Hit = Gearscore in Rift

[Slipmat]

EU is on life support, and people I know are leaving everyday

Really? then explain this screenshot 2 days ago on Zaviel (EU) at 5pm in the evening, i counted well over 60 brand new players wailing on this boss in Silverwood, the first Guardian starter zone.

It's simple to open the map and mouse over the boss icon, shows you how many players are attacking him, roll a new char on Zaviel and run around Silverwood, it's like headstart all over again, the zone is choc-a-block with new players. Not bad for a server on "life support"

[The Casualty]

I love the game and how the F2P model is. I wish that hit wasn't a gating mechanism the way it is. I've been playing for about 2 months now and got to 460 hit with IDH/TDQ achieves (I found myself in a small guild that is trying to build itself up, but can't yet field 20 man), but I haven't set foot into EE/FT because I don't have the achievements for completing them, which is an interesting catch 22.

I guess I was always lucky in WoW when I played. I was in the same guild from TBC through Cataclysm (when I eventually left for RL reasons), and I never had to bother with gearscore, as I always had a spot.

[Puremallace]

Really? then explain this screenshot 2 days ago on Zaviel (EU) at 5pm in the evening, i counted well over 60 brand new players wailing on this boss in Silverwood, the first Guardian starter zone.

It's simple to open the map and mouse over the boss icon, shows you how many players are attacking him, roll a new char on Zaviel and run around Silverwood, it's like headstart all over again, the zone is choc-a-block with new players. Not bad for a server on "life support"

Slip did you really just try to link a Bloodfire Behemoth event in a 6-15 zone with 60 people to prove the game is in perfect health in EU to someone who has played the game just as long as you have? That proves that people want to get the item so they can get the mount and does not explain how many there were from other shards and also mentored who are 60.

Interesting read below. The general consensus is that tier 2 is not being nerfed and tier 3 was rushed to get the tier 2 gear on the cash shop as soon as possible.

http://forums.riftgame.com/game-disc...-question.html

but I haven't set foot into EE/FT because I don't have the achievements for completing them, which is an interesting catch 22.

My exact point. You have to be way above the hit required to enter this place but because everyone wants rapid assault they ask for 120 over the hit requirement and the achievement.

Slip or Lathais can tell you in Vanilla the most they asked for was 20 above the hit requirement on GSB and HK runs. It started in Storm Legion with their refusal to nerf content after release to make money off the cash shop.

[Slipmat]

Slip did you really just try to link a Bloodfire Behemoth event

Nope, because that is a Bloodfire Army Invasion boss which does not drop a conduit, only Bloodfire Behemoths drop them and this isn't one.

My offer still stands, roll a new char and run around Silverwood, it's packed with new players, not level 60's mentored down

[Lathais]

Interesting read below. The general consensus is that tier 2 is not being nerfed and tier 3 was rushed to get the tier 2 gear on the cash shop as soon as possible.

http://forums.riftgame.com/game-disc...-question.html

My exact point. You have to be way above the hit required to enter this place but because everyone wants rapid assault they ask for 120 over the hit requirement and the achievement.

Slip or Lathais can tell you in Vanilla the most they asked for was 20 above the hit requirement on GSB and HK runs. It started in Storm Legion with their refusal to nerf content after release to make money off the cash shop.

That certainly does prove what the general consensus is. All that proves is that the people that whine the most think that. The majority of players do not read the forums. Of those that do read the forums, many simply lurk and do not post. The people that post are the minority. People get tired of arguing with unreasonable people like you and just give up and stop posting, so all that is left are these unreasonable people with their only defense being other unreasonable peoples posts.

You do not need to be way above the hit required to enter, you only need to be at the requirement to enter. As a PuG, yeah, there are 100s of people trying to PuG. When trying to fill a raid, I fill with people from my guild first, that I know are good, people from friends list or other guilds I know second. My guild talks to 3-4 other guilds that raid on a different schedule, so if someone misses their raid night, on our raid night we ask them if they have anyone that needs to go. We typically fill this way, instead of PuGing. If we -do- come to the point where we simply do not have enough people, yeah, we want the PuG we bring to not be a detriment to the group. It's kind of like hiring someone. If you have one spot to fill and 20 people to choose from, all willing and able to perform the same role and accept the same pay, do you pick the kid right out of high school with no experience or the 30 year old guy with 15 years of experience?

You still argue these points that you cannot do this stuff if you do not have 120 over the requirement and I keep telling you, yes, you can. Here is how in 3 simple steps.

Contact me in game(or Amynara or Rrever and tell them I sent you.)
Join my guild.
Go on runs without being 120 over the requirement.

This is true for anyone trying to get in to content. We need able bodied people that can play well, so hit us up!!

I just told you how to do it, yet you continue to argue you can not. Acknowledge this and agree it is possible or continue to get laughed at.

[Puremallace]

Nope, because that is a Bloodfire Army Invasion boss which does not drop a conduit, only Bloodfire Behemoths drop them and this isn't one.

My offer still stands, roll a new char and run around Silverwood, it's packed with new players, not level 60's mentored down

The game is F2P slip and retention after 60 is the problem I am pointing too with the Hit = Gearscore debate here. Trying to pretend EU does not have some serious problems is denial pure and simple. It is not exactly like I am advocating people quit a f2p game because that is just silly. What I am advocating is that pressure be put on Daglar to fix how they are doing end game raiding.

At this current rate you cannot expect anything to be different in 3.0 as compared to 2.0. Massive grind to 65 or 70, then most of the population gets left behind as they try and keep the main attraction at end game as exclusive as humanely possible to a few players in order to force them to buy from the cash shop to experience said content.

Have you even bothered to run around zones other then Freemarch or Silverwood? Go check out some of the leveling zones in Storm Legion. The game is called Rift not RAID and the sooner Daglar learns this the faster he can try and recover from the mess he has caused.

[Polarthief]

Most people just can't do this content- I don't mean unable to learn/play the game. I mean they literally can not do it because they don't have the gear necessary to unlock it. The only way to get that gear is through a full progression of the older raids.

I'm not one for RIFT (tried it, didn't really like it), but you're telling me an MMO exists that has gear being MANDATORY to even step inside the raid, and this is fully pre-built/constructed raiding, not matchmaking like LFR?

... I mean, are the devs psychotic or something?

[Fencers]

but you're telling me an MMO exists that has gear being MANDATORY to even step inside the raid, and this is fully pre-built/constructed raiding, not matchmaking like LFR?

Correct. There is no LFR (Looking for Raid, I am assuming) matchmaking and each tier in Rift requires a specific threshold of an arbitrary stat called HIT.

There is no work around unless one is not attacking or targeting enemies. HIT, unlike "Gear Score" is an absolute. One must have the minimum requirement to register attacks on targets in a fashion necessary for the raid encounters.

... I mean, are the devs psychotic or something?

Trion like it that way. It's their game. There is nothing to say that Trion's preferred design decision is faulty. Because it isn't faulty in any quantifiable manner.

Though the practical reality of the situation is Rift does not support a population of raiders large enough to propel lower tier raiders upward easily or quickly. One can do it, and some do, but it's not nearly enough to support the ranks of upper tier guilds.

As a side effect of sorts, I notice Rift has a pretty high "burnout" factor among raiders. There is just a lot of steps needed to get current tier ready and not all of it is valued equally. Time being a commodity, there is only so much many guilds can do in a 2x night raid week. And even that gets pretty stressful/thin.

[Dimmune]

[QUOTE]... I mean, are the devs psychotic or something?[QUOTE]

I think this was sarcasm, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. Not often though.

[Puremallace]

Correct. There is no LFR (Looking for Raid, I am assuming) matchmaking and each tier in Rift requires a specific threshold of an arbitrary stat called HIT.

There is no work around unless one is not attacking or targeting enemies. HIT, unlike "Gear Score" is an absolute. One must have the minimum requirement to register attacks on targets in a fashion necessary for the raid encounters.

Clearly you never played WotLK when the poison known as Gear Score reared its head and demolished what was left of the community in WoW. It started almost identical to what you see in Rift. There were times in Vanilla Rift when people would require achievements to do GSB and nearly get trolled off of the server and called an elitist.

Gear score is a way to judge people based on GEAR. If I ask for 620 hit for a tier 1 raid that requires 400 hit then I am basically asking for tier 3 geared people for a tier 1 raid. You can sit here and tell me to guild up or try harder, but elitism is elitism no matter how to try and mask it.

You want to know how Trion can solve this?

1. Stop increasing the hit requirement for each raid by 100 per tier. Get rid of the utterly massive grind called Lycini and Torvan rep. Whoever at Trion decided that the NCSoft model of grinding endlessly was a good idea needs to be fired. I can actually probably promise you that somewhere on this persons resume is Lineage or Aion experience.

2. Get rid of or demote Daglar. He approaches raiding as something that only the most elite can see and if you are not amung this select group of shrinking players who talk constant shit about your game then too fucking bad. He promised no pay to win or tricks and then sure as shit put all the raid gear on the cash shop and created a cash shop solutions to UTTERLY massive grinds they put in the game.

3. LFR I do not care if you like it or not but WoW started bleed players bad after this type of gear score crap took hold and they solved it with a rather dumb solution. Give the players versions of the raids that are easier and have a lower tier of gear to keep the elitist from crying. This automatically shits all over the "LFM {link x achievement" people.

At this point I do not care if you agree with me because this entire thread is an opinion piece of what was once one extremely hardcore fan of Rift. It does not mean I do not support Trion but I do not support the Rift management team who has seen dollar signs at any cost to the player base.

If you need anymore evidence follow the post count of this subforum alone and see how it has dwindled as Daglar has driven Rift into niche status. This is not a troll central forum where you get attacked like mmorpg.com for simply saying you like Rift. My opinion is mine alone, but my observations are usually spot on and unless they solve systematic issues created by money hungry fucks 3.0 will not be some saving grace because the end game is not going to cover for the fact the game will devolve into its current state over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in a never ending example of inept devs who favor the few over the many.

[Fencers]

Clearly you never played WotLK when the poison known as Gear Score reared its head and demolished what was left of the community in WoW. It started almost identical to what you see in Rift.

I did not play World of Warcraft very much. However, I did play enough to know that Gear Score was a player base creation.

Whereas Hit in Rift is an actual game mechanic.

That is a huge difference.

[Edge-]

1. Stop increasing the hit requirement for each raid by 100 per tier.

This is actually the best thing they can do to gate off tiers one by one. By making the amount of hit needed for each tier increase, they put in a real wall that players must pass if they want to progress. It's a great way to make the stat continually matter rather than just fall by the wayside once the "cap" is reached.

2. Get rid of or demote Daglar. He approaches raiding as something that only the most elite can see and if you are not amung this select group of shrinking players who talk constant shit about your game then too fucking bad. He promised no pay to win or tricks and then sure as shit put all the raid gear on the cash shop and created a cash shop solutions to UTTERLY massive grinds they put in the game.

How is putting old tiers of gear P2W? Not only is it trash in PvP (you need PvP gear), but you still need to raid the highest tier of raids to get the best gear. And simply buying gear won't get you through raids if you suck. You're literally "winning" nothing.

And if Daglar/the other devs want to keep raiding as a hardcore focused exclusionary activity, that's entirely their decision. It's not inherently good or bad design.

3. LFR I do not care if you like it or not but WoW started bleed players bad after this type of gear score crap took hold and they solved it with a rather dumb solution. Give the players versions of the raids that are easier and have a lower tier of gear to keep the elitist from crying. This automatically shits all over the "LFM {link x achievement" people.

This is not correct at all. Gearscore was a "thing" throughout all of LK, which was the peak of WoW's subscriber numbers. It wasn't until Cata launch that the game started losing subscribers, and by then ilvl was integrated into the game and gearscore stopped being a thing. LFR works as a tool to get people raiding, but it didn't actually change the whole "need achieve/X ilvl" thing. People still ask for that when recruiting for cross realm flex/normal's in WoW. All LFR did was make getting higher ilvl gear significantly easier, it did not change the social aspect that you're talking about.

If you need anymore evidence follow the post count of this subforum alone and see how it has dwindled as Daglar has driven Rift into niche status.

This has never been a very active subforum. I mean, it gets bursts of activity, and the F2P transition gave it a big boost, but this is a very small subforum. I mean, I've kinda been around here since it was first created, so I remember how it was.

Rift has never been anything other than a niche game, though. It's never been some huge success. Never had millions of players. The size of the game and activity of this subforum have not significantly changed since the game stabilized around 6-9 months after launch. Daglar taking over when Hartsman left didn't have any significant impact on the size of the game, or even its direction, in any reality.

but my observations are usually spot on

Well...we could definitely debate that one.

and unless they solve systematic issues created by money hungry fucks 3.0 will not be some saving grace because the end game is not going to cover for the fact the game will devolve into its current state over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in a never ending example of inept devs who favor the few over the many.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Last we heard, the game was still very profitable for Trion. It's not as if the game is failing or losing tons of players, it's pretty stable. That's an indication that the current systems and social structures (yes, the requirement for achievements for pug raids and the excess hit they ask for are social structures, not part of the core game design) are at a point where they are not turning players away.

Honestly, it sounds more like you're just upset that you can't do pug raids and are projecting those frustrations on the whole game and the Rift community.

Also, what Fencers said in the post above mine.

[Fencers]

The problem with Rift's raiding isn't the ever increasing Hit rating, per se. Really it's the ever increasing Hit Rating relative to the rate at which the game retains players.

Rift is very well made. Just not particularly exciting or remarkable in the genre- it's the same with LOTRO, a well made game of no particular distinction (well, license).

That has always been Rift's core issue- not enough people are attracted to this game to support the kinda of "grand MMO" design of Everquest or World of Warcraft. EQ and WoW were also well made, not better made than Rift, but they were popular; captured a market, developed a culture, became controversial, had lots of money, etc, etc.

Rift just never reached that kind of critical mass to support a gameplay system of a distinctively 2nd era style.

[Tankendog]

Gating is not bad. It shows clear level of progression and allows developers to make ever increasing difficulty of content. In WoW you had gear score from WoTLK on, but gating was still in previous places as well. From Attunements to needing hit/def capped. I was in a high end raiding guild in BC, and we would only recruit people with at least 2P T5 or higher. Nothing personal, but mechanics can only carry one so far. You eventually need the gear to provide the raw numbers to clear content. Without Hit, can you imagine the amount of fresh level 60s trying to do T3 raids and failing? It be a crapshoot.

[Puremallace]

Rift just never reached that kind of critical mass to support a gameplay system of a distinctively 2nd era style.

It does not need to be niche and never has had to be, but when you have people rushing to defend this system what is the point? They will release and expansion identical to this expansion and it will make the problem worse. It is ingrained into the community as the new number to never allow new people a chance to see the content.

You say the end game is not raiding, but that is what literally everything is focused around. Rifts are a complete joke in terms of gear because Trions fears insulting some WoW fanbois who failed out of top WoW guilds and now call themselves hardcore in Rift. My main complaint since hitting level 50 in Vanilla was that the game was called RIFT and not RAID.

There needs to be clear tier 1 to tier 3 progression through Rift raids. If you need to make it a grind then so be it because the rifts are not instanced, but calling the game Rift when all the gear and end game is entirely focused on raiding is a blatant lie. Daglar is perfectly fine with his WoW dev viewpoint of the world and hence Rift will never be any different then WoW.

Also do not say Rift raids have never dropped tier gear because I invite you to go buy a rift raid from the Vanilla vendor and go drop that boss and tell me what he drops. I also invite you to go pick up the rift raid daily and tell me what it drops.

In tier 2 they began the shift away from making Rifts important and in tier 3 vanilla they completely killed it.

TL'DR: If I wanted to play WoW then I would be playing WoW. Rift distinguished itself with RIFTS not raids (outside of HK)

[Edge-]

It does not need to be niche and never has had to be, but when you have people rushing to defend this system what is the point?

Rift is a niche game. It's not some huge, broad success. It's doing well, but it's going after the niche, more hardcore raiding community.

They will release and expansion identical to this expansion and it will make the problem worse. It is ingrained into the community as the new number to never allow new people a chance to see the content.

Changing player behavior is difficult. Even if they removed hit, for example, people would still require folks have the achievement for a raid before pugging it. There will always be things like that happening that developers can't really counteract.

You say the end game is not raiding,

Did I miss that in a post somewhere? Because I can't think of a person who would ever say that.

Rifts are a complete joke in terms of gear because Trions fears insulting some WoW fanbois who failed out of top WoW guilds and now call themselves hardcore in Rift. My main complaint since hitting level 50 in Vanilla was that the game was called RIFT and not RAID.

Or Trion decided that they wanted to have a raiding-centric endgame supported by open world Rift content and not the other way around. I mean, I'd love to see rifts more prominently focused on as a progression system, but at the end of the day the game has been a raid-centric game from day one.

but calling the game Rift when all the gear and end game is entirely focused on raiding is a blatant lie.

Yeah, and calling WoW its name is a blatant lie because there's not constant warcraft going on at the core of the game. And Everquest isn't actually a never ending quest.

Don't take things so literally.

Daglar is perfectly fine with his WoW dev viewpoint of the world and hence Rift will never be any different then WoW.

The design direction under Daglar has not been significantly different than under Hartsman. The game was a raid-centric game in chocolate Rift, and it remains so now. Did Dagler like, shit in your cereal or something, because you really seem to think he's the root of all evil in Rift or something.

TL'DR: If I wanted to play WoW then I would be playing WoW. Rift distinguished itself with RIFTS not raids (outside of HK)

And rifts are still there, and you can progress to raiding through them, just as you could in chocolate.

[Fencers]

It does not need to be niche and never has had to be, but when you have people rushing to defend this system what is the point?

To be honest, I am not sure if your are addressing my post exactly. Not sure what you mean by this or how it relates to what I am talking about, frankly.

I am saying Rift isn't popular enough to support this style of design.

You say the end game is not raiding, but that is what literally everything is focused around.

Again, I am confused. Are you talking to me? I never said this in the above posts.

The endgame of Rift is absolutely raiding. It is the goal of the game to complete the raids successively to earn gear. It is literally the sole reason for playing Rift as laid out by the game design.

The game is based on rifts, though. Rifts are the catalyst for all the game lore and settings. So it's still perfectly fine to call the game "Rift" as that is the basis for the game setting. It's a minor thing, but it is valid from a logical and marketing standpoint.

If you need to make it a grind then so be it because the rifts are not instanced, but calling the game Rift when all the gear and end game is entirely focused on raiding is a blatant lie.

I don't think this is necessarily so. It's like saying Metal Gear is a lie unless you fight a Metal Gear or Final Fantasy is lying to us because none of the games have been an actual final fantasy.

Rift was just a catchy title related to a neat open world mechanic for what are essentially Public Quests. That doesn't mean the game has to be centered on rifts as a sole or equal activity or that rifts are necessarily the endgame.

These titles are just made up by marketing. I wouldn't read into to it as a means of game mechanics. Everything is technically a lie if it is not expressed directly in game mechanics.

I don't know how much ever questing, or guild warring, or warhammering, or defying I am doing right now.

Also do not say Rift raids have never dropped tier gear because I invite you to go buy a rift raid from the Vanilla vendor and go drop that boss and tell me what he drops. I also invite you to go pick up the rift raid daily and tell me what it drops.

Not even sure if you are talking to me. I don't even know where this is coming from or what it directed toward.

I supported more raid rifts as a mid entry point to raids. In fact, I was insulted for doing so on this very forum by it's regular users for suggesting such and insisting that the hunt rifts tier thingy was terrible game design.

Which most players now agree hunt rifts are repetitive, brain dead and lame content. I remember snorting out loud in laughter when I was asked by one forum user to "prove" my credentials for running hunt rifts because I made up some arbitrary tier as a talking point.

Open world content as standalone or a bridge to other content is a wonderful thing in my view. I would enjoy Rift and other MMOs in the style genre being as open and accommodating as possible to all styles of play and players. I might not enjoy it all personally, but I have never had anything against how others want to play a game.

TL'DR: If I wanted to play WoW then I would be playing WoW.

That is EXACTLY the problem. People that want a 2nd era style MMO are bettered served in WoW not for it's quality but for it's popularity.

Rift has never been popular enough or designed broadly enough to allow for the critical mass of World of Warcraft. That isn't to say Rift's approach to endgame is "wrong". It's simply a style that can't be supported as easily as in World of Warcraft or The Old Republic because Rift is not nearly as popular as those games.

[Lathais]

TL'DR: If I wanted to play WoW then I would be playing WoW. Rift distinguished itself with RIFTS not raids (outside of HK)

Funny thing is, all I eer hear in your complaints are things that WoW does. You say you don't want to play WoW, but you want Rift to be like WoW apparently. Seriously, your biggest complaint in this thread and what I think it is all about is players require over the needed stats to get in to PuGs, this means you can not PuG when you want to because there is no catch-up mechanism besides absurd amounts of cash. I have given you 2 responses to that issue that you pretty much completely ignored then go on spouting other unrelated issues like how Rift should not be niche and Rifts should be a bigger part of the game. Neither of those issues really pertain to the title or main argument in the thread.

As far as Rift being niche, it is. Plain and simple. It has the players it has and has to keep them happy first, then work on things to attract new players. It apparently is not your niche as you continue to complain about the things it does and have been for over a year now on these forums. You say it does not need to be a niche game, so you want it to change into what -you- want, not the majority of the playerbase.

The title is a lie? So there are not Rifts in the game and the bosses we fight in raids are not from the other side of those Rifts? Ok, sure.

As for the orignal complaint in this thread, I will again give you the 2 answers you completely ignore.

Join a guild, mine is open, we raid the stuff you say is impossible to see and we do not require you to be over geared, merely competent.

WoW has catch-up mechanisms like what you want. Seriously, I levelled to 90 and got caught up to current tier in less than 2 weeks. It has exactly what you want, but you say you do not want to play it?

Please quit asking for Rift to be more like WoW. If it was more like WoW, people would just play WoW. It has to be niche to prevent that from happening. It must stand out in significant ways, like overall progression design.

[Puremallace]

For anyone thinking this is just me being a scrub please pay attention to this thread. The raid dev even acknowledges there are flaws in how they have approached raiding in Storm Legion. They took a raid design path that would have fit for MMO players back in 2007 or 2008.

http://forums.riftgame.com/game-disc...estion-13.html

Starting tomorrow on 6/11/2014 (barring any unexpected issues), all T1 encounters will have an extra 2 minutes added to their enrage timers. All T2 encounters will have 1 extra minute added to their enrage timers. Their mechanics will otherwise remain unchanged.

The essence of the problem here is the drastic difference in player skill required between expert dungeons and raids. Even with a largely imperfect combat rotation, you can still win an expert dungeon with the provided gear if you invest the effort to learn the mechanics. In contract, raids (with the current tuning), leave no tolerance for player failure. This, in turn, pressures the raid community to demand outright extraordinary attributes from individual PUG members to compensate.

Learning to raid is much like learning to play an instrument; you get better with practice and you work your way up from the basics before you're ever able to play actual music. Similarly, learning to design raids is like learning to compose music for an instrument; your ideas are built around what you believe the instrument is capable of. Since Rift has launched the design philosophy has evolved from 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Hylas' into 'Für Maelforge'. This has an unintended consequence for players who started raiding after Storm Legion launched. Players are handed an instrument, briefly told what it can do (in theory) and that they must now use it to play the best song in the world or else the demon will eat their soul.

While the requirement proposed may seem entirely unreasonable, it isn't without reason that it is requested. There is a requirement for performance in later raid tiers that utilizes the the skills learned from these encounters. That leaves us (as designers) with one of two choices: Gut the raid mechanics (which would be both tragic and self-defeating) or allow players a larger margin of error to learn them. We calculate error from DPS, healing and deaths into the total enrage time of any encounter. It unifies the various possible outcomes into a single number. By increasing that number we expand the number of viable strategies for success.

Regards,
Anony

[theWocky]

Pure is always amusing.

Why can't he admit, like I quite freely do that he does not have time for a tier progression raid system?

I've said it many, many times that I don't have time for the gear treadmill in mmo's. This is not to say it's a bad thing - it just means my game preferences have changed. I still admire a good mmo.

For example, while I loved the look of ESO, the story and I absolutely love Wildstar, both these games after trying them for two weeks and getting to level 12~17 made me fatigued. Wildstar was too grindy and I just grew to hate the slow pace of ESO - the absolutely crap AH and grouping bugs and a worse social interaction engine than Defiance had at launch made me hate ESO even more.

I think some of us just outgrow a more hardcore or even grindy type game. Rift is very "niche" - it caters to people who like progression raiding. It's ludicrous to suggest that any major part of the playerbase have bought a piece of gear at US$100 per item or that it is implied by the devs that they are forcing you to gear up this way.

You know what I said I would do at beginning of WoW MoP? I said - I'm going to wait for WoW to go on special at the final patch and then purely for nostalgia take my druid through all the content - which is exactly what I am doing. I'm quite content to just pay two months and go through the heroics - they're pointless because of the 496 gear, but then so is LFR, the questing. I'm not doing it as a serious raider - I'm just a tourist.

I can also guarantee you that the achievement is more important than the gear item level. I will be in full 496 gear in WoW in a week or so (took me 4 very casual, relaxed sessions to get from 85 to 90) and will probably not get into a normal or flex PuG. Item Level or "hit" is irrelevant unless you have a guild to do the content with to get the achievements.

Just because you may not have time to participate in a progressive guild (you've been offered the opportunity to join by Lathais) doesn't mean the game is flawed.

Rift Raiding just caters to a more hardcore community. I'm no longer part of that sort of community - haven't got the time, but Rift is still a very good game.

The tier system started affecting people in HK already. Infernal Dawn just cemented it.

Rift, Wildstar are all fine games (ESO was a disappointment to me), but they just cater to different audiences.

Look what happened when Cata brought back TBC heroics that needed CC? It was a friggin' nightmare if you didn't do 5-mans in a guild. I would say that the majority of players want a more casual leveling experience now.

The Rift cash store is completely irrelevant to progression in the game. I would say that spending some money on the storm legion souls and a few bag slots may be a good thing for new players, but other than that? There is no evil conspiracy or pay to win idea behind it whatsoever.