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Rift: Taking On the Uphill Climb
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In today's Rift column, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Bill Murphy takes a look at the upcoming months for Rift and Trion Worlds. With Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 looming on the horizon, Rift developers are taking a hard look at not only maintaining the integrity of the game, but also at adding some exciting new features. Check out Bill's thoughts about Rift's next few months and then let us know what you think.
But it’s what’s coming down the road this summer that could help Rift fight off the onslaught more than anything in 1.4. Further into the summer and fall months Trion is going to be implementing an alternate advancement system. Rather than just a way to get more skill points on your main soul trees, the idea is to let a player attune themselves to one of the six planes and thus open a whole new tree of skills. The experience you then gain at level 50 will go towards earning new points to be used in these trees, further fleshing out your character at the level cap: something just about every game could use more of.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Tripping the Rift - Taking On the Uphill Climb.
Comments
Some of us explorers in Rift have stumbled across some new content and there are some video's floating around. Ember Isle is shaping up to be beyond massive and looks pretty complete.
PlaneTouched Wilds is actually starting to turn into another continent with it's size, but it looks far less complete then Ember Isle, so you can guess which is coming first. You have to be blind/deaf/dumb to ignore the fact SWToR is dropping end of year.
Blizzard is obviously going to hold patch 4.3 until EA announces the launch date. Trion is still going to do their monthly updates which is still unpresedented. Monthly content updates are just not done by devs at all. I am still predicting SWToR will get a good rush of fans, but problems are already cropping up and the more game play footage that comes out the worse it looks.
I'm not a mega fan of Rift. I've been playing it, thinking it a filler for GW2 and SWTOR as the OP suggests. BUT, I must admit Trion has been able to crank out a lot of content in a short amount of time.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I like this, very much. I expect to see badass looking animations and really effective spells. Level 50+ should be better combat and better content than it is from 1-50.
Why 50+ content and combat need to be different is because you can't get any levels and at endgame the content and combat NEED you to get hooked. Look at games like LoL, HoN,Dota,Champions of Norrath,Diablo 3 and such. The combat there is very strategic,fps, fast and fun.
Only mmorpg we will see with this soon is GW2. FUN FUN FUN FUN.
MMORPGs like Wow,Rift, Aion and all Korean mmorpgs does'nt have this in their combat. If Rift really want to be a good game, change the combat at 50, or the combat for all levels and make it FUN.
blizzard:asia is happyÉblizzard is happy! so 4.3 wont come out for a while yet!
What i hope will happen to Ember Island and Plantouched Wilds.
- No quests.
- Dynamic Events.
- RvRvRvE
I posted the videos on the Rift subforums. Personally I do not have the FIRST clue what that zone is. The guy recorded like 30min because that is how long it took him just to see like 3/4 of the place lol
They have their own form of dynamic events and just taking GW2 is not exactly cool to do and as of right now GW2 system for running and MMORPG is still unproven, so while you might see them take concepts like more interactive stuff the [consequences of your actions] system they have may never be accepted.
Gotta say, Trion has impressed me. While I will be playing SWTOR and GW2, I guarantee Rift will be on the backburner ready to go when I need a break. Plus, they've done so much work and showed they care, I'm willing to buy their next few products at launch as well. The RTS game and the other MMO, Defiance.
They are adding content, but tis not the content the game needs to excel.
I know some of the die hard Rift fans will disagree vehemently, but its a *very* common complaint amongst the people I know that have tried Rift and left it.
The game has a very generic, soulless feel and world.
They are adding stuff that would be fantastic on top of a better foundation, but the foundation desperately needs to be filled in, not built upon.
A game where leveling is treated as an inconvenience will fail. And thats how Rift treats its leveling. Bare minimum number of zones, bare minimum number of instances, uninspired quests (with mob density that makes many of them not a brutal chore).
Its not too late to change that, but so far Trion doesnt seem to care. I completely disagree with the last paragraph. Trion does NOT know what its doing. Their retention is not very good and they dont seem to be listening to some of the major complaints by those leaving.
With a planned release of the next expansion q2 2012 Blizzard probably isnt timing around SWTOR release. i would bet 4.3 in october, and 4.4 in january
Well the problem is I can not justify or rationalize a company spending huge amounts of money on something that is literally 1% of your overall /played time in a MMO.
If you invest a year in a MMO and it took 2 weeks to hit max level why focus on that 2 week instead of the other 46 weeks? Now Trion can do things like try and add alternate starting zones after you pop out of the time machine. It is basically built into the game if you look at it.
The game launched with this:
Standard Difficulty Dungeons Available
- Realm of the Fae (16-17) - Silverwood
- Iron Tomb (18-19) - Freemarch
- Darkening Deeps (22-23) - Gloamwood
- Deepstrike Mines (25-26) - Stonefield
- The Foul Cascade (29-30) - Scarlet Gorge
- King's Breach (34-35) - Scarwood Reach
- Runic Descent (39-40) - Moonshade Highlands
- Fall of Lantern Hook (43-44) - Droughtlands
- Abyssal Precipice (49-50) - Iron Pine
- Charmer's Caldera (49-50) - Shimmersand
Expert Difficulty Dungeons Available
- Realm of the Fae (50+) - Silverwood
- Iron Tomb (50+) - Freemarch
- The Foul Cascade (50+) - Scarlet Gorge
- King's Breach (50+) - Scarwood Reach
- Fall of Lantern Hook (50+) - Droughtlands
- Darkening Deeps (50++) - Gloamwood
- Deepstrike Mines (50++) - Stonefield
- Runic Descent (50++) - Moonshade Highlands
- Abyssal Precipice (50++) - Iron Pine
- Charmer's Caldera (50++) - Shimmersand
If this is considered bare minimum I am not sure what to tell you. They have released a 10man or 20man raid every single month and have announced a Solo/Duo instance system in the pretty near future which the article talks about. A solo/duo instance system is something we begged Blizzard to do for years.
Now I do not know how man flashpoints or raids SWToR plans on launching with, but they said 17 planets which could be huge or small depending on how they do it and it has not launched yet so noone really knows.
AA system is a terrible idea. Funcom has done this with Age of Conan, and it just ends up being whoever spends the most time in game is OP in PvP since they have much better stats than everyone else. I won't be subbing to rift again. Like a user said above, it's a soulless world.
When I play WoW, I feel like I'm playing in an alive world where things are going on, and when you get into Stormwind, it's busy with players and npcs, making it feel like a busy city and a world. When I play Rift I feel like I'm just playing an instanced mmo when it's completely open world. It lacks lore and story that I care about so all quests are just boring. When I go to a quest hub in WoW, the quests are fun and interesting to read, and you quest through small story lines which are satisfying to know the ending to.
No one bringing up the whole thing of Trion not being able to balance souls for crap. Completely nerfing souls to almost uselessness then buffing souls to broken. Though what got to me the most was taking the only range warrior soul and removing his ability to range without a 6 second cooldown.
At least GW2 gets warriors right, they are the masters of weapons not just melee beat sticks. Warriors should have the ability to attack at range with a bow or a gun but for some reason that's given to rogues in Rift.
I like Rift. It seems to me from what I read,that casual players like Rift, and most of the complaints come from hardcore gamers. You can't make steak out of a wiener.
Not true. Asheron's Call used to do monthly updates and weekly server wide story driven events. The death of the Ancient Olthoi Queen was epic!
You find me another dev that spits out raid content at Trions pace and I will be shocked. They have without a doubt shown Blizzard is flat out ripping off it's customers.
That 900k might not have all gone to Rift, but they sure as hell wised up to the game Blizzard plays with their sub money. I mean come on 4.2 launched with a 7 boss raid and some dailies and Trion matched it with a 10 boss raid THAT GUILDS ARE still getting destroyed in + a wolrd event + dailies, THEN less then a month later they drop another 10 man raid with another world event + water saga quest PLUS they just hot fixed in more vanity items.
This is also not to mention from the videos we found they have a whole other damn content in the works. The dev pace takes insane to a new level because they must have their devs on a IV feed of Red Bull. The game might piss people off because it takes from the WoW/EQ formula, but the "big competition'" called SWToR specifically said there was nothing wrong with that lol
Trion is doing for Rift in just 5 monthes after launch what Ncsoft didn't do for Tabula Rasa until it was already too late: keeping their dev team actually busy and working on new content and stuff to keep players interested beyond the hype instead of just laying around polishing stuff that already worked fine.
Still miss TR, though.
I love this game, i think their biggest mistake was opening so many worlds during launch day. after people hit level 50, it was hard to find new players and do low level stuff. the truth is with cross realm lfg and many updates, game is fine for level 50. but i think they need more and more players for filling the world. people should want opening alt characters or trian has to make more commercials but they must target non-wow players, cause most of the wow players will quit this game because they tasted another good mmo before.
I've been enjoying Rift for several months now and am really looking forward to what more they have in store for us.
IMO sounds more like u are more interested in wow in a fan point of view,i love stars wars lore and i loved rift but even if stwtor questing system end being boring(wich i doubt) pbly will be better than rift as they dont have a well know or stablished lore,but i still think rift its fun and quests are okay not the best but pbly better than half of the mmos out there(lloking at aion),,,but i do agree rift even with the events and rifts popping out everywhere feels like...just "ok"...maybe need more flasy skills and stupid characters and races and over the top armors to have the feeling wow have lol
true gw2 as a mmo is a big question mark!wow has been on what 6 years almost 7 ,dont know if a format like gw2 can survive the test of time!
as much as Iike Rift, and don't want to see it go "down hill". Man, SWTOR and Guild Wars 2. Not looking good
Kudos to Trion for building a very stable and fun game. I have 3 50's and a level 42 and I just find myself resistant to group up and run instances until my fingers bleed to gear up for raids. If I wanted to do that, I'd be doing it in WoW. So, now what? Sounds like they're being very creative in their alternatives and I give them tons of credit for that. I'd like another way to earn plaques for the tier gear other than instances.
I plan to play SWTOR and to buy GW2 just to at least check out the awesome art if nothing else. If both fail, I think Rift will remain my current game but after 5 years in development and tons of testing, experience and money behind SWTOR, I can't imagine it failing.
This industry has become so very lucrative and so very competitive that it's got to be hard to compete with the heavy hitters. Trion has stepped up to the plate and knocked one out of the park by doing so much right and taking away the wrongs (even little stuff like being able to pull a mount in combat and taking out that stupid stun when you get hit by mobs in the back x times). If they continue to be innovative, use what works and toss what doesn't, there's no reason why they can't be a mainstay in the mmo community. They have been extremely good at adapting to their market and suggestions from their players.
No bitchers.