Rift: Planes of Telara

[Rasix]

$33.50 on Steam this weekend (33% off)

It really needs to come down to $19.95.  The game requires server consolidation, an influx of new players, or both.  Major zone invasions in off hours kill the ability for new players to complete quests.

Hasn't really been my experience, except for one really long zone invasion in Gloamwood.   Game could use more players, and server mergers would probably be a good thing.  Bigger pops would trigger more invasions and have more people to help with those invasions, which is a good thing, IMO.   I don't think MMO devs particularly love the scrutiny and perceived weakness server consolidation might produce, so they're likely reluctant to do so despite the benefits.   Game over expanded servers early on out of necessity, and now they most likely need to scale it back some.  Hartsman would know better than us, however.

$20 would be a better price point, I agree. 

[Numtini]

I think more than just server mergers, server reorientation that includes migration off of high population shards. They're apparently still seeing queues on some realms in prime time. So something like Low X and Low Y merge and high pop Z can also migrate there.

I don't find the invasions are a problem though and I'm playing eastern mornings at 7am before work.

[Mrbloodworth]

Wow, once the new wares off you guys really devalue something.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Wow, once the new wares off you guys really devalue something.

Rift never had a lot of value to begin with.

[Numtini]

Well I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Most fun I've had in a fantasy mmo since Hartsman left EQ2.

[Rasix]

Wow, once the new wares off you guys really devalue something.

MMOs get the most bang out of deep discounts.  Draw them in and you have a chance at keeping them and drawing in that sweet, sweet sub. 

Coming in new, I wouldn't pay full price for the game at this point in time.  3 months post launch and you're going to see low pops at the newbie levels.  You need something dramatic to draw someone in and scream, "COME PLAY ME".

It's "wears" also.  You and Morf need to have a spelling contest.

[sam, an eggplant]

Rift never had a lot of value to begin with.

Rift's only value lay is in its neat multi-classing system. Beyond that, after playing WOTLK and cataclysm, the TBC-era quest grind got old quick.

Mechanics like getting constantly dismounted and being forced to clear 20 mobs on the way to your quest target and the same 20 respawned mobs on the way out are simply unacceptable at this time. I quit after making it to level 12 or so, when I hit an underwater quest to kill 10 of one foozle and 8 of another foozle while swimming at 50% normal speed. Seriously, fuck that shit.

[Dren]

I'm beginning to realize that the quests have to be secondary.  Now I just explore and look for rifts.  The quests kind of guide me towards which areas I do that, but if there is anything that can take my attention away, I let it.  EXP gain is really in the killing of mobs and the item/currency gain from rifts is nice and more fun to me.

I agree though, if you only concentrate on the quests, it will get boring right quick.

I also agree on the price.  I recently bought it and have no regrets, but I only did so because I'm tired of WoW and already went through my single player game round for the last two months.  For 20 bucks they would have had me a lot quicker.

[Tannhauser]

Rift never had a lot of value to begin with.

Rift's only value lay is in its neat multi-classing system. Beyond that, after playing WOTLK and cataclysm, the TBC-era quest grind got old quick.

Mechanics like getting constantly dismounted and being forced to clear 20 mobs on the way to your quest target and the same 20 respawned mobs on the way out are simply unacceptable at this time. I quit after making it to level 12 or so, when I hit an underwater quest to kill 10 of one foozle and 8 of another foozle while swimming at 50% normal speed. Seriously, fuck that shit.

You got that right, although some later zones aren't too bad.  But fuck Scarwood Reach, I really despise that zone.  Seriously needs a 50% culling of spawn points.  I duo'ed 85% of that zone and riding a mount is pointless and the whole place is annoying and frustrating.

[DLRiley]

I really don't understand how anyone can stomach "travel" in an mmo when simply teleporting to a city i already been to 30 times would be simpler and less rage inducing. I like to explore and go "oh that place looks cool" and will gladly spend hours in a new area just to see empty shit and I partially jizz my pants when the level designer decides to put something of interest there. But exploring != backtracking and for some reason mmo developers lump the two together because "hours of meaningful content" means re-killing spawned mobs over and over again because your "quest" has me running in very long intricate circles.

[Venkman]

Bigtime. I've run enough West Karanas for a few lifetimes. Anyone not implementing a robust run-to-once/fly-after system with a WoW-density of nodes is seriously misinformed about the general gamers tolerance for running. I think it's a good idea to have densely-packed flight points and more scattered teleportation points, as flying gives the sense of the vast world that pulls players through the sequence of zones whereas teleporting is good for really long distances or people who've hit the cap after having gone through all the zones already. And on teleporting, more games need player-created portals others can step through. It's a nice way to show the future of some class abilities and make a little coin on the side.

[Numtini]

I get the mob density thing and agree, but I really don't see a whole lot of travel in the game. Certainly nothing like what's in LOTRO (or was when I last played). No, it's not instant gratification like WoW, but that's a positive as far as I'm concerned.

[Threash]

Some zones are pretty horrible about running back and forth but the grand majority of them are just go to ques hub, do several quests, move to next quest hub.

[Azuredream]

Running to DSM sucks as Guardian, and I imagine running to DD as defiant probably sucks too. The run to GSB/RoS is just awful but thankfully only one person out of twenty has to do it.

[Threash]

It's easy enough to send a rogue to gsb.

[Draegan]

DD is a short run from the Defiant porti in Moonshade.

For Fae, as a Defiant, I have access to the Guardian porti in western Silverwood.  

DSM is terrible for Guardians though.

For GSB you can run up the mountains in the north and drop in.  Takes no time at all.

[Dren]

MOB density and  re-travel aspect will eventually kill this game for me.  I too, hate it.

Most of the time it comes where I accidentally missed a quest from an area I spent an hour in doing all the other quests.  I look back at my map after getting back to the quest hub, sigh, and log out.  I get burned out of killing MOB after MOB just to get back to that point.  The respawn rate of trash in most areas is too high too.  The only times I die are when I think I've cleared a path only to pull that next group and have another come from a respawn behind me.  And I die often...

[Draegan]

What calling/spec are you?  There is a spec for each calling that can handle multiple mobs at the same time.

[Amaron]

Not sure if this got posted elsewhere but it belongs in this thread so here we go:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35044/Interview_Trions_Debut_Rift_Closes_In_On_1M_SellThrough.php

He implies they stole 600k customers from WoW and further implies they are current customers.   The roundabout implication makes me think they don't really have 600k current but the whole article sounds like they still have a lot of paying subscriptions.    The fervor over this game has dropped a lot but WoW failed at their pull back this time.    I'm getting the feeling like we're looking at a new #2  till SW:TOR comes out.

[Rasix]

What calling/spec are you?  There is a spec for each calling that can handle multiple mobs at the same time.

It's still annoying if you're specced for multi-mob destruction and survivability.  Would be nice if they just pushed Soul Recall down to a 15 minute timer. That would at least help mitigate some of the hassle.

[Shatter]

Not sure if this got posted elsewhere but it belongs in this thread so here we go:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35044/Interview_Trions_Debut_Rift_Closes_In_On_1M_SellThrough.php

He implies they stole 600k customers from WoW and further implies they are current customers.   The roundabout implication makes me think they don't really have 600k current but the whole article sounds like they still have a lot of paying subscriptions.    The fervor over this game has dropped a lot but WoW failed at their pull back this time.    I'm getting the feeling like we're looking at a new #2  till SW:TOR comes out.

Well Id say its already done better then WAR, AOC, EQ2, Aion(NA), etc etc.  But yeah, TOR will hit every MMO hard.  I dont know anyone right now that isnt tired of WOW and those same people plan to play either GW2 or TOR.  Just a waiting game now. 

[Ashamanchill]

Every second trade chat conversation in WoW is about SWTOR. The word on the street seems to be 'YO DAWG, THIS GAME IS GOING TO BE THE SHIT'. Even among people who I would actually trust to a real, face to face conversation over drinks, this games seem to have a 'I gotta try this boss, and you do too!' feel. The gamut may run from 'It's gonna suck balls', but in a schadenfreudeic kinda way, to a 'It may suck, or it may rock, but I gots to know!' sentiment, right up to 'STAR WARS MMO?!?! HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLE SUCK?!?!?!?!?!?' Anyway you shake it, this game is being talked about.

[Lantyssa]

... right up to 'STAR WARS MMO?!?! HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLE SUCK?!?!?!?!?!?' Anyway you shake it, this game is being talked about.

How quickly people forget.  While I loved it, SWG was a huge disappointment to a lot of people.  I'm not sure SWTOR will be any different in that regard, though it might surprise me since what I look for tends to be different from the majority.

[Amaron]

How quickly people forget.  While I loved it, SWG was a huge disappointment to a lot of people. 

Yea I expect big things of SW:TOR but a lot of people forget that SWG was supposed to be the game that finally made MMO's hit the big time.

[Merusk]

SWG was panned as Sim:Beru for a reason.  TOR doesn't look to be trying to fill those shoes any time soon and *from what we've seen* is very much in-line with what a successful SW MMO should have looked like when SWG launched.

The real question is, how much of it feels and plays exactly like a MMO that should have launched in 2003 vs one that will be launching in 2011.

[Malakili]

... right up to 'STAR WARS MMO?!?! HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLE SUCK?!?!?!?!?!?' Anyway you shake it, this game is being talked about.

How quickly people forget.  While I loved it, SWG was a huge disappointment to a lot of people.  I'm not sure SWTOR will be any different in that regard, though it might surprise me since what I look for tends to be different from the majority.

A lot of people excited about TOR probably don't even know what SWG is.

[Comstar]

A lot of people excited about TOR probably don't even know what SWG is.

I know I'll be able to right hook Sith Lords in the face while making a action hero line while I do it, as voiced by FemShep (assuming I roll high). If I can do that, it'll be worth playing till Mass Effect III comes out 4 months later.

Well, that and I hope they learn somethings from Rift.

[luckton]

Well, that and I hope they learn somethings from Rift.

I actually doubt that this will happen within the first year of live production, as Rift just got released this year.

Besides, the only thing to learn from Rift is one variation of how to make a better WoW-clone, which TOR is already trying to do 

[Simond]

AoE looting in SWTOR kthx

[Shatter]

SWG launched very buggy which was one of its biggest faults.  Beta testers cried the 2 weeks before launch for them not to do it, of course that had no impact.  I guess if TOR launches with few bugs thats already a step up :P

[luckton]

AoE looting in SWTOR kthx

I'm already cringing from gameplay footage of people looting corpses and seeing a fucking 1 second timer bar for each corpse.  That shit needs to get lost, ASAP.

[eldaec]

Clicked expecting a rift thread, left disappointed.

[luckton]

Clicked expecting a rift thread, left disappointed.

I don't even know why this thread is here since we have a subforum...

[Malakili]

Clicked expecting a rift thread, left disappointed.

I don't even know why this thread is here since we have a subforum...

Generally speaking when we do this we have a thread for generally discussion of the game, and then the subforum tends to be for people who are regularly playing the game to discuss specific things related to the actual playing of it. (Builds, etc).  Another example of this is Minecraft, which we have the Minecraft thread, and the subforum was/is for discussion of things related to the f13 Minecraft server specifically.   

For people like, who aren't playing, I'll regularly check out this thread when it gets bumped, but I almost never go into the Rift subforum.

[Count Nerfedalot]

SWG launched very buggy which was one of its biggest faults.  Beta testers cried the 2 weeks before launch for them not to do it, of course that had no impact.  I guess if TOR launches with few bugs thats already a step up :P

From what little I've seen of TOR, they could launch today and they would still have vastly more content and actual working systems than SWG had at launch.  "Very buggy" is totally inadequate to describe just how much stuff wasn't even finished yet much less how many of the numerous complicated subsystems didn't even work right on their own and interacted with each other in spectacularly broken ways. Bugs are bits of code that don't work right. What SWG had was an incomplete design that could never have possibly worked right even if it had been completely implemented without any bugs at all.