or maybe he/she is just tired of the same old WoW clone that is dumbed down for the LCD to enjoy. and unfortunately for those of us in the same boat our choices are .....
AAA WoW clone (with a few gimmicks) 15356 or a "sandbox" game made by 4 dudes in some guys basement.
Not sure why I get so insulted when people call it a WoW clone. Atleast call it a EQ clone to be more accurate. WoW did not invent gear grinds.
Also the freebie raid tier helm and shoulders I got from doing the Water Saga quest or the crafted gear that is on par with some of the T2/Raid gear disagree's with your statement. It is changing, but do not expect some dramatic stuff. It comes slow in Themeparks.
i wouldn't insult my memory of EQ1 by calling this POS an EQ1 clone. this is a WoW clone, i wouldn't be surprised if you played WoW and Rift in wireframe mode you would not know which game you are playing.
This is where sandbox wins; players make there own content.
PS: I don't play Rift.
Sandbox content gets old and boring too. Grinding, grinding, grinding for mats and skill ups, and roaming the countryside greifing/PvPing with the same old players isn't as "replayable" as the vocal minority thinks. A "player-made content" generally consists of a couple of OP guilds basically greifing with no RP elements (ie no lore) and no real purpose other than showing off their e-peens.
I think there should definitely be more character progression in game like Rift (ie, "themeparks") including higher-level crafting, deeper player customization, and novelty tasks like housing - but full blown sandbox games become just as boring after several months - especially as they lack directed content. Hybrids are the wave of the future!
Those aren't really sandboxes. They have some elements of sandboxes, but they're missing the critical 'player created content' portion of the sandbox. The closest MMOs have gotten to sandboxes is the original UO and EVE Online.
A lot of it is actually due to technological limitations. But we're finally at a point where the technology is good enough that a 'true' sandbox might be capable of taking off. Of course, because of the success of WoW, there's no monetary reason to really invest in such a risky project.
As you can see by my signature, I've played WoW and WoW clones before. I never actually played WoW until endgame — I played for a couple of months, reached level 67, and then called it quits (this was shortly after BC was released). I foresaw that the endgame consisted primarily of grinding reputation and doing the same handful of raids for months on end until the next expansion, at which point I'd discard my epics (you know, the ones I just spent months earning) and start over again with the new content. Even with an excellent and active guild, which I had, I just wasn't interested in that.
WAR barely even had a PvE endgame, but I spent all of my time PvPing, so I hardly noticed. I still quit WAR after only a few months due to its many flaws, most notably the fact that open-world PvP was an absolute joke. WAR is still essentially a WoW clone, though. Yes, I know: Blizzard based Warcraft on Warhammer and/or ripped it off, depending on who you ask, but I'm talking about MMORPGs here. I remember WAR's endgame PvE being pretty damned annoying, too.
So now we come to RIFT. I found a very active, "fun-but-we-also-do-hardcore" guild that's really top-notch, and I promised myself that I'd give the theme park/WoW clone endgame a fair shake this time around. I quested to max level in about a month, raised my character's crafting and gathering skills to 300, and started participating in the endgame with my friendly and active guild.
I've come to the conclusion that theme park/WoW clone MMORPGs just aren't for me, because I despise this crap. It's the same garbage day in and day out. Log in, get world event dailies, get crafting dailies, get expert, dungeon and raid dailies, and perhaps also regional notoriety/rep dailies. Log full of dailies, almost literally the same thing over and over again. Yes, there is a variety of raids, expert rifts and T2 dungeons one can do with one's guild, and participating in this group content is pretty fun... at the moment. After I've done it all 5 times over, however, I'm pretty damned sure it'll just be a drudge to squeeze gear out of the RNG.
When it comes to dailies, I hate that I feel compelled to log in and do this repetitive content for several hours each and every day. For every day I don't, I miss out on approx. 200 event tokens, 37 crafting badges, thousands of notoriety points, and various endgame PvE loot currencies. I consider myself a hardcore player, but I prefer to play when I want to play. That might mean a big-ass weekend neckbeard marathon, or it might mean a week-long break. Thanks to dailies, my marathon/hiatus playing preference is severely crippled.
I'm going to try the PvP end of things now and see how that holds up, because I'm quite sure the PvE isn't going to do it for me. Are there a lot of PvP dailies...? I'm not sure I want to know.
judging by the well thought out concerns you list here (and, yeah i had many of them myself playing rift, except that i had *just* come from 4 years in WoW so i was even more burned-out about wow-style endgame than you!), the game you list as the game you're playing now is the game you should be playing!
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.
Nobody is forcing the OP to play that way. Sounds to me like he doesn't like his own play style.....sooooo, change your play style. It's as simple as that.
A game is what you make it. Rift is no different. If you make it a chore than it will become a chore. If you make it fun for YOU then it will be fun for YOU.
Don't like dailies? then don't do them
Epic gear useless cause there always something better coming? ..then don't worry about getting any.
I'm playing Rift and having a blast. I don't raid. i don't have epic gear. I only do my dailies when I feel like it. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I'll get what I get when I get it...if I get it.
It's all just make believe anyway. None of that stuff is real. Trion can pull the plug and it's all gone..forever. It means NOTHING!
So stop torturing yourself and just do what you WANT to do in game and not what you think you HAVE to....and you will have a lot more fun an any mmo.
Is every hamburger a McDonalds clone? Is every car a Ford clone? I am sick of people who spend a couple of hours skimming a game and writing it off as a WoW clone if it looks or feels like WoW initially to them. There is a reason most MMORPG's look this way......part of it is to comfort and ease the transition from similar games, part of it is lack of imagination, and part of it is keeping requirements within the reach of the masses.
This is a great MMORPG and does many things differently, but being an MMORPG means that a lot of it is similar to other MMORPG. STFU if you can't be a reasonable, rational human being.
P.S. The OP made a nice, eloquent post and I feel for him. I have been there and I really think it's burnout with the genre.
This is one of the big reason Im really looking foward to GW2. One of the mayor focus points for Anet with GW and GW2 is PvP. They put a lot of effort into battlefront style PvP, since its the one that you can actually try to balance and Anet likes to provide competitive PvP. Open world PvP is more of a destruction derby than anything else, it is fun but its a bit of a mess. So endgame in GW2 for me will definately be PvP
Comments
i wouldn't insult my memory of EQ1 by calling this POS an EQ1 clone. this is a WoW clone, i wouldn't be surprised if you played WoW and Rift in wireframe mode you would not know which game you are playing.
Those aren't really sandboxes. They have some elements of sandboxes, but they're missing the critical 'player created content' portion of the sandbox. The closest MMOs have gotten to sandboxes is the original UO and EVE Online.
A lot of it is actually due to technological limitations. But we're finally at a point where the technology is good enough that a 'true' sandbox might be capable of taking off. Of course, because of the success of WoW, there's no monetary reason to really invest in such a risky project.
judging by the well thought out concerns you list here (and, yeah i had many of them myself playing rift, except that i had *just* come from 4 years in WoW so i was even more burned-out about wow-style endgame than you!), the game you list as the game you're playing now is the game you should be playing!
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
Nobody is forcing the OP to play that way. Sounds to me like he doesn't like his own play style.....sooooo, change your play style. It's as simple as that.
A game is what you make it. Rift is no different. If you make it a chore than it will become a chore. If you make it fun for YOU then it will be fun for YOU.
Don't like dailies? then don't do them
Epic gear useless cause there always something better coming? ..then don't worry about getting any.
I'm playing Rift and having a blast. I don't raid. i don't have epic gear. I only do my dailies when I feel like it. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I'll get what I get when I get it...if I get it.
It's all just make believe anyway. None of that stuff is real. Trion can pull the plug and it's all gone..forever. It means NOTHING!
So stop torturing yourself and just do what you WANT to do in game and not what you think you HAVE to....and you will have a lot more fun an any mmo.
Is every hamburger a McDonalds clone? Is every car a Ford clone? I am sick of people who spend a couple of hours skimming a game and writing it off as a WoW clone if it looks or feels like WoW initially to them. There is a reason most MMORPG's look this way......part of it is to comfort and ease the transition from similar games, part of it is lack of imagination, and part of it is keeping requirements within the reach of the masses.
This is a great MMORPG and does many things differently, but being an MMORPG means that a lot of it is similar to other MMORPG. STFU if you can't be a reasonable, rational human being.
P.S. The OP made a nice, eloquent post and I feel for him. I have been there and I really think it's burnout with the genre.
This is one of the big reason Im really looking foward to GW2. One of the mayor focus points for Anet with GW and GW2 is PvP. They put a lot of effort into battlefront style PvP, since its the one that you can actually try to balance and Anet likes to provide competitive PvP. Open world PvP is more of a destruction derby than anything else, it is fun but its a bit of a mess. So endgame in GW2 for me will definately be PvP
Just wait for SWTOR , that is rift's end game .. game over end game lol