Rift MMO

[cosmonaut]

What, no Rift (http://www.riftgame.com/en/) thread? I was under the impression everyone was talking about it, but maybe that's only the case in Warhammer?
I've been playing the beta last week (they gave out keys like candy), and I found it a really fun game, it's very likely I'm going to play it when it comes out.

It's mainly a PvE fantasy MMO with some PvP elements. I really hope the PvP will be good, since I acquired a taste for it in Warhammer (sadly the latest version finally broke the already buggy gameplay, greedy EA now sells levels and armor that created a huge power gap in the last bracket, this kills PvP-centric game since newcomers and casual players can't compete :lamo).

There are some neat things about this game I really like:

-> The soul system that allows you to create a very unique combination of skills. It's possible to switch from an offensive built to a defensive or healing built in 2 seconds, so if you're in a group and need a healer or a tank you can just switch. Every one of the four classes can be offensive, defensive or heal, and everything in between.
-> The name giving rifts which will appear everywhere and will invade and destroy your towns if you don't stop them. It's a very dynamic element and the world will change a lot if you keep on questing and don't stop them.
->The PvP element, you can go to the opposing faction and destroy there towns and open rifts there. But I have only seen a bit so far and been mainly on the defensive, I reached the necessary level pretty late. But it's surprising how popular the PvP servers were, I wouldn't expect that from a PvE centric game. For now there are no level restrictions for the zones, so I wonder how much griefing low levels are going to be an issue.
-> The game is very polished, the beta is far better than Warhammer after two years, and both games run on the same engine (Gamebryo). The developer team seems to be very fast to react to inputs from the community, that's really amazing.


Some things that are not so impressive:

-> The races look very bland and the story doesn't seem to be very deep.
-> The crafting system is nothing to write home about. Certainly a step up from Warhammer, and supposedly comparable with Warcraft, but peaople on the forums say there have been MMOs that did a better job there.
-> Presently there is no way to change the appearance of your armor/weapons besides some expensive dye, so if you want the good stats you look a bit mismatched and like everyone else on that level. (I'd expect them to at least take the minimum effort of Warhammer that allowed you to apply appearances from other armor to your present set.)


So far I had a lot of fun, might be just the honeymoon phase and I haven't seen endgame yet, but there are two more beta events I will take part in before it gets released in March.

My favorite video, it explains a bit about the game and the first guy talking is my guild leader in Warhammer, he's an alpha tester. :)

Rift: Enter the Rift Video

[billybob476]

I'm in the beta, have the client downloaded just haven't had time to log in and check it out!

[cosmonaut]

I'm in the beta, have the client downloaded just haven't had time to log in and check it out!

Oh, nice, the next beta event will probably be around the 4th, hope to see you there! :)

[KingIsaacLinksr]

The problem I saw with Rift was that it really looked like a WoW clone.  And really with as many companies that have been doing wow-clones then dying, it was lucky it even blipped my radar.  I'd like to see someone actually produce a unique game, not just a WoW-clone and then change a few features.  Not what I'm looking forward to atm.  

I'll also admit that the few companies that produce a MMORPG with a fantasy-based game are going to have a tough time breaking the WoW-clone-comparison. 

King

[cosmonaut]

Well, Trion claims to have the next generation of MMO, I'm not sure if this holds up, but at least it'll be a very well produced game.

I lately came to the realization that innovation isn't necessarily the only key to a good gaming experience, excelling on your field is, too.
For example the Mass Effect 2. Was it really unique? No. Was it a good, enjoyable game? Yes, the people producing it really knew what they were doing and polished the game until it shined. Or the latest Trek movie? Unique? No. Enjoyable? Oh yeah!

If you want to go deeper into the topic of innovation concerning this game, I'll just put this blogpost here, I found it very interesting.
(He's Benjamin Foley, my guild leader in Warhammer and someone I look up to. He's driven to improve the gaming experience for everyone, starting with alpha testing and sending in code that actually gets implemented in the game to being a leader of a big guild, organizing social events and being a forum mod. Even more amazing, he also has a live. And no, he's not working for Trion, in case you wondered.)

Foghladha's Blog:

The Evolution Of MMO

By: Foghladha

There's been a lot of debate over whether RIFT: Planes of Telara and Guild Wars 2 are "Next-Gen". Many have ruled them out completely claiming their carbon copy MMO's. We'll lets take a closer look at these two upcoming titles and see what's under the hood.

PUSH vs PULL METHODOLOGY

In WoW, DAOC, EQ, WAR, Etc. The main system is built on the idea of a world which a player lives in. You play a side story in bigger picture. When you log off nothing changes, nobody misses you, the world is the same as when you were logged in.

In GW2 & RIFT: they have innovated this concept and placed the Player first making the game the world that exists around the player. With these 2 games the MMO world gains cause and effect for the first time. IF players do not stop RIFTs they will spawn invasions that will take over every square inch of the map. Your efforts directly effect the world around you. In GW2 you see a wagon train getting ambushed, you can help ambush it or you can save them. Depending on what you do changes the overall picture. NO OTHER MMO has ever allowed this type of player dictated content. In both of them the WORLD fights back and the idea behind TiVO, Hulu, & Netflix comes to the MMO world. The same fate is hitting the Radio industry hard right now. People want content to be Personal, They dont want it to be dictated by some other outside force. Hulu, TiVi, and Netflix have flourished, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter have boomed. The world is about YOU now. Traditional MMO's are based on PUSH methodology, they make YOU come to them. The NEXT GEN MMO's use PULL methodology making the world come to you. Play it how you want, when you want, for as long as you want and the story will shape around your actions.

QUESTING:

In the Traditional MMO you will spend most of your time Questing in Travel. The vast majority of games send you to the opposite ends of the earth.

NEXT GEN MMO's (GW2 & RIFT) place the quest near the player. If you pick up a quest in RIFT you will not have to travel to the far side of the map and back again. Each Quest hub takes you to the next quest hub. All those stupid annoying quests that send you several zones over just to come back then send you back again are a thing of the past. RIFT is very good at keeping it local and making the EVENT part of the quest the primary focus rather than the travel time to get to the event. In GW2 they take this a step further getting rid of quests all together. EVENTS happen in GW2, You'll see them spawn up and have to decide what to do with them. Again killing the travel time required to complete a quest.

REWARDS:

Rewards in the NEXT GEN MMO's are not random chance of goodies that you cant even use. Both RIFT and GW2 deploy a mechanic that ensures that every time you complete a RIFT or a dungeon you walk away with something. It may not be the elite axe of almighty doom but it will be something that you CAN use. How many times have you farmed dungeons in Traditional MMO's and come up empty handed?
SEPARATION OF PVP & PVE

WOW, DAOC, WAR, and most of the other Traditional MMO's require players that love PVP to PVE to get the best gear, They require players who hate PVP to PVP to get the best gear. They FORCE players to do something they dont enjoy just to get the best toys. The NEXT GEN MMO'S change this. They give players the freedom to do what they like and have equal rewards. If you love PVP they want to make it so you never have to do a single quest to advance and equip yourself. If you hate PvP they want to make sure that you have a great time and have no problems getting the gear you want solely by PvE. No longer are you REQUIRED to play how you don't like playing. How you play is entirely up to you.

THE ENGINE

Yes the game uses the Gamebryo toolset which just happens to be the same engine WAR used. Realize WAR was based of the early version of the Gamebryo engine, RIFT is 2.5 years after that launch in technology. Thats a long time in the software development world. Saying "Oh WAR sucks so RIFT must suck because they use the same framework" is like saying, Mass Effect 2 (Unreal 3 Engine) sucks because Devastation (Unreal 2 Engine) was built on the same engine. Except in this case those 2 games we less than a year apart. I can tell you from experience that RIFT is a very beautiful product, especially later on in the game when you get to AIR and WATER rifts. The foundation of the game is extremely solid and they have a lot of versatility to expand on demand. I've played WAR and I've play RIFT and I can tell you RIFT is a looooot nicer to control and play. I don't get stuck on everything, I don't fall through the floor, In WAR things see through objects, in RIFT they do not. And heck, I can even /sit.

THE STAFF

This is not something to overlook. I drew up a list of the people involved over at TRION here. Their staff is hand selected from the best MMO's of the past generation. WAR, DAOC, WOW, Lineage, Aion, AOC, WAR, EQ, SGO, you name it they got people who helped build those products and learned from their short comings. Both TRION and ArenaNet have some of the most impressive developers and artists on the market today. The people who brought you the products you LOVED now work for these 2 companies and are competing to have the next game that you love. The fact that I personally have submitted countless bugs and suggestions and had most of them implemented in the game within a couple patches time is impressive. Much like the game putting the players first, TRION is putting they player in control of the outcome of the game. If you can dream it and theres a demand for it they can build it. Not saying that if you think it would be totally rad to have pink legwarmers that breath fire that it will actually make it into game, but every idea is seen by the teams that make it happen and EVERY DAY Trion meets and discusses these ideas and the pro's and con's of these ideas. Making everyone able to be Jedi's or Removing RVR Mechanics that people have grown to love is not going to happen here. Every last person who holds a desk at TRION knowns Failure by name, They've seen it first hand, and every bone in their body is going to do their best to avoid it in the future. To be successful you must know failure, it's only in the hard times that we learn our lessons.

So is RIFT & GW2 a NEXT GEN MMO? Well was Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the whole social networking boom Web 2.0? I would say so. Innovation isn't about changing everything. It's about taking a good product and making it great. Games that try to break the mold often fail miserably. Trion is working on taking out all that crap you hate from the Current Gen MMO's and improving upon what we enjoy. I for one think that TRION and ARENANET are doing all of us a HUGE service in the fact that by taking this step they raise the bar for every other MMO out there and force them to start thinking about US and not the static story. We want to feel important in our game world, and these 2 companies are making that possible.

http://www.gaiscioch.com/lore/the_evolution_of_mmo.html

[Rico]

I wouldn't mind giving it a try if anyone has any type of beta key available.

[billybob476]

I wouldn't mind giving it a try if anyone has any type of beta key available.

I know Scott and others keep posting keys on twitter and in the Rfit thread on the ELR forums. They are 25-use keys so each one is good for 25 people. That's how I got mine.

[Rico]

I will check later on when I'm back at the apt.  Thanks!

[Jobydrone]

Is there a Mac version?  I'd try it.  Isn't this the game that Scott has been hyping for years now that Kurt Schilling the old Phillies pitcher helped develop?  

Oh and welcome back Cosmonaut! :)

[billybob476]

Scott has been enjoying the beta but this isn't the 38 Studios project. They are coming out with another game before they release their MMO apparently.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Claiming to be next-generation of gaming scares me period.  There is NO developer company who has repeatedly said that their game is "The Next Generation of ____" and won me.  And I've tried a bunch.  While their idea may be next-generation, their implementation was poor and all they had was fancy graphics.  Anytime anyone has said they are next-gen anything in gaming I just run the other direction.  Of course this doesn't mean that these developers (TRION or anyone else) is great/terrible, but I just view it as false advertising, trying to amp up your game as something great when it really isn't.   Trion is an untested company promising a lot of features to their game and then also claiming to be the next-generation.  This "scares" me because your promising a lot.  Almost too much for any sane developer. 

Now to be a little less negative...

Excelling in your field is exactly what attracts me.  The games I loved last year, AI War, EvE, ME2, they excel in their field.  So I'll grant you that.  If Rift is all that it is cracked up to be, then maybe I'll give it a look.  There is quite a bit of promise in what they are putting out.  World PVP, an interactive changing world and more.  I always wanted that from WoW, but it never got there.  But the question is can they deliver on this.  And will the PVP be balanced.  As you said, Warhammer epicly failed on this front so I wonder if TRION has figured out the magic formula on this front. 

King

[Jobydrone]

Claiming to be next-generation of gaming scares me period.  There is NO developer company who has repeatedly said that their game is "The Next Generation of ____" and won me.  And I've tried a bunch.  While their idea may be next-generation, their implementation was poor and all they had was fancy graphics.  Anytime anyone has said they are next-gen anything in gaming I just run the other direction.  Of course this doesn't mean that these developers (TRION or anyone else) is great/terrible, but I just view it as false advertising, trying to amp up your game as something great when it really isn't.   Trion is an untested company promising a lot of features to their game and then also claiming to be the next-generation.  This "scares" me because your promising a lot.  Almost too much for any sane developer. 

Now to be a little less negative...

Excelling in your field is exactly what attracts me.  The games I loved last year, AI War, EvE, ME2, they excel in their field.  So I'll grant you that.  If Rift is all that it is cracked up to be, then maybe I'll give it a look.  There is quite a bit of promise in what they are putting out.  World PVP, an interactive changing world and more.  I always wanted that from WoW, but it never got there.  But the question is can they deliver on this.  And will the PVP be balanced.  As you said, Warhammer epicly failed on this front so I wonder if TRION has figured out the magic formula on this front. 

King

Have you played WoW since they implemented phasing tech all over the world?  The whole interactive, changing environment thing you talk about is there now.  You can work on a quest and when you're finished the world is very different than when you started. 

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I have Joby and it is nice I'll grant that, I just wish it didn't separate you from other players, always felt like I was alone all the time when I tried it out on my vacation last month.  TRIONs idea has merit in that everyone can be involved, not just because you did a special quest to get to that point (if I'm hearing them right). 

King

[Jobydrone]

I'm always alone when I quest anyway so that doesn't bother me.  Don't mean to talk about WoW in yet another thread...saw there were currently no plans for a Mac client for Rift.  Once again I should figure out how to run Bootcamp...blah blah

[Rico]

Yes Joby - a Mac can't really do everything.  ;)