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Honest review of rift.
I finished leveling my rogue on a PvP server and I’d like to give an honest review to anyone interested in the game, or just tracking its progress. I'm going to separate it into various sections as people usually are only willing to read a few lines about the subject they are interested in.
Questing
Questing in Rift in theory is quite similar to how questing was in WoTLK/CATA, you have several smallish quest hubs, once you finish one hub you are directed to the next one and so on. There are a few issues with rift questing however. The first issues is that there are no safe roads, you can’t just get from one quest hub to the other easily, you’ll often be stopped by mobs and you have to kill/CC them, because if you try to run they will stack a debuff on you that will eventually raise their damage high enough to destroy you (much more annoying than daze). The next issue is that pretty much all of the quests are simple click or kill quests, you either click items or kill mobs. If you are rerolling you have 2 options, Defiant or Guardian, every race in each faction has the exact same starting area, and for the first few zones you have very little options as to which zones you can go to, which can make it quite boring.
I’d give questing a 2/5, it's nothing special and could have used more work.
Rifting/Invasions
I will put these under the same section because honestly there is very little difference (an invasion is basically a whole bunch of rifts). Rifting is something that seems like alot of fun when you are starting the game, you group up with people to accomplish a goal and get prizes based on how you participate, awesome. However, as you get higher in level you become more jaded and think of these rifts simply for their material value, so you try to get the most out of the system, which leads you to problems. The contribution system is the worst thing ever, honesty. It’s not based off of how much damage or healer or damage taken you have, it’s based on how often you can spam you global cooldown. So you aren’t going to be doing rotations in a rift/invasion, you are going to be spamming your instant abilities. If you use rifts as a primary way to level, I can almost guarantee that you will get carpal tunnel syndrome by the time you get to level 50 (unless you already have it), that is how bad it is. As a bard I figured out ways to abuse the system so I am always #1, I just spam my verses (no cooldown buffs) and my participation skyrockets past everyone, I’m actually accomplishing very little for the group by spamming it, but I will get the most rewards out of it. The whole system needs to be reworked.
I would give rifting a 4.5/5 for early levels (when you are a noob) and ? near max level because my hands hurt every time I do one now.
Warfonts
Now these warfronts are actually pretty well made, I personally think that the CTF BG in rift is far better than WSG is in WoW, the problems with PvP are mostly related to the players. I have yet to find a server where you can actually PvP, because right now I would not call this player vs player, it’s basically one side slaughtering the other. On my server, Defiant are conditioned into thinking that they are going to lose every match, this goes on to later levels where people just afk all day with no punishment. I was in one match where it was 10 defiant vs 2 guardians and we lost. 9 of the defiant were afk and it was me vs a champion + cleric, and since I have to carry the flag (which does damage to me) there was no way for me to win. The winning side varies from server to server (but it’s mainly guardians dominating) but in either case it’s one side stomping the other.
I would give pug Warfronts a 0/5 and premade Warfronts (premade vs premade) a 4/5
Open world PvP
Fantastic. The inclusion of cross faction chat makes it especially awesome as people swear at you after you stomp them, it makes you feel great. Raids are made to attack towns, counter raids are made, and it just becomes a huge fckfeast, just the way it’s supposed to be! I have one tiny complaint, it would be big if people weren’t stupid, but luckily they are. If you queue for a warfront you can enter it while in combat, so you can keep queueing for stuff (queues take very little time) and escape combat even while stunned.
I would give open world PvP a 5/5 (thankfully I’ve only seen about 3 people exploit the WF queue)
Dungeons
Quite fun, I would compare the dungeon Vanilla/BC dungeons in WoW, lots of trash, a bit time consuming and most of the bosses are tank & spank. They are very pretty though!
I would give dungeons a 3.5/5
Crafting
It’s just as bad as it is in WoW.
Giving crafting a 1/5 is very generous.
Endgame
The word I would give for endgame... is grind! You can grind expert dungeons, grind expert rifts, grind warfronts, grind (though I guess alot of MMO players won’t have a problem with this). Rift raids are mostly tank and spank with very few twists, they are really easy and exploitable (as predicted). I won’t comment on the 20 man raid, however people downed a few bosses and they had to be buffed recently.
I would give endgame a ??/5, have to wait to see how this turns out, there aren’t enough level 50’s to say much about it.
The community
I don’t know if it’s the advertising or what but rift seems to havdrawn out some of the worst/craziest members of each gaming community, and brought them all under one roof. It’s really that bad.
I’m not even going to try to rate how bad the community is.
Classes/balance
All of the classes seem to be overpowered in one or more specs (except mages) so in some ways I guess you can call that balance. Cleric healers are about as insane as WoTLK healers, you can get 3 people on one of them and not be able to bring them down. Everyone’s soul choices are currently somewhat unique, but you can already begin to see people theorycrafting out the ideal specs.
Too soon to rate the classes on balance, however they are all fairly unique and fun to play.
The world
Aside from the issues with the roads and being unable to get anywhere really quickly (each zone only has 1 portal to it for the entire zone). Exploration in the game is quite awesome as there aren’t many invisible walls that prevent you from cliff climbing and you are actually encouraged to explore, as you can get various prizes (such as artifacts or items) for doing so. Many people say that the zones are too dark, but that doesn’t apply for all of them, and one of the later zones is more bright and colorful than anything I’ve ever seen in a MMO.
I would give it a 4.5/5 (.5 taken off because getting dismounted on roads by mobs 20 levels lower is soooo annoying)
Overall
I think overall rift is a pretty solid game, the dev team seems to be willing to listen to the community (which may actually be a bad thing) and they are quite quick to make changes in raids and even with security problems. If you asked me if it’s a WoW killer, I would say absolutely not, it is most likely going to face the exact same issues WoW has with endgame very soon, with far less content. I predict that the game will get around 200k subscribers after the first month and maintain somewhere around 150k in 6 months (which is pretty solid) However this does not mean that I think Rift is a bad game, I will most likely will not be playing it in 6 months, but I do not feel like I wasted $60 as I had a great time playing it. I won't rate the game overall because it really depends on where you are coming from and what you want to take out of the game, if you want open world PvP I would rate this game 10/10, if you want crafting I would give it a 1/10 and so on, it all depends on what exactly you want to do.
Comments
For once, I'd absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE for someone to put "A Dishonest Review of Rift" in the title. You haven't hit endgame, you are not qualified to make a fair judgement. I've had a blast in PUG Warfront groups. Some win, some lose. Made some friends. If you expect it to be one-sided all the time in your favor you're kidding yourself.
1 for crafting? Really? Because unlocking all those hard to get items is sooooo like WoW right? Did you even bother to see all the tokens you need for some of the more rad recipes?
The community isn't bad, it's the players. The ignore function is generous. Give it another 30 days to get all the little kiddies and whiny WoW-fanbois out and we'll see how the community develops. Especially awesome are BOTH RP-PvP communities... helpful, nice, and chatty.
As far as content... you people expect too much. WoW has had 3 expansions. EQ2 is on nearly what a dozen now? All you people who expect MASSIVE amounts are doomed to be disappointed. Just like the GW2 mob has sworn that game will do everything including curing cancer.
At the end of the day, a review is an opinion. Yours in this case. Doesn't make it bad or good. It also doesn't mean there needs to be yet ANOTHER thread discussing it.
Well that is just reality in any MMO and not Rift. Hell that is reality in FPS games too lol I remember linking x-box's to play Halo and there would be a stacked team of like the best sniper..best up close guy and best guy on the vehicle on one team we would get owned.
Pre-made vs Pug ussually results in ownage in any situation.
US Army vs PuG Terrorist - US OWNAGE!
Crafting is simple. Go do Aion if you want to see a real 1/5 system IMO
i dont agree with some of your ratings but they're within the margin or reasonability i think. the only one i strongly disagree with is the community rating. like most games you can expect the nexus of Dbags to be a pvp server. it's the case in wow. if you want a nice community try the RP pve servers, the one i'm on is very helpful and friendly. and no, people dont RP in public channels so if you dont RP you'll be fine unless you name your character something Dbaggy, like ipwnzjoo or something dumb.
i'd give community on my server 4/5.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Yeah, community is relative and differs wildly from server to server. I would give the community on Estrael a 5/5. I have not met a single ass hat, which is refreshing. I am sure they are there, but they are so eclipsed by the decent folks, I have not noticed them.
The terrible community all left, because people started ignoring them. My server Reclaimer on Guardian has no issues with community I would give it a 4/5 because of ganking.
lol yeah it depends on which community we mean here. My guild and guys on Faemist are pretty cool if you avoid the "w" word. The "w" word touched them in a special part when they were young I think.
The official forum community is what you get when you do not hammer down threads like Blizzard or NCSoft does. It would be equivalent to posting " I hate WoW" on the WoW general discussion forum or "swtor is gay" right in the middle of the SWToR forums.
It would get violent fast!
He's giving his opinions.. To me, they seem spot on.. 'Cept he gave the World PvP a little higher rateing then i would.. And didn't he say he just "finished his leveling" as in he hit end game? I think this review is fair and spot on.. Prolly gonna get Rift later today tbh.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Before you do. Please mentally prepare yourself. Questing in this game is like WoW. Some people have missed this statement, eventhough it has been repeated a million times.
For some odd reason people think questing in Rift is like GW2 or something, then feel the need to post life biographies about how they feel cheated.
When I said"I finished leveling my rogue on a PvP server" Perhaps I should have been more clear. I reached level 50 on my Defiant rogue some time ago and did alot of the endgame (I haven't done the 20 man raid, however I know guildies who have done it).
Now why did I make the threads title "an honest review"? It's because I haven't seen any reviews that are just plain observations, they are mostly outright bashing of the game, or all about promotion of it. I am just showing my various experiances with parts of the game and then trying to throw some rating for people who don't like to draw conclusions themselves.
Now as for your statement about PvP, I am willing to bet by your statement that you are: A) A guardian or
Extreamly lucky (seriously go play the lottery). I've played on Defiant side and winning a WF is very rare. Now I know you are thinking of a way to bash me with that, however I suggest that instead of doing that you go on the server forums, specifically Briarcliff and Seastone. In each match you can bet that at least HALF of your team is AFK and that the guardians are going to be smashing your face into the pavement.
In terms of crafting... Perhaps I was a bit harsh... but the system is basically exactly like WoW's and is just completely boring and fills your bag with useless crap that you have to take apart or NPC.
We'll see how the communities look in 30 days, alot can change, but it can be for the better or worse.
I'm not saying the content is bad, I am saying that at the rate rift is going and with the advent of LFG, Rift is going to eventually become like WoW where people just raid/PvP/dungeon all day, and if that's all they are going to do then Blizzard who has done this for years, are going to be quite far ahead. The fact that it already has a ton of content is just icing on the cake.
I know that this is just my opinion, I never said it was not. I've yet to see a review by a level 50 who experianced most of what the game has to offer (excluding guardian limited stuff) and just given out a review that isn't just blatant bashing or promotion. I'm just listing features, how I felt about them, and that's it.