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Rift: Tradition Can Work
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
While many MMOs in development spend a lot of time touting 'groundbreaking' features and innovation, not all do, preferring instead to polish and improve on that which works. Trion Worlds' Rift is a very polished, very traditional high-fantasy MMO and one that is attractive to those who actually like traditional high fantasy MMOs. MMORPG.com Lead Writer Bill Murphy has a few things to say about why Rift is attractive to millions of fans. Check it out and then tell us what you think.
I’m just as capable of respecting the old “don’t fix what ain’t broken” saying. When it comes to Rift, what Trion seems to be aiming for is a well-polished and fully featured traditionally-styled MMORPG. In that much, they’re more than succeeding. They’re playing with the traditions of the genre, and there’s no reason that it can’t work in today’s market.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Rift: Tradition Can Work.
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Comments
So well put, so well put!
"Camp A will roll their eyes and continue waiting until something truly remarkable comes along. Camp B will know that Rift is what it is, and will enjoy the hell out of it for not making any false promises."
Thanks
If a developer takes UO and the only thing he does is revamp the graphics engine into something like unreal 3 and the sound to something similar and touches NOTHING else, who will NOT play that game?
Zero innovation, zero genre progress. Just old good UO with a brand new engine. Who will NOT touch it because it's same old?
I'll give Rift a shot, hell I give just about any game a shot. The only question is will I be bore after a couple months or will Rift continue to entertain me. That seems to get harder and harder as I get older and older
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Well if this fails we have a large pile of MMO's over the last few yers that just didnt cut it, or even compete with the big dog. Not that you have to beat the top dog, but you would think a game could get it's fair market share. I hope this game makes it.
I'm tired of the same old WoW formula that companies are still trying to copy...Thankfully there are many amazing sp games to play while waiting for something else other than Rift.
Well put.
“don’t fix what ain’t broken” That is exactly how I feel!
The traditional MMO controls and UI are what defines this genre for me. When you start making the combat more "action oriented" this starts to move the game away from being an actual mmorpg into more of an mmofps or tps
Rift has so many great features, it feels more like the next gen of WoW and WoW clones, which isn't a bad thing. EQ2 is going on hold, even with a new expansion coming out.
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Camp B might end up being a guild name. :-D
"Rift is for the people who want something like WoW, who want something like EQ2, who want something like LotRO, but who do not want any of those games." Spot on. This is exactly what Rift is about. And it's fun. It's a solid game. I do want LotRO, though, so I won't be picking up Rift. But it could certainly end up being the next game I try.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Nice attitude, I hope you realize that with pretty much every game since WoW has lost money that most game developers are broke, most investors are disinfranchised and moving thier money away from game developement,
So keep hoping games fail, and pretty soon we wont have anyone making games anymore.
While I agree that Rift's polished and very well put together aside from the occaisional quirk.
However, the most recent AAA releases haven't been lacking in polish so much as lacking high-end content or featuring poorly designed endgames. These games impressed in the first weeks of their release for those reasons alone. In other words, the experiences included in these games were inconsistent and very frontloaded. Games like AoC, WAR, and Aion recieved high marks by both critics and players during their initial releases.
Sure enough, Rift features a fairly polished early game. However, can it keep players interested for more than just the first few months? Will it maintain that enthusiastic 9.0 review score after month 3? Will the end game feature that level of polish, that level of engagement? Thats the kicker, thats the question.
Amen.
Happy to be in the B-team for once.
I wouldn't. Just like I wouldn't touch rift if it didn't have the rift and soul system is has.Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Spot-on.
Rift is a good game, even if it's not for everyone. Much like DCUO.
Though I wonder if your positive view will have posters accusing you of taking kickbacks from Trion. Probably not.
Playing: FFXIV, EVE
It can work if the majority of people aren't bored of tradition, which it seems they aren't.. As for me, one of the few and lonely people out there that are bored of the same old same old and want something different. I'm not just talking a few new features i'm talking about a drastic change.
Yeah the current WoW or AC2 UI ripoff works pretty much flawlessly, but there has to be a new way of doing things that will work just as well if not better. I liked FFXI's UI the best out of any MMO I've played so for and their combat system is what I like the best as well.
I'f I had the money I would fund my own game and I'm pretty sure it would flop because most MMOERs wouldn't be ready for all the changes and couldn't handle being out of their comfort zone. No I don't have any examples for you all cuz I haven't thought to much about it since Its a hell of a pipe dream to have that kind of money to fund a game by yourself.
There has been a few Indie companies that have made some nice and different games, but either the setting (EVE) or the quality of the game (Darkfall) has pushed me away. What we need is a AAA studio needs to come out and change everything we know about the MMORPG.
Funny you should say that actually. What's wrong with only enjoying the game for a couple months, and then moving on? As long as you're enjoying your time playing, and you're getting "value for money", should it really matter? I think that the need that so many MMO gamers seem to have to devote themselves entirely to a single game is bull.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with liking a game so much that it's the only thing you want to play, but let's be honest: That usually only happens in your first and possibly second MMO. When we're "new" to the genre (in the sense that we haven't tried many MMO's), we're far more willing to overlook the shortcomings of a game - and they all have them, it's a matter of luck of the dice where you end up to start with. After that though, we become more discerning, and we start to more easily see the flaws in a single game and thus, it fails to captivate us for as long.
But I ask again, what's wrong with that? Even if you buy Rift and play for 2 months, and then get bored, it should still be good value for your money. Paying 60 dollars for the game + 15 dollars for a month's sub comes out to 75 dollars total. Even if you play only an hour a day for those two months (and you know you'll be playing way more than that), it comes out to 1 dollar 22 cents or so per hour. That's still good value for your money, and not all that much to be entertained.
Once I realized that, I started to chill out a lot more about my games. I'm less afraid to try new games, and I'm more willing to accept any inherent flaws in the game - as long as it's still fun, I'll play it. When it's not, then I'll move on to the next shiny game that catches my attention. Personally, I'll be playing Rift until I get bored of it, be it 2 months down the road, or more. I already know for a fact that I will be getting TOR, so I see Rift as a temporary distraction anyways. If it turns out to be more than that, great. If not, then I'll still have gotten my money's worth.
http://machineborn.guildportal.com - Now recruiting players!
That is a good question.. While your are correct that if a Dev did that, it wouldn't be anything new since its just an exact copy. But it would be totally new to me since I've never played UO. I sadly missed out on the few sandbox games that have came out over the years or didn't like the setting like EvE.. I started out playing EQ then went to FFXI right after that and have been playing the "Themepark" type games since.
So to those who missed the sandbox, sandbox type gameplay is not the same old same old to us. So to add on to my post above, I'd be ok if a AAA sandbox mmo would come out that copied all the good stuff from the older sandbox games with some new features.
I knew what Rifts was going to be when I first played it. So I wasn't expecting something new at all. I lasted through the first few quests and got to lvl 2 before I knew this game wouldn't be for me.. I like the Idea of the Rifts and being able to mix and match abilities from different classes. But its the themepark, quest grinding gameplay is what makes me bored.
I will try just about any game that is "highly polished". To me that was a huge feature of WoW. Unfortunately, part of "polish" is how smooth the graphics are on your personal PC. Yes, it got better for me during the beta, but not enough...yet. Course I am perfectly willing to accept that my 512mb video, 4gb, and dual core etc. is compromised because I am using a laptop. I could add that the same miserable laptop could do very well in WoW, Lotro, WAR, and EQ2. But whatever! It is what it is.
I think I can predict that I will be trying Rift at some point, perhaps when I get a better rig at my disposal - like after I finally get relocated and get my xps desktop out of storage - DOH!
All the same I can't help repeating ad nauseum that smooth play >>>> pretty graphics. My opinion, only.
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
Being "traditional" really only works if your version of the formula stands up to the original.
In other words, copying WoW would probably only make sense if your copy was better in some way, or at least as good. Bigger, deeper, more fun, more complex, smoother....whatever. Sadly, Rift is not, in any sense, better than WoW. In fact, it falls down pretty badly compared to WoW in most respects. It's much smaller, much more shallow, and is missing a lot of the things that usually make "traditional" MMORPGs good.
This is the same trap that so many other "traditional" (i.e. cloned) games have fallen into since WoW became a massive success. If you try to wrestle the champ in his home town, you better be sure you're better and stronger than he is.
Rift is a pretty and short-term shallowly entertaining console-like version of "traditional" MMORPGs, and it would probably be better if these desperation-induced marketing attempts just left other games alone and focused on the few interesting things that Rift brings to the table for the few months people will play it.
I was thinking Rift doesn't have any thing LOTRo doesn't have ( besides a modern character creater ) but it's been 2 years since a substansial update in LOTRo so sure I'll try it. Really good timing, Trion.
Rift is actually launching with way more features than WoW did, and with the same amount of polish. WoW launched with levelling content, a bunch of broken quests (ravasaur trainers anyone?) and dungeon content difficult and buggy enough that people would 10- or 15-man them and thus never be able to do the quests. Hell, doing a Scholomance run with a good questing group took 4+ hours back then. A bad group would likely not make it past the first boss. Raiding came in later - It was 6 months or so before Molten Core was opened up. Battlegrounds came in much later.
The fact that Rift will launch with everything that WoW did plus endgame raiding, battlegrounds, achievements, collections, a properly developed guild system, public quests and so on, all in a quite highly polished state, puts them at about the same footing that WoW was at when it launched. WoW just has 5 years of development and tweaking on any new game that comes out. For a game following the "traditional" formula, I'd say Rift is doing better than most other games of that type that has come out since WoW.
Do I think it will beat WoW? Hell no, I don't think any game will. WoW hit that magical sweet spot of perfect timing and good craftsmanship, and the opportunity to be a mega-success like WoW has come and gone. I don't see it happening again at all. Is Rift still a very solid first offering from a new MMO company? Definitely. Is it a shallow version of WoW? Not really - there are a lot of systems already in place in Rift, and more will be added, but like I stated, WoW has 6 years of development time on any new game that comes out. Even with Blizzard's infrequent content updates, that's still a lot of extra stuff. You might hate it, but there I think there will be enough people looking for a "familiar but new" game that Rift will be successful enough to keep going, and to keep developing new content. And, if they keep going at the pace they're going at now, Rift will eventually catch up to WoW in terms of content.
http://machineborn.guildportal.com - Now recruiting players!
Rift isn't going to be compared to WoW at release, and doing so is silly. Rift is launching in 2011, and will be compared to the current market and all of its competition NOW and in the next year.
The fact that you can compare Rift to WoW at release and not see the dramatic number of things that have been simplified or flat out removed in Rift makes me believe that either you don't have a very detailed memory of WoW, or else you're making some very optimistic assumptions about what Rift will be outside of what has been shown in the beta events.
Just as a few examples out of many... How many large cities does WoW have, and how many starter areas? What about Rift? Rift has no cities at all (don't try to tell me a single building with some gazebos outside is a city), and only two starter areas. At a given level range, how many areas are there in which to adventure in WoW? How about in Rift? The time /played to max level in WoW at launch was double or more what it is in Rift, and WoW was filled with multple paths of content to fill all that leveling time. Rift's leveling curve (they've said) is something less than 100 hours to max...and they have only two possible leveling paths (which converge into a single progression of zones) even with that dramatically faster advancement.
Launching with "features" which are shallow, redundant, and only entertaining for a short time (and are mostly copied from previous games), is nothing like launching with actual content and depth. Saying that it's just fine for an MMORPG to only keep people entertained for a month or two totally disregards one of the major things that set this genre apart from other games. "Traditional" MMORPGs are supposed to be a service.... a long-term subscription service with enough content and a deep fantasy world to keep players playing for months or years. What's the point of charging a monthly fee if your game is set up to be played through in little more than the free month? I wouldn't call that type of game a "traditional" MMORPG in any sense.
I'm not even a fan of WoW, to be honest. I'm an old EQ player who hasn't found a REAL traditional MMORPG to play in years. But even I can clearly see the difference between WoW (which despite being more casual than I like, at least is a legitimate MMORPG) and Rift.
No company out there wants to release a game on the premise of people playing "a couple of months" then moving on. They need retention, keeping players engaged and interested. Playing for a month and then moving on to anticipating the "next big thing", players are actually creating the environment where less and less new games will be released. Current games are not competing with WoW 6 years ago, but most of them would come up short even if they could.
Rift has a lot of good points, but they have written off so many aspects of a good MMO as being unnecessary or of lesser importance, that the game feels shallow. Initially, I was going full out, buying a CE and a 6-month Founders sub. Then, after leveling several characters to the 15- 20 range, I really questioned whether I would even feel like playing after the first month. I find myself, as with Aion, AoC, and others, that I can skip this one and not feel like I've missed anything. The sparkle on Rift chips off pretty quickly.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I'll sub to rift but i'am also gonna let me EvE Online sub continue.. EvE is always a good game to play inbetween another game anyways.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta