After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway.
Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks.
To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
{Mod edit}
Comments
An astute observation.
"I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks."
and here we go...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSLlZh9yelk&NR=1
LoL Ahhh you make an account on forums to post that ? Blizzard needs to try harder. You made it too LvL 30 too ? And just decided you did'nt enjoy the game. Who do you think you are kidding...come on man.....come on
Jymm Byuu
Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
Considering it's the OPs first post I'd say take the seriousness of this thread very lightly.... if at all. Game is great, best thing to happen to mmos in a while.
he's not completely wrong. i dont agree on all points...especially about the graphics but i'm on day 2. was exciting first day but to be perfectly honest today i'm like "meh" dont even feel like logging in. played about an hour or so tonight and to be honest i'm bored. it seems like the same old, same old. different graphics, setting and mobs but same thing we have been doing for ever in other mmo's. maybe iv'e been playing these type of mmo's too long and i'm just burned out.
if your a veteran thats played this genre before you might want to wait for a free trial if your nervous about wasting $60. or at least a while till the new smell wears off. its not a bad game and may be great one day but hardly unique and fresh.
The most acurate description i could give it is that it seems like WoW and EQII blended together in almost equal proportions.
has alot of valid points!-i was in since beta 3 till end of beta!-I subed but cancelled cuz i found it just like most all other MMOs!-and i do not work 4 Blizz!
This is your opinion and....it's no more valid than the OP's opinion or mine, for that matter. We are all entitled to our own opinions about RIFT, and they are not ALL positive or negative.
I do want to add, however, I think they're ALL worth reading, at least to me.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
You obviously never played FFXIV
so the op is a blizz employee and all the defenders are trion employees?
I agree with the quest part, most boring quests ever. However, I usually hear people say the defiant side has more interesting quests and story, so I was a little surprised he didn't say he played Guardian side.
I think most of the Graphics are good, the only thing I hate is the pets for Ranger and Beastmaster...they didn't really match the rest of the world in my opinion.
Other than that, I don't think Rift was that bad.
-I want a Platformer MMO
NO, THIS GUY IS DEAD ON.
I have argued with people non-stop in RIFT chat this past week asking them, PLEADING with them, to give me what RIFT brings NEW to the table.
NOTHING. NOT ONE DAMN THING. Unlike the original poster, I played in closed beta and was "on the fence" on buying it. Well I found it for 39.99 pre-order so took part in this ugly affair. The original poster is SPOT ON. If you think he's delusional then add me to the list as well.
Reason(s) why RIFT FAILS.
1. The rifts ARE BORING. PERIOD. BORING, BORING, BORING. Same thing over and over, same spots. Just annoying.
2. The quests suck. read OP post.
3. The PvP SUCKS. Its like going into a warhammer scenario but having NO collision and spamming buttons over and over. Energy management? LOL Wait your a caster? Mana management? LOL. Say goodbye to those!!! Just spam spam spam and enjoy!
4. The classes are BORING. The trees make WoW tree abilities look like aglebra on crack.
5. The LORE IS BAD.
Thats it. What you have is a grip of WoW rejects all over their chat blabbing non stop as to HOW GREAT RIFT IS AND OH HOW I HATED WOW. Its pathetic. I cant even log into this game anymore. And dont get me started on the que times for some of the servers.
No I dont play WoW. I called WoW's pvp end back at vanilla before the BC release. You can either accept it or keep living on a prayer, but rift brings NOTHING NEW TO THE TABLE.
Good luck, Hope I saved some poor soul 50 bucks.
If you look at the dates that the accounts were created you would notice one is several months old and the OP is a few days old. I don't think a shill would make an account and then post several days or months later.
Most of these points were brought up during the beta many times.
Reading the official and fansite-forums, one can see players already complaining about people ignoring rifts, rifts becoming an annoyance, quests are blunt and not nearly enough, lore is shallow, some classes/skills are boring 1:1 copies etc.
But if you post this here, you'll get runover by the fanboytrain and moderators will lock your negative thread afterwards.
Same will happen to this one, it's the same with every major release having the big add on the mainpage.
**best thing to happen to mmo's in awhile** made me L O L in real life ..and you cant be serious..a new mmo comes out and everyone thinks its the best thing sence sliced bread
lol u are being way too sensitive bro
I agree, it's hardly the best thing it happened. On the other hand, it's hardly what the OP is describing. The truth is somewhere in between. People that are bored with a certain type of gameplay will not find their reincarnation of the genre in Rift. Those who played in the beta (and should be pretty much everyone at this point) should be well aware of what the game has to offer and what the game is and is not.
If you bought the product with features A expecting features B, who's to blame really?
LOL makes me chuckle reading all these blizzard employee conspiracy theories. Its a game at the end of the day and a dull and boring one at that.
Land of AKA Godzilla with Wifey
Agree totally. Whoever bought the game without playing the FREE and OPEN beta has nobody to blame but themselves. Really. I played the beta and, in my opinion, it was very boring and been there done that. So I did not purchase it.
And no I am not a Blizzard employee: WoW is VERY been there done that for me and I do not have an active subscription and probably never will again. Right now the MMO scene is pretty weak in my opinion: I am hoping for something to save me from my MMO doldroms but Rift was very dissapointing. I really don't understand those that are heaping all this praise on Rift to be honest. Quests and story are uninspiring. Graphics are good, especially if you can run on Ultra. Soul trees are a good idea but really just a more flexible version of WoW's talent trees, but this is mitigated by the fact that there are only 4 classes in Rift. So overall I'm not sure that Rift actually offers more variety overall in gameplay in this regard. Rifts are unbelievably tedious to me: there is really no purpose other than some random loot and to reestablish the quest givers in the area.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
to elaborate i thought the graphics were beautifull. character weapons and armor looked awesome. really loved that part. character customization and detail is very nice although some of the male hairdoo's were really bad (actually all of them except shaved head which i ended up using), very similar to EvE if you ever played that although EvE char creation is still alot better.
animations i thought were well done. i especially liked the fighting animations. well done but not overdone or silly.
i wasn't fond of the skills. at lvl 11 my warrior had 7ish skills which i had leveled from rank 1 to rank 3. i honestly only had to mash 3 of the skills over and over. the skills did seem slow and unresponsive though and i dont think it was lag or my connection. i just wanted to kick my warrior in the ass to get him to move a little faster. run speed is the same, seems agonizingly slow, especially when being chased. i wasn't able to run away from any mob.
this brings up another frustration. mobs aggro you way to easily, just seemed more irritating than fun. trying to run to a rift i would have to sometimes stop and fight off a couple mobs beofre i could.
i did like the collection system. if you played eqII you will be familiar. basically you find little sparklies objects all over the place and build up collections. i never managed to complete one so i'm not sure the reward but i assume theres some nice goodies.
the loot system was nice, some really fun loot, especially from fighting in the rifts. i especially liked the vampire bat challice that turns you into a bat. fun stuff. also there is a second type of ingame currency you earn fighting in rifts and fighting off random invasions that allowas you to get some really nice weapons, armor and such. definately a nice feature.
what else? oh the random invasions were alot of fun. these i didn't get bored of. alot of fun and nice loot. very chaotic and fresh.
performance and polish / bugs was exceptional. 9 / 10 for sure.
all in all i think new mmo players will probably find rift alot of fun. again its not a bad game at all. if i'd only played mmo's a couple years or so i think it would be my #2 mmo...depending on how it evolves over time. in all fairness it just released so its hard to be criticalbut to be honest as i mentioned earlier...its not new and revolutionary. the only part of rift i think long term i wouldn't get overly bored with are the random spawning battles. other than that veterans might want to sit back and wait if your unsure. hope this is helpfull to some.
Some of you guys are just adorable!
While at least you made the effort to share your view, before you accused me of being a Blizzard employee, I honestly don't get the point. I made it crystal clear in my post that I am presenting my opinion. Emphasis on opinion. How are you going to write a rebuttal to my statement that I dislike all the above mentioned points about Rift? I still dislike them and I am afraid that's not gonna change.
But since you tried, I will answer your question about worthwile pvp guilds. If you were a pvper, which you are quite obviously not, you'd know that the hardcore pvp community is surprisingly small. Thus, the same guilds you've played in pvp centric games for several years flock to one server to ensure real competition. And no, you will not find them in WoW.
Several negative poosts from people with "1" forum post. Same person i guess.
This is the most complete polished game that has been released in several years. Its worth the £30 to even try it, if you don't like it no big loss!
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I played in open beta when I could. that being said I didnt get far enough to see the full differance in the game.
I think the game it self is "decent". is it a wow killer? not at all.
The problem for me is time and leveling. the amount of time it takes many of us hardcore players to lvl from 1-50 is insanly easy. I know some one that got all the way up to lvl 25 in 2 days. the person stopped because they wanted something to do once they purchased the game.
another issue for me is that the game is not fully balanced. one example of this is when you head into higher lvl rifts and not participate in the fight and still be rewarded with a decent amount of xp. another aspect is with certain class builds. When I created a lowbie warrior and trained him to be a pally/void knight, he wasnt able to fend off any amount of mobs. however, one of my other friends was able to hold off five mobs all at once with his cleric build. now, I like the idea of having any class tank but when the tanking class cant sustain or solo its way out of fights theres a problem. who knows maybe I did something wrong but I used what ablities I had with what gear I had.
with all that said, the game is decent but if your lookign to get away from wow completely this will just remind you of it to a certain degree. it does have certain things from war hammer and other games but is it worth it? if you can get to lvl 25 in two days and the lvl cap is 50 how long would it take for you to reach the cap? ive read on many other forums that some players are already claiming to have hit thelvl cap in about a week. my point is what kinda gamer are you? if your hardcore, your going to blow through content very fast, and if your casual, well your pretty much set for a certain period.
You do realise that if this was the case he would've been banned by now ?
Anyways while some of the OP's points are exaggerated, I am with him on this one. I really really didn't like RIFT.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I think its a leap saying that the same guy is posting twice here.
But whenever I see a new poster come in with something very negative or positive about a game I am very dubious. Most of those of us who have played Rift, myself included, find it a good but not great game. The days of the great new MMO are over, no company will take the risks and few will even put up the cash needed.
Emotive titles or ones which suggest danger like 'Read before you Buy' are always a giveaway.