Debating giving this game a shot

[Timun]

First off, I'm a casual WoW raider. Been through Firelands and most of the other raids in the game, loved 'em all, Heroic modes are a hoot (especially with a good group).

However, I've grown slightly tired with the game. How does Rift compare to WoW?
1. How is the PvP aspect of the game? Is it actually balanced, or a semi-clusterf*** like WoW?
2. How does the gameplay shape up to WoW? Are the mechanics basically the same?
3. Is the world fun to explore? Is it HUGE? Is it dynamic? Is it generally a great place to adventure in?
4. The raiding scene -- is it as huge and competitive as WoW's is? Are the raids enjoyable? Are they difficult, easy (as a whole)?
5. The community in general -- does this game still have a community? I heard it died almost immediately after it launched due to a severe lack of endgame content, so I don't want to hop on board to a game that'll die within 6-8 months to a year.
6. Could I run this game on a Duo Core Intel 2.4GHz with NVIDIA 8600GMT graphics card?

Thanks for your responses!

[Baz]

I'm only lvl 22 so I cant give my opinion on endgame, but--
PvP seems balanced and is better imo. The level brackets are 10-19, 20-29 etc, but aside from higher hp/damage values (which arent too large a jump) its fair. The Warfronts (BGs) I've played are basically hold flag(s) and cap points[on a very arathibasin like map] but they are fun. However, my favorite thing about Warfronts is you get XP per kill, cap, victory/loss, instead of only for caps and victory/loss like in WoW. It makes Warfront leveling extremely viable, and since its mostly balanced [though like 60% of people play ranged rogue in there.], it is also a lot of fun.
I've only experienced two dungeons, questing, and of course rifts, but its well done and balanced. I found the first dungeon, Realm of the Fae, too easy, but I was level 15 and everyone else was 20, so maybe that's it. The world doesn't have nearly as many zones as WoW, but the two I've been in (and Meridian, the Defiant Capital) are really cool. Rifts are well done and fun; but I think rift-farming gets tedious. I just do them when they pop up near me. I won't get into huge detail about invasions, but they are A LOT of fun, and this goes with the community question -
The community is absolutely fantastic. A lot of people say so. If you try it and find it isn't, Dayblind [Oceanic] is where I play, and the people are great. This guy gave me a bunch of pointers, an invite to his guild, and even money for my first mount, at level 10, when most players get the money for them ~20 (also money isn't too easy to get - I've heard at high level you can farm it easily, but prices aren't too high as of now)

Can't comment on the raiding scene yet, and just use Can I Run It? to find out if your pc can play it. (google it, iunno what the website is)
Overall, even after like 8 hours played total, I still find the game a lot more fun and interesting than WoW. Not that WoW is bad, but all I use it for now is raids. If you are casually playing, Rift is definetley a good choice. You can google some boss videos too - Akylios is ~16 minute fight, really epic.

[Vespian]

I can't help you with the pvp aspects of RIFT, but I can tell you a little about the rest.

The mechanics are virtually the same, you will be using the same "hotkey" type gameplay. The world is reasonably large, especially without a mount and rewards explorers with items, ranging from "epic" to "green" or visa versa, if you will. Raiders have the same attitude all raiders have, although I think the amount of raidguilds is definitely not on the same scale as WoW. Perhaps you should compare it to vanilla wow.

The community never died, after release the amount of subs kept rising, although no doubt they've reached a certain stationary point by now. Most servers are average, one or two are full. You can migrate characters from server to server at will, to join friends, guilds, etc.

You can probably run it, but don't expect to be able to run it on max, or even medium, especially if you raid a lot. Raids are quite GFX intense, as I discovered on my old and similar system as your CPU/GFX card indicates.

[Azuri]

First off, I'm a casual WoW raider. Been through Firelands and most of the other raids in the game, loved 'em all, Heroic modes are a hoot (especially with a good group).

However, I've grown slightly tired with the game. How does Rift compare to WoW?
1. How is the PvP aspect of the game? Is it actually balanced, or a semi-clusterf*** like WoW?
2. How does the gameplay shape up to WoW? Are the mechanics basically the same?
3. Is the world fun to explore? Is it HUGE? Is it dynamic? Is it generally a great place to adventure in?
4. The raiding scene -- is it as huge and competitive as WoW's is? Are the raids enjoyable? Are they difficult, easy (as a whole)?
5. The community in general -- does this game still have a community? I heard it died almost immediately after it launched due to a severe lack of endgame content, so I don't want to hop on board to a game that'll die within 6-8 months to a year.
6. Could I run this game on a Duo Core Intel 2.4GHz with NVIDIA 8600GMT graphics card?

Thanks for your responses!

I would recommend poking around their main website at www.riftgame.com there's plenty of info regarding content and videos to get you started. Try the free trial and see if your system can handle it. It's much more demanding on your PC then wow so I can't say for sure how your system will perform.

[Saladbar]

1. Similar to WoW; I personally like it better, mainly because of the shared DRs on stuns/etc, but some people like WoW PvP better. There is certainly more world PvP in Rift, even lots to be found on PvE servers.
2. Similar gameplay/mechanics to WoW.
3. World size subjective. Dynamic aspects of the environment are my favorite part of the game. Trion has given folks lots of reasons to be out and about, so not everyone is just chilling in the capitol cities.
4. Newer raids are plenty difficult. Seems to be plenty of raiding guilds on my servers. You get free realm transfers, so you can move to find a server that suits your needs.
5. Community is great. Rift has way more end game content than other similar games out there now.
6. Yea, I think that is comparable to what I had when I started playing, but I had to run on low settings. Didn't make the game any less fun.

[Timun]

Thanks everyone for the responses! I checked the system requirements, and I roughly meet the recommended requirements, but God knows how I'll fare with my ancient, boot camped MacBook Pro.

[Magepot]

Mkay. So, I played this game for a bit about a month after it came out. And I was like 'Screw WoW! I ragequit! I'm going to Rift!'

So, that didn't last too long, and I came back to WoW. Before I answer your questions, I'll tell you of my personal experience and what made me come back to WoW.

I thought Rift was a fun game. While yes, the questing is an echo of WoW (like WoW questing is an echo of games before it) - it had a very unique feel due to the Rifts. Rift has a sort of vanilla WoW feel to it, in the sense the community is great (although they already added in cross server BGS and such), because they band together to fight the Rifts. The way the Rifts are done (and the loot from them) is neat as well. I wasn't too impressed with the diversity of it, other than obviously class wise. Since very few games outside of WoW have impressed me enough to actually give them a try, the multi-class tree system was incredible for me. Although I generally just ended up using spells from mainly one tree. It didn't have the overall polish that World of Warcraft has, though, is the bottom line. While the Rifts and Class systems are wonderful, the quests (though like WoW) lacked something, I wasn't impressed with the professions or cities, and the worst part to me is the lore. The Lore is not deep at all, and very basic. AND I NEED LORE, LOTS OF IT. Though, of course, Warcraft has been around for AGES of course it's been able to build up it's lore into something phenomenal. And that was my take.
Is it worth a shot? Yes. You might like it, it's not a bad game, and you might stick to it.
Was I impressed? Kind of? It's like WoW. Only with less polish. That doesn't mean I didn't stick around and get a break from WoW, though, for a bit - which was much needed : ). WoW offers more for their players, much more.

Now, answering your questions.

1. They have a PVP spec tree for PVP to attempt to balance it. I would say PVP is decently balanced. When dealing with that many tree/class combinations it's hard to get it perfect. I prefer WoWs PVP, though.
2. It's similar. You'll feel right at home. I didn't come across any of the neat vehicle mechanics that WoW has added in, though, which I really like.
3. Is it HUGE? No. Not at all. They made it smaller, much, much smaller than even vanilla WoW. They did this due to the Rifts, there have to be a lot of people in a zone to take it down, so the zones are smaller - but, also, it adds onto the 'community' I talked about.
4. Since I haven't played recently at all, I don't know at this point.
5. Yes, and it feels like a closer community (server wise) since you have to band together, and also since Rift is a much less popular game than WoW - so less players in general.
6. : o I suck at this computer stuff. If you can run WoW you can probably run Rift though at low settings.

[Azuri]

In response to megepot's post I value posts that actually are well written and given some thought. Not to discredit the post by any means but this is a common response form people who played the game for the first month after launch. The entire game has gone through massive improvements and content releases since launch and doing comparisons from playing then to now just don't have much of a valid argument ground to stand on.

One point I semi-disagree with is that wow has more content then rift, while true in the overall picture I would say yes but for relevant current content rift now trumps wow by a long shot and this is based on my opinion of course and I can say this after playing both games actively since their launches.

[Requiemcliff]

[/COLOR]Well, after playing for about two months in March to May (Left due to RL/Friends, not as much the game), and coming back for about three weeks now, here is generally my responses...

1. I don't PvP much, from what I know it's balanced to an extent, it's not great, but it's not that bad either, expect to be roflstomped while getting your first few prestige ranks. (As said though, I don't PvP much.)
2. Similar Mechanics, same hotkey based style, there are plenty of differences, but it does have a WoW styled interface, though I liked WoWs interface, so it doesn't bug me much.
3. I'd actually say, yeah, I love the exploration, most zones have a puzzle implemented in them as well, a hidden literal puzzle, where you can get loot from it, as well as artifacts to collect, it's a ton of fun to do, the world is still a bit small, at 1.6 though, the Ember Isles will be opened which will add twice the size of the biggest area in the game.
4. Most Raid Rifts aren't entirely hard, but they are essentially puggable, dungeon raids are fairly difficult, and there are plenty of dedicated raiders.
5. It's an active community for the most part, most servers are medium population at least...and people expected tons of end game content when it first came out? They had a raid coming out nearly every two months, jeeze...(sorry for the complaining, but no MMO I can think of had more than one or two raids)
6. You could, but probably semi-crappily, I need to upgrade my graphics card still...

[Eorayn]

I got to level 35 in the Beta and actually liked it

Reasons for not buying it myself:
-Monthly Subscriptions
-None of my friends would buy it
-Became tired of leveling new characters because there only is one path through the game.

[xizor98]

anyone claiming rift pvp is more balanced than wow pvp is either delusional or outright lying. If you think wow pvp is unbalanced, please, for the love of god, do NOT get Rift expecting to find anything resembling balance. Also the movement in Rift is stiff and boring, and while there are more options classwise (roles or whatever), there is also correspondingly more which are laughably bad for pvp. The worst part though is that the entire point of the game (the RIFTS!!) has been lost already. Hardly anyone participates in rift events anymore, save the occasional pvp rifts in the high level zones. If there was more of that sort of world pvp, it would almost offset all the negatives, but as it is, no. It bears noting that any sort of world pvp is better than wow's world pvp which has been dead for several consecutive expansions now.

Overall the pvp isn't bad in Rift, but it's not as good as wow's in any form. It feels slow and mechanical in comparison, the balance is exponentially worse than in wow (and this probably won't ever change given how many roles there are), even the sound effects lack any punch or distinction (distinctive sound is important in pvp). Stay away from Rift if pvp is your focus. Wow is the better bet.

[Deleted]

The worst part though is that the entire point of the game (the RIFTS!!) has been lost already. Hardly anyone participates in rift events anymore, save the occasional pvp rifts in the high level zones. If there was more of that sort of world pvp, it would almost offset all the negatives, but as it is, no. It bears noting that any sort of world pvp is better than wow's world pvp which has been dead for several consecutive expansions now.

Not sure if serious?

Every event i have done in a while has had too many people at them. Half the time the bosses that spawn in the new Fire/Earth invasions are dead before i can get to them. I assume if you have even played Rift you must have not move off a trial realm?

While i think the pvp is more balanced than WoW * Frost mages cough* its not really balanced either. The main issue with Rift pvp is the gear discrepancy. That is the same in wow tho a P8 bloke with ker-splat you in seconds just like a Season whateveritisnow will ker-splat you in seconds.

The reason Rift pvp will always be more balanced than wow is simply due to no arena. They try and balance around proper group pvp unlike the insane Buff/Nerf cycle in wow based on the current OP 3's team. Indeed wow is much slicker to control than in Rift but its not as bad as you are trying to make out. On Riptalon there are PvP Rift kicking off a few times a day now on average during the times i play at. Some days there are more and some day there are less. What realm , if any , do you play/played on?

To the OP. Unless you are happy to put in the time to grind up the gear you will find Rift pvp to be borked but imho when you get the gear is alot more fun than wow. Just for the fact that you can do alot more. On my Rogue i can pew pew at range untill bored then change to a more traditional sneaky rogue with a melee build. Just now i am having tremendous fun with a Bard/Rift Stalker build. Think of it as a buff bot with aoe healing, multiple teleports and a few good CC's. Very hard to lock down with pretty good damage and insane Aoe healing on a 3 min cooldown. Thats the great thing about Rift pvp and why it will never really be balanced tho so much choice. In wow my Rogue was..well a rogue. I could sneak about and stab things with some good CC but that all i could ever be.

[xizor98]

i'm on Briarcliff. I was led to believe this was an active pvp server but it's been pretty sparse so far. Perhaps if i was into raiding the raid rifts in the high level zones I'd see more people, but as is, short of raid rifts (and certainly while leveling) it's usually like running through northrend now, just a barren wasteland.

Other than that, it's basically just wow but stiff. Everyone joins warfront queue ignoring the world pvp aspect almost entirely (not quite entirely yet, just almost). Server community is total shit since basically just wow rejects play anyway. Same elitist mentality covered by the anonymity offered by remote queues. If I'm gonna play a game like that, it might as well be smoother and better balanced. So Wow it is. I haven't even touched the pve aspect of Rift so i have no input on that.

I am a fresh (last weekish) 50, but I've played enough to know that wow pvp feels better and is more balanced. I do like that my rogue is able to go healer (though my bard is pretty meh in pvp) or hunter or even tank (which is surprisingly fun in pvp) on the fly. Although I usually just stay assassination.

[Deleted]

I am a fresh (last weekish) 50, but I've played enough to know that wow pvp feels better and is more balanced.

No wonder you think its unbalanced. When you start out anyone P6 or above will kill you by looking at you. When i started even with the P1/2 gear the turbulence of a P8 weapon killed me. With all due respect calling the pvp shit when you must have crap gear is pretty absurd. Even getting upto the P4 gear was a revelation. You get the weapons and alot more survivability and you can be a functioning team member rather than feeling like an impediment.

Its the same in any form of mmo activity. You cant raid in greens and you cant pvp in greens. If you try you will just get frustrated and end up loathing it. Sounds like you have made up your mind tho. At least you gave it a shot unlike alot of folk who come to this forum. Sounds like you are on a pretty crappy realm as well. If you move to a more active pvp realm and gear up some you may find you will enjoy it alot more. I know i did.

[Sanguinesun]

Rift is alright. Its got some appeal but it doesnt have the depth in activity that some other games have.

Its relatively smooth game play but there are some bugs or issues (pet pathing being one that comes to mind or a few subzone transition lockups).

Socialization wise, its got some features that improve such socialization but yet the social discord issues with typical gamers still exists(drama, chat trolling etc).

Other than that its virtually the same as any kill 10 pigs mmo.

[Tarien]

Rift is alright. Its got some appeal but it doesnt have the depth in activity that some other games have.

Its relatively smooth game play but there are some bugs or issues (pet pathing being one that comes to mind or a few subzone transition lockups).

Socialization wise, its got some features that improve such socialization but yet the social discord issues with typical gamers still exists(drama, chat trolling etc).

Other than that its virtually the same as any kill 10 pigs mmo.

I have a feeling that someone played in beta/launch and hasn't the faintest clue what's been introduced/fixed in the past six months in terms of the terrabytes of patches.

[Redblade]

From some one that only played for a month or so I can say that the PvP feels much like oldschool Vanilla wow with better balance, lots of big brawl type fights, world PvP is there if you go look for it, at least on my shard, and gear does wonders, even the rank 1-2 made a big difference on survivability.

Generally the game feels like it offers much more to do in the world than WoW, sure some of the content might become a bit stale after a while much like any game but at least the choice is there, in WoW all I can think of is raid or arena basically, unless you want to go back and do achieves or are one of those that don't prefer stabbing your eyes out rather than doing archaeology.

The world feels bigger even if it's not that huge, simply because you don't have a flying mount (which is a good thing imo, never realized how bad it was for the game until I started Rift), if you have the right mindset for exploration without looking everything up beforehand it can be lots of fun to just go around and gather artifacts along the way.

All in all I would say it gives much of the old vanilla WoW feeling, there is rep grinds, the PvP ranks is another grind, gearing for PvE took a little effort but nothing to bad. By grinds I don't mean it in a negative way, rep grinds and similar is goals that one can set for one self and as such creates something to do in game, there is no force to do it, but there for you if you want the reward at the end of the tunnel.

[russykh]

I would say just try it. Grab the free trial and give it a shot, but try and play it not thinking of wow or trying to play it like you would wow. Most people who do the "I tried it and it sucked so I came back to wow" are really just looking for a prettier wow, or have an axe to grind with Blizzard despite actually liking wow, and try to play the game like they would wow. Its not really, and you have to really try playing it on its own strengths and see if its for you. It may not be, but the only way you'll find out for sure is trying it.

[Redblade]

I would say just try it. Grab the free trial and give it a shot, but try and play it not thinking of wow or trying to play it like you would wow. Most people who do the "I tried it and it sucked so I came back to wow" are really just looking for a prettier wow, or have an axe to grind with Blizzard despite actually liking wow, and try to play the game like they would wow. Its not really, and you have to really try playing it on its own strengths and see if its for you. It may not be, but the only way you'll find out for sure is trying it.

That's what I did, didn't read up on anything like what to level as or how to do X, Y and Z, simply loged in and played the game figuring things out as I went along. Some stuff you end up needing to search for at the end of it but it was well worth just playing the game for what it was instead of trying to do it the "correct" way.

[Sanguinesun]

I have a feeling that someone played in beta/launch and hasn't the faintest clue what's been introduced/fixed in the past six months in terms of the terrabytes of patches.

Never played in Beta. Thus you're wrong on that point. Nor have I played prior to my joining the game 3 weeks or so ago when steam did a deal on it for just a few bucks.

Also, my views and thoughts have not one iota of concern towards any past improvements in the game nor the size of patches there of. It comes strictly from the last 3 weeks or so in game.

Sorry to disappoint your hubris laced assumptions.

But perhaps to clarify what Im saying a tad more with these past 3 weeks of game play:

Pathing:

Ranger's boar has on more than one occasion charged 30-45 degrees off at an angle from the intended target. Its also charged into visible terrain and as well in some rare cases gotten hitched from pathing to a mob because of an incline(up slightly) in the terrain between the mob and the boar. And Im just highlighting the pathing issues there not with other bugs Ive encountered with em. I've also seen similar with other classes pets while leveling/rifting.

In Scarlet gorge heading south from the main quest hub for guardians where the river bends more easternly, there is evidently a subzone transition that locks up people. I wasnt the only one that experienced it as I had 2 different rift parties get snagged there with most either having to end task through task manager to get out of the freeze then log back in or a few times it unfroze(saw from task manager when the not responding shifted to running). Most of this happened last week when I was leveling the ranger in that zone but as of yesterday when I passed through there again to fill a mining need, it did it again. Before you call out my rig for it, my comp runs to gtx 580 cards 12gigs ram and other bells n whistles and again I wasnt the only one who encountered the problem.

Other than that and the other issues I've spoke a lil bit about the game has been pretty smooth... as I said before.

Socialization issues: same as other mmos as I specified. Ive seen a few plat sellers in Sanctum. In the 1-29 chat this week alone was a guy being pretty blatantly racist for a good 30 min before stopping(seems he got popped) and another held the same channel and belittled and insulted everyone who tried to speak in it for any reason... ie typical wow style barrens chat and hence no dif than other mmos.

Blind guild invite in sanctum on most occasions if hitting during the peak evening hours. And I can go on. Features I was saying were nice compared to say the likes of wow were the ease with world event and rift group joining or quests and some of the guild features for communication too. this is what I meant by improve. Not improvement over time of the game(as again I just started 3 weeks ago) but in comparrison to other mmo's features.

Again as well still the kill 10 pigs style mmo questing wise. In some ways its even more recycled as some mechanics of missions and mob type skins are same with only minor differences. This isnt necessarily a big deal as many mmo's do it and Rift is not -that- big of an mmo by comparrison. Rifts are one of the more unique aspects of the game yet once you've done the basic mechanics of it(and with the current world event running) you get pretty used to and or sick of it. To put it another way, first day of phase 1 I got my raptor mount whilst running from rift to rift a few hours through rift raid groups on randoms and then 2 events in while in gloam. Since then I've earned enough to get a second one plus over 4k in those other tokens for other items from the vendor in sanctum(24 slot bag for phase 3 will be nice when it starts). My character as of today is not yet 50 But I should hit it in a few days depending on my play time.

The game is alright. Its not necessarily the best and its certainly not the worst mmo I've ever played. I wont sub for Novemeber however. Its just not engaging enough nor offer enough that I feel it warrants it. There's other games coming out staggered over the next 4 months that I'd rather give a go at. If I change my mind then later and want to return its of course easily done.