It’s hard to describe Rift in a few sentences.
I mean, if I say it’s like WoW but better that’s pretty subjective (read: correct) and depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking to pay $15 a month for a single player RPG with amazing 2004 graphics, WoW is still the better game. If you are looking for a more traditional themepark MMO that acknowledges you are not just a line item on a DPS meter, Rift delivers.
If I say it does a lot of what WAR and other games tried but actually succeeds, that’s not telling you a whole lot either. Succeeds at what, and why? And how is fixing feature X important enough to make me care/switch?
If you ask for 3-4 things that make it ‘special’, the list would not do a great job of pointing out why the game is as much fun as it is.
And at the end of the day, the above is really only a problem when talking about Rift, because playing it is pretty damn good fun. Now maybe if you are coming off their 12th straight themepark it’s not as fun. Maybe if you have been playing nothing but themeparks since 2004 you don’t find it as enjoyable. Maybe if you are taking a break from WoW to ‘try something new’ Rift is not doing it for you. All fair. Of course, if you are complaining that the PvP is bland and you wish it was more worldly, all while ignoring Darkfall, well, it’s not the genre that’s failing you. If you wish for something more complex without playing EVE, again, it’s you. And if you hate all of the above, keeping waiting for that jesus MMO, it’s coming “soon”.
For me though, Rift arrives at the perfect time. I’ve been away from the themepark space for a bit, and I still have a ‘serious’ PvP MMO that is always available in Darkfall.
Now that I’m half a bar away from level 30, I think I’ve seen enough of the game to offer some additional thoughts.
As has been repeated often but can’t be stated enough, Rift does most if not all of the basics well. If you feel something should be in a themepark MMO, odds are good that Rift has it. The lack of a guild bank stands out as much as it does in part because, well, basically everything else IS there. Guild quests, puzzles, explorer caches, solo/3-man/group quests, solid instances, achievements, collections, a currency tab, pets, mounts, zone-wide events, customizable UI, etc etc etc. Name a themepark feature you would expect a game to have, and Rift probably has it and executes it well.
And executing well is what separates Rift from other MMOs IMO. I’m not just talking lack of bugs or stable servers, I’m talking ideas improved on slightly to make them overall work better. The zone invasions and rifts are PQs 2.0 not because of some hidden details or improvement, but for the simple fact that when they happen, a large section of the zones current population gets together and fights it off. That’s very, very different from WAR, where unless someone gets people together, you don’t run a PQ. Reactive vs proactive. Huge difference. That they tie into each zones lore and storyline is just icing on the cake.
The difficulty here is also important. If you show up with a few people, you will succeed at the early levels. The more people you have the faster you succeed, and the better you play the higher your chance for a reward, but the difficulty being what it is means the event is more of a social “come look at the pretty lights” type of deal than a hardcore DPS metrics race to the e-peen top. This conditions people to show up, rather than having the average player get stomped at level 15 and swear off invasions all together.
One other thing I’d like to point out, and something that I hope continues as I level, is that rifts, instances, and invasions are slowly getting a little more complex as you go. In Silverwood the bosses and rifts were pure tank and spank, while in Gloamwood they have a mechanic or two that semi-matters (you can ignore it and still zerg-to-win, but reacting to it is better). Hopefully by 50 things are closer to the old WoW world dragons, if not quite that tuned, as at that point it’s no longer an option to ignore them and move to the next zone. Again though, the tuning is going to be key. Make things too difficult, and you condition people not to show up. Make them too easy, and at 50 it might not entertain people as long as you expect in an MMO. I’m thinking this is where raid-level rifts come in, and if so, I’m looking forward to them.
A quick note about questing difficulty; 90% of it is WoW-easy, but that 10% is just enough to keep things interesting. Skip the next paragraph if you have not been to Gloamwood and want to avoid a somewhat minor spoiler.
There is a quest in Gloamwood that, at one point, curses you and turns you into a werewolf, which subsequently makes most of the previously friendly NPCs (merchants, guards, etc) hostile to you. If you finish the quest and kill the named mob, the curse is lifted, or you can sneak into town and talk to someone who can also break the curse. As I’ve been reading the quest text, none of this was a surprise and I was able to reach the NPC to cure me after some sneaking and running away. Two guild mates who play only for the shiny had a tougher go of things, and I’ve seen some hilarious forum threads of people complaining that this one quest “completely broke the game for me and made it unplayable!”
It’s good that in the age of ‘accessibility’, there are still a few quests or encounters that require more than fist-pounding your keyboard, and they make all of those simpler quests more enjoyable by contrast. If every quest cursed you, it would be a drag, but being challenged once in a while is, in my book, a great thing. And so far, that’s really what Rift has been about, one enjoyable ‘great thing’ after another.
Hardcore Casual 
Great thoughts. Another thing about Rift I love is that mobs don’t suck. If you bite off more than you can chew, at an early level you’re taught that is a horrible idea and you will subsequently die. Rift manages to teach you at a low level some of the basic thought processes people in WoW still aren’t grasping I.e. Don’t stand in the fire. Another piece of icing on the rift cake is the ability to do whatever you feel like to level up, rifts, invasions, PvP, questing, grinding, artifact hunting, you name it. In rift you tend not to notice your xp bar and I myself often find that I level up without even realizing it because I’m too immersed in all the fun things to do in the game. I’m only level 19 and I am seriously impressed already and I’m looking forward to slowly reaching 50 because honestly I’m happy leveling (normally I’m racing to max level).
TL;DR – Rift is awesome.
Does the mob density get any better? I am getting sick of “oh look, neat a rift, and I will have to fight 2-3 trash mobs to get through to it… and it will likely close while I fight those trash.”
Hit or miss depending on the area, how the event is shaping up (is there one big zerg or a few raids running around?), and your soul. If you play someone who can get by mobs (a pet, a speed boost, stealth), it’s not that bad.
It would be helpful to have an identifier for either which phase a rift is in, or how many people are currently at it, but personally I’ve not had a major problem with that kind of thing.
So far the only indicators I have seen that are reliable are the timer. All rifts have a one hundred minute timer (that I’ve seen so far) and you can usually base off of that how long a rift has been open and whether it will be closed soon. Also, the level of a rift as far as Major, Minor, or unnamed can usually be a great indicator for how long a rift will be open because elite mobs take significantly longer to down even with a large raid. And finally, you can guess what stage a rift is on based on whether it says “Stable” or “Unstable”. Unstable rifts are in a timed stage to unlock an extra stage and they usually show up for the 3rd stage and beyond. If you see an Unstable rift, most likely, there’s already a group of people fighting there and reguardless of whether how quickly they down the boss, that rift will be closing soon.
I’ve also found that rifts that are out of the way rarely get targeted by players and sometimes it is fun to go out and hunt these rifts just for some unimpeded looting. During invasions, though, these rifts usually get picked off by “breadcrumbing”, where raids are gradually lead to the rift by other rifts.
Just pull the mobs with you into the rift and the raid will burn them down for you!
Well I started reading this post and then I was like, shit guise, fire our shit.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single person from Sunrest in a Warfront. Whats up with that? Do the RP servers play with each other or something gay?
Have you seen Greybriar or Reclaimer or Shatterdogwhatever server peoples in Warfronts? (I’m Greybriar, the other two I see all the time)
I wanna yell at your face!
Nope, I only see Lothar (or something) and maybe one more. Looks like they cluster them. Guess you miss out on our pre-made stomping you until you switch to the real server (Sunrest).
And by real I mean the one with the longest queue.
Yeah fuck queues man, ours is 20 minutes at its biggest and I usually beat everyone home so I never get caught in it. Gotta love the primtetime EST downtime huh, wtf is that shit lol. PST can suck it!
My guild is constantly in warfronts, and we’re from Sunrest. And yeah, go 7 hour queues. =(
Stupid werewolf quest was immersion breaking…as in, it broke my no-quest-text-reading-roll-face-on-keyboard-to-level immersion that I enjoy so much.
I was very immersed while listening to your agony on vent though. I could feel your werewolf pain as your repair bill climbed.
Sunrest, Briarcliff, and Lotham is our warfront group/cluster.
I’m on Faeblight and I am pretty sure we are in that cluster. Those are the server names I see whenever I do Warfronts. It may be that not many people on Faeblight bother much with PvP of any kind though…
Uh, so what’s the deal with jerseys and why does being 30+ prohibit you from wearing them?
Am I behind on my internet memes?
Unrelated, but I just spent 20 minutes or so browsing the Rift forums. I’m pretty sure I saw every single class complain about every single other class being OP. Which suggests that Rift may have gotten things pretty well-balanced at launch.
Jay-Z line.
But really, unless you are in the game itself, the jersey on someone 30+ is not a great look.
Heh, I don’t know Jay-Z lines I’m 30+.
I rarely find the need to look professional these days, so I wear Pats jerseys rather often. Especially my Moss jersey, I find it entertaining. Strangely, I never wore jerseys at all until I started attending a friend’s football parties where jerseys are required (or she’ll provide you a pink one) in my late 20s.
Where I come from a “jersey” is a woolen jumper. I think you’re referring to a Football Shirt?
Yes.
Where do you come from?
On a note on difficulty, we tried doing DD [lvl 22+ dungeon, Darkened somethingsname] and i must say, they threw in every painful,difficult thing you find in WoW raids right there.
Staying out of the fire : Check
Tank having to drag boss+adds out of various AOE effects : Check
Boss that fears and requires the tank to “pick him up” or else he wipes you all : Check
Stealthed Trash that stuns the tank : Check
Multi group Trash that if pulled wrong , cause a whipe : Check
Trash that spawn out of “bunkers” continiously until bunker goes down, or you all wipe : Check
Boss that randomly “stunlock” a member , requiring entire group to get member out : Check
Multiple paths to take, taking the wrong path will wipe the group and everyone will go “wtf are we doing wrong” : Check
Extra long Corpse Runs : Check
….and i can go on…lets just say we tried it at lvl 22 and wiped and wiped and wiped. All good though, i was getting worried dungeons was going to be mind-numbing boring. Compared to the cakewalk dungeon “Fae” , DD is one hell of a step up. I foresee PUGs dying alot in that one.
Yea we ran DD above level (25ish) and while still entertaining, did not have to really focus on all that stuff, which kinda ruins it IMO. The next instance, Foul Cascade, we will run at level (30).
Good stuff though, that breaks down the different mechanics well.
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