Interesting read. I've never played WOW and once in a while I wonder if I have missed something enjoyable. It must be great to play a game you love playing that just keeps going.
Just a comment on musical score.... In GW I never tired of the score. It just seemed to fit the situation so flawlwsly it was part of the scene or fight.
On longevity... Folks were claiming WOW was failing and would soon join the heap of used to be MMOs when they were at 10 million players a year or 2 back. Plus 2 million at 12 million sounds like a healthy game to me. How may new games dream of a total base of 2 million? WOW has grown by that in a relatively short time.
Prediction: WOW will be around for a long long time unless someone gets into a senior management possition and move in a hugely wrong direction.
So what the point of this article is is to make the suggestion that Rift isn't as bad as it all seems because even the mighty WoW seemed like it lacked innovation? That's what I'm reading out of it. I mean the following statement has to be pointed.
"It's interesting to me because a lot of the comments he has for WoW and what kind of game it is, echo the sentiments years later about another newly released fantasy MMORPG."
I'm sorry, but I was never a huge fan of WoW but I managed to play it for infinitely longer than Rift because it had freedom. Sure WoW was quest driven, but there were a number of zones in which to quest drive. Sure WoW had less of a challenge but there were more dungeons and more freeform dungeons.
WoW was a shade of EQ but Rift is so far from what EQ was that it may as well be a new genre entirely. Rift has two cities, so few zones that there's maybe two levelling paths to take in the higher levels (only 2 - 1 for each faction to begin with) and quest-driven content so boring and simplistic that a 2 year old could play the game.
MMOs have changed for the worse in so big a way and Rift is right at the bottom in terms of innovation. As much as I might slate WoW for changing the genre which I love, I will stand up and testify that it never sunk to the lows that Rift does.
WoW might have picked up a lot of stuff from games like EQ but it gave its own twist to most of them and some of them were vastly improved. WoW's hugest addition was the questing system. Every MMO since WoW included this system. Even EQ started to adopt some of the features/philosophies of WoW later on in its life.
Rift is an exact copy of WoW. However, they do have RIFTs and the soul system which is a unique thing to RIFT.
What do you mean by questing system? The ! indicators? The fact that leveling was done mainly through quests? The quest journal? Im not sure how much of an addition this was for WoW when a game that released at the exact same time (well, 2 weeks earlier) was nearly identical.
And the Rifts in Rift are just a rehash of WAR PQs, and the soul system is a variation on WoWs 3 tree system. Its ultimate effect is allowing you to build, say, a Prot Warrior/Blood DK/Ret Paladin character or maybe a Destor Lock/Fire Mage/Shadow Priest mix. Just not as powerful as those options sound. Its a cool system but underwhelming in practice with respect to how it sounds.
The fact that every game on there can be replaced with another modern game is a bit depressing to me. WoW with Rift. DaoC with War. Etc. We havn't changed one bit. ?_?
PS: "I will say that it definitely seems that WoW is drawing a younger crowd than previous MMORPGs"
Lol, He called it
-------------------------------- -Been there, done that: Xsyon, WoW, EVE, Maplestory, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, FF11, Rift -Currently playing: Not MMOs -Wants to check out: SWTOR, Dark Millennium
back when we still had hope for a great mmo. that's why people's opinions didn't reflect wow's future success. The genre just kept going in a downward spiral. Now they are so bad that vanilla WoW seems great.
Even though this game is taking a look backwards, and on most points he was very much correct whether or not you actually like the game, I have to wonder what the future holds.
I remember when WoW and EQ2 were about to release (along with Horizons if anyone remembers that). EQ2 had a rocky start, while WoW was polished and (for all intents and purposes) complete. Now we have Rift, GW2, and TOR. I think the outcome will be very different. Many are saying that the genre hasn't changed, and in some respects, those individuals are right, but I argue that games like Horizons, Vanguard, WAR, and most recently, FFXIV taught us a valuable lesson. We all know what that lesson is by now, and it is my sincere hope that it will foster a new age of MMO gaming in which the player actually has viable choices of what to play. Six years from now, we'll all be reading the old review about TOR or GW2 and reflect in similar ways I suppose.
Even though this game is taking a look backwards, and on most points he was very much correct whether or not you actually like the game, I have to wonder what the future holds.
I remember when WoW and EQ2 were about to release (along with Horizons if anyone remembers that). EQ2 had a rocky start, while WoW was polished and (for all intents and purposes) complete. Now we have Rift, GW2, and TOR. I think the outcome will be very different. Many are saying that the genre hasn't changed, and in some respects, those individuals are right, but I argue that games like Horizons, Vanguard, WAR, and most recently, FFXIV taught us a valuable lesson. We all know what that lesson is by now, and it is my sincere hope that it will foster a new age of MMO gaming in which the player actually has viable choices of what to play. Six years from now, we'll all be reading the old review about TOR or GW2 and reflect in similar ways I suppose.
Um, EQ2 had an IMMENSELY better start. EQ2's launch was near flawless. WoW had loot lag that made the game unplayable. EQ2 had two things that majorly hurt it: It was not designed for an average PC, WoW was designed for an average PC from two years prior. Also EQ2 was slower paced with a group focus, WoW was fast paced with a solo focus.
But from a technical standpoint EQ2 was the better launch. Hands down. The game was complete and free of major bugs and stable.
Even though this game is taking a look backwards, and on most points he was very much correct whether or not you actually like the game, I have to wonder what the future holds.
I remember when WoW and EQ2 were about to release (along with Horizons if anyone remembers that). EQ2 had a rocky start, while WoW was polished and (for all intents and purposes) complete. Now we have Rift, GW2, and TOR. I think the outcome will be very different. Many are saying that the genre hasn't changed, and in some respects, those individuals are right, but I argue that games like Horizons, Vanguard, WAR, and most recently, FFXIV taught us a valuable lesson. We all know what that lesson is by now, and it is my sincere hope that it will foster a new age of MMO gaming in which the player actually has viable choices of what to play. Six years from now, we'll all be reading the old review about TOR or GW2 and reflect in similar ways I suppose.
Um, EQ2 had an IMMENSELY better start. EQ2's launch was near flawless. WoW had loot lag that made the game unplayable. EQ2 had two things that majorly hurt it: It was not designed for an average PC, WoW was designed for an average PC from two years prior. Also EQ2 was slower paced with a group focus, WoW was fast paced with a solo focus.
But from a technical standpoint EQ2 was the better launch. Hands down. The game was complete and free of major bugs and stable.
You have to be kidding me. EQ2 was a complete mess at launch, it ran like the absolute crappy unoptimized POS it still is, but much much worse. Not only that, the devs of EQ2 have constantly doubted themselves and their original vision. When EQ2 launched there were harsh penalties... if some idiot Wizard in your party spam nuked the mob that your tank wasn't on and died, the whole party got an exp debt. Definately not a good innovation, but at least it was original. Look at EQ2 now. It still has that horrible engine, it still runs like crap on even the best computers in the world 7 years later, and it has sold it's soul and anything that made it unique to be just like... you guessed it. Wow.
This review is pretty spot on with how i remember seeing it as a WoW Beta tester myself. I too didnt care too much for the graphics, outright hated the armor looks when the game was released. My friends can easily attest to this as I voiced it many times over. But thats not the thing I find the most humerous about this review. That being if you replace the term WoW with Rift, you have a copy of half a dozen current reviews on that game, as its being released, by Beta testers. Ironic dont you think, that the game everyone is calling a WoW clone has a clone for a review even. And we can all see how it turned out for WoW 6 years down the road, I wonder if Rift can do the same.
WoW might have picked up a lot of stuff from games like EQ but it gave its own twist to most of them and some of them were vastly improved. WoW's hugest addition was the questing system. Every MMO since WoW included this system. Even EQ started to adopt some of the features/philosophies of WoW later on in its life.
Rift is an exact copy of WoW. However, they do have RIFTs and the soul system which is a unique thing to RIFT.
Hahaha I love responses like this one.
Its exactly like....except for this and this and this.
I find the quest versus "task" idea to be very accurate. Most MMOs have devolved into a task based game instead of questing game. In Everquest there were quite a few quests that were highly involved and complicated that required, luck, effort, perserverence and not a little bit of thought. Getting your epic weapon being one of them.
Sadly, I'm not sure people have the patience to do questing like that any more, certainly not for the mainstream give it to me now type of gamer.
So this was the review the game got when it came out? I am at a loss for words.
This game was critically appraised everywhere. Period. The game did so much so much right. But in this review all you have is negativity against the game. This is biased beyond belief. I mean he's only complaining about the game and downplays most of the stuff in the game. I don't see him praising the game at all for anything.
He says they just copy pasted everything from other games. Blizzard never just copy & paste. What they do is compile stuff and make it a million times better than the original version. WoW improved so many features from past MMOs. Not just copy paste. Improved. The genre was shaken to its very foundations when this game came out.
So you get this review, which could pass as a review for some indie MMO, and you have reviews from huge gaming reviewers who tag the game as "this is the game you should play no matter who you are".
Are you for real?
WoW did not bring anything new to the table, they just shaped it up before they launched it and had a well known RTS to back it up.
And Blizzard only copy/paste, I'll give you the examples if you can't figure it out yourself.
Basic game = EQ style game
Warhammer is released, and Blizzard adds XP to battlegrounds and Achievments, a complete Copy/paste
SWTOR get's announced and their plans to turn quests into stories, and Blizzards make Cata questing one big story telling on rails.
Rift get's launched, and Blizzard announces all new guild quests.
The list goes on, the only thing Blizzard made up themselves are the LFD tool, which havent done the game any good, infact it turned a childish community into a complete nightmare.
This review is pretty spot on with how i remember seeing it as a WoW Beta tester myself. I too didnt care too much for the graphics, outright hated the armor looks when the game was released. My friends can easily attest to this as I voiced it many times over. But thats not the thing I find the most humerous about this review. That being if you replace the term WoW with Rift, you have a copy of half a dozen current reviews on that game, as its being released, by Beta testers. Ironic dont you think, that the game everyone is calling a WoW clone has a clone for a review even. And we can all see how it turned out for WoW 6 years down the road, I wonder if Rift can do the same.
WoW might have picked up a lot of stuff from games like EQ but it gave its own twist to most of them and some of them were vastly improved. WoW's hugest addition was the questing system. Every MMO since WoW included this system. Even EQ started to adopt some of the features/philosophies of WoW later on in its life.
Rift is an exact copy of WoW. However, they do have RIFTs and the soul system which is a unique thing to RIFT.
Hahaha I love responses like this one.
Its exactly like....except for this and this and this.
Yup, that would make it exactly the same!
Lol yup.
Rift is exactly like WoW, except for the different graphics, Lore, soul system, Rifts, towns, races, combat style, armor looks, quests, raids, dungeons etc etc etc.
Rift and WoW has few things in common.
The only place where I see Rift borrowing ideas from WoW is the bg system
It's hilarious how a person who claims that Rift is a huge WoW ripoff, can't accept that WoW is a copy/paste game itself, Blizzard did not create the mmo style that they made WoW with, nor did they take it apart and made it 1mill times better, compare SWG crafting to WoW "crafting" they dumbed it down to a level where my 8 year old son is an auction house tycoon, heck imo they put a stop on a mmo scene that could have evolved into way better games.
Instead they showed gaming companies, that they never had to put much thought into their games, just make them easy to learn and play and polish their product before shipping it
It's hilarious how a person who claims that Rift is a huge WoW ripoff, can't accept that WoW is a copy/paste game itself
There is a pretty big difference. here is a challenge to you: Play DAoC and EQ1 for 2 hours each. Then play WoW for 2 hours. Then play Rift for 2 hours. Then come back and try to tell me WoW is an EQ clone to the same extent Rift is a WoW clone.
I find the quest versus "task" idea to be very accurate. Most MMOs have devolved into a task based game instead of questing game. In Everquest there were quite a few quests that were highly involved and complicated that required, luck, effort, perserverence and not a little bit of thought. Getting your epic weapon being one of them.
Sadly, I'm not sure people have the patience to do questing like that any more, certainly not for the mainstream give it to me now type of gamer.
EQ2 still has quite a bit of that questing. Heritage quests, signature quests, and of course epic quests.
Wow was a pain in the beginning but I think it was more fun when it was harder. EQ2 could have easily been in the same league as WOW with numbers if they only marketed the game better and added a PVP aspect to it. I am not sure they knew WOW was going to dump so much money in its marketing campaign. I totally enjoy the EQ2 community but WOW has an easy play style to it so its nice to hop in and hop out. God bless and happy gaming.
EQ2 needed to be marketed better? No way. They had tonsd of advertising and even had Heather Graham and some other Hollywood guy doing voiceovers. My wife and I and all my friends got EQ2 collectors editions. We were all so stoked. Out of the 10 of us, no one lasted more than 3 months. It ran like crap, had horrible character models, and horrible systems. Locked targets and group exp debt among them.
Comments
Interesting read. I've never played WOW and once in a while I wonder if I have missed something enjoyable. It must be great to play a game you love playing that just keeps going.
Just a comment on musical score.... In GW I never tired of the score. It just seemed to fit the situation so flawlwsly it was part of the scene or fight.
On longevity... Folks were claiming WOW was failing and would soon join the heap of used to be MMOs when they were at 10 million players a year or 2 back. Plus 2 million at 12 million sounds like a healthy game to me. How may new games dream of a total base of 2 million? WOW has grown by that in a relatively short time.
Prediction: WOW will be around for a long long time unless someone gets into a senior management possition and move in a hugely wrong direction.
Gottqa try it! Someday....maybe
So what the point of this article is is to make the suggestion that Rift isn't as bad as it all seems because even the mighty WoW seemed like it lacked innovation? That's what I'm reading out of it. I mean the following statement has to be pointed.
"It's interesting to me because a lot of the comments he has for WoW and what kind of game it is, echo the sentiments years later about another newly released fantasy MMORPG."
I'm sorry, but I was never a huge fan of WoW but I managed to play it for infinitely longer than Rift because it had freedom. Sure WoW was quest driven, but there were a number of zones in which to quest drive. Sure WoW had less of a challenge but there were more dungeons and more freeform dungeons.
WoW was a shade of EQ but Rift is so far from what EQ was that it may as well be a new genre entirely. Rift has two cities, so few zones that there's maybe two levelling paths to take in the higher levels (only 2 - 1 for each faction to begin with) and quest-driven content so boring and simplistic that a 2 year old could play the game.
MMOs have changed for the worse in so big a way and Rift is right at the bottom in terms of innovation. As much as I might slate WoW for changing the genre which I love, I will stand up and testify that it never sunk to the lows that Rift does.
.
What do you mean by questing system? The ! indicators? The fact that leveling was done mainly through quests? The quest journal? Im not sure how much of an addition this was for WoW when a game that released at the exact same time (well, 2 weeks earlier) was nearly identical.
And the Rifts in Rift are just a rehash of WAR PQs, and the soul system is a variation on WoWs 3 tree system. Its ultimate effect is allowing you to build, say, a Prot Warrior/Blood DK/Ret Paladin character or maybe a Destor Lock/Fire Mage/Shadow Priest mix. Just not as powerful as those options sound. Its a cool system but underwhelming in practice with respect to how it sounds.
The fact that every game on there can be replaced with another modern game is a bit depressing to me. WoW with Rift. DaoC with War. Etc. We havn't changed one bit. ?_?
PS: "I will say that it definitely seems that WoW is drawing a younger crowd than previous MMORPGs"
Lol, He called it
--------------------------------
-Been there, done that: Xsyon, WoW, EVE, Maplestory, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, FF11, Rift
-Currently playing: Not MMOs
-Wants to check out: SWTOR, Dark Millennium
You know, if you took out all Warcraft refferences and changed the name to Rift you could probably run it as newly written.
Great nostalgic read.
back when we still had hope for a great mmo. that's why people's opinions didn't reflect wow's future success. The genre just kept going in a downward spiral. Now they are so bad that vanilla WoW seems great.
Even though this game is taking a look backwards, and on most points he was very much correct whether or not you actually like the game, I have to wonder what the future holds.
I remember when WoW and EQ2 were about to release (along with Horizons if anyone remembers that). EQ2 had a rocky start, while WoW was polished and (for all intents and purposes) complete. Now we have Rift, GW2, and TOR. I think the outcome will be very different. Many are saying that the genre hasn't changed, and in some respects, those individuals are right, but I argue that games like Horizons, Vanguard, WAR, and most recently, FFXIV taught us a valuable lesson. We all know what that lesson is by now, and it is my sincere hope that it will foster a new age of MMO gaming in which the player actually has viable choices of what to play. Six years from now, we'll all be reading the old review about TOR or GW2 and reflect in similar ways I suppose.
Um, EQ2 had an IMMENSELY better start. EQ2's launch was near flawless. WoW had loot lag that made the game unplayable. EQ2 had two things that majorly hurt it: It was not designed for an average PC, WoW was designed for an average PC from two years prior. Also EQ2 was slower paced with a group focus, WoW was fast paced with a solo focus.
But from a technical standpoint EQ2 was the better launch. Hands down. The game was complete and free of major bugs and stable.
You have to be kidding me. EQ2 was a complete mess at launch, it ran like the absolute crappy unoptimized POS it still is, but much much worse. Not only that, the devs of EQ2 have constantly doubted themselves and their original vision. When EQ2 launched there were harsh penalties... if some idiot Wizard in your party spam nuked the mob that your tank wasn't on and died, the whole party got an exp debt. Definately not a good innovation, but at least it was original. Look at EQ2 now. It still has that horrible engine, it still runs like crap on even the best computers in the world 7 years later, and it has sold it's soul and anything that made it unique to be just like... you guessed it. Wow.
Hahaha I love responses like this one.
Its exactly like....except for this and this and this.
Yup, that would make it exactly the same!
No it wasn't. Read the first paragraph.
I find the quest versus "task" idea to be very accurate. Most MMOs have devolved into a task based game instead of questing game. In Everquest there were quite a few quests that were highly involved and complicated that required, luck, effort, perserverence and not a little bit of thought. Getting your epic weapon being one of them.
Sadly, I'm not sure people have the patience to do questing like that any more, certainly not for the mainstream give it to me now type of gamer.
Are you for real?
WoW did not bring anything new to the table, they just shaped it up before they launched it and had a well known RTS to back it up.
And Blizzard only copy/paste, I'll give you the examples if you can't figure it out yourself.
Basic game = EQ style game
Warhammer is released, and Blizzard adds XP to battlegrounds and Achievments, a complete Copy/paste
SWTOR get's announced and their plans to turn quests into stories, and Blizzards make Cata questing one big story telling on rails.
Rift get's launched, and Blizzard announces all new guild quests.
The list goes on, the only thing Blizzard made up themselves are the LFD tool, which havent done the game any good, infact it turned a childish community into a complete nightmare.
Lol yup.
Rift is exactly like WoW, except for the different graphics, Lore, soul system, Rifts, towns, races, combat style, armor looks, quests, raids, dungeons etc etc etc.
Rift and WoW has few things in common.
The only place where I see Rift borrowing ideas from WoW is the bg system
It's hilarious how a person who claims that Rift is a huge WoW ripoff, can't accept that WoW is a copy/paste game itself, Blizzard did not create the mmo style that they made WoW with, nor did they take it apart and made it 1mill times better, compare SWG crafting to WoW "crafting" they dumbed it down to a level where my 8 year old son is an auction house tycoon, heck imo they put a stop on a mmo scene that could have evolved into way better games.
Instead they showed gaming companies, that they never had to put much thought into their games, just make them easy to learn and play and polish their product before shipping it
There is a pretty big difference. here is a challenge to you: Play DAoC and EQ1 for 2 hours each. Then play WoW for 2 hours. Then play Rift for 2 hours. Then come back and try to tell me WoW is an EQ clone to the same extent Rift is a WoW clone.
EQ2 still has quite a bit of that questing. Heritage quests, signature quests, and of course epic quests.
Wow was a pain in the beginning but I think it was more fun when it was harder. EQ2 could have easily been in the same league as WOW with numbers if they only marketed the game better and added a PVP aspect to it. I am not sure they knew WOW was going to dump so much money in its marketing campaign. I totally enjoy the EQ2 community but WOW has an easy play style to it so its nice to hop in and hop out. God bless and happy gaming.
EQ2 needed to be marketed better? No way. They had tonsd of advertising and even had Heather Graham and some other Hollywood guy doing voiceovers. My wife and I and all my friends got EQ2 collectors editions. We were all so stoked. Out of the 10 of us, no one lasted more than 3 months. It ran like crap, had horrible character models, and horrible systems. Locked targets and group exp debt among them.