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It's alot like WoW, WAR and EQ2...
...had a 3-way love child. Don't give me stuff about comparisons; they're blatantly obvious. Overall the flavor was unmistakably Warhammer, without the keep seiges and open-zone battlefield objectives, and the "public quests" are random-spawning, multi-stage encounters. Some aspects are unmistakably WoW-inspired... like rogue combat (really? they couldn't come up with a newer system than "5 "hits or marks" to a combo finisher?) and the simplistic crafting (oh and the beastmastards are your "everyone's gotta have one" huntard). Some aspects are unmistakably EQ2 like collection quests and "class flavor" (specifically looking at you paladins, necromancers, inquisitors, wardens, etc not to mention the obvious "doubles" that don't share names).
So, they took alot of the good ideas from other games and put them in one, added some decent lore and a character creation system leaning heavily on "hybridization". That part's kinda cool, but some "combinations" actually make for a pretty weak toon, and other combinations heavily favor better degrees of success. So that's pretty much what they "bring to the table".
Up points... the game is beautiful, from the detail of half-destroyed buildings, to the mob models and animation, to the panoramic view of an open rift battle (I actually did, a few times, catch myself staring at the rift animation. It's pretty good.). You're not "forced" to immerse yourself in the lore, but if you want to, there is alot included; almost every quest, or any other place I turned was something to read about the backstory and the "factions". The effort was worth it, at least I appreciated it.
Down points... I found the combat action a bit wooden. If they're going to blatantly copy things from other games, they skipped good multi-player combos like the "Heroic Ops" from EQ2. Also, in a world where everyone and their grandmother has some kind of healing (by point distribution on their trees, not by design, but then, it becomes inherant), NOT having it makes you feel like a moron and you respec. Another point is lack of content; you pretty much have one path to follow for questing on either side, and if you have alt-itis you'll be bored to tears leveling up.
So, aside from the issues I had getting into the free trial mentioned in the other thread, it looks like this has been a relatively smooth launch of a decent game that relatively lacks ingenuity. I gave it a 6.5 out of 10. I won't be buying it... as a matter of fact, mostly it made me miss Warhammer and EQ2. I think I'll go give those guys my 15 bucks a month until the "next big thing" comes around.
Comments
The main problem I have found with Rift (like more and more MMO's these days) is how quickly you level.
Used to be that levelling took a while and you could enjoy the journey. Items that came along were worth investing time into and an Epic item would be around for a while. Now a few weeks into the game and you are at cap with the usual Raid or BG choice and any half decent items you saw along the way were outlevelled in half a day.
When will MMO companies start to realise that games which are so easy to level cap are likely to have very short subscriptions (unless of course they are only after the initial box sales profits)
Well I have been enjoying the journey so far, doing gathering, tradeskills and dabbling in the economy game via auction house, dying my new found armor, ansd yes even socializing with the more mature people I run into and generally having old school flashbacks while playing, I generally keep my quest tracking turned off unless I get totally stuck, just hit lvl 31 last night and have been playing since release and although I have experimenting with new chars a bit Killborn is my main toon. So far I am loving it but everyone in my guild(s) so far seem to outlvl me pretty rapidly...
Sounds similar to me. Have been doing collections, crafting (to 285 so far), odd dungeon with guild (which stretches back to DAoC) and mucking about with dyes.
But the big question is, should so many people already be at cap and would you really expect to be 31 already whilst dabbling in so many areas of the game? It surely doesn't bode well for the longevity.
I miss the days when saying "Ding" in guild chat actually meant something, now it's just a running joke.
they've taken the challenge out of mmo's. now its just a monotanous loot grind & for whatever reason the casuals couldn't be happier about it. I just don't understand people.
I'm pretty much with the OP on that one.
Some good , some bad but nothing really gets me excited enough to go fish in my wallet and P2P. I'd rather go back to Warhammer and do some PvP scenarios to lvl 10 and start over again with a different toon.
One of my main beef tho, as an RPer is that I looked like everyone else in the game until I reached trial cap. I'm assuming its the same even higher up and there was SO many Beastmasters it looked like a Pet Show at every Rift. Couldn't they of at least let the user change the look of the beast ? but that's just ranting.
Good, well executed but more of the same.
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"If RL was an MMO, I'd probably be getting laid more often..."
You should try Mortal Online
)
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"If RL was an MMO, I'd probably be getting laid more often..."
Who said "casuals" were happy about it?
The ones that ranted on me in my blog for giving it a 6.2/10 for one. The casuals just love them some loot grinds without a point I guess. Until people demand depth they're going to get this warmed over piece of crap.
To the people that turn off the quest tracker and dabble, great. The competitive person in me just can't do that. I think games shouldn't have maps unless you find a piece of one and put it together nor quest trackers but that's just me wishing again.
When they put them in and hand hold me I'm going to use them.
Thirty years of gaming experience...not sure if I should be proud of that
www.mmoexaminer.blogspot.com