Hal Hanlin has left

[neonsheep]

Have fun looking at Daglar's boring, static, indifferent face during E3 videos or Elrar's blubber mincing around at Gamescon(if Trion can even afford it anymore). When I met Daglar at last year's E3 he was one of the most dull people I had ever met and had 0 passion for the game. I told him I disagreed with some of the things he worked on and he told me to "go away, noob". He is in several videos with some of these Trion Vets.

Anyways, I'm not surprised by this. The guys that propped up Rift, and made it the game that we used to love before Infernal Dawn, are either being shown the door in not so harsh ways, or leaving of their own accords because they see the writing on the wall. Oh, and those trying to compare this exodus to a bunch of WoW devs leaving WoW before BC are dumb. Burning Crusade came out a lot later than Storm Legion came out for Rift. The two franchises are not even comparable in any way, shape or form.



---------- Post added 2013-03-08 at 02:31 PM ----------

Correct me if i'm wrong, but this much vaunted MoP 5.2 patch with 14 boss raid, isn't it gated as far as the LFR mode goes? something like 6 weeks to unlock all of the raid and even then, LFR will only be doing it one wing at a time?

Anyhow no point in trying the Game Vs Game debate, never ends well, but i'll just comment on one feature both games introduced in their Expansions...

Rift: Storm Legion gave us Dimensions, the ability to build and create your own "housing" and go wild with it, no two Dimensions in the same "zone" will be identical

Storm Legion Patch 2.2 added two more Dimensions

Mop: Patch 5.2 gave you...a Farm

Actually, LFR is not considered progression, so egg on your face. Second, 5.2 gave us a whole new raid tier of 13 bosses, a huge island with hidden rares and very challenging content, and another huge island that has nothing but elite encounters with some of the elite rares being borderline raid bosses in their difficulty. No realm has unlocked the complete Isle of Thunder, yet, but the first unlocked area has as much content as what Ember Isle was.

Dimensions are great, but if you are going to use them to defend Rift then you should look at how much better EQ2's housing was than Rift's, yet is EQ2 a better game?

[Puremallace]

So speaking of Dimensions

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...ml#post4182293

^ badass Star Wars dimension

[Lathais]

I don't believe this at all. WoW had a number of things going for it:

1) Massive lore built up over years to draw from, and an existing user base (via Warcraft and Diablo) for the franchise.
2) Enormous open world filled with places to go and things to see, only dungeons and raids were instanced (and this was a good thing, no more camping rare mobs).
3) Dozens, maybe hundreds of quality of life improvements over previous MMOs. Negligible death penalty, low recovery times, enough quests to attain max level without grinding, flight paths, customisable UI, macro's, addons. Eight years later and WoW still has the most amazing QoL features. It was easy to play, to understand.
4) The 'cartoony' art style and frankly one of the best server/client models made for low PC requirements, it barely mattered what your PC specs were, it would run and run really well, no graphical lag, no network lag.

Those are the main points anyway. I mean look at these four basic things, and I can already tell you that RIFT lacks 1 and 4 (and arguably before SL lacked 2), we see daily complaints about lag, high PC requirements, and honestly I feel like RIFTs lore is so terribly shallow, we have no cut scenes, little out of game information from books, comics, articles etc. Just some quests ingame, if you do them.

Sorry to go off topic a bit, but WoW is not an unnatural phenomenon, it just did everything right. The trouble with any MMO since is that they want to replicate WoWs success without the effort to achieve the same depth of lore, size of the world, volume of content or optimizing the client/server. Some achieve some of the goals, some don't do anything. Even when there is success it's often only that they achieved what WoW achieved eight years ago, no one is competing on the level WoW is now.

Can't believe I am defending WoW, hate what the game is now, but it's still the most successful MMO out there (unfortunately).

I agree that they did everything right, however, the unexplicable phenomena I am referring to is the fact that people still play after 8 years just as religiously as they did at the start. That is an odd phenomena that will likely never be replicated. Maybe not so much a inexplicable phenomena as a freak. I dunno, I jsut don;t think it rightly deserves to hang on to as many people as it has and using it as the example in these types of arguments, especially when twisting the fact to say things like adding LFR will gain you 3 players for every one you lose, is kinda silly. I actually did give WoW the edge due to number 1 if in fact they had released at the same time. Though number 4 actually helps a lot as well, kinda forgot about that as I have always had a PC that was capable of playing both, if just barely.

Sorry edge, saw your warning after posting this, over now.

[Slipmat]

I told him I disagreed with some of the things he worked on and he told me to "go away, noob".

I like Daglar more already, you wouldn't happen to be an ex Rift player from a certain Guild that got kicked from Rift? just curious

Don't bring this shit up again please. There have been ample warnings and infractions about it already. Infracted. -Edge

[BrerBear]

MoP released Sept 25th
...
SL released Nov 13, over 2 months after MoP(putting Rift "behind" from the start)

Storm Legion released a month and a half after Pandaria, not more than two months.
If Rift is keeping pace, it will need to release a major new zone and raid by late April.
They may be able to pull it off, but it doesn't seem like Rift is producing significantly faster than other games at the moment.

[Arbs]

I don't believe this at all. WoW had a number of things going for it:

1) Massive lore built up over years to draw from, and an existing user base (via Warcraft and Diablo) for the franchise.
2) Enormous open world filled with places to go and things to see, only dungeons and raids were instanced (and this was a good thing, no more camping rare mobs).
3) Dozens, maybe hundreds of quality of life improvements over previous MMOs. Negligible death penalty, low recovery times, enough quests to attain max level without grinding, flight paths, customisable UI, macro's, addons. Eight years later and WoW still has the most amazing QoL features. It was easy to play, to understand.
4) The 'cartoony' art style and frankly one of the best server/client models made for low PC requirements, it barely mattered what your PC specs were, it would run and run really well, no graphical lag, no network lag.

Those are the main points anyway. I mean look at these four basic things, and I can already tell you that RIFT lacks 1 and 4 (and arguably before SL lacked 2), we see daily complaints about lag, high PC requirements, and honestly I feel like RIFTs lore is so terribly shallow, we have no cut scenes, little out of game information from books, comics, articles etc. Just some quests ingame, if you do them.

Sorry to go off topic a bit, but WoW is not an unnatural phenomenon, it just did everything right. The trouble with any MMO since is that they want to replicate WoWs success without the effort to achieve the same depth of lore, size of the world, volume of content or optimizing the client/server. Some achieve some of the goals, some don't do anything. Even when there is success it's often only that they achieved what WoW achieved eight years ago, no one is competing on the level WoW is now.

Can't believe I am defending WoW, hate what the game is now, but it's still the most successful MMO out there (unfortunately).

Wow (Pun Intended), Tarien defending WoW? Trion must be doing something wrong.

[theWocky]

http://i.imgur.com/EAWjbrp.gif

Hey, Cupcaek - that's quite a nice site, by the way - in your sig, I mean.

[Tarien]

I agree that they did everything right, however, the unexplicable phenomena I am referring to is the fact that people still play after 8 years just as religiously as they did at the start.

Because those four factors are still there, and a fifth in the form of habit and numbers reinforcing the belief that it is the best MMO to play plus the whole cultural impact, WoW is practically a household name.

RIFT definitely feels like it is winding down. A lot of staff have left, including some of the most visible and passionate developers. Content that arguably should have been released at Storm Legion's launch (Endless Eclipse, Hard Modes, T3 PA etc) is being offered up as incremental patches. Tons of changes such as reputation gains, item stats, sweeping PvP balances and other QoL fixes should have been ironed out before now. Twice now RIFT has tried to shrug off accidental mistakes as intended course of action, first with fall damage, now with cross shard summonings - both of these since the first big lay off.

RIFT's first 18months were imo a major success, but the lay offs and I think a bit of a rush to launch SL have hurt it. They're also being very reactionary to things, upping gear stats, PvP changes etc, very little proactive or creative content going in. Very little new content or ideas.

I have high hopes for the next raid tier and where we go now that the dragons have been defeated on Telara tho.

---------- Post added 2013-03-08 at 10:07 PM ----------

Wow (Pun Intended), Tarien defending WoW? Trion must be doing something wrong.

They aren't really doing anything wrong, they just aren't delivering the way they used to. RIFT blew me away when I first played it, Storm Legion did not. Nothing new or innovative has been added (bar dimensions, but they're just for looking at, you still can't even sit in the chairs after two years), just minor alterations to existing stuff such as Hunt Rifts (just more Rifts really). I want to see a more imaginative push, you cannot just reiterate previous content with a new skin, this isn't some sports game or console fps.

[Lathais]

Storm Legion released a month and a half after Pandaria, not more than two months.
If Rift is keeping pace, it will need to release a major new zone and raid by late April.
They may be able to pull it off, but it doesn't seem like Rift is producing significantly faster than other games at the moment.

Which if they keep on pace they will. Dendrome is a huge zone and is slated for release in next patch and the new 10m is slated for release at the same time.

[RoninaThorstone]

Which if they keep on pace they will. Dendrome is a huge zone and is slated for release in next patch and the new 10m is slated for release at the same time.

This.

I don't recall getting very many MASSIVE zones in other MMOs content patches. The closest I can think of was queldanis which was tiny.

[Kelimbror]

This.

I don't recall getting very many MASSIVE zones in other MMOs content patches. The closest I can think of was queldanis which was tiny.

To be fair, as much as I love Rift's aesthetic the zones are overly large and pointless to a pretty severe degree. I've seen other people who are longer players than I say the same thing. It doesn't seem that Mathosia suffered with that as much, but Storm Legion content is only vast by overindulgence and not by actual merit.

[Arbs]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but this much vaunted MoP 5.2 patch with 14 boss raid, isn't it gated as far as the LFR mode goes? something like 6 weeks to unlock all of the raid and even then, LFR will only be doing it one wing at a time?

Anyhow no point in trying the Game Vs Game debate, never ends well, but i'll just comment on one feature both games introduced in their Expansions...

Rift: Storm Legion gave us Dimensions, the ability to build and create your own "housing" and go wild with it, no two Dimensions in the same "zone" will be identical

Storm Legion Patch 2.2 added two more Dimensions

Mop: Patch 5.2 gave you...a Farm

Only LFR is gated, Normal open with 12 bosses Day 1 & HMs open with all 13 bosses the following Tuesday.

[Deleted]

Next, George R. Martin will stop writing A Song of Fire and Ice books and start doing comics.

[Tarien]

Dendrome is a huge zone and is slated for release in next patch

Another piece of content that should have been up at launch, imo. Unless there's a really good lore related reason for it to be delayed.

[Lathais]

Another piece of content that should have been up at launch, imo. Unless there's a really good lore related reason for it to be delayed.

While I agree, there was a lot that should have been in at launch that is just now getting to us, there are a couple different ways to look at this.

1) They could have just made us wait until everything was ready and given us nothing for 6 months.

2) They gave us plenty to keep us busy. I still have not done everything I want to do. This spaces out the content and lets people enjoy it at a reasonable rate instead of all at one.

3) I WANT EVERYTHING NOW GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!!one!!1one1!1one!!!!!!!!elevendy!!!!!!!


I choose to take approaches 1 and 2, others can do as they will.

[Tarien]

While I agree, there was a lot that should have been in at launch that is just now getting to us, there are a couple different ways to look at this.

1) They could have just made us wait until everything was ready and given us nothing for 6 months.

Or, they could have continued to give us content just like they had been for the previous year or more while simultaneously working on the expansion?

[Antipathy]

Or, they could have continued to give us content just like they had been for the previous year or more while simultaneously working on the expansion?

Fair points but didn't they also announce a zone early at launch of chocolate (it was on the player map that came with the game CD, I forget the name now) and was never delivered? its not an issue to me that content has "slowed down"; I don't see it as such personally; though I do understand the "burnout" most people seem to be suffering from. As always, none of us have a crystal ball and none of us have insights towards their release schedule(s), it all boils down to a waiting game now to see what happens in the near future (April possibly).

and while 2.2 may have been a glorified hotfix, I've seen developers rush off content and call it a patch with purely minimal content in it of any consequence. I'm actually rather shocked that people here are comparing head to head what Rift has delivered in 2.1 against... well... brawler's club and a daily hub?

I'm not going down the game vs game path, but let's just keep things in perspective.

[Coolit]

Snip
Rift is giving nothing for the majority of players to do outside of raiding and that is not going to be enough for most people. WoW is starting to emphasize improving the experience for the other 99% of the people which is really showing strong in this expansion for them.
Snip

You're kidding right? I've played RiFT since beta 3 and only occasionally raid; there are plenty of things to do outside of raiding, far more than its counterpart that’s for sure.

[Kelimbror]

You're kidding right? I've played RiFT since beta 3 and only occasionally raid; there are plenty of things to do outside of raiding, far more than its counterpart that’s for sure.

I'm just going to guess that you haven't read these forums much, or else you would have seen just a month or so ago where I was prospecting how much there was to do in this game because of a, b, c. I was so enthralled with it's differences that I assumed those things would be enough for me. Unfortunately none of those things are directly related to character progression.

So no, I'm not kidding. You clearly don't have any priority of advancing your character, which is what I was directly referring to. Other games have side activities as well. Those are very important things and I still say that those are amazing things in Rift. It's just not enough for a lot of people, because a lot of people want to make their character more powerful and actually progress through things in the game.

In Rift that wall of progression is hit very rapidly and only furthered by raiding. Who knows, maybe they will add more events and put the current Tier of gear into the IS system when the next set launches. We'll see.

In regards to your little snip, you must not know a whole lot about other games if you think that it has *more* things to do outside of raiding. That statement is very uninformed/completely biased, so it's no use having an argument that will quickly devolve into a game bashing/comparison argument which isn't really needed.

[Puremallace]

In Rift that wall of progression is hit very rapidly and only furthered by raiding. Who knows, maybe they will add more events and put the current Tier of gear into the IS system when the next set launches. We'll see.

It is sounding more and more like you want this chracter driven story mmo, then the traditional themepark that Rift is. I know GW2 tried it and I assume it never worked because I have no not heard major hurrah about it sense release. There is stuff like Planar Attunement and many people forget it is there. Current implementation if done correctly is a neat feature...if done wrong it is a massive grind for min/maxers.

Only thing to really satisfy this niche of the playerbase would be some type of unique story driven profession!?? Maybe more player control over the environment. I always thought Nexus Infusion was half finished. There should be areas we build up....literally like walls and more advanced turrets with planar invasions to match.

Maybe you want like Fable the mmo? It is damn near impossible to customize personnel stories for any entire mmo playerbase as SWToR and GW2 have found out.