Is Rift worth the chance?

[egreathouse]

Hello All,

I've recently been on a permanent vacation from mmos since aion started up, seeing as how i have a lot more time on my hands I've been thinking about joining up in one just to give myself something to do. After looking at all that's come out since I last quit, I've narrowed my search down to two possibilities, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I don't want to join a game where no one is playing, but really have no idea how to tell the population of the game. If you all could let me know what its like before i go and buy the game, I would be greatly appreciative.

[Antipathy]

Hello All,

I've recently been on a permanent vacation from mmos since aion started up, seeing as how i have a lot more time on my hands I've been thinking about joining up in one just to give myself something to do. After looking at all that's come out since I last quit, I've narrowed my search down to two possibilities, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I don't want to join a game where no one is playing, but really have no idea how to tell the population of the game. If you all could let me know what its like before i go and buy the game, I would be greatly appreciative.

Ayo, I think the answer depends on which region you want to play in, EU or NA.

From an EU perspective, The game is vibrant and Queues to do anything are rather fast - This is largely due to Trion consolidating the English speaking EU realms into "Super cluster" servers. There are casual raiding guilds on Blightweald with over 300 members, for example. In addition, Tomorrow's new patch will effectively eliminate the faction concept from the game for non-PvP servers, meaning that the number of players to do things with will increase by a significant margin, for both EU and NA regions.

As an aside, BG's also have a mercenary concept, whereby you can play as a merc with the other faction, also done to minimize queue times.

[Deleted]

I personally think RIFT is an amazing game and the development it has gone through has been inspiring. Trion puts out a lot of fun stuff to do on a frequent basis (no waiting on massive patches unless you make yourself). Thing is, I'm bouncing between RIFT and GW2 and WoW at the moment. Playing WoW with my girlfriend who is doing HC raiding, GW2 with my buddies and I'll pick up RIFT again when the expansion's out. I work full time, so it's not like I have buckets of attention to drop on these. I just make sure to take a couple of hours a week for each. RIFT's levelling is awesome, dynamic events are great and the people are really nice. The PvP is good fun too, I imagine it's what EQ2's pvp would look like if it had been that kind of game. If nothing else, should you buy the game and pay for a month or two - the levelling process alone is worth it. Combat is fun in that game, even though it's fairly 'standard' fare. I must have run at least 5 different builds over the course of levelling alone, a level of experimentation sorely missed in other MMOs.

I'm sure others will point out the subscription model. I leave that up to you to worry about. If you have a full time job, £8.99 or $14.99 really is nothing to get upset about in my opinion. It's the same amount of money I spend in a weekend on snacky bits.

EDIT: Also, what Antipathy said. Population's decent and on the EU side things are great. Trion's responding to concerns over 'visible' population by doing the things he said.

[egreathouse]

Thanks guys i appreciate it. I've been looking at videos of the game the last two days, and it looks interesting, I'm kind of waiting on my desktop to get upgraded , its in the shop now, to actually play the game. If I do play it will probably be on the NA server just because it works better for my hours due to peak playing time.

[uberdork]

I believe it's free to play this weekend. And there's always Rift Lite which is free to lvl 20 if you can't play it this weekend.

[egreathouse]

Yeah there's no way this old laptop could handle Rift's requirements, it'll be a couple weeks before my computer gets back to me, but on a positive note I'm looking at getting a laptop soon so i may be able to join up sooner than that.

[Fencers]

Rift seems pretty active. It's about medium in overall population from my POV compared to other MMOs. Lots of folks log on to play with guilds. So it can be a somewhat insular game in a certain sense. Esp. since Rift is lighter in population than like Warcraft or a newly launched MMO like Guild Wars 2.

I think you have to look at Rift's population alongside games such as SWTOR, Tera or TSW.

Not asked in the OP, but I would say be prepared to play Rift at low settings on lower end PCs. Rift is pretty hard on even good PCs. Very common complaint- though I have no problems personally. Just recognize Rift is pretty modern compared to other MMOs. Natch, ignore all this if your new laptop is beefy enough to play Rift at decent settings.

[RoninaThorstone]

Hello All,

I've recently been on a permanent vacation from mmos since aion started up, seeing as how i have a lot more time on my hands I've been thinking about joining up in one just to give myself something to do. After looking at all that's come out since I last quit, I've narrowed my search down to two possibilities, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I don't want to join a game where no one is playing, but really have no idea how to tell the population of the game. If you all could let me know what its like before i go and buy the game, I would be greatly appreciative.

You don't have to guess thanks to Rifts trail version! You can play up to level 20 on a "rift lite" account.

Also, you can be refer a friend ed by any of us for bonus exp gain, bonus items, and a title!

This refer a friend system also applies the bonus's to your rift lite account.

If you feel like giving it a go, PM me.

[egreathouse]

well i just tried to download the game and i got to the point where i made my charcter and after that my computer just laughed at me, so i'm not gonna be able to play for at least a couple of days, but when i do i'll let you aall know. Thanks for all the help by the way its greatly appreciated.