I was never a huge Wow fan and certainly never played it for long periods of time. But I can say this. I believe Rift is a very well put together game with developers who really care about what their players want. I think it combines a lot of tried and true aspects of other MMOs as well as some unique ones on it's own. I have been very happy with Rift and will continue to be a dedicated fan.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Some of us saw Rift as having some softcore sandbox options (conquering zones by disabling towns, wars over rifts, etc). While these are being added in, the simple fact of the matter is that it's still very much a theme park game. I've been leveling up without questing much (aside from getting the bounty hunter title, I haven't done any non-event related quests or non-pvp dailies) since lvl 11, and I'm currently 46. However, players got sick of rifts pretty quick. Players didn't ever get real serious about the wardstones. Most people hit the level cap by simply running quests and dungeons. There are other ways of doing it, but it's difficult to find others who aren't racing to the end.
i swear if i see one more post about how Rift is WoW i am going to scream. I played it in beta it's not WoW it has many different aspected of many different games in it, it has many different ui elements from a few games in the past including WoW but it's definitely not WoW or based on WoW. WoW was never the first MMO they came into the MMO market much later then many other titles. These people who believe WoW was the first MMO are probably the same people who believe that George Washington abolished slavery or they really spent 500 million dollars a day for the president to visit India.
First of all, author doesn't seem to know enough about Rift to write an article about it. Second of all, no, RIft is nowhere near a WoW replacement.
If anything, it made me go back to wow after not playing it for almost a year. I am now finishing my 10 days return ticket a friend gave me and am about to resubscribe tonight. Rift made me realize how great WoW is and how well made and supported it is. Rift felt like an Asian grinder after Cataclysm questing and as a roleplayer I was very unmipressed with the story and even minor grinder quests.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." Hans Margolius
If a person is a new player to MMORPG's, than yeah, Rift is a good game. If you are a former WoW player, I cannot see how you can say Rift is better. Just my opinion.
If a person is a new player to MMORPG's, than yeah, Rift is a good game. If you are a former WoW player, I cannot see how you can say Rift is better. Just my opinion.
Many of us have been saying this for a long time. More and more people sign on as the luster fades.
RIFT does everything WoW does on an overall equivalent level. Some better, some worse.
We should have come further in 7 years and shouldn't be praising a lack of effort by new companies.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
"and with the huge variety of play available its hard to get bored."
before cancelling my sub i tried to force myself into believen this statement was true.... and i realised that it is only true if you stick with 1 character (maybe 1 toon per faction). I am an ALToholic so every time i wanted to try a different race and class (calling, not soul) i got extremely bored of starting the same zones and the same quests again and again.... I am a casual player and i am not the type of person that sticks with 1 character per faction untill the end of time... in every mmorpg.
thats one of the reasons i havent missed Rift since i cancel sub 2 weeks ago. Of course that does not mean i will never play it again. I will play again when i feel the need. I just dont need it right now... Trion sacrified a wider variety of either races or starting zones / stories per race in order to provide a wide variety of souls.... not really the best move and im still digesting it
First of all, author doesn't seem to know enough about Rift to write an article about it. Second of all, no, RIft is nowhere near a WoW replacement.
If anything, it made me go back to wow after not playing it for almost a year. I am now finishing my 10 days return ticket a friend gave me and am about to resubscribe tonight. Rift made me realize how great WoW is and how well made and supported it is. Rift felt like an Asian grinder after Cataclysm questing and as a roleplayer I was very unmipressed with the story and even minor grinder quests.
Funny, I hated cataclysm questing. It made that expansion feel like a single player game with the absolute linear on tracks progression that allowed for no variation at all. It was like playing DAO without the good graphics and with a very predictable story. WoW has been moving away from the "world" design and into the "game" design with each expansion. That's why I probably like Rift's more limited world, because it actually feels like one. Well, GW2 will probably be even better in this regard, but it's not out yet.
All i can say is that when i tried to play wow a few weeks after launch, it made me barf. It was dull, boring, ugly and just a dumbed down EQ1. On the opposite, i find RIFT pretty funny, casual friendly and nice to play, not to mention that the characters and the world look decent, not like some failed anime.
About content, WoW got 7 years (about ?) of content from Blizzard, u can't compare Rift now to WoW now, u gotta compare Rift to what WoW was when it got released and, to me, it's much better, except on 2 facts :
1) The world's much smaller i believe.
2) Because of 1, u don't have like different starting positions and alternate way to xp for the same faction if u wanna play, say, an elf a human or a dwarf/weird thingie. They'll undoubtfuly add more and more content but it doesn't take a few weeks to do so.
Ah yeah and 3) it seems that there's no (real) world boss, like in EQ2 or WoW, u got the invasion giants but i don't recall seeing high end pve world boss (i might be wrong).
Question i got is : how many high end raid content were in WOW, say 2 months after release ?
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At 50 ,it brings out the worst of the game and WoW.Remember those endless grinding of dungeons in WoW woltk,now add in the endless grinding of rep in classic wow and there you go rift at level 50.
Basically you do same dungeons as you did levelling up(same as wow heroics) but with added 1 or so bosses in the instance.
Now there is 10 of them and they used to take ages to do due to loads of trash mobs but they nerfed them a bit to make them a bit faster(1-2 hrs now ) but they nerfed the loot so the drops are rarer and mostly bleh ,and they severely reduced the plaques you can gain to buy proper gear which means a hell of a lot more dungeon runs with loads more grind,repeatitive and time to get to the same goals as pre patch.
This is with them saying they wanted to eliminate grind .I suppose rift endgame might do well in asia.
the new lfg was poorly implemented and is only server based which means if you are stuck on one of the dead servers you can queue from now till 2012 and not get a group.
Raid rifts are now much more hassle then use espically since they took off randon inscribed soulstone and made it a daily ,so means yet more days of grinding.
pvp has been covered so much in most forums about the unbalanced nature .yes yes every game has some imbalance but rift has a real severe problem which the devs seems to be unable to get on top despite a major patch recently.
Author sadly is now high enough to see many things which is why i ususally prefer mmo to be reviewed by people who kept in the time.For instance he says rift has many choices for you class.granted it does buuuut there a lot of broken trees out there.
Lets take the warrior.he can tank or melee dps .since a lot of the builds are broken you are pretty much stuck in a champ/bm/para build and it needs to be very specific or else you dps drops massively and thats warrior dps for you ,on paper loads of choices in reality this is it.other coices means you got others basically carrying you.
Also ,trion tries to make it all classes can do it all but then some can do it better.rogues and clerics tank better then a warrior apart from vk for caster mobs .
So right now rift end game = loads and loads of grinding and not fun grind neither.or pick fotm class and pvp against fellow fotm class
When i think of "replacement" i think of a completely different game to move on to.
The last few games i can remember that i went through and "replaced" the older one was like this: Diablo 2 5 years, EQOA 3 years, WoW 6 years to DCUO. All completely different styles of game.
Replacing WoW with Rift is like replacing COD with Battlefield or vice versa which really isnt a replacement in my mind, just playing 2 different styles of the same game.
I just dont see the point in replacing your old game with a new game that is exactly the same with new make-up. Play both sure, but replace it? not for me.
You are right... for example, my bed was already old and in very bad shape, my matress made my back hurt so I decided to replace it and got a new kitchen furniture, the problem is that now my back hurts even more...
No matter, at least now you consider I made a replacement...
WoW, and I say this with barely a straight face as well as a bad taste in my mouth, just had more of IT at launch. Can't really define it, it's just something that engages the players and gets them into the game. For me, rift was a few hours of fun, then two hours of really? You guys went with that, then thirty seconds of deleting the game. Somehow it had a lot of the TR feel to me, the invasions just get to be more of a "Will someone close that thing so I can quest already" feel than a dynamic one. For some people it will replace wow, for others it won't. The fact that it has already lowered it's price, increased buying incentives, and started half off sales on digital download sites, makes me a bit worried for the prospect of this title making it to the 5 year mark.
The game was ruined for me with their poor balancing, but I did enjoy the customization you had with each class. I know that many different specs can be hard to balance, but they went the route of "wait a while, and then change everything at once and hope for the best"; I prefer my MMOs to make small changes over a long period of time to balance things rather than drastic changes once in a while.
I am not a rift or wow player, but I have played both. Small peice of advice I would suggest playing any game past lvl 14 before writing about it. There is just no way you can have any real idea of what the game offers at that lvl much less write a artical called "Rift The WoW replacemnt. Just my thoughts I could be wrong. PS: EQ2 beats the pants off both of them I think.
This reviewer played a different game than I did. The Quest zones start to spread out after level 10? The game is faster paced than WoW? Both games have fluid combat, but to get from point a to point b in Rift felt tedious to me with the mob density and aggro ranges.
And a lot is being said about the class variety, and yes to a degree its extremely customizable. However some things are actually limited in Rift. WoW you had 4 completely different classes you could heal with. You could wear Plate, Chain, Leather or Cloth. Rift you only have two options, Cloth or Chain. The hybrid builds are fun solo, but to do any serious content you will have to narrow yourself down quite a bit. Yes, more flexibility than WoW, but not as extreme as its made out to be.
And also in Rift if you are a cleric the playerbase expects you to have a heal spec. Not the game developers fault, but its a HUGE issue with the game right now (more than just healers, rogues/bards too). In WoW if you wanted to be a shadow priest or a enhance shaman or a feral druid most people dont think anything bad of it if you dont have a heal spec. In Rift you are considered lazy and not a team player if you dont have a heal spec.
Despite a fairly mediocre pair of newbie zones, Rift does seem awesome at the start. But the longer you play, and especially once you hit 50, the flaws really start to show
Rift is a better game than WoW, but you will hit end level far more quickly and WoW has more content. As Rift adds more content this will balance out, Rift won't be able to catch up but all it needs to sort out is end game, then WoW is a past chapter in MMO history.
Rift is a better game than WoW, but you will hit end level far more quickly and WoW has more content. As Rift adds more content this will balance out, Rift won't be able to catch up but all it needs to sort out is end game, then WoW is a past chapter in MMO history.
Better is a very subjective term. The truth is you may or may not like Rift better than WoW. I didn't. Many others didn't. Many like Rift better than WoW as well.
As far as the content, WoW and Rift arent very far apart in terms of max level content. they both have a similar amount of recycled dungeons and a similar amount of raid encounters. WoW has significantly more leveling content (and the amount of leveling content really hasnt changed since the day WoW launched, they just made it better) plus past raids and instances you can grind achievements or play superman in, but as far as meanignful max level cotnent the two games arent very far apart.
I can confirm that you easily can level via pvp only, although doing just that seems like a bit of a narrow attitude. There are several ways to get gear, rifts, pvp, dungeons, crafting(!) and by quests. Im leveling mainly through pvp right now, so it does work
Complaining about getting a build where you can 2-3 shot people and get 2-3 shotted yourself is so .... (insert word of choice here). If you want more defenses, then shift some points from offensive abilties into defensive. How come you cant see that? Since it's very cheap to respec and you can five different roles (specs) that you can change as long as you're out of combat, there's no reason why you couldnt find one that suits you.
If it's a wow replacement or not, that's up to you. But an mmo is never a life replacement, dont forget that. If you find your life to be unforfilling, then no mmo will ever cure that.
To me this is just a blander version of wow, ive been trying to get into it with the 7 day free trial but the world is so bland and boring, i really tried to get into it but just couldnt, the writer says the game is faster paced than wow and i just cant see it, the combat seems alot slower than wow to me, the risfts are not that impressive and as for the soul system for me is its only redeeming feature.
Also thier advertising bringing wow into it just doesnt sit well with me, if your game is good enough then advertise it as such.
And most of the eu/english servers are pretty damn dead bar a couple.
Comments
I was never a huge Wow fan and certainly never played it for long periods of time. But I can say this. I believe Rift is a very well put together game with developers who really care about what their players want. I think it combines a lot of tried and true aspects of other MMOs as well as some unique ones on it's own. I have been very happy with Rift and will continue to be a dedicated fan.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
I do like this game alot , especially the class systems. but im really just switching to Rift from WoW till TOR comes out.
Feels like ive been waiting forever for that game to come out....
Some of us saw Rift as having some softcore sandbox options (conquering zones by disabling towns, wars over rifts, etc). While these are being added in, the simple fact of the matter is that it's still very much a theme park game. I've been leveling up without questing much (aside from getting the bounty hunter title, I haven't done any non-event related quests or non-pvp dailies) since lvl 11, and I'm currently 46. However, players got sick of rifts pretty quick. Players didn't ever get real serious about the wardstones. Most people hit the level cap by simply running quests and dungeons. There are other ways of doing it, but it's difficult to find others who aren't racing to the end.
i swear if i see one more post about how Rift is WoW i am going to scream. I played it in beta it's not WoW it has many different aspected of many different games in it, it has many different ui elements from a few games in the past including WoW but it's definitely not WoW or based on WoW. WoW was never the first MMO they came into the MMO market much later then many other titles. These people who believe WoW was the first MMO are probably the same people who believe that George Washington abolished slavery or they really spent 500 million dollars a day for the president to visit India.
First of all, author doesn't seem to know enough about Rift to write an article about it. Second of all, no, RIft is nowhere near a WoW replacement.
If anything, it made me go back to wow after not playing it for almost a year. I am now finishing my 10 days return ticket a friend gave me and am about to resubscribe tonight. Rift made me realize how great WoW is and how well made and supported it is. Rift felt like an Asian grinder after Cataclysm questing and as a roleplayer I was very unmipressed with the story and even minor grinder quests.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
I never wanted to play WoW, but could you get to the Max level in about 13 days?
If not, Rift has that "going for it"...
Not to mention many other things I could say I dislike about Rift..
If a person is a new player to MMORPG's, than yeah, Rift is a good game. If you are a former WoW player, I cannot see how you can say Rift is better. Just my opinion.
Many of us have been saying this for a long time. More and more people sign on as the luster fades.
RIFT does everything WoW does on an overall equivalent level. Some better, some worse.
We should have come further in 7 years and shouldn't be praising a lack of effort by new companies.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
"and with the huge variety of play available its hard to get bored."
before cancelling my sub i tried to force myself into believen this statement was true.... and i realised that it is only true if you stick with 1 character (maybe 1 toon per faction). I am an ALToholic so every time i wanted to try a different race and class (calling, not soul) i got extremely bored of starting the same zones and the same quests again and again.... I am a casual player and i am not the type of person that sticks with 1 character per faction untill the end of time... in every mmorpg.
thats one of the reasons i havent missed Rift since i cancel sub 2 weeks ago. Of course that does not mean i will never play it again. I will play again when i feel the need. I just dont need it right now... Trion sacrified a wider variety of either races or starting zones / stories per race in order to provide a wide variety of souls.... not really the best move and im still digesting it
Funny, I hated cataclysm questing. It made that expansion feel like a single player game with the absolute linear on tracks progression that allowed for no variation at all. It was like playing DAO without the good graphics and with a very predictable story. WoW has been moving away from the "world" design and into the "game" design with each expansion. That's why I probably like Rift's more limited world, because it actually feels like one. Well, GW2 will probably be even better in this regard, but it's not out yet.
lol hardly. It's just the place where some ex-wow gamers go to get the feeling of vanilla back that was lost from WoW itself.
All i can say is that when i tried to play wow a few weeks after launch, it made me barf. It was dull, boring, ugly and just a dumbed down EQ1. On the opposite, i find RIFT pretty funny, casual friendly and nice to play, not to mention that the characters and the world look decent, not like some failed anime.
About content, WoW got 7 years (about ?) of content from Blizzard, u can't compare Rift now to WoW now, u gotta compare Rift to what WoW was when it got released and, to me, it's much better, except on 2 facts :
1) The world's much smaller i believe.
2) Because of 1, u don't have like different starting positions and alternate way to xp for the same faction if u wanna play, say, an elf a human or a dwarf/weird thingie. They'll undoubtfuly add more and more content but it doesn't take a few weeks to do so.
Ah yeah and 3) it seems that there's no (real) world boss, like in EQ2 or WoW, u got the invasion giants but i don't recall seeing high end pve world boss (i might be wrong).
Question i got is : how many high end raid content were in WOW, say 2 months after release ?
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You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
Awaiting a re review when author hits 50.
At 50 ,it brings out the worst of the game and WoW.Remember those endless grinding of dungeons in WoW woltk,now add in the endless grinding of rep in classic wow and there you go rift at level 50.
Basically you do same dungeons as you did levelling up(same as wow heroics) but with added 1 or so bosses in the instance.
Now there is 10 of them and they used to take ages to do due to loads of trash mobs but they nerfed them a bit to make them a bit faster(1-2 hrs now ) but they nerfed the loot so the drops are rarer and mostly bleh ,and they severely reduced the plaques you can gain to buy proper gear which means a hell of a lot more dungeon runs with loads more grind,repeatitive and time to get to the same goals as pre patch.
This is with them saying they wanted to eliminate grind .I suppose rift endgame might do well in asia.
the new lfg was poorly implemented and is only server based which means if you are stuck on one of the dead servers you can queue from now till 2012 and not get a group.
Raid rifts are now much more hassle then use espically since they took off randon inscribed soulstone and made it a daily ,so means yet more days of grinding.
pvp has been covered so much in most forums about the unbalanced nature .yes yes every game has some imbalance but rift has a real severe problem which the devs seems to be unable to get on top despite a major patch recently.
Author sadly is now high enough to see many things which is why i ususally prefer mmo to be reviewed by people who kept in the time.For instance he says rift has many choices for you class.granted it does buuuut there a lot of broken trees out there.
Lets take the warrior.he can tank or melee dps .since a lot of the builds are broken you are pretty much stuck in a champ/bm/para build and it needs to be very specific or else you dps drops massively and thats warrior dps for you ,on paper loads of choices in reality this is it.other coices means you got others basically carrying you.
Also ,trion tries to make it all classes can do it all but then some can do it better.rogues and clerics tank better then a warrior apart from vk for caster mobs .
So right now rift end game = loads and loads of grinding and not fun grind neither.or pick fotm class and pvp against fellow fotm class
priceless ^^
his idea of 'replacement' boggled me as well....
Game was 'ok' until 50 but after that...
PVP grind - check
PVE grind - check
Pass.
WoW, and I say this with barely a straight face as well as a bad taste in my mouth, just had more of IT at launch. Can't really define it, it's just something that engages the players and gets them into the game. For me, rift was a few hours of fun, then two hours of really? You guys went with that, then thirty seconds of deleting the game. Somehow it had a lot of the TR feel to me, the invasions just get to be more of a "Will someone close that thing so I can quest already" feel than a dynamic one. For some people it will replace wow, for others it won't. The fact that it has already lowered it's price, increased buying incentives, and started half off sales on digital download sites, makes me a bit worried for the prospect of this title making it to the 5 year mark.
The game was ruined for me with their poor balancing, but I did enjoy the customization you had with each class. I know that many different specs can be hard to balance, but they went the route of "wait a while, and then change everything at once and hope for the best"; I prefer my MMOs to make small changes over a long period of time to balance things rather than drastic changes once in a while.
I am not a rift or wow player, but I have played both. Small peice of advice I would suggest playing any game past lvl 14 before writing about it. There is just no way you can have any real idea of what the game offers at that lvl much less write a artical called "Rift The WoW replacemnt. Just my thoughts I could be wrong. PS: EQ2 beats the pants off both of them I think.
This reviewer played a different game than I did. The Quest zones start to spread out after level 10? The game is faster paced than WoW? Both games have fluid combat, but to get from point a to point b in Rift felt tedious to me with the mob density and aggro ranges.
And a lot is being said about the class variety, and yes to a degree its extremely customizable. However some things are actually limited in Rift. WoW you had 4 completely different classes you could heal with. You could wear Plate, Chain, Leather or Cloth. Rift you only have two options, Cloth or Chain. The hybrid builds are fun solo, but to do any serious content you will have to narrow yourself down quite a bit. Yes, more flexibility than WoW, but not as extreme as its made out to be.
And also in Rift if you are a cleric the playerbase expects you to have a heal spec. Not the game developers fault, but its a HUGE issue with the game right now (more than just healers, rogues/bards too). In WoW if you wanted to be a shadow priest or a enhance shaman or a feral druid most people dont think anything bad of it if you dont have a heal spec. In Rift you are considered lazy and not a team player if you dont have a heal spec.
Despite a fairly mediocre pair of newbie zones, Rift does seem awesome at the start. But the longer you play, and especially once you hit 50, the flaws really start to show
Rift is a better game than WoW, but you will hit end level far more quickly and WoW has more content. As Rift adds more content this will balance out, Rift won't be able to catch up but all it needs to sort out is end game, then WoW is a past chapter in MMO history.
Better is a very subjective term. The truth is you may or may not like Rift better than WoW. I didn't. Many others didn't. Many like Rift better than WoW as well.
As far as the content, WoW and Rift arent very far apart in terms of max level content. they both have a similar amount of recycled dungeons and a similar amount of raid encounters. WoW has significantly more leveling content (and the amount of leveling content really hasnt changed since the day WoW launched, they just made it better) plus past raids and instances you can grind achievements or play superman in, but as far as meanignful max level cotnent the two games arent very far apart.
I can confirm that you easily can level via pvp only, although doing just that seems like a bit of a narrow attitude. There are several ways to get gear, rifts, pvp, dungeons, crafting(!) and by quests. Im leveling mainly through pvp right now, so it does work
Complaining about getting a build where you can 2-3 shot people and get 2-3 shotted yourself is so .... (insert word of choice here). If you want more defenses, then shift some points from offensive abilties into defensive. How come you cant see that? Since it's very cheap to respec and you can five different roles (specs) that you can change as long as you're out of combat, there's no reason why you couldnt find one that suits you.
If it's a wow replacement or not, that's up to you. But an mmo is never a life replacement, dont forget that. If you find your life to be unforfilling, then no mmo will ever cure that.
Short answer: No.
XFire showed a 65% drop since launch just before the free trial started. It has gone up a bit since but will drop again once the trial is over.
Rift is simply too shallow and easy to breaks WoWs dominance. WoW is shallow and easy as well but why go from one shallow and easy game to another?
My gaming blog
So sick of seeing, "WOW REPLACEMENT/WOWKIILLER"
Lame, as is WoW, RIFT, and 90% of the MMOs out there.
Going back to wait for something better than a grind fest or a hollow game full of "Next Gen" statements and broken promises!
To me this is just a blander version of wow, ive been trying to get into it with the 7 day free trial but the world is so bland and boring, i really tried to get into it but just couldnt, the writer says the game is faster paced than wow and i just cant see it, the combat seems alot slower than wow to me, the risfts are not that impressive and as for the soul system for me is its only redeeming feature.
Also thier advertising bringing wow into it just doesnt sit well with me, if your game is good enough then advertise it as such.
And most of the eu/english servers are pretty damn dead bar a couple.