In a tug of war between WoW & Rift..

[potis]

I was gonna answer your post long ago before people did, with honest answers about the game.

I played WoW since day one, been researching about it ever since i heard of it (Warcraft 3 CD ftw!), i have taken big breaks from it, TBC for over a year, WoTLK for 10 months and Cataclysm for 10 months (Rift ftw for the cataclysm one >_>), during my play time i was always playing properly and hardcorely.. Cthun on farm on Vanilla, most bosses in Naxx vanilla, very fast early progress in SSC/TK, Ulduar Hardmodes very early on etc..

MoP is gonna be the same as TBC/Wrath/Cata was, something completely new, a full reset, a reason to check out new stuff, its like a huge content patch for WoW and its the reason many people return the first 2-3 months, its how WoW is and that will never change, WoW is indeed a great game, but for people that played it for a long time, its a bit boring, but when an expansion hits, its the same, new stuff to check and learn the first month!

Now you asked about Rift and its endgame.

This sentence expalins it well "Its the offspring of TBC and Vanilla WoW".

What that means:

1)Raiding mechanics are unforgiving there is no :

"Here is normal, you can stand in the fire for 2-3 seconds, just move out after"

Or

"Here is the hard mode, same fight as before, but move out of the fire the first 3 seconds or you die"

There is lots of:

"Yeah, you see the effect that spawned? I dont know what you are gonna do, get the hell away instantly or you die"

Not all mechanics are like that but you get the point, the damage/health ratio on many abilities of the bosses are simply unforgiving and failing on them stresses your healers much more than they should, assuming you can survive them.

There are also some resistance fights where resistance highly helps or is required, as example, think Ragnaros in Vanilla WoW and Princess Huhuran, not all fights are like that, but a few are, including the hardest boss in the game right now, Akylios (He wont be the hardest after March i think >_>.)


2)If you are used to WoW gamestyle, Rift will surprise you in many ways.


a)The most important part of Rift and the reason i cant jump ship.

The class system, its simply awesome to myself as a Rogue to have the power to switch specs.

In short example in WoW terms.

In 1.7, Rogue specs will be even more refined that you can have multiple options without hindering your raid, what does that mean, my main spec right now is Marksman, which is as it sounds, Marksmapship hunter in WoW, silence, big shots etc...

What makes Rift is awesome is, that my Combat Rogue (Bladedancer spec) is on the same character, and what makes it even more awesome..my tanking spec (Riftstalker) is on the same character, same as my bleed spec (Sin spec), and my Beastmaster (WoW-Wise, not Rift wise, talking about Ranger) same as my Support spec (Bard).

b)If you are used to the easy-mode WoW grinding that WoW became after Wrath of the Lich King, Rift will tire you.

The grinding isnt heavy, its just not easy mode,but they are making it easier and more refined patch after patch, doesnt mean its easy, you wont be wearing Hammerknell (The top gear) in 2 weeks, unless you get carried by a guild.

c)Rift literally starts at endgame, and this is really important to understand, there are many new players saying they dont meet many people while leveling the main reasons are that

1)A class covers most stuff.

2)Lots of things to do at 50, to roll an alt, doesnt mean you cant roll an alt, it just means if you want to finish everything on your main, it takes awhile.

d)PvP wise, many people are complaining about PvP, but thats because they look at it from the "5v1" prospective that they meet in Warfronts (Battlegrounds), the game isnt as bad as people make it sound. "He killed me in 2 seconds"

Yes people die in 3 seconds 5v1 if they dont do anything, same as in WoW, same as in every game you are 5v1 ..

I am wearing full PvE gear and i survive up to 5-10 seconds if i play back, and because of the gear level against some players i actually kill them (And die from dots...Fuck PvE gear!)

Generally dont read the PvP forums much, they exaggerate a lot.

Yes there is no competitive PvP in Rift (No Arena), but they have some weird plans for 1.8 apparently, just a rumor though, so cant say much on that.

Anyways, PvP is getting changed to make the progression, smoother for new players, the gear changes and the rank changes coming in a couple of weeks, ensure more "fair play"

The PvP grinding is heading towards WoW way, so it will be familiar to you but with a difference.

They made it so the new players will progress through gear equally while playing in PvP.

The lowest rank gear was removed, you start from Rank 3-4 Gear (I dont know when you played WoW last, but think of it as starting with 346 item level gear), then use the same items+ some Favor (Honor) to buy the rank 5-6 gear.. (Think of it..as item level 365 or so), then Rank 7-8 Gear (Think of it as item level 390 or so), but you need the rank for the weapon..But there are some crafts, and drops and changes in the game that will help you with that.

It just means what it means in WoW, the guy with the big weapon will hit you harder than you hit him, but you will survive enough to actually play.

[Sleepysnik]

As a casual non raiding player, I can say that I enjoy Rift way more than TOR/WoW. When you say that Rift isn't as casual friendly as TOR/Wow in my opinion you are wrong. I can't really say anything about the difficulties of the raids since I've only done GSB once but I don't feel a need to raid in Rift, since it has so much more to offer for a casual than wow/tor has by miles.

Atm Im playing all three games actively, wow since beta but I prefer Rift. Will cancel my Swtor sub after this month and maybe Wow.
Played Rift since release and still haven't found any need to raid at all like I do in other MMOs since it's not lacking fun stuff to do outside instances.

Lol I was looking for this kind of reply, so many raiders saying they don't recommend rift to their non hardcore raider friends :P I also played since release, so far I have raided a total of 5-6 times. Cleared all t1 content except greenscale, but that was with good groups from my guild. As you said, I don't feel the need to! I know that if I for instance were to be out of work for a longer period I would probably jump into it, but my schedule is rather busy so I'm just happy that this game entertains me pretty much 95% of the time even tho I'm super casual. I must say that was missing for me in WoW.

RAIDERS! You can probably stop telling your friends that Rift is mostly for progression raiders, we are at least two people who disagree! :P

[Deleted]

Thats not the point I want a game I can stay on and grow with a community, I dont want to play an MMO on a character I will only have for a month

If you want a community then wow is not the place to be tbh, the community here is dead and has been for a long time and its really sad to see as ive been playing wow for a very long time. Now after a 2nd failure with the raid content I decided to find a better place to spend my time and first I gave swtor and well lets just say like this, its a singleplayer game nothing more(enjoyed the hell out of the story leveling part) so after that i looked around for a proper game and i found rift and I love it!

Starting playing wow at this time is not a good choice as the game is in hibernation untill MoP.

[probert]

I have an ongoing subscription to both. I've moved my gameplay to Rift almost exlucisvely, for a few reasons. 1) there's a ton of content to consume that i haven't even got to yet. 2) new content every 6 weeks.

WoW 4.3 is the same in December as it is in January as it will be in May or June -- until MoP. I've hit 85 on three toons, raided Firelands (normal) and Deathwing too thanks to LFR, cleared all the dungeons and maxed all my reputations. I can revisit the same content over two more times if I want at harder and harder difficulty (normal, then heroic), but otherwise i've 'done' the expansion.

Rift has so much content, that I'm almost paralzyed every time i logon. Do i want to focus on crafting or rifts or pvp or join a raid or an instant adventure or do a chronicle or run some dungeons... maybe i just want to go trinket hunting, or attempt some of the exploration achievements (like some of the physics jumping/climb to weird spots; or the zone puzzles). Its an embarassment of riches.

WoW is always around if you want to play. You can resub for a month if you feel nostalgic. Unless you're looking to continue a long term commitment to a raiding or arena team, though, i think you can find what interests you and more in Rift.

[Andronian]

I ended up quitting WoW because it rarely got updated, Rift seems to get updated much more with new content, keeping the game fresh. My $.02

[mmokid527]

If you like content go with Rift.Rift currently has 7 raids right now with 5 boss min in each.Also 4.3 is terrible and is when I left the game Rift is much more challenging from the raiding all the way up to there expert dungeons.If you like things being super easy and having minimal content that wow is probably a good choice.

---------- Post added 2012-07-10 at 01:57 AM ----------

But yeah take it from someone who played wow up until the midde of 4.3 the game is in the worst state it has ever seen.Id never thought I would play Rift but I'm not going to lie this game has shocked me so far I can't believe I took so long to give it a serious go.Get to 50 and I promise you won't be disappointed.Don't do what most fanboys do including myself at one point in time and pick it up for 10 levels than quit because its unfamiliar and not wow and figure it sucks.Change always takes time to get use to but you will be glad you did. Maybe blizz will turn it around with MOP but by the looks of things I don't think so

[Lathais]

A friend of mine came over and was watching me play Rift one day. His comment was it looks a lot like WoW to him. Without actually playing both it would be really hard to see the differences as they are both very similar in a lot of ways. I hear a lot of people say, and somewhat agree, that Rift difficulty is more on par with TBC difficulty as opposed to WotLK and Cata, though I am not good at providing specific examples.

What I can say is that Rift has a lot more quality of life features, and more being added all the time. The "talent system" in Rift, IMO, is far superior. Sure, there are still cookie cutter builds, but you have a lot more room to play around. You have several "trees" to choose from, pick any three you want and mix and match them. The upper and lower tree thing works well and is pretty cool. You can save up to 6 specs and switch between them at will instead of only having 2. Many classes have much more versatility than WoW too. A cleric for example can have 2-3 Different Healing specs(Single Target, AoE, HoT) that he can switch between at will for bosses/trash/PvP, a melee DPS Spec, a Ranged DPS spec and a Tank spec. There are also true support roles, like Bard for example, that neither do a lot of DPS or Heals(well, they can actually) but mostly provide Buffs/debuffs. Support roles are really missing from a lot of MMOs out there, and I really like having them in Rift.

A few other smaller examples are just simple things, like looting while mounted. A system they added in a recent-ish patch that impressed me was being able to que as a group for Warfronts(BGs) and once you que, a snapshot is taken of your group and you can split your group up, join another group, add members to your group or whatever, and when the que pops, your original group is reformed and you join the WF together.

I think the best part about Rift though, that hands down beats WoW, is the fact that there are constantly things going on to get players out into the open world doing things, in different areas, all the time. This really opens the door for what is, IMO, one of the best aspects of MMO's...world PvP. There are zone events and world events that have PvE bosses and fights can, will and do break out into PvP battles.

[Puremallace]

WoW is still good. Rift is a change of pace, but essentially similar to WoW. I don't think Rift will ever beat WoW, but for now it's cheaper and still fresh.

This is not really true, but it is a nice general statement accepted by a majority of the sheep in the mmorpg community. Blizzard could take a dump on this guys chest and he would say it is warm because they put so much dev time into it.

Blizzard just has a fan base with more brand loyalty then Trion does. Guess it is a advantage of basically monopolizing the mmo market for 7 years straight with no actual competition.

[Lathais]

This is not really true, but it is a nice general statement accepted by a majority of the sheep in the mmorpg community. Blizzard could take a dump on this guys chest and he would say it is warm because they put so much dev time into it.

Blizzard just has a fan base with more brand loyalty then Trion does. Guess it is a advantage of basically monopolizing the mmo market for 7 years straight with no actual competition.

Really don;t want to turn this into a game vs game thread but just gotta say, they never held a monopoly. There were other games out there, WoW was better. It still is "the best" in terms of subs as it finds ways to keep people entertained. I know several people who have played both, at end-game and raided, and I know a lot that prefer WoW to Rift. Personally, I like Rift better for a variety of reasons, customer support and the way devs are involved with players is the major one for me though.

Basically, for him it may be true while for you it isn't. Which game is best is completely subjective and a matter of opinion. WoW may be the best for some people because that is what their friends play, and they want to play with friends. WoW may be better to some because it is easier, and they are a fail player. WoW could be better to one person, but not to me and you, for a variety of reasons. That does not make those reason wrong just because we are not in the same position though.

In the end though, the only thing you can objectively base how good a game is is how many people play it. More people play WoW, so from that standpoint, WoW is still good, and better than any other game out there. Doesn't mean I like it, but I rarely do like what the majority does anyway.

[alturic]

Well, coming from 7 years of WoW, I quit with the introduction of LFR (ran it the first 2 hours and told my guild I wasn't playing anymore, I was the GM/RL) and tried Rift, I can definitely tell you the "grindy" aspect is on par with what a lot of people say WoW was like in TBC, which I don't really get and if it was (hell it's been what, 5 years?), they way they did it in WoW made it seem not bad at all. I don't do dailies (outside of required rep enchants), basically to sum it up, all I do is dungeons to get the gear for raids and then that's it. Raid is my life in a MMORPG. In Rift, you have Sourcemachines/Essences you have to worry about (resists), while some/most of the raids don't require resists anymore if your healers/group is overgeared it's very time-consuming to get the planar/stones to buy the essences.

Basically to sum it up, I do think Rift is better than WoW, which is sad because it'll never get anymore popular than it already is. I definitely think if more people tried it they would see it's better than WoW. Just be prepared for a grind (whether it's Invasions, Rifts, IAs) to get the planar/stones to buy essences, etc. I do think once you get that grind over with it would be a pretty smooth game with minimal grind. I MAY pick it back up when the expansion comes out due to the gear reset.

[Puremallace]

Really don;t want to turn this into a game vs game thread but just gotta say, they never held a monopoly. There were other games out there, WoW was better. It still is "the best" in terms of subs as it finds ways to keep people entertained. I know several people who have played both, at end-game and raided, and I know a lot that prefer WoW to Rift. Personally, I like Rift better for a variety of reasons, customer support and the way devs are involved with players is the major one for me though.

They did hold a monopoly due to one crappy dev after another. It is nearly impossible for any dev to come into the market when the entire player base has come to expect one thing. This is the same WoW player base who looked at almost monthly content and said "well it is too fast and bugged thank god Blizzard waits 6 months to release content"

WoW's competition in the past 7 years was Aion, Warhammer, and EQ2, then toss in Guild Wars off to the side as a CORPG some other f2p crap games + facebook games. The mmorpg space has been pretty void of good American devs. One comes along and has been shit on since day 1. My pessimism about the mmorpg community being retarded is founded on evidence.

This mmo has proven that when you give the player base what they want they will still find something to bitch about and unsub.

What will BE GOD AWFUL nice like you cannot believe is to have the Rift expansion launch after the pain in the ass GW2 hype is dead and gone.

[willowe]

This mmo has proven that when you give the player base what they want they will still find something to bitch about and unsub.

Actually, I agree here. Case and point: Rift PvP. How many times has Trion updated it, 'fixed' issues, added warfronts, and Conquest and everything. How do they players repay Trion?

Well, there's 3 PvP shards left, and two are near empty. This game proves that you can't rely on PvPers for jack sh*t. They will whine that the classes aren't balanced to within 1% of each other from launch, and that there isn't 'X Feature' and unsub for another game. Then when that game fails to give them everything they could ever dream, they leave for another, then another.

I used to be in a guild, < Moderately Awesome >. They left for the same reasons for SWTOR. Funny story: they're in TERA now. I'm 95.2236% sure they'll be in GW2 in a month and a half, because the average MMOer doesn't know what they want, because all they know is they want EVERYTHING. Then when a company gives it to them, they get bored of everything and leave. It's a retarded process, and unfair to development companies that -actually- deserve your money, like Trion, and to a lesser extent Blizzard.

The community in every game is filled with idiots that gloat about how " X Game" Will "Kill Y Game" and it's an endless cycle, the players don't have a f-ing clue what they actually want in an MMO, and follow the blind hype until they either become too jaded to stay in the genre, or realize their cycle. I'm willing to bet US $100 that within 6 mos of GW2 launch, people will have left in droves, and the forums will be filled with 'omg Elder Scrolls Online will kill all games!' It's just how things work. Half the forum goers are Trolls, the other half are blind sheep that believe whatever game they play/have preordered will give them the stars, moon, and planets (including Pluto, it's a planet), and anyone who doesn't side with them is a 'fanboy.'

Yeah, I go to the Rift forums a lot. I have like 800 posts there. I've given up on caring about anything that a player posts there, because it's just as bad as the Aion, WoW or SWTOR forums I tried to join before them, and just as bad as the GW2 forums will be a month after launch. Nobody is happy because everyone wants everything and even if they get it, they'll over-consume it until they explode with boredom and throw it away.

Welcome to the World of MMOs. Population, ~20 million. Average IQ: 42.

[Fencers]

Moderately Awesome was like a huge zerg guild. I remember them spamming world a lot.

But to speak on the subject raised here; I think it's kinda fantasy to have expected or expect in the future for any MMO in the traditional mold to be a market leader other than Warcraft. WoW is just too big a game- as much a cultural touchstone as a game.

MMOs come and go. They each find their core audience. Don't think that is any different for Rift than it is for Tera, Secret World, Aion or say, Everquest 2.

I do believe Rift to be a very good game. With that said, I think Trion made a few decisions that hurt the game fundamentally. As Rift ages, it will be problematic as new MMOs enter the market with big IPs and novel ideas.

Sub fee based games are not going to carry for long in the market. Especially once Guild Wars 2 arrives which will likely be a seachange in the genre. Many are tired of the type of MMO that is Rift or Tera. Those that aren't are majorly committed to the MMO with the greatest inertia- World of Warcraft.

[willowe]

Moderately Awesome was like a huge zerg guild. I remember them spamming world a lot.

W-what? Were you on Corthana-Defiant?

You would have no doubt had seen my guild spam, I was co-leader, sadly. An ill-fated merger and they pretty much gave me a title with no merit and told me, that when the shard died, I wasn't 'allowed' to follow them to Keenblade, because i had the 'audacity' to say that 1.1's Event was horrible, and because I spentpart of my gaming time playing Aion as well.

[Fencers]

No, I was on Keenbad for a long time. When they moved servers, my sister joined for a few weeks. And they spammed Keenbad's world too.

Also, I am intentionally calling it Keenbad. I don't need a PM on it.

[willowe]

Ah, yeah, that was after I was gone. They're pretty selfish. A 'real life friend' (of theirs) spent days of his time, and bandwidth, to make their custom guild web page, and while he was afk when he wife was giving birth they jumped ship to a guildlaunch site for no reason, pretty much.

I don't have many nice things to say about them, as you can tell.

[Fencers]

Shaemis was kinda insufferable, yea.

[Tarien]

Sub fee based games are not going to carry for long in the market. Especially once Guild Wars 2 arrives which will likely be a seachange in the genre. Many are tired of the type of MMO that is Rift or Tera. Those that aren't are majorly committed to the MMO with the greatest inertia- World of Warcraft.

When GW2 is deemed to be the next 'failure' I will not be at all surprised. Free to play is not going to guarantee success, neither will it completely displace subscriptions, for the sole reason that subscription based games give more content.

[Fencers]

GW2 already pre-sold through the roof. Arena.net have a hit without releasing. Selling the box is all they need to do. They proved to be highly successful with the same premise, business model and design philosophy for years now. The franchise has been popular for years- a consistent seller.

Not sure it's remotely realistic or in touch with the market pulse to think GW2 isn't a watershed for the genre.

[Tarien]

GW2 already pre-sold through the roof. Arena.net have a hit without releasing. Selling the box is all they need to do. They proved to be highly successful with the same premise, business model and design philosophy for years now. The franchise has been popular for years- a consistent seller.

Not sure it's remotely realistic or in touch with the market pulse to think GW2 isn't a watershed for the genre.

I refer you to SWTOR, set market records, did not meet market expectations. Also GW2 pre-orders are at 182k for the USA, let's generously triple that for the rest of the world and call it 600k, still not close to SWTOR. And let us keep in mind that the number of units sold do not reflect the long term success of the game in the public's eyes.

GW2 is not the best looking MMO, it is not the MMO with the most content, it is not the MMO with the most popular IP, about the only two things that it has going for it are that it is a buy once, play forever experience, and the dynamic content, but I am pretty sure that neither is enough to be a watershed for the genre.

And play nice, no need to take subtle digs with your comments about realism or being in touch. Just because you believe something to be true, does not make it the case nor give you grounds to insult others.