The Glade 4.0

So, is Rift still alive and well or did it turn out to nosedive after launch like Vanguard?

It's still alive and well. I still play a bit. Post-launch support has been pretty good, steadily adding raid content and whatnot. I don't pour enough time into the game to really attack all the new stuff, but when I can, it's moderately fun to do so.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I haven't played in a couple of months. it got a bit redundant for me, and I got distracted by other things.

My sub is still active and I'll probably log in this week and see how it's playing...

I bought the CE when it was on a steam sale a couple weeks/months ago...

havent had time to use it yet

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I haven't logged on since June, when school really cut into my free time. My sub's still active, but time is again something of a premium.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

I still play regularly and have lotsa fun. Defiant on Estrael.

The game is still going pretty well. There's tons of content at max level, and like mentioned their patching schedule is way fast. Patch 1.5 is on test, and they just hit their six month mark. When was the last time WoW put out that much content in six months? Never that I can remember.

I kind of keep going back and forth on it, because to me it just feels like it's missing something. It just feels empty or soulless for me, and it doesn't hold my attention for more than a month or so at a time.

Wonder how long it will take to go f2p

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Rift was too much like WoW for me to play, although admittedly I'm not huge into MMORPGs in the first place. I tried it out and it is a pretty solid game, but just not my type.

Like WoW in what way?

I played pretty actively for several months, and I don't ever recall thinking it felt like WoW...

This might be more of a reflection on the community/other players than the game itself.

I played for a while, got a toon up to 50 and got bored with the grindfest and combat mechanics.

Been having fun in Champions Online again, seems like they fixed a lot of the game balance issues and it's more engaging than it was originally. But mostly I'm waiting to see what Guildwars 2 ends up being like.

The 'collect X' quests, overhead view, talent tree, monsters that don't chase you far, becoming a ghost when you die, attack combos. I haven't played the game long and am not an expert on this topic, so feel free to prove me wrong that they are very different. I won't debate.

You obviously weren't playing the same game, then. Because RIFT gameplay is WoW gameplay almost exactly. The look and the Rift events were the only things that separates the two.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

And the character/class development...

And the look/feel...

Raltar, did you play Rift?

I played Rift and I got tired of it QUICK because of how similar the play style was to WoW (see: combat and questing, the two real factors). That's fact. I felt like I was playing the same game with a different engine.

Pretty much any given combination of souls can be directly compared to a WoW spec.



I said it looks different, but the feel is exactly the same. You've got some world ending force that two factions are fighting and yet those two factions also fight each other, despite the fact that there are much bigger issues at hand than to be fighting each other. Gee, that sounds awfully familiar...



I had a couple of Defiant characters in their 40s before I stopped playing. Don't get me wrong...it's a pretty cool game. I really liked the Rift events and I liked that I didn't have to level more than 4 characters to experience all of the class combinations...but this game tried entirely too hard to be WoW with a different skin. But this isn't the only game to go this route, either(LotRO is in a similar boat, but at least each of their classes is unique and you don't have tanks wanting to be DPS or healers which is where WoW and its clones really dropped the ball giving all classes multiple roles).

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I have 2 50's and was working on a third when I stalled about 2 weeks ago. Various issues leading to my guild mates leaving the game and I followed shortly there after. 1.5 is due to hit soon so maybe there will be a resurgence.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

So, bottom line for someone who has never played an MMO other than EverQuest and is looking for a solo/group-friendly game for casual play - is Rift worth jumping into at this point, or are there better options?

Its as good as any. The good thing about Rift, at least in my experience, is the community (other players) are more mature than most of the other games I've played (especially WoW).

An alternative might be one of the Free to Play games like Lord of the Rings Online or Everquest 2, although I think you'll find the player quality in those games somewhat lower.

Rift is plenty solo-friendly. It's not group *un*friendly, but the questing-to-level model doesn't really support groups very well (you can group up on most of them to speed the process, but it's pretty mindlessly boring since you're just mowing through solo content with friends around. There's not much group dynamics to worry about, it's really soloing next to other people you're sharing a chat box with and (usually) sharing quest updates with).

That said, the group content in dungeons is pretty decent. The bosses rely too heavily on scripting for me to call it outright *good*, but that's par for the course in modern MMO development, and my own personal windmill to tilt at, so take that criticism for what it's worth.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I've played LotRO and RIFT and neither community is more or less mature than what you get in WoW. It's just that you could take both the RIFT and LotRO subscriber base, multiply it by 10 and still wouldn't have as many WoW players. You notice it more when there are more people, but the ratio of immature assholes to not immature assholes is basically uniform across all MMOs. If anything, free to play games will have more because they don't have to subscribe to the game to troll people.



Because having a boss just stand there why you hit it is sooooo fun and interactive. Not that RIFT has complex anything. You can faceroll every instance at all difficulty levels just like you can in WoW. I can't speak for the raids, though, aside from the public zonewide invasion raid bosses...which are basically tank and spank. They might blink about, but there's nothing complex about that.



It's really easy to get started in RIFT and they don't have a bunch of expansions to go through like other MMOs, so you could still get in without having to worry about being way behind like you might in Everquest, but LotRO and WoW are basically the same in this regard. They've also been pretty good about getting free updates out there on a fairly regular schedule...though, most of it is raid stuff, but it seems that each major content patch comes with a new world wide invasion with quests that span across all levels. This is really where RIFT shines, in my opinion. It's really fun to get a whole zone of people grouped up fighting back the various invasions and the rewards are pretty decent as well, so you feel like you actually accomplished something.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I found the emergent gameplay inherent in breaking camps with "interesting" class combinations in something as simplistic as EQ far more interesting than most "move out of the goo, stand here when he says X, and switch to Y when he summons them" style scripted encounters.

Some of the most interesting, dynamic, and reactive fights I've had have involved things like root parking surprises and tactically managing limited resources on a tight spawn schedule deep in a dungeon.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If you're interested in MMO's you should definitely play either Rift or WoW to get the feel of a modern game. See what you think. I'd go with Rift as it has a bit more random excitement with the zone events and such.

Very casual friendly.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I always come back to the classic, myself. The breadth of the gameplay is just so much more immersive to me.

As Kaffis mentioned, the randomness inherent in many of the "stand and hit it" boss fights was what made it different from time to time. The heavily scripted fights I just felt like I was following a complicated set of dance steps, not having to actually think my way through it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I never found anything up to Planes of Power to be exciting or challenging aside from having enough healers and DPS to kill the boss. Enchanters would pretty much trivialize any adds that came with encounters.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick