Rift vs. Wow and all haters

[Dammagia]

1. No, there are many many more. And I include every single "wow sux so i gonna play Rift"-thread, they have the same content.
2. Yeah, because killing X add-waves followed by one boss is what made MH such an awesome raid.
3. WoW is balanced, maybe not balanced enough but certainly more balanced than other MMO's out there.
Top guilds stack them, because topguilds care about that 1% more damage. And even they didn't swap everything out to stack hunters and DK's.
4. I have played a lot of MMO's, no other two MMO's looked as much like eachother as Rift and WoW.
"You're not in Azeroth anymore", but you are still playing WoW.. The only difference is the graphics and the classes.
5. Here we have something different, because WoW has nothing to do with graphics; it's a graphic-STYLE you don't like.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=65108/dr...delviewer:10+0
See that? The graphics are fine, if you don't like the cartoony style than that is your problem.

But please, enlighten me what it has to offer more.
And if it's soo much better, why are you spending your time on a WoW-forum? :')

1. No you just can't count, most threads start off as a "Rift is great have you tried it" until fanbois show up and try to trash it.
2. MH was my favourite raid ever along with Blac Morass - personal taste is personal, and you are judging this as endgame, this is WHILE YOU ARE LEVELING, something on top of questing and grinding profs, something new... /facepalm
3. NORLY it is not balanced, you are deluded if you think so, they will buff damage for some classes this patch and then all the QQ will start again, go read the PTR forums if you think things are balanced.
4. No the rifts, the real worl raids, the real world PVP, the Soul trees, you are deluded.
5. No its the fact that it still doesnt support SLI and Crossfire to get smooth performance after 6 years and the gfx are so poor in 25m raids that it goes flick screen as soon as everyone gets going, even with a decent PC like mine. Don't patronise me with style over quality, go look at a wow tree and a Rift tree, I could go on, but I won't as there is so much more than the polygon count of the main toon/npc. (for the record I like cartoony style I am one of the few that does).

I have listed above what more it has to offer, please don't confuse your taste with fact, if you take all that is different and then say its crap, that is taste, not fact, and it is far more choice than the difference between the 2 products graphics styles.

[Talio]

tbh i see more RIFT IS GONNA DESTROY WOW posts then hating on rift posts. I'm sick of Rift already and I haven't even played it. Just all the fans of it talking about how amazing it is has me sick to my stomach thinking about it.

This, this, this, and oh yeah, this. OP is the first person who I've seen say "In my opinion, rift is better" almost everyone I've seen on the RIFT side of the arguement have been like ZOMG IT IS BETTER THAN WOW HURRRR DURRR, not "In my opinion it's better" Even then the only thing most people can say about it is "It's got better talent systems and better graphics".

[sCRAPbott]

you heard it here folks, world of warcraft invented multiplayer games and teams. Before wow every single game was single player and nobody knew anyone else in the world who played video games, so a team could never be formed. This is why attempting communication on forums generally ends up fruitless, because people are so close minded they may as well be speaking a different language. Next up, wow invented oxygen, you now owe blizzard a monthly fee for breathing.

On topic, i have yet to play rift but it looks to be very interesting. They appear to have gotten the class differences down right, they have world events to break up the grind of leveling the only thing left of importance is how endgame functions. Peoples negative assumptions are fairly well grounded though, most other mmos lure you with candy and once you eat the candy there's nothing left. Hopefully rift will not end up this way.

Silly rant below v
to those claiming it's quests are just kill x of x, so are wows. To those who complain the game is too high end to be played on their computers (ie: Low frame rates), it's not the companies fault your computer can't play it. I don't hear atari fanbois crying that they can't play call of duty on their atari, do you? To those claiming it's not original, there is nothing original left. Wow wasn't super ultra unique upon launch itself, it took ideas from previous games and improved on them in the way that rift is attempting to do. Go ahead, try to come up with a completely unique idea for a mmo game. If you use elves, magic, swords, mounts, talent trees, gear with stats on it, team based gameplay, levels, experience points, potions, health, mana...well then you're just copying other games now aren't you?

lmao! :d

[Deleted]

not that fussed about graphics tbh but rift is frustrating it just feels so slow and bland my char and the rift world feels like it needs a good nights kip, i have tried the 6 betas gave it time tried to enjoy the game as much as everyone seems to have done but if im honest i cant see the fun in standing near a rift spamming 1 2 3 etc there are no mechanics what so ever so you just stand there sometimes you are there for 20 mins, so the rifts get boring in my opinion but its good that they are an option you dont have to go, well i thought they was an option till i went back to my quest hub along a safe road and got beat down by 6 mobs 2 of them was 3 levels above my level i was like wtf i wasnt in their aggro radius either so its looks like you cant avoid them.Then the quests i dont understand why people enjoy doing collect and kill quests all the way upto lvl 35 (level cap at the minute in beta) when that was a big issue in wow before cata (as far as i can tell most people playing rift are long time players of wow).the talents dont see the point in all them points and trees when most of the abilities you get from them are the same spells just different names and some are useless, i dont think they matter that much at the minute because we are just questing but end game i can see it being a problem where some people have just put points in anything and dont have a clue...i had no fun in the betas if im honest i wish i did because then i would have had another mmo to play as well as wow..final thoughts slow,bland,not newbie friendly and the travel system (lack of it) is pants i think thats why my char is always tired and slow coz hes knackered from all the walking

[dysphoric4life]

I'm tired of Rift being compared to WoW. Rift is not WoW. Wow is not Rift. Get it through your heads. Yes, there are some similarities, but "Wow + rifts + more talents" is not good enough to describe the differences, nor the similarities. I could go on and on about my personal review of this game, but I'll just give you the fundamentals.

I've been in the past few beta events, and the strides Trion has made is pretty incredible, to be honest. I've reported a few bugs, and within hours they were fixed. I've noted a few things I dislike about the game, but none of which make the game a failure, and I don't think this game will kill WoW. It has been said "The only thing that will kill WoW is Blizzard." I fully believe that statement. It has a HUGE fan base, people love WoW, sometimes more than their own children :-P. As for the people who say they are tired of the game are really just tired of the repetitiveness of WoW. Rift has it's upsides and downsides, and some of them are a double-edged sword.

Amazing talent system that has it's drawbacks. Imagine you were new to MMO's, and came into a game where the first quest they give you gives you a choice of 6 completely different set of talents. Sure, they added what sets go well with what. I for one, don't follow the recommended path most of the time, I try to do my own thing, and sometimes, in Rift, it would end in utter frustration. Imagine if you were new to MMO's, and kept dying over and over because you chose the wrong paths. Sure, you can reset the 3 you just chose often, if you have the money to, but, if you chose the 3 healer souls as a Cleric to get out of the noob zone, it will take a long time to level 13 so you can pick up the other souls.

In WoW, for the most part, you can run through a group of mobs and generally be fine on the other side when they unaggro. Not in Rift. If you try to do that, you will get a debuff that increases damage taken, and slows your movement speed, and then you die, unless your goal is to pull 6-7 mobs at a time (not recommended).

Dismounting. The bane of my existence. Any time you take damage, you have a chance to get dismounted, and in my experience it's usually 1-2 hits.

Now lets move on to Pvp. The first Calling I made was a Warrior, and I tried to pvp with him at level 19, as the pvp brackets are roughly the same. It was zero fun as a Warrior. Every other Calling can be "Ranged" so to speak, except Warriors, of course, the best they get is an ability that you can spam that does ~60 or so damage at that level. I spent most of my time dying, which is no fun.

Dungeons are very entertaining as any role you might happen to play. The first dungeon you encounter as a Defiant is called Iron Tombs, and the "feel" of the dungeon fits the name perfectly, it's filled with Undead, and generally creepy. The boss fights are pretty straight forward, and the dungeon requires some strategy when it comes to trash pulls, especially the last room with the purple glowy orbs - I wont spoil the strategy to this room if you actually plan on playing - is quite entertaining.

Rifts make the game very random, and to me, very fun. They are a good way to get some extras, Greater and Lesser essences, along with Planarite, which can be used to buy decent gear. The waves of Rifts get progressively harder the longer you fight in that particular Rift. If you managed to kill everything fast enough, you get "Bonus Stages" that increase in difficulty and frequency, and if you're able to defeat them, you get extra Planarite and other little extras (Epic Quality Companion Pets, items that turn you into Bats for ~30 minutes). I got my Warrior to level 35 (current max level in this round of beta) running around with 2 other level 34s closing every Rift we could find in Scarwood, only took about 2 hours or so, which was much faster than questing.

And to finish off this wall of text, I feel the need to say that if you plan on playing something that is not WoW, do not compare it to WoW. It ruins your gameplay, and your overall experience of the game if you go into playing a new game with the mindset of "is it like WoW?"

TL,DR: Rift ≠ WoW. WoW ≠ Rift.

[darknsss]

Lets Just face the truth that WOW have been lacking in term of innovation and having new games coming out with different stuff will most likely result in a content patch to add new feature in the future.WOW have stolen many Ideas from other games and perfect them, so having something else out there they can copy from again like they did many times allrdy would benefit everyone in wow.Rift offer couple nice feature that i would love to see in wow to be honest but it wont be a wow killer,Its only going to give some of of us a option while waiting for raid time

P.s english is my third language so dont give me that learn to spell bullshyt till you can actualy write/talk 3 language kthxbye.

[Deleted]

Lets Just face the truth that WOW have been lacking in term of innovation and having new games coming out with different stuff will most likely result in a content patch to add new feature in the future.WOW have stolen many Ideas from other games and perfect them, so having something else out there they can copy from again like they did many times allrdy would benefit everyone in wow.Rift offer couple nice feature that i would love to see in wow to be honest but it wont be a wow killer,Its only going to give some of of us a option while waiting for raid time

P.s english is my third language so dont give me that learn to spell bullshyt till you can actualy write/talk 3 language kthxbye.

What on earth would you want to copy from rift to wow besides some graphical eyecandy?

[Zoma]

Can the mods or administrators merge all these damn Rift threads into 1 huge 'official thread' or something? I'm so sick of going onto the mmo-champion homepage and seeing half the threads being the same "Rift is better than boring old WoW!" "No, Rift will flop like every other mmo!" discussions.

Just merge it all, and ban everyone who tries making a new one. Let everyone who gives a damn about rift go there.

[Jerv]

I did enjoy the beta a lot, and I've preordered. Am I going to switch over and play Rift istead of WoW? Probably not, But not 'cause one is better than the other.

In WoW I have a main that I've played since Vanilla, I raid twice a week with a casual guild. So far only Neffy left on normal mode.

When cata launched it was fun and "new", but quickly grew boring, except from raids and the social bit inside the guild.
For me the only thing that makes me log on anymore is the social bit, and the raids. Granted some of the time is used obtaining consumables for use in the raids, but not musch as "playing" the AH keeps me in enough cash end then some for my daily expenses-

When I logged on Rift the first time (Beta 4) I got an old familiar feeling that I haven't had in over 6 years. While some of you have WoW as your only MMO experience I've tried quite a few. The last 3 years before WoW launced I played Everquest. Rift gave me the same feeling again. Unfortunately Sony destroyed EQ by opening the player shop where you could by characters and gear. That was their reply to goldsellers. "If you can't beat them, join them" And oh what a horrible solution it was.

I remember one of the developers for wow giving an interview once. Where he explained their philosophy. They took everything they liked from other MMO's and dumbed it down so that it would be as easy as possible to get in the game for new players.

The one thing WoW was way better at than the other games of the era was humor. Small tidbits of fun and popculture refereces.
After hours upon hours those little comical breaks are IMO what sustained WoW as a game.

The things I like about rift is the options you have when it comes to customize your character. Weird combos of souls and points that can help you perform unexpectedly well or bad. Gear that can change color when you apply dyes.

Not beeing bound to one cookiecutter specc, and actually thinking for yourself is the biggest appeal for me. Alongside all the damagemeterspamming morons that for some reason finds it amazing to be 1 k ahead of the next DPS, even though he himself is 2-3k behind the tank.

[Deleted]

Played in Beta 6 this weekend. Computer's not powerful and moved to low graphics setting fairly quickly. Would prefer higher graphics but think the lower graphics setting is a good comparison to WoW. The only complaint I had when I started WoW was the cartoony characters. Not a fan. And on a side not - spending time making water look pretty was a waste of time and effort!.

Without referring to WoW:

I found Rift very immersive. They were doing a stress test and fps was rubbish for awhile but picked up and Sunday's play was lovely.
Questing was very linear and moved progressively through the zone - i'm only lvl 16 but have experienced rifts by the bundle and even jumped into some pvp action which I didn't understand what was going on but I was healing so didn't mind
Graphically the world is lovely - I mean really lovely.

The crafting is quite smooth - I like the way it splits down to raw materials. Salvaging items is a nice idea as well.
The Soul trees were very confusing at first and there is so much choice with different souls having similar spells.
In the end I purchase a second Role and created a Heal Spec and a DPS spec which boosted both roles significantly. The idea was to hit 17 and heal a dungeon but I never got that far in. Healed the massive rift invasion and it was great to watch the mass of players moving to deal with it.
I really like the way they deal with loot in the events - having the participation plus roll to get you your placing meaning that someone can't just rock on up to the boss fight and win the loot etc. It's a very fair way of dealing with things.

I spent ALOT of my time wondering what the hell was going on - and to be honest I loved it. There was an urgency to my time in the game. I have only dipped my toe in the water and like it alot.

Now for my comparison:
WoW has been a part of my life for a very long time and it is starting to show it's age - not in anything specific but more in a "I've been playing an MMO for years and been there, done that" way.
Cata was a huge disappointment. 5 levels of realistically the same old same old.
The idea of every class being equal doesn't gel with me but then my idea of an MMO is: Tank is a rolling machine of rage and violence, dps are there to kill stuff and healers are waif like characters that look like they will die to a breath of wind keeping the others alive.

Playing Rift was a breath of fresh air - specifically for the fact it's new. I don't care about the lore for either - if I want that i'll play a FPS on my Xbox where I follow a path through mobs and watch cut scene after cut scene. Rift has followed the WoW example and incorporated the best things from other MMO's to create an immersive game that I will definitely play.

I don't want any game to be a WoW-Killer. Why would I want a game i've loved for years killed. I just want something that evolves. People go on about graphics not being a concern for WoW for the computers people use. I'm really sorry but using 6 years old graphics and investing time in making water look pretty is inexcusable.
If you look at old loot from the vanilla raid's it was beautiful - I mean really stunning in comparison to the one item used 40times just with a different colour devs use nowadays.

The issue I see for Trion that Blizzard overcame is longevity. I was there for WoW release and it was buggy as hell, had less characters than now, sod all lore, less abilities than a sheep caught in a fence - BUT it was new and people flocked to the game.

There is a place for both games and I hope Rift sticks around long enough to push Blizzard into evolving.

TLDR: Rift Beta 6 a lot of fun and held my interest. Hope it lasts.

[Deleted]

Ok, seriously, making rubbish up to make a point really is BS.

1. There are not 50+ "Rift will kill wow" threads, there may have been 1, a long while back, but none since.
2. The rift invasions got boring to you, problably because you havent done them all and don't understand yet how they work to get decent loot.
3. Balance is not an issue, and if you think WoW is well balanced, you are seriously clueless, blizzard have stated over and over they will not balance for 1v1, and just go read all the Frost Mage QQ, then ask yourself why people generally only play a few specs except for specific fights and why top guilds still raid stack certain classes.
4. Exact copy of WoW... WoW the first MMO you played right? Must be if you think this.
5. Graphics are Fugly, opinion, but seriously, lets not compare to WoW's graphics that suck even after 6 years of development.

Rift offers so much over wow, and the main ones are getting away from LFD idiots, the same dreary profession grinds, Chinese gold farmers and Bots, hackers, and playing something fresh with a bunch of people who have more experience than just WoW and can see the future.[COLOR="red"]

This is a load of bullocks to say.

You can't go ahead and say WoW's graphics sucks, because it sure do not. It adds up to the fact that it's a unique game that keeps the same track, in which a lot of players love, instead of creating the today's sickly, typical graphic-heavy game. Before you note me down on that, i do have a very, very good computer, so it's not because i can't play Rift. Don't worry about that.

Rift does not offer "so much" over WoW, because i've seen how it is so similar to WoW, besides it's graphic heavy and with brandnew stunning talent trees. Yeah yeah... I've seen this before. Taking a concept, and evolving it. WoW did the same, became successful, yes, i won't dig down on Rift. I'm sure it will get a solid playerbase. It's a good game afterall.

But saying WoW will die at this particular time? Eh, no. Not really. That's just overhyping a game, because with a 12 milion base maybe reducing to 11 or 10, because 10-20% will try Rift, is not a dying game. It's setting the game on pause on some's behalf. That said, Rift > WoW, no. WoW > Rift, ehh... Not really. It's opinion that carries the behalf, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a fact no matter what question mark you choose to make use of.

Now leading to your statements:

- Gold farming? Like.. If Rift because better than WoW in some years, the chinese will swarm it. Drop this illusion that this won't happen. You know it, and i know it. The chinese is smarter than any defense you'll come across, and hacking, so on, will not either be disappearing, just because Rift launches. It won't be better with the years. Dreams, however, is allowed to have of course.

- It's not a exact copy of WoW, but a modified version. It's not illegal, so won't pursue.

- If he got bored of the way Rift is, don't go ahead and call him stupid because he then didn't bother to continue by eliminating more rifts and gain rewards. That won't give any fun. Nagging on others, won't give benefit at all, only make people get angry with you. And who wants that? I must say, i sure don't want that.

- The term "LFD idiots", will repeat itself if Rift gets popular. Of course it will. In these years, games that makes it easier for people to play, "casuals", will dominate since people gets more and more busy, as seen in a lot of tests from previous 10 years ago and now. Humanity does more than we did then. We are filling hands up with a lot of non-important stuff, witch makes it less likely that working hours and hours on end to gather a group together, just gets more and more dislikely. The LFD system is great, but it saddens me that a lot is this unlucky to queue up with non-workers that mainly consist of 12 year olds. Sad, but that does not mean it's a bad system

Conclusion: Rift will make a great game, and draw a good solid playerbase in prediction. But it simply will not kill anything, Blizzard is a trusted company, and are known for delivering the thing they think is the best. It suits a lot, but won't suit everyone. As a lot of Blizzard devs may have come across to say a lot of times.

[Deleted]

I will play Rift. You know why? Because this makes me a better person than all the wow players.

[Luko]

The game is fantastically solid and smooth and will be one of the better launch titles I've ever seen. (Assuming the servers stay up, which is highly likely after the stress tests we just had.)

However, I will not be playing it. It's too much like WoW. Now, before you equip your pitchforks and torches and start those classic "OMG it looks nothing like WoW" allow me to clarify that I wasn't refering to graphics or visuals or even gameplay. It's the direction the game is headed that's all too familiar for me personally. I didn't play very extensively and I ended up with a level 32 assassin. The leveling is very rapid, about the same level as current WoW outlands range up until level 32 which is as far as I made it.

Basically this means that the game will not be putting much effort on the leveling process, infact I hear it's actually even quicker if you focus majorly on closing rift fulltime instead of following the linear quests. This system is very successful and because of this I'm sure the game will do fine, but as someone who's spent the last 5 years in WoW, I am not about to fall into another end game grind fest consisting of logging in to run my heroics (Yes, they're literally heroics that you'll be running at level cap to gear for raids to gear for etc.)

Before some know it all breaks out the "All gamez are leik that!", yes I know to an extent, but not always. FFXI for example, it took me almost a year to get to level cap on my first class. I liked that a lot. Not permanently, obviously as I eventually went to WoW, but in segments sure and having spent so long in a "Rush to cap" game, it's time for a change. I'm personally holding out for star wars.

(TL;DR~ Too much of the same thing for me personally. I'll hold out before making any final decisions.)

[Kosic]

I for one was in the Rift Beta for a week.. and I hated it. Sure at first, I thought it was kind of cool. But then I realised : Hey.. What did they bring to the table with this game? Heres what they added :

- Rifts
- More Talent Trees and class possibilitys

I mean, Rift does not even have a specific lore.. Which sucks since I like story oriented games.

Now before you guys rage, I have not played WoW for 1 month.. So I am not a WoW Lover, im just pointing out my point of view.

I got the same points as this guy. I got into the Rift beta for a week, (2nd to last beta). I played it for a few hours the first day and then gave my account info to a friend who was actually excited about Rift.
I found Rift to look nice, alittle like LOTR but not as dark and gloomy. But i didn't take well to Rift, it felt slow, felt like a massive grind, and it felt like your progressing down the road abit to often.

For the first 13-15 levels, you're moving from one camp of 2-3 quests to a 5 min walk to another camp of 2-3 quests, then moving on again. I got bored of running down a thin pathway to do my quest then run back up it to hand it in, then to run down it again to get to the next set of quests.

Rift isn't for me, i don't feel that i'd like to pay a subscription for that game, as it doesn't feel as solid as Wow did when i first got into it.

The only good thing about Rift is how many options you got with one class and it's talent choices, but picking a talent cus the game sugguests it was a big misstake. I choose the mage class, with Arcane talents (for pet), pyromanic, and elementalist (because the game sugguested i should had). I found myself having way too many damaging spells then i needed, and hardly any buff spells to increase my toons dmg, mana regen or crit level.
So i was stuck with just improving my pryomanic tree without worrying about branching into the other two trees as much to get new spells, or buffs.

Anyways, instead of me going on a rant about Rift, i'll just point out, i'm not saying WoW is better, it was here first for 6 years. It's going to be hard to beat WoW.
I'm not a WoW fan boy, i actually think Wow is pretty terrible in it's recent expansion, it's taken Blizzard soo long to tweak numbers from Beta to a PTR then into Live. From what i was told, they had weeks to fix numbers at the end of the cata beta, and instead of doing much work, they just left certain classes deal major dmg while others had the lack of dmg. I know the testing wasn't there to make it solid numbers, but it could of been alot closer on the meters compared to what they are now.

I also don't play WoW, haven't done since 26th of Dec, so i'm not favouring one game over the other.

Final notes;
Rift has nice ideas, but nothing ground breaking.
WoW is just a solid, easy to understand, and play style game. If Wow had alot more solo game play (long end game lore quest lines, fun professions that isn't a boring grind such as Archeology), it would benifit to alot more casuals, and to the hardcore players who turned casual over the new year.

[Mister K]

I will play Rift. You know why? Because this makes me a better person than all the wow players.

How exactly I don't know....

Played Rift and I love the Rifts and Talent trees, apart from that il be staying with WoW since well nothing different apart from few things that would keep me playing. Why play something "similar" to WoW when i can play WoW?

Its a good game and only a filler when you bored of WoW. I hope the story expands since its pretty basic and meh atm..... I give this game 7.5/10

[FutureX]

I'm tired of Rift being compared to WoW. Rift is not WoW. Wow is not Rift. Get it through your heads. Yes, there are some similarities, but "Wow + rifts + more talents" is not good enough to describe the differences, nor the similarities. I could go on and on about my personal review of this game, but I'll just give you the fundamentals.TL,DR: Rift ≠ WoW. WoW ≠ Rift.

It's a MMO. It will be compared to other MMOs and WoW being the leading MMO is the benchmark of success. I assure you within their own companies marketing & development are not trying to attract a brand new type of gamer or age group. They are fighting for the same share of the market and people for this reason make direct comparisons. You can feel strongly about a game either way but in end it's still a game/product and those direct comparisons will be made.

[reemi]

I played RIFT beta, not a bad game but I don't see why I should play this game instead of playing WoW.

[Deleted]

Ok, seriously, making rubbish up to make a point really is BS.

1. There are not 50+ "Rift will kill wow" threads, there may have been 1, a long while back, but none since.
2. The rift invasions got boring to you, problably because you havent done them all and don't understand yet how they work to get decent loot.
3. Balance is not an issue, and if you think WoW is well balanced, you are seriously clueless, blizzard have stated over and over they will not balance for 1v1, and just go read all the Frost Mage QQ, then ask yourself why people generally only play a few specs except for specific fights and why top guilds still raid stack certain classes.
4. Exact copy of WoW... WoW the first MMO you played right? Must be if you think this.
5. Graphics are Fugly, opinion, but seriously, lets not compare to WoW's graphics that suck even after 6 years of development.

Rift offers so much over wow, and the main ones are getting away from LFD idiots, the same dreary profession grinds, Chinese gold farmers and Bots, hackers, and playing something fresh with a bunch of people who have more experience than just WoW and can see the future.

---------- Post added 2011-02-07 at 10:03 AM ----------



Look at the trees in wow, they look like they are printed on s heet of paper and then cut into hexagons and slotted together. The trees in rift are actually properly modelled. Thats just one example.
---------- Post added 2011-02-07 at 10:07 AM ----------



If you have a think about this I am sure you can work out why this is, and yes you would only use the abilities you have talented for the most part with a few notable exceptions.

Having played in all beta's my 2cnts on this are:
2 rift invasions are boring , the first few are funny , than you find out they are all basicly the same , kill adds , kill boss , move to next and repeat, if your questing somewhere and don't want to join and invasion , tuff shit but you'll have in some cases. and what you say is true , many people indeed don't have a clue what to with them and that should say enough imo it means people are missing knowledge about an essential part of the game , somethimg trion apperently forgot about in their 'tutorial'
3 wow is balanced enough and they work hard to try and keep the balance , from what i seen in rift beta , there is no balance in rift or would you say a cleric seems balanced ? and also in rift there will be a certain way to spec that is 'best' and 90% of the players will run with the cookie cutter specs.
4 that argument again ? wow has evolved and is it's own game and one of the best mmo's currently out, rift IS one big carbon copy of wow in essence and nothing wrong with that imo why not try to be like the king of mmo's , trying to argue it's not which a lot of rift fanboys do is just silly , everyone who played the beta can see that.
5 i have a high end machine and the graffics look ok but that goes at the cost of performance even on my machine, where blizzard is having a game that is 6years old and runds on older machines it still looks decent enough , rift does the same so many mmo's tried , top of the line grafics that require a top of the line machine to show, newsflash: the majority of gamers run on older machines worldwide.

and on the trees in rift there is only one word to describe which is something we all complain about in wow : bloated.
Not that rift is a bad game but it does try to hard to be wow and it's not.
All in all i think it is a nice game people can enjoy because of it's simularities to wow but because of that it won't be the next 'wow-killer'

[dysphoric4life]

It's a MMO. It will be compared to other MMOs and WoW being the leading MMO is the benchmark of success. I assure you within their own companies marketing & development are not trying to attract a brand new type of gamer or age group. They are fighting for the same share of the market and people for this reason make direct comparisons. You can feel strongly about a game either way but in end it's still a game/product and those direct comparisons will be made.

I agree with you on that, and that Marketing and Development will be trying to replicate without stealing, but my point is that the Player base ultimately decides if a game lives or dies, and going into it with the mindset that wow is the end-all-be-all in MMO's is the wrong way to play. Play it to enjoy a game, not point out if it is or isn't like another game. ALL games, in some way, shape or form are like another game. Period.

[Dethh]

For the first 13-15 levels, you're moving from one camp of 2-3 quests to a 5 min walk to another camp of 2-3 quests, then moving on again. I got bored of running down a thin pathway to do my quest then run back up it to hand it in, then to run down it again to get to the next set of quests.

Explain how this is different from WoW or any other MMORPG. I just leveled 3 toons (80-85) starting my 4th and all I do is go from one hub to another, running back and forth from that hub to my quest area and back to hand it in, then down the road and do the same thing again.

I'm not defending Rift or anything like that. It's just really funny how people who say "I didn't like "X" about rift" meanwhile "X" is done in every MMORPG to date. It's nothing new or groundbreaking, it is a lot like WoW not just because its a MMO but because WoW has derived so many things from other games and refined them. If it ain't broke don't fix it pretty much sums it up.

About the only really new thing is the rifts. I am lvl 20 and haven't left the zone yet but rifts seem like they would be really annoying after you have everything you need from them as you can't ignore them. Rifts open and attack NPC's so questing or any interaction with npc's isn't possible until the rift is closed which you can't do alone. Now if higher level areas were different or the rifts functioned in a different way in those areas then it may not get old fast.

Leveling is not a grind at all and between quests and rifts you level really fast. I hit 20 in 2 sessions of about 4 hours each, I think I have a total of 10 hours played and I was afk for superbowl or IRL stuff. Not to mention I played alone and quested alone, the only groups I joined were the public ones or if I came across someone killing a named I needed I would spam inv so I got credit for kill and then drop group. When approaching any rift you are prompted to join the public group for defending against the invasion. You can also make private groups.

PvP was not closed this session and if you have an up to date PC and have no lag in WoW you won't have any in rift. The one BG I was able to do was called The Black Garden. TBH it was pretty lame. No mounting for one. Also its such tight quarter combat that you are almost ALWAYS in combat. There is a fang of remulous and you hold onto it and take increasing damagae from it the longer you posses it. The longer you hold it the more favor you get, favor=honor. I did not like this BG style at all. The world PvP was fun at times there were huge groups of opposing factions fighting for rifts.