learning experience. When generalized enough, you aren't learning anything new, so you get bored.

This is why some people say "XX game is the same exact thing as YY game," while some would find XX completely different than YY. One group has generalized and the other hasn't.

Anyways.... Good Game. I'm just burnt out on MMOs :)

[Nisch]

I'm still playing it, in fact just started boxing it.

I run a single toon when playing with the wife, and box it when she's not on.

I still find it quite a lot of fun.

[Oatboat]

I'm enjoying boxing this game. Even without all the luxuries of the addons wow provided... its still a very solid game.

Combat system is a wow clone... so no problems there. (not broke dont fix it)

Story line is pretty interesting. Rifts and Lore im not that familiar with

Pvp is pretty one sided for a couple of classes atm but that will change.

Pve is a mix of dungeons, rifts, quests, grinding... its pretty enjoyable.

Crafting is pretty nice. You make items to develop skill and then can salvage those items to retrieve some mats to make more.... not just disenchanting... but if you salvage leather you get leather back and so on.

If you are looking for a change of pace, change of scenery come try it out.

Overall i give it an 8 out of 10.

[Gomotron]

What is fun and frustrating about the game is the new class system. I like to plan stuff out and trying to min/max without knowing really what the hell I am doing is equal parts fun and frustrating, particularly when I realize I just selected the wrong secondary class and have the reroll, ha!

I am having fun with it for now, we'll see how it goes in later levels, Still a noob.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I suspect a lot of it is, as some have already noted, that folks are sorta burned out on the WoW-like MMO scene for a bit. A lot of us have taken breaks (even from WoW itself) and come back fresh after a few months. I look forward to playing it one day myself, though I figure I'll wait until the game stabilizes and they've been through their first few rounds of buffs/nerfs/etc.

[pox67]

I am really enjoying Rift. I haven't played an MMO since EQ2 years ago and never played WoW so some of this is quite new to me. I do see quite a bit of resemblance to EQ2 in Rift though.

At the moment Rift is an amazingly polished release game. They rightly focused on the core elements and got them working very well for release. What Rift is missing though are the options that the older MMOS have like more dungeon experiences and cosmetic clothing. Those are just 2 examples but you get the idea.

What I'll likely do is take my current trio up to a high level then take a break and wait for a few major updates or an expansion to bring in the fluff that fills out the mmo world.

[Berserker]

Funny thing about Rift is that everyone sees a lot of what ever was the last MMO they played in it :) I have a good friend that swears it is a Warhammer clone :)

[Ualaa]

Most successful new games, will take whatever flavor and mechanics of previous games that worked in those games and integrate it into their own.

Same for any industry really.
If one car manufacturer had a model which took 97.3% of the market for its category, you can be sure each of the competition will come out with their own model that is very similar.

[pox67]

True true, I think the EQ2 feeling probably came across with Scott Hartsmann.

[Slimez]

Rift is a solid game. I quit because I'm generally tired of traditional MMOs, and have other interests which leave me with no desire to log on.

For me, the idea of selecting a target in 3D space, and then pressing keys in a homogenous way to produce an effect just isn't doing it for me anymore.

These games are targetted at a 13-30 audience, because the concept is still new to them, and not generalized. With time, your mind begins to generalize, as is the human learning experience. When generalized enough, you aren't learning anything new, so you get bored.

This is why some people say "XX game is the same exact thing as YY game," while some would find XX completely different than YY. One group has generalized and the other hasn't.

Anyways.... Good Game. I'm just burnt out on MMOs :)

I couldnt have said it better myself. Since I posted this I played the RIFT quite a bit and have completely lost all interest. IMO, there just isnt anything new and groundbreaking enough to make me want to stay.

I have been a gamer since before EQ1 (Quake on ten.net was my first online home). If RIFT is someones first or second MMO I think they would really enjoy it and play it for awhile... to me, the above post says what I feel perfectly, the same ol thing with a few polishes.

[cichard]

and the warhammer reference is there cause the game is on a modified warhammer engine