1. #1
    I am Murloc!
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    Fresh 50 Perspective...(a review of sorts)

    I wanted to give a little perspective and hopefully give some helpful tips for people who are considering playing Rift. I just dinged 50 and leveled through the end of patch 1.5 into the start of 1.6. I often see comments along the lines of “I played in beta for an hour and didn't like it” or “I played at launch to level 12 and hated it” and I feel the comments are a dated and erroneous. I wanted to also give a quasi-review of the game from a fresh 50 as I believe there is more to the game if people are willing to do more than just scratch the surface.

    *Disclaimer: Some of you Rift vets will have to excuse my noob-ish terminology and ignorance on a few of the points made in the post.

    For starters, I am not a fanboy or have allegiance to Rift or any game for that matter. To me, Rift and every other game I've ever played is just that; a game. I've played WoW off and on for years and to varying degrees (everything from very casual to hardcore raiding). I don't hate or dislike WoW in the least, I just found something I like better so that is what I play. If anything, I am Nook fanboy to the bitter end . Additionally, I plan to play SW:TOR when it comes out but I also plan on keeping my Rift sub and playing both (having two subs at once will be a first for me) because I am having a lot of fun in this game. That said, here are a few tips and perspectives I have on Rift:

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    1. When events are going on in your zone; take part.
    This is where I've met nearly everyone on my friends list and also the people who I group up with to do dungeons (see statement 3). Once the zone event is over people will usually be looking for other groups to complete objectives, go after rares, do world bosses, or do dungeons or something of that nature so it is easy to latch onto another group or form your own and go do something else after then event is over.

    Zone and world events (and soloing rifts) generally give much better XP than doing questing, dailies or dungeons. I was able to go from 49.5 to 50 in a little over three hours last night because two zone events launched back to back in Stillmoore. It would have taken several times longer to complete that half a level going with a more conventional MMO style of gaining XP.

    Also, the zone events are an absolutely blast! Zone events, especially the higher level ones, are really unlike anything I've experienced in a game. Often times I sees several dozen people in a main group racing around completing objectives, a secondary group protecting the main group from invaders that were constantly attempting to stream into the main group's battles, and several smaller groups defending outposts or downing smaller invasion hubs only to have [almost] everyone meet up at the end to down the final boss. It is both exciting and a lot of fun to be a part of a large, open world battles like this.


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    2. Leveling can get really grindy if you prefer to level through just doing quests.
    Rift is your standard “collect 10 of x, kill 15 of y” formulation while leveling. Mobs have more health and hit harder so it can take a while to do some quests if you have to take a survivability spec like warriors often do. Some of the quest chains have you going back to the same area several times for different things and it gets annoying. IPP has a chain where you go into the same cave to fight the same mobs six times for different reasons/items. It is cosmetically my favorite zone so far in the game, but that quest chain drove me crazy. Not all zones/areas/quest hubs are like this, but the few that are can zap a lot of fun out of the game while you are enduring it and definitely need to be reworked. In addition, quests are very dry for the most part and it is kind of sad when getting turned into an ant to kill/subdue other ants (via Droughtlands) stands out as a high point in the process. Zone events, closing rifts, getting groups for dungeons is the best way around this.

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    3. More dungeons while leveling, please?
    I have to tell you I was blown away at dungeons when I first started Rift. They are truly a treat. As much as people may not like Realm of the Fae or Darkening Deeps I was absolutely impressed with the thought and detail that went into these dungeons. Unfortunately, there are only 8 dungeons between being able to queue up (level 14 I think) and level 48 which can make them repetitive and doing a random gives you a good chance of getting queued for the same dungeon over and over long after it has stopped giving much in the way of XP.

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    4. The LFG isn't dead, it just isn't the same as WoW.
    The LFG isn't a bad thing to be queued for while you are off questing and closing rifts, but your wait time can be rather long. One reason being that a lot of people group with friends, guildies, or use chat to form groups instead of relying on the LFG button. Another reason being that since there are no pure classes in the game it can make leveling an alt less of a priority for people. The level 50 population is healthy, but the lower level zones can get a little lonely at times depending on your sever.

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    5. Rift CAN be exactly like WoW with a different skin if YOU choose for it to be.
    By that I mean that there is enough variation in how you develop your skills and enough familiarity with WoW to enable players make very similar builds if they choose to.

    My questing build on my rogue is very similar in dynamics to a Sub rogue in WoW (albeit much more fun and fast paced with consistently high single target damage) but for dungeons and soloing rifts where AoE is needed I take on a spec which really isn't like anything I've played in WoW. Also, I have an alt which I affectionately refer to as my 'Parareaver' which I use primarily for soloing rifts (can get most rifts to level 6 or 7 depending on what shows up). It is basically a dual-wielding parry/aoe dps based tank (closest thing in WoW would probably be a hybrid tankadin and blood dk but doesn't really play like either one).

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    7. If you don't know...ask someone!
    The community in Rift is perhaps the best I've experienced in any online game; MMO or otherwise. I don't know why this is, but I am sure as hell not complaining. Asking a question in chat will, surprisingly enough, get you an answer and even some helpful tips instead of getting flamed for being new to the game or not already knowing something. That isn't to say that the flamers and capital city trolls aren't part of the community as well, but at least in my experience they seem to be the exception and not the rule. The population is small enough that people DO get reputations in this game which I think moderates some of the behavior.

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    8. Rift is centered around level cap.
    You will start to see how evident this is as you get into your late 40's (level-wise) where your various rewards are centered around transitioning to to level 50 (such as xp gains on planar attunement) and how certain world events are geared towards level 50 players. Since I am a fresh 50 and haven't experienced much of it yet, I have tier 1 dungeons, tier 2 dungeons, raid tier 1 and raid tier 2, planar attunement, maxing my crafting professions, and a whole new continent to look forward to. I think the leveling process suffers a little for this, but they do a very good job of rolling out content for level capped players.


    Overall, I am continually impressed with Rift. It is a good MMO and worth the time that a person will put into it. The buy-in can be extremely low (I picked it up for $5) and I think it offers a lot of fun for the monthly price. Trion almost makes me want to put on a tinfoil hat as many of the things I wished were in an MMO are present in Rift or in the works for future release. The animations are good, the art style is beautiful, and the few bugs I've run into so far are not game breaking in the least (although more than a couple have resulted in some good belly chuckles). Part of me thinks they have devs that lurk the MMO-C forums as well as their own to keep a close eye on what will/wont be accepted and enjoyed by the player base and are constantly trying to take things up a notch compared to the status quo.
    Last edited by Rooflesstoofless; 2011-11-21 at 02:35 AM.

  2. #2
    Really nice review. Very accurate on all points.

    #8 is the one a lot of people miss about Rift.

  3. #3
    huh only wish I made reviews this good because that is very well rounded. If I had to take a guess Trion had 100mil to work with and they dropped 50mil of it into Rift. They had to choose to put it into the leveling process or put it into end game.

    Turns out the end games made people flip out because they had not seen something good in years. The hype behind Rift is this random dev out of nowhere made a seriously triple A game out of nowhere. I sort of wonder if they plan on revamping the lowbie areas to encourage alts. Eventually we all know extra races are coming. These are EQ devs after all.

    Another thing with the helpful community pretty simple. Most of the kids left and alot of guilds in Rift are 18+ and while we get lulz from joking sometimes the community is very defensive about WoW type trade chat taking over.

    Also where else are you going to find videos like these



    Not even NCSoft/Sony or anyone is putting out raids like this. You got Blizzard a multi Billion dollar company....EA/Bioware a multi billion dollar company and then you got Trion funded by the mafia I think


  4. #4
    I am Murloc!
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    I haven't seen that second video before, that...is...awesome! I have a long way to go before I get to that point I am sure.

  5. #5
    First video is lawl. Glad I watched it all the way through.

  6. #6
    Brewmaster Syce's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HBpapa View Post
    I haven't seen that second video before, that...is...awesome! I have a long way to go before I get to that point I am sure.
    it takes a while to get to him. theres like only a handful of guilds that are up to him. a lot of the prior bosses are very unforgiving and some need high resist such as water or Death resist to handle it.

  7. #7
    Akylios is also kinda hard. Can be chugging along 10mins into fight... a few mistakes = wipe.

    Which makes Akky a very exhausting boss encounter.

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