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Sunday, June 19, 2011

Rift - The game with no rifts

I got rift at launch and found the beginning stages of the game to be one of the most enjoyable experiences in a MMO for a long time. There was a real sense of war between the planes.

Fast forward to today and I have re-subscribed and re-rolled defiant.

Before you hit the guts of the post, I was excited to play again and looked forward to it. I really did think Rift was still a good, freash and new MMO. Turns out I was being to hopeful. It is still better than the state that Warcraft is in but only just. 


What I have discovered is a very dull mmo that pales compared to where it was at launch. It makes me question why I resubscribed when I should have resubscribed to Aion.

The game is called Rift, and while there are rifts due to the dead server population you end up doing them by yourself. The game realises this and only spawns baby rifts.

Epic invasions are gone, hiding from patrols is gone. All I have been doing is the FedEx quests which I had no idea how boring they were until the distractions of the rifts were removed.

Good luck seeing this kind of open world raid event any more.
The usual response from players is to ' get to the level cap, that's where the real action is '. Yet I also hear people moaning that no ones turning up to the end game rifts. 

I am just really disappointed on my return to the game. Usually with MMO's if they don't hold me in the first month, I give them a few more months to bake then return to see how they have changed. Almost all of them have improved but with Rift I feel it has taken a step back and falling on its butt.

I have no idea what they can do to fix the Rift events, besides artificially making them easier but still keeping the epic feel ( NPC parties attacking bosses ? ) but the core feature and what this game is named after has fizzled. Trying to get new players excited is going to be hard when all they are left with is a Warcraft clone with linear quest tracks.

The only dynamic content left is enclosed cue for pvp that is a clone of warcraft battlegrounds mini games. The endgame is raid or die, so I might as well get out while I can.

Update: I have gone back to my original server which is still busy and not a ghost town. Epic level raids still happen at all levels regularly but there still isn't enough people to complete the. 

1 comment:

  1. This sums up more of the issues rift has:

    http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/07/13/enter-at-your-own-rift-are-rifts-in-danger-of-collapsing/

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