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My thoughts after a few days with the free trial.
I posted this as a responce in another thread, but was planning on writing a little review. So with a little more polish and fixes....
I've been playing the free trial for Rifts the last couple of days. I've only been disapointed with two things.
The trial only lets you get to lvl 20. I didn't see anything about that and was a little taken back by it.
I'm on a PvP server, and in 20 levels I hadn't experienced any world PvP.
However, what I did experience was suprisingly good. People calling it a WoW clone, or saying it has no depth, really didn't look past the surface. When I started I did see similarities with WoW, but the more I got into it the more I saw it actually had stuff there to set it apart.
Character development is actually very well done. On par with EQ2, probably even better. You actually have a lot of variation in classes, and most of the stuff I've read and seen people talking about seemed to show me that there aren't just a few FoTM builds. I saw people repeatedly asking in chat what was the best class for so and so, and the responces I always saw was, "depends on your playstyle." That says a lot. Even on forums dedicated to class builds, I saw a LOT of diversity within a single class. Disclaimer: I'm sure there are a few class and builds that would be considered FoTM, as pretty much every MMO has them. Balance is always a factor, and no studio has figured out how to completely balance an MMO.
Quests weren't just NPC's that stood around with markers over their heads, even though they were. Each quest hub unfolded a story. It wasn't just 10 guys standing there with markers. It was a couple, you get those quests then someone esle has something to offer, or you wouldn't get a quest from another guy until you completed another guys quests. I never really knew who was going to hand out quests. While on the surface that's no different then just grabbing all the quests at once and doing them, it did provide a little more immersion, as you were unfolding the story.
Warfronts were actually really good. I liked the map layouts, for the two I was able to do, better then WoW or WAR's battleground maps. Terrain seemed to be taken into consideration, both maps had places that ranged characters could get overhead position on the enemy, and line of site played a big part in the fights. 5 years of WoW and I never saw the terain used strategically in a battleground.
Crafting has a lot of depth to it. I would put it on par with EQ2. Crating quest are always nice, it's better then crafting junk just to level your proffesion. There's certianly better MMO's for crafting, but from what I've seen Rift does a pretty good job with it. It's still pretty mindless, but at least they give you some little purpose to make it feel slightly less mindless.
Rifts themselves aren't anymore repetetive then anything else you do in an MMO. They're a part of the overal story, and done rather well for what they are. Especially the big invasions, seeing one of them for the first time was impressive. Rifts are also more then just for getting gear apparently. I stumbled on a vendor who was selling some egg thing, I purchased one out of curiousity, and apparently I can incubate the egg with drops from the earth and fire rifts. I've also constantly got quests involving the rifts, and the ability to start a rifts even if I want. I found it no more repetetive then dungeons in any MMO, better then public quests in WAR, and a lot of fun when lots of people got involved. It was nice playing solo and then suddenly spending the next hour or more in a raid of 20 to 30 people, running around killing giant bosses. They're also a nice diversion from questing, especially when one opens up were you have to complete a quest. It was also cool seeing bad guys swarming to the quest hub from a nearby rift. At one point I was just about to start selling junk to a general vendor, when a bunch of guys came out of a rift and attacked. The vendor ran down to help out; I just stood by and watched. The vendor didn't make it back, I thought that was kind of funny; I probably should have helped out.
They took what was fun in WoW, WAR, and EQ2, polished it up a bit, and then put in their own little twist. Playing Rifts the last few days has felt the same as when I first started CoH, Lineage 2, and WoW.
I've put almost 40 hours into it in the last 3 days. They're doing something right; no other MMO in the last few years has grabbed me that much. I hope to buy it in the next couple of days, and with a little luck I can convince my brother and a friend to play as well.
They go tthat same formula that made WoW a success, simple to learn, hard to master.
Obviously it's not going to be everyones cup of tea. If you're playing WoW or EQ2 with friends, unless they decide to make the switch as well, you're probably not going to, but if you enjoyed WoW and are just looking for something with a little more to it, then Rifts is probably right up your ally. If you're simply tired of the EQ/ WoW formula, then you shouldn't even be looking at this game. If
I can see why the game is popular, and one of the most successful MMO's to release since WoW.
Comments
I cant agree with you about the quests and the quest hubs. They just felt rather badly written and stereotypical even with MMO standards.
Rift is a fine basic game, particularly for new MMO players but they will need to add a better story for the expansion. That and the frequant of DEs needs to be fixed in the future with the expansion whenever it might come. The DEs spawns too often and tends to get annoying instead of fun.
Having 4 classes but plenty choices is a great idea, even though I feel that they can probably improve it more with time.
To be honest, I didn't read 99% of the quests. Really only read the stuff that had an orange background.
Steriotypical? Absolutely. I read all the Lord of the Ring books when I was 12, and a bunch of Forgotten Realms stuff around the same time; to be honest, all fantasy is stereotypical. At least to me.
Whether or not it's bad writting I can't really say. Like I said I didn't read enough of them.
What I did find though, is that I didn't really need to read them fully to understand what was going on. There was enough voice over and chat balloons poping up where I was questing that I understood what was going on, especially with the main sotry arcs. I can't say that about any other MMO, except maybe EQ2 which has a lot of that going on as well.
It was more the way they were handed out that I liked. While it's really no diffirent then any other MMO, it was slightly different enough to not fully feel like every other MMO I played. It was just nice going into a hub, seeing 3 qusts, and progressing from there, instead of having to grab 10 and do them all at once. I know some people would prefer the later, I like the former because I felt a little more connected to the going ons around me.
I also found some quest that were a litte diffirent. Like one to harvest some plants, and another to impress some guy by completeing a variety of feats, like a race and eating poisoned cheese.
I have to strongly disagree about the crafting. Very strongly. Its almost exactly like WoWs. Daily quests that want you to make 3 or 4 of the first items of a tier dont really add a lot IMO. At least there are the crafting Rifts at high level though, but I couldnt be bothered with the soulless grind to get there.
Overall its a solid AAA MMO but light on immersion and flair/soul. If you dont care about those things then you will love Rift for a long time most likely.
Oh the concept of Black Garden BG is cool. They need ot redo that map though and keep it a smaller area.
Agree about the crafting. Rift's crafting system is completely inconsequential. Even worse than WoW's, IMO. Should never be mentioned in the same breath as EQ2's.
The crafting system, at it's core is exactly like WoW, and the magority of every other MMO. I did refer to it as mindless.
What makes it a little diffirent is being able to add properties to it from materials you get with the rifts. The crafting quests help give you at least something to do with some of the stuff you craft, you make more money doing the quests then just selling everything off to a vendor, you're rewarded with crafting currency that allows you to buy rare items, and then as you pointed out you have the high level rifts for rare materials. I do keep in mind though that I've only experienced the game over the course of 3 days. However, I did put in almost 40 hours over the course of those three days. I don't know how relevant crafting is at later stages, I did notice that crafted light armour tended to have better stats at lower levels then armour of a higher level that dropped off mobs or was given as a quest reward. At the same time you do outlevel gear; so the lower level stuff becomes pretty pointless, and again mindless crafting to raise your level.
On the SURFACE yes, it's no different then WoW, but that's most of the game. On the surface, as a whole, the game is no different then WoW.
Not everyone is going to get immersed into the same things. I see people using "a lack of immersion" as why the game won't appeal to people, and that's not really fair. No more then saying that the art style sucks, so if you don't mind sucky art then you'll probably like the game. Well that's entirely subjective. Some people will make a connection with the world and the lore, others won't. The people that don't make a connection won't feel immersed in the game.
The comparison has more to do with being able to add properties to crafted stuff. With EQ2 you get rare resource drops that add effects to the item you're crafting. With Rift you get rare resource drops from closing rifts that add stats to crafted items.
I can choose how I want to modify the item in Rift by using different materials, but the crafted goods, at least at the lower levels, weren't as meaningful as EQ2's. I put it on par with EQ2 becaue I can decide how to modify the item, wereas in EQ2 I don't get to make a choice. Being able to break down armour is nice, even stuff I crafted to get some of the resources back, something I can't do in EQ2.
Also, keeping in mind that SoE made changes to the crafting system over the years to improve it, as well as added new crafting proffesions.
I certainly prefer the meaningfulness of EQ2 crating. Rift has just enough to it for me to not feel as mindless as WoW crafting, even when it is. Each game has their differences, EQ2 and Rift; which to me brought Rift just about on par with EQ2.
And we have to keep in mind that some people don't like EQ2's crafting, and consider it inconsequential, considering you can still get better gear through drops and rewards then you can craft, and you're still crafting a bunch of whatever is giving you levels; either selling it to the vendor or puting it on the market. At it's core, the only thing that EQ2 does differently, is a minigame, and some people would prefer to not have it, myself included. When you get below the surface of EQ2's crafting, there are things there to be appreciated, and that's how I feel about Rift's.
I can t stand rifts, you say they re a diversion from questing, yes sure they can be. What I hated was if you wanted to just go off and quest/explore, they were always in the way. annoying as hell, and way too frequent. If they actually made them quite rare and the rewards alot better, then I wouldn t mind them. They just popped up EVERYWHERE, and annoyed the hell out of me. Other then that the game is your standard MMO, with rifts, that as I said are implemented terribly. If you re looking for month or 2 of entertainment, this game can offer it to you, other then that, I found it extremely boring.
While i agree Rift being boring, just like WoW or any other mmorpg, rifts where never in my questing way. I can not understand, how can rifts be annoying, you can just pass nearby and never get involved if you don't want to.
I can understand that. Some people will find them boring. As I said, they're no more repetititve then doing quests in any MMO.
I haven't had any problems runnng around the world because of them, but they do pop up a lot. It wouldn't really make much sense, or feel much like an invasion if they were infrequent though. And if you're interested in the rewards you can get for dong them, either for crafting stuff or the currencies to buy things, you have to do them rather frequently, and yes that does get repetitive; just like quests.
I can understand some people don't want to have their quest or exploration interupted by something they didn't want to do. I supposed it's kind of like having another play trying to gank you while questing for people who aren't really into PvP. It's not something you were looking to do or even expected; so it can be a little annoying.
Not always could you just pass by them, and many times they took over a quest hub. Neat as it sounds to fight them off and get the hub back, it became an annoyance to me. It s more they re too frequent I guess I should say. No feeling of cool after the 5th time doing it. Just lacked in so many ways IMO.
Its more the frequency, as I said after. I know you can run by them in most cases, but I felt there was no sense of invasion at all after a week or so. More like, oh look another million rifts in the zone. The first few times it was neat, after that, it just became an annoyance. The rest of the game wasn t good enough for me to find it very fun, rifts or not.
Nice constructive write-up worth the read. Very well put together.
Thanks.
The only negative thing I can say about rifts is that it is way too easy to level.
I would agree with the leveling speed.
I tend to find myself wishing MMO's would slow back down. At the same time, I can't imagine how daunting it must be to develop enough content to least weeks or months at every level range. It must be easier to put focus at a single level, and hopefully create a game that would be fun to make alts in. With Rift's class structure I can see it being popular for playing alts.
I also tend to think about CoH whenever I think a game needs to be slowed down. leveling takes some time, so everyone powerlevels and it becomes annoying to find decent groups, or groups that want to do something other then whatever gives the most XP per minute.
Vanilla WoW had a nice leveling curve. They should have had it at that pace.
Tired of hearing how rifts interfere with questing. It's not because it's untrue...but it's not nearly the annoyance most report. Yes they kill mobs you're looking for....but rarely in my experience and respawn rates are not intolerable.. Yes..the npc you need may have been killed. It respawns within a minute.
I like the rifts myself ..so maybe I'm biased...but I also don't consider myself oblivious and incapable of rational judgment based on observation and experience. And from the latter two ..i've decided that these rifts are really not all that inconvenient. Too each his/her own I guess.
side note: just got a new PC and this game runs like butter in the summer sun..smooth as hell. I never thought the game could look better..it really in nice. One of my top three for looks..including AoC and Lotro.
side side note: My all time top so far for best sunrise ..sunsets..is Fallen Earth. They can really look spectacular and the skies and horizons...are awesome. It's free...so check it out if only for that reason..lol. A small thing I know.
Rift events became boring after awhile and the invasions became more of an annoyance.Quests were all about go fetch and go kill quests. Dungeons were like every other dungeons you have seen before. Too much of more of the same old same old.
That's something I didn't point out and have to agree with.
The game looks really good on a system that can crank the graphics up, and runs well. About the only think my PC has trouble with is shadows, I always have to set them to medium, and then ground clutter always gets turned off, just because I like to run shadows. I can't run both ground clutter (foilage) and shadows at the same time.
The only thing that I found I didn't like graphically, I suppose you could lump it in there, would be the jumping animation, mounting, and lack of animation from the character on the mount. These 3 things didn't really detract from the game for me, but I couldn't help thinking they could have done better.
Yeah. Some of the animations are wonky. Not LOTRO bad but very unappealing none-the-less.
Quests will always be the same in an MMO. People waiting for something different or new will never get it, unless they start playing MMO's that aren't about being a hero.
I started playing MMO's with CoH and Lineage 2. CoH gives you guest after quest, L2 didn't really give you that many quests, but in the end they weren't really any different. Go kill X, or collect Y, both games offered the same thing, with different presentation. CoH was contact after contact, L2 was a few guys in an area that gave repeatable collection quests.
I only did one dungeon, and that was at lvl 18. The Iron Tomb in Rift was not like any low level dungeon I ever played in WoW, only on the surface were they similliar. On the surface you're going into a dungeon and killing trash on the way to a mini boss, and then more trash on the way to the main boss. Not really sure what people are expecting developers to do. Every dungeon is the same on the surface in every MMO I've played.
Below the surface a game may offer puzzles in the dungeon, or the ability to trigger an even in a dungeon, or quest givers within the dungeon.
The dungeons I crawl through are no different then any dungeon I've crawled in a single player RPG. In fact they're just like every dungeon I ever created or played threw in a pen and paper RPG.
I just played through Rage. On the surface it wasn't any different then every other shooter or RPG I've played when it came to "dungeons". I would go in and kill stuff on the way to completing an objective. If I didn't enjoy doing that, I wouldn't have though Rage was the best single player game I've played in years. It would have been more of the same old same old.
Nothings really changed since I started really gaming in 1981, or whenever the nintendo released in the US. Zelda isn't any different from any MMO I've played. Get quests, kill mobs, go in dungeon and kill mobs, kill mini bosses, and then kill main boss. The way it's presented to you is the only thing that's really changed since zelda. The old D&D PC games I played in the late 80's and early 90's were all the same, in fact Meridian 59 is the same kind of game as those D&D games, but with a focus on PvP.
I always see people in the Darkfall forums asking if it's like so and so game. Darkfall is just like Meridian 59. That is were that style of gameplay originates.
The only thing that will ever change is the presentation; on the surface it will always be the same old same old. People waiting around for something different will never get it, and will end up playing an MMO that's not any different from what's already out there. ToR is going to be the same old same old, but if you prefer how they do the stories, or the setting then you'll probably get into it, and if that's not enough, then you would be dissapointed there.
Edit: I really sorry about some of the really starnge gramatical errors. My hands don't function correctly, and I'm seeing I keep missing whole words or speling completely different words then I intended. I'm really not as illiterate as it looks, although my spelling is pretty awful.
Vanilla WoW had a nice medium between the long grind of EQ1 and the quick pace of Rift.
When people rave about Trion's quick release of content in its first six months, they leave out the inconvenient truth of this: no other game NEEDED to add this much content in 6 months. And when you get behind the content curve, its impossible to keep up, just ask Blizzard about this. yes, your hardcores will always devour content. But when the casuals get antsy? Thats when you have issues.
And Rift is not popular for alts, because its the same journey up and its not a very compelling journey. In WoW you could choose to revisit your favorite zones, or try out new ones you didnt visit your first time up. And with some classes being able to do up to 4 things, people dont need to roll alts because their characters are all in one. Also there is nothing unique about the leveling process. You can still do your favorite dungeons at 50, Rifts are still there, BGs are still all there.