Rift WoW Alternative?

[Halfkeg]

Hey folks, looking for some opinions, if you all would be willing to share. I had played rift from beta thru 1.6(ember isle) i believe it was.I left to rejoin family and irl friends, who had returned to WoW. When I played rift, i had the honor of being apart of a very srs progression guild, we were able to kill Akylios before he was tuned. So now with Rift going F2P, my friends and family would like to try rift. I have some concerns with this as, the content(raiding,masters and experts) at the time were fairly challenging, Im not sure if my casual friends and family, are setting themselves up for failure/frustration, unless things have changed some in the time , I was away. I've explained to them repeatedly that WoW heroics and raids,are more casual friendly than rifts offerings. Some insight would be great! Thanks everyone..

[theWocky]

Yeah, I don't know about WoW being dumbed down on a class "playability" level. While the talent trees have changed, the raids and classes are still pretty good and have a good balance of skill required from what I've seen. As for the game being dumbed down - there are a few things I don't like - some include things "dumbed" down - like the class homogenization. (sic? too lazy to google)

I do wish they'd maintained the TBC dungeon types (the type that was also in early Cata, but someone forgot to send the AoE tanks a memo about this), BUT... make them shorter... no more than 40min or so - 45min to an hour too long - and reward people better.

Here's why I quit, and moved to Rift in Cata - but Rift also had some flaws similar to WoW - and it appears the F2P model may address at least one of these - cut down on the grind a bit for more casual players - the casual players will still fund the game, it seems and the hardcore people who have a lot of free time will still have the same, unaltered game:

So, as an alternative and "why" I lost interest in WoW gradually:

1. Graphics - this is a big thing for me - a blend of gameplay + graphics is a big thing for me.

2. WoW is an mmo - like Rift that requires too much commitment to raid - and my time schedule is less. I hate letting people down by not pitching, not helping the team. I have no problem buying gold in games like EvE (PLEX) so I can maintain consumables (like ships in EvE) and not be hindered by grind. I don't mind paying so that I can participate in the activities I enjoy easier - not to be overpowered, but to be an effective, player.

3. Boredom (at the time) due to being WoW'ed out after playing WoW for 5+ years. When you're jumping up and down in Org, it's time to move on. When you log onto an mmo to alleviate boredom and are bored, there's something wrong.

4. Game is way too grindy, doesn't cater for "casuals". By casual, I mean a person with limited play time. F2P games have a better model (usually) than sub-based for guys like me that don't like grind.

5. It could be argued that I got spoilt in WotLK and now I just plain suck at tanking. All my l33t skillz (He He) have faded with time. I prefer a game to be more about "raid awareness" than learning casting rotations.

6. Blizz too greedy - I had 12 level 80's and couldn't justify spending an obscene amount to transfer characters as servers dried up.

7. Lack of old friends playing - this was a biggie.

8. Token gear system. People were running dungeons "just" to get their tokens, not because they had any interest in loot off of bosses or to have fun. The whole "epics" everywhere indicates far too many people suffer from purple-haze syndrome.

9. Flying mounts and shift towards a lobby based game.

10. Lack of "special" quests - paladin quest, druid flight form, shaman quests, tie in of lore to dungeons, raids, etc... note: I can't comment on MoP - these points are about why I quit early Cata.

11. Dailies are not content for me. "Content" in an mmo is something I do in a group with friends or something that contributes to the "lore" of the game like a quest chain - the fire quest in Rift, the quest chain to open Silithus gates, the druid flight form, the shaman tier 0.5 dungeon helm, attunement quests (however - I don't think attunements should be gates and should rather be "side" quests that elaborate on why you are killing the boss - "That" is content.

12. Lack of value for money - F2P is better value - game like GW2, Tera, NW, and now Rift allow me to spend cash when I play. I can't justify spending $15 a month for a game like EvE or WoW when I don't get content at least every two months. In WotLK and Cata, we had huge lulls - 9 months I think?

13. F2P will slowly erode all sub-based games numbers as they get better and better and I must say, I will be hesitant to continue to sub to most now after the initial "honeymoon" / launch period - and I include android and other games in this list - there is just more for gamers to play for free, so why pay? Buy Once, then F2P makes the most sense imo.

14. Community - I miss these before servers went cross-zone as in LFD, LFR, but once again, you can't now bring back long queues or "LF healer".

15. I wanted a new version of WoW - different story, similar game play, new world.

16. Let's not get started on and not ever introduced AoE tanking and removed crowd control. Too late to change now.

17. Dungeon mechanics should have been changed to accommodate classes, not classes to accommodate dungeons and PvP. Bring the player, not the class was a dumb move in my opinion. They shouldn't design encounters that need 8 shamans for bloodlust or 8 mages or whatever. Changing all classes to mostly feel the same was a dumb move - Rift has been partly guilty of this too, but to a lesser degree.

Note... many of these "negative" things have permanently damaged the game (for me) and some appear in Rift too and really irk me and I see no way for them to change back without pissing off the community. You can't give people things, make the game easier and tighten the screws again. A major biggie for Rift is to improve PvP - it's too damn grindy. I don't even bother with Conquest. I like the battlegrounds, but I feel the rewards for winning a game should give more favour (Rift's PvP currency). I feel the same about dungeons and the infinity stone system - I hate the token system and the grind for Infinity Stones is obscene for a casual guy, but at least epics are still pretty epic. Only one or two epics drop in a dungeon.

Rift is a great alternative to WoW? Yes, absolutely. Many of it's features, but also expect some of it's flaws!

No risk - it's free on the 12th June.

Obviously has a few of WoW's flaws, but if I decide to stop playing, it doesn't cost me anything, so why should I complain?

EDIT: I don't think enough people understand - this Rift F2P is going to be completely Free-to-Play - no gating, no restriction on content you can access. You boot it up and it's like GW2 model - except you've already paid for the game and don't "have" to pay anything more - they're not making it grindier for F2P people. They're not gimping it. It's the full game for you to enjoy.

Rift is a very good copy of the winning WoW "magic" and mechanics (I would argue "better" as it came later), with a different, fresh story for WoW players, with several innovations that have prompted other mmo's to include. Rift lacks as much of the "pop culture" funny stuff in WoW, but they're slowly learning and including stuff.

[forwards1ca]

as far as i am concerned, rift is basically WoW with different skins...its far too close to be fun, plus its one of the grindiest games I have ever played. If you want something thats similar enough to WoW to be familiar, yet different enough to feel very fresh and fun as hell, check out Star Wars: The Old Republic. Its a fantastic game that bioware is actually makign smart improvements on, and is listening to their player base to when fixing things that are broken. Definitely worth playing.

[Fkiolaris]

Can someone elaborate a bit more on why pvp in Rift is awful? The only thing I could gather from here and the official forums is that Trion in cutting down on pvp (no pvp rifts and events), but other than that what is it that really bothers people? I am just curious because Rift is next on my list to try (even though Tera is going well so far).

Also, for the OP, if your computer can handle it and you can ignore pvp then you should definitely give The Secret World a go. By far the best story/writing in any MMO (it smokes SWTOR, and I am a huge SW fan), their dungeons are epic, their skill system is amazing and it offers endless possibilities while their B2P system is very good imo. Just check the spec requirements and do not expect balanced pvp (naked 1st timers in pugs vs fully decked premades).

[Deleted]

Yeah, I don't know about WoW being dumbed down on a class "playability" level. While the talent trees have changed, the raids and classes are still pretty good and have a good balance of skill required from what I've seen. As for the game being dumbed down - there are a few things I don't like - some include things "dumbed" down - like the class homogenization. (sic? too lazy to google)

I do wish they'd maintained the TBC dungeon types (the type that was also in early Cata, but someone forgot to send the AoE tanks a memo about this), BUT... make them shorter... no more than 40min or so - 45min to an hour too long - and reward people better.

Here's why I quit, and moved to Rift in Cata - but Rift also had some flaws similar to WoW - and it appears the F2P model may address at least one of these - cut down on the grind a bit for more casual players - the casual players will still fund the game, it seems and the hardcore people who have a lot of free time will still have the same, unaltered game:

So, as an alternative and "why" I lost interest in WoW gradually:

1. Graphics - this is a big thing for me - a blend of gameplay + graphics is a big thing for me.

2. WoW is an mmo - like Rift that requires too much commitment to raid - and my time schedule is less. I hate letting people down by not pitching, not helping the team. I have no problem buying gold in games like EvE (PLEX) so I can maintain consumables (like ships in EvE) and not be hindered by grind. I don't mind paying so that I can participate in the activities I enjoy easier - not to be overpowered, but to be an effective, player.

3. Boredom (at the time) due to being WoW'ed out after playing WoW for 5+ years. When you're jumping up and down in Org, it's time to move on. When you log onto an mmo to alleviate boredom and are bored, there's something wrong.

4. Game is way too grindy, doesn't cater for "casuals". By casual, I mean a person with limited play time. F2P games have a better model (usually) than sub-based for guys like me that don't like grind.

5. It could be argued that I got spoilt in WotLK and now I just plain suck at tanking. All my l33t skillz (He He) have faded with time. I prefer a game to be more about "raid awareness" than learning casting rotations.

6. Blizz too greedy - I had 12 level 80's and couldn't justify spending an obscene amount to transfer characters as servers dried up.

7. Lack of old friends playing - this was a biggie.

8. Token gear system. People were running dungeons "just" to get their tokens, not because they had any interest in loot off of bosses or to have fun. The whole "epics" everywhere indicates far too many people suffer from purple-haze syndrome.

9. Flying mounts and shift towards a lobby based game.

10. Lack of "special" quests - paladin quest, druid flight form, shaman quests, tie in of lore to dungeons, raids, etc... note: I can't comment on MoP - these points are about why I quit early Cata.

11. Dailies are not content for me. "Content" in an mmo is something I do in a group with friends or something that contributes to the "lore" of the game like a quest chain - the fire quest in Rift, the quest chain to open Silithus gates, the druid flight form, the shaman tier 0.5 dungeon helm, attunement quests (however - I don't think attunements should be gates and should rather be "side" quests that elaborate on why you are killing the boss - "That" is content.

12. Lack of value for money - F2P is better value - game like GW2, Tera, NW, and now Rift allow me to spend cash when I play. I can't justify spending $15 a month for a game like EvE or WoW when I don't get content at least every two months. In WotLK and Cata, we had huge lulls - 9 months I think?

13. F2P will slowly erode all sub-based games numbers as they get better and better and I must say, I will be hesitant to continue to sub to most now after the initial "honeymoon" / launch period - and I include android and other games in this list - there is just more for gamers to play for free, so why pay? Buy Once, then F2P makes the most sense imo.

14. Community - I miss these before servers went cross-zone as in LFD, LFR, but once again, you can't now bring back long queues or "LF healer".

15. I wanted a new version of WoW - different story, similar game play, new world.

16. Let's not get started on and not ever introduced AoE tanking and removed crowd control. Too late to change now.

17. Dungeon mechanics should have been changed to accommodate classes, not classes to accommodate dungeons and PvP. Bring the player, not the class was a dumb move in my opinion. They shouldn't design encounters that need 8 shamans for bloodlust or 8 mages or whatever. Changing all classes to mostly feel the same was a dumb move - Rift has been partly guilty of this too, but to a lesser degree.

Note... many of these "negative" things have permanently damaged the game (for me) and some appear in Rift too and really irk me and I see no way for them to change back without pissing off the community. You can't give people things, make the game easier and tighten the screws again. A major biggie for Rift is to improve PvP - it's too damn grindy. I don't even bother with Conquest. I like the battlegrounds, but I feel the rewards for winning a game should give more favour (Rift's PvP currency). I feel the same about dungeons and the infinity stone system - I hate the token system and the grind for Infinity Stones is obscene for a casual guy, but at least epics are still pretty epic. Only one or two epics drop in a dungeon.

Rift is a great alternative to WoW? Yes, absolutely. Many of it's features, but also expect some of it's flaws!

No risk - it's free on the 12th June.

Obviously has a few of WoW's flaws, but if I decide to stop playing, it doesn't cost me anything, so why should I complain?

EDIT: I don't think enough people understand - this Rift F2P is going to be completely Free-to-Play - no gating, no restriction on content you can access. You boot it up and it's like GW2 model - except you've already paid for the game and don't "have" to pay anything more - they're not making it grindier for F2P people. They're not gimping it. It's the full game for you to enjoy.

Rift is a very good copy of the winning WoW "magic" and mechanics (I would argue "better" as it came later), with a different, fresh story for WoW players, with several innovations that have prompted other mmo's to include. Rift lacks as much of the "pop culture" funny stuff in WoW, but they're slowly learning and including stuff.

Some fair points and articulacy put. I can understand the appeal of f2p games for "casuals" as it were. I am one now, i suppose, but because of my long history with WoW i still dont feel the want for MMO's to go f2p and allow people to get those things easily just to allow them to circumvent the grind. An MMO for me is not about shortcuts or the ability for me to play it easily in my spare time it’s a game for me to play because I have a lot of spare time. Hence why I quit when I didn’t have the time, doing it easily feels halfhearted. I feel MMO’s are trying to cater towards those who can’t afford the time properly do it, and that is fine in some respects, but when a huge portion of the market is following suit, that’s what gets my goat. I would prefer to slowly work my way up without boosts/shortcuts I had bought through a marketplace and actually feel like I had achieved something…maybe I am old fashioned actually wanting to work towards something, as it seems the majority of people nowadays just want it handed to them.

The f2p aspect has ruined so many potentially good games for me. Sure I don’t mind cosmetic marketplaces, hell people can waste all the money they want on useless stuff to make themselves look better ingame, but when it comes to an actual advantage gained purely because you spent money I drop the line.

Also I simply used the talent tree as an example. People claim they lament over which skill to choose. When you only have 3 to choose from…every 15 levels…if that isn’t a no brainer I don’t know what is, I could tell within seconds of looking at the tree what was the best for my disc priest for example. And people claim about skills trees pre cata/MOP “oh but you did it once and then didn’t look till there was a new expansion” of course people become more familiar with the tree and knew what was needed, but when you rushed to max level and had to decide what skills to use as your went/when your reached cap, before there had become a norm, that was the challenge. Finding out what was the best skillset to use, sure you might not change it for a while, but that’s to be expected

But moving away from the talent tree, as it seems that because it’s the only thing I could visually represent it’s the only thing people focused on. I just didn’t like how the continually hit every instance with a nerf bat as soon as people, who were simply bad at the game, couldn’t handle it. For example I was on the minute the servers went up for cata and I pretty much powered to 85 in a few days, if that. And you know what, the dungeons being actually challenging (mainly due to gear) was a breath of fresh air. But because people couldn’t handle it (because they weren’t decently geared at 80) whined, even in the knowledge if they just got a few bits of gear it would have become much easier, and as a result, boom knocked out of the park on the nerf-o-meter. It’s the same with all the raid instances giving people buffs…why? As time goes on people get better gear, nerfing an instance is purely illogical. I was never in a hardcore raiding guild, and it was never really a case of people being under geared or the encounters being too challenging, it was people not being good enough 99% of the time. Making the same mistake over and over. People whined and whined at blizzard that things were OP, unbalanced/too hard and it all went steadily downhill. I remember when I did Deathwing with one guild and we spent 2 days wiping on it, despite having got it to like 5% on the first day and everyone knowing the mechanics inside out. The sad thing is that they were a “decent” guild in the grand scheme of things. I then went with a group of people I knew/IRL friends, none of whom had downed him, but were decent players, and boom on the 3rd try. I don’t know what raiding is like in MOP but I doubt it has changed considering the world firsts for the last boss in Throne of Thunder was something like 5 days after release? That screams to me there is something wrong when endgame content can be eaten through so quickly.

To me an MMO should be confusing, take time to learn, be challenging and actually need the player to think or need the input and help of others. That isn’t exclusive to skill trees, but to everything, be it crafting, not having to go to your trainer when you level, (same in rift) and having your hand held through every little thing. Now I know a lot of people will say well then go and play EVE, and I have and simply it wasn’t the game for me, I aint into sci fi MMO’s hence why SWTOR isn’t for me. But I did love EVE’s no bullshit approach to the game, you either learnt or you died. It was harsh, but it made you really think about what you did carefully. Now I am not asking for that level of extremity in an MMO, but at least Vanilla/BC standard of difficulty.

Wth rift although it has some shortcuts etc it felt more like the BC / Vanilla feel to it. I have already bought it and maybe I will get advantages when it goes f2p, but I don’t think I will stick with it, I am going to keep plugging away and see how far the f2p marketplace goes, if it stays limited then ok. But the other thing I see diminishing with the f2p model is simply that they wont push out as much decent end game content. The advantage to a sub model is that you have a continuous stream of revenue that can be used to push out new content. With the f2p model I don’t see that happening.

[Duronos]

Was wondering about this game, is it okay to play on my laptop. I don't really know the specs other than I play LoL at low graphics with 30+ FPS without any background applications.

[dukem]

Yet again if you really played the game when those different talent systems we're active, you would know that with MoP style you actually has most choices. Before there was always that one cookiecutter build. Now it is not the case but talents are used based on every encounter. And that is really giving players the choice which we didn't have before.

it's a choice without consequence and a choice without consequence isn't a choice at all.

[Aydinx2]

it has gone f2p now, so it is only a matter of time when you'll be forced to pay to win.

It hasn't gone F2P yet, and F2P does NOT automatically make it P2W.
Plenty of games are free without a pay 2 win structure.

---------- Post added 2013-05-17 at 10:06 AM ----------

Was wondering about this game, is it okay to play on my laptop. I don't really know the specs other than I play LoL at low graphics with 30+ FPS without any background applications.

To be fair, that doesn't sound too bad.
However, Rift is pretty intensive and I can't run it on max settings, even though my PC is pretty good (it can run LoL, SC2 and D3 at max without problems).

[lanerios]

performance wise:

WoW gives me 12-20 FPS while questing with everything on minimum
Rift everything on medium? Same
Everything on minimum? 50 FPS

[Aydinx2]

I have already bought it and maybe I will get advantages when it goes f2p

You will.
Normal F2P gets 2 character slots, people who already bought the game get 5 or 6 (forgot which).
Some other advantages as well, but nothing that makes you "win" compared to people who didnt buy it beforehand.

[bigmac]

I like WoW because I don't get nickled and dimed to death.

[MikeBogina]

Rift looks amazing, plays like wow.

SWotR uses wow graphics, but up to date, while also playing like wow does/did

Tera Looks amazing, doesnt play like wow, but more like GW2 and ESO (Dynamic combat)


of all the free to play mmo's, Tera seemed the most fun over wow, but my pc can't handle the city :/

---------- Post added 2013-05-17 at 10:24 AM ----------

I like WoW because I don't get nickled and dimed to death.

Except towards the end of each expansion, when you have 12-9 months of no new content and still paying monthly fees

[Nobleshield]

It's a very smooth WoW-clone, I'll give it that. The expansion isn't nearly as good as the original game was IMO. PvE is good but you need to have 20 people or you're stuck with a single easy four-boss raid with no real way to progress. The raids are fairly challenging; you can't carry subpar people (maybe in the 10-man) but it can be frustrating if you're in a guild that isn't able to field 20 people as you have nothing to do. The zone events are okay but get boring after you've done them all.

[Fencers]

Was wondering about this game, is it okay to play on my laptop. I don't really know the specs other than I play LoL at low graphics with 30+ FPS without any background applications.

Rift is not a game kind to low systems or settings.

It might run but not well. This ain't World of Warcrtaft that you can run on a calculator taped to an iphone.

[lanerios]

Fencers, Rift runs a lot better on low end systems than WoW though, with me and a lot of guildies :P

[Lathais]

Fencers, Rift runs a lot better on low end systems than WoW though, with me and a lot of guildies :P

I gotta call straight up bullshit on this one. Even with a pretty good machine, with low quality renderer on, in packed areas I get 15 FPS. Maybe while out in the open, but that doesn't count. Raiding does, and I get better FPS raiding in WoW that in Rift.

[lanerios]

performance wise:

WoW gives me 12-20 FPS while questing with everything on minimum
Rift everything on medium? Same
Everything on minimum? 50 FPS

Same as I said earlier before.

[Shockeye]

I'm having a hard time getting into Rift, it's just not connecting with me. At level 17 quests seem to fetch-oriented, things feel very grindy and there's no story or plot to really capture my attention. Story isn't absent but it's not really "present" either in the quest portion.

I think the near constant state of darkness in the Defiant zones leads to a lack of immersion as well. At least it's going F2P, I can poke around at it whenever without worrying about a sub.

[Newbryn]

If you are still interested in this particular style of game its a great alternative to wow, granted its aesthetics don't turn you off.