If you don't have a fairly decent gaming pc I would not recommend Rift, the graphics are beautiful but demanding and if you have to play with the low quality settings the world looks very flat and the colors bland. That being said, I love Rift. Try the lite to see how you like it
Another question, sorry to hijack the thread: Once the update hits playable, can i pause the update and play it? because Im torn. I'd love to try it out, but i dont want to hit my family's download limit and staying up til 2am tonight just isnt feasable right now.
ah. Guess Im waiting til tommorow at the very earliest then. or 2am. Think I'll go read up some more in the meantime
As a longtime WoW player, hardcore to casual raider and arena player, if you're looking for another game like WoW, Rift is not for you. I just finished the first 20 levels of the trial and ended up purchasing the expansion and a month of gameplay. We'll see how far I go with it. Don't expect the superb polish of WoW or the feel of it's classes. The early dungeon is a brain fart and compared to the first early dungeons in WoW, it is a no contest. But I don't expect any game to achieve the same level of team play dungeons and raids as WoW does. Ion Hazzikostas, the lead raid designer for WoW is brilliant.
This game expands on class abilities despite the detriment to new players. WoW has slowly edited out the confusion behind choosing abilities and talent specs... Rift capitalizes on the confusion. Without doing some research, I can see a huge portion of the Rift population not playing their classes with optimal specs.
The closest comparison I can make is an amped up version of Everquest 2. By amped up, I mean almost everything about Rift is an improvement over EQ2.
The first 20 levels of Rift gameplay consists of your basic run of the mill tunnel vision quests but with the addition of the highly addictive Rifts. Right from the start you are encouraged to open them up and go through the five motions of closing them. They are fun and can be repetitive but as you discover uses for planarite they become an activity you won't want to avoid.
It's fun and for someone who has been playing WoW for almost 8 years, it is very refreshing to feel that need to log in and level again.
As a WoW player from launch, I completely disagree with you. Not only that, but you haven't even raided or done high level dungeons yet...so I'm not sure you can give an accurate assessment of the PvE designs. I was awe struck with the first dungeon I did, which was the Goblin city one (w/e it is called). Dungeons in WoW have evolved to be gimmicky, otherwise most standard RPG mechanics have been covered infinitely. Gimmicks might make a fight different, but it doesn't do much else.
I also completely disagree. While the constant simplification of WoW is optimal for that game and a mass audience, I feel no attachment or design connection to my character. I have less control over what I am now than I ever have. In Rift, you are free to be what you want with far great possibilities than WoW offers.
Considering that the bleeding edge progression group, who are the only ones that would have such strict standards, are normally such a low percentage of a playerbase, the amount of people who require any 'cookie cutter' builds are few and far between. You can choose to spec however you want and still defeat your enemies. Unless you specifically take all talents that have no synergy, the builds are going to be fun and mostly effective.
I can't wait until they have 14 trees and even more callings. In a game that doesn't use PvP balance as the overwhelming factor of how a class plays, I'm glad for the diversity.
Something that hasn't been mentioned - the out-of-game community isn't quite as robust as WoW's. A lot of items in Storm Legion are still kind of "idunno where this comes from" even on the database websites. A lot of the crafted gear is ridiculously expensive right now (including all kinds of enchants for your gear). There are good sites out there, but no one-stop-shop like Wowhead. The addons for Rift aren't as polished as those for WoW, a lot that were great before expansion haven't been updated, etc.
However, I'm having fun with it. I actually like PvP in Rift, while the only other game I've liked it in was Warhammer Online. I've only done a couple of level 60 expert dungeons, there aren't many places to find info about the boss fights to read up before you get in there and I don't like bugging my team mates to explain each fight, but I have done a bunch of normal 50-60 dungeons while leveling. While the dungeons for SL are pretty fun, it seems like they have a lot of sitting in one room, fighting a boss, then another boss spawning in the same room type dungeons.
For database site, I find rift.magelo.com to be very good. It also has a sync tool that you can use to help keep things up-to-date.
Addons, while maybe not as polished, you also don't need near as many. The default UI is very customizable. KBM is up to date and very polished, Gadgets is great for everything else and Super Meter is great.
rift-mmorpg.com has excellent strats, in an easy to find format, for all regular and expert dungeons and raid encounters.
Magelo is slightly better than Zam. Still has some improvements to be made. Suppose I'll make an account and start making suggestions or leaving comments on items. I had a big paragraph written up about specific examples...and then my computer crashed, so this will have to do for now.
I haven't found a replacement for nkAdvisor, but my guild pointed out this site to me: http://benstepp.com/rift/
That link will help a lot, will make me join a lot more experts (though I've been focusing on CQ at the moment to get Rogue DPS trinket).
Your level 60 guide has helped me quite a bit too, just to kind of put in a list form all the different activities for me to do at 60.
The thing about opinions... they can be so, so very wrong.
Rift is awesome. After becoming bored of WoW, and after being lied to regarding smaller, faster, more frequent content releases (I challenge anyone who played end of WotLK and Cata to tell me otherwise), I switched to Rift and never looked back. It is probably the most polished, most well supported PvE mmo on the market today.
If you want something similar to WoW, Rift is definitely the mmo to go for.
---------- Post added 2013-01-13 at 11:02 PM ----------
Yeah - the game is definitely busier. Nice to see a chart showing this too. We had over 300 level 60's in the Volan event last night on my dps meter. It was insane!
Last edited by theWocky; 2013-01-13 at 09:00 PM.
But if people change server the population would drop on one and increase on another ^^
And more bots is a good sign of population growth. More people=more bots trying to make money.
Killed him for the first time yesterdayYeah - the game is definitely busier. Nice to see a chart showing this too. We had over 300 level 60's in the Volan event last night on my dps meter. It was insane!
It was indeed insane! Would've been more fun without the cast time deley but i can understad it with that many people all over the place!
I've played WoW since 2006. Played Rift during beta, at launch for about a year then stopped for a bit. Got back into Rift end of this summer to prepare for Storm Legion - and by God am I glad I did. Game is amazing.
Just an overwhelming amount of stuff to do. You'll never login and say to yourself "I've got nothing to do." Just cannot happen with this game.