Rift: Planes of Telara

I can't remember why I quit Rift... I think it had to do with grinding out pvp ranks to gear up for HK and also some friends forming a guild for Cata, so that didn't help matters. Overall though I thought Rift (before any expansions) was a pretty solid game. The expert dungeons, the raids, all pretty solid. I'm tempted to play again but have a feeling the spark would wear off after a few days, if not a few hours. In any event, anyone still play that has a guild? Or would anyone coming back want to throw something together?

I quit because of the ridiculous DDR wow type raids on steroids. Had a few mouth breathers in our guild that were completely incapable of executing perfectly (sarcasm obviously) sowe just couldn't stop wiping on some fights. Shit is way too tightly scripted these days.

Yeah, that was my main issue with the game. Liked the rest, just found raiding tedious because of the incessant wipes due to some player having to answer a door, change a diaper, lag, or some such nonsense. That happened all the time in older games too, but we could usually cover for them.

Kreugen_sl said:

Rift may not have been a failure at launch, but everything after that was. The expansion failed to bring back the legions of people that quit the game once the new wore off.

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For me my biggest reasons for not coming back were there were no social hooks, a very boring world, and overtly generic classes that didn't really draw me in. The game and content itself were polished and well designed, but despite the good design it really was just a typical treadmill MMO without a lot of in depth appeal.

It's a travesty Trion didn't have an AD&D or Tolkien license, as they could've had a killer game with a bit more creative and legacy hooks with their polished dev team.

You can fault Trion for a lot of things but they set the bar for releasing content. They were fucking machines with their patches and content delivery. Idk if that was due to Hartsmans leadership or not though.

Kreugen_sl said:

Rift may not have been a failure at launch, but everything after that was. The expansion failed to bring back the legions of people that quit the game once the new wore off.

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I had always planned to buy the expansion, but it came out right when F2P was really starting to take off in the mmo world. Tons of players were just too occupied with the F2P gaming options to bother getting our credit cards out for SL.

The whole sub model died even before Storm Legion came out. I can't speak to the quality of SL, but even if was the best expansion in the history of mmos, it might not have been a huge success. Subscription games are a thing of the past. WoW is hanging on because it has such a large base, but they are losing subs by the boatload.

I give Trion props for recognizing reality and making the conversion to F2P as fast as they did. They could have hung on for months with the old model and still have been profitable, their sub numbers were very respectable. F2P is a much better business model though, even failed games like APB Reloaded are profitable now after their F2P conversion. For Rift it should be huge.

I guess it depends on what the term 'successful' means to you. All I know is 2 years ago when it launched, the game was being treated like the 2nd coming on FOH (the thread was incredibly large, probably as large as the wow thread at the time) and other sites and at the end of the day, it wound up being just an average MMO in a sea of average MMO's. Trion went directly after Blizzard with their ad campaign and it failed. I agree with you, Trion recognized reality, but that reality was that their expansion didn't do anything for them in sales. They were actively hawking year long subs when Storm Legion came out, they were banking on that expac to carry them and it didn't. That's why they are going F2P.

I don't know many players that thought Rift was an "average" MMO. Most got pulled away by SWTOR and then when that mass exodus happened either went back to WoW or splintered off into the last year of failed MMOs

Success is having a very healthy bottom line in business. Popular is getting fawning reviews from the fans. Rift is very successful compared to most mmos. Successful enough to now be working on 3 more mmos (in various capacities) and a fps.

Ambiturner_sl said:

I don't know many players that thought Rift was an "average" MMO. Most got pulled away by SWTOR and then when that mass exodus happened either went back to WoW or splintered off into the last year of failed MMOs

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Most players didn't go back to WoW after SWTOR though. WoW's numbers have been in freefall for a while now. F2P games took them.

anyone giving away rift account. Cleric would be nice. (or maybe cheap like $25 bucks. )

Are you serious? It's completely free to play. Just level one. It's easy as shit nowadays.

My friend is pushing me to play, I'm reluctantly getting back in as it seems my class has been quite changed so I'm futzing with the builder thing.

Anyone know if macros have changed from before? So can I just slap 4 attacks in one key and it cycles through as they refresh?

Grim1_sl said:

Success is having a very healthy bottom line in business. Popular is getting fawning reviews from the fans. Rift is very successful compared to most mmos. Successful enough to now be working on 3 more mmos (in various capacities) and a fps.



Most players didn't go back to WoW after SWTOR though. WoW's numbers have been in freefall for a while now. F2P games took them.

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I think it was popular in the beginning. But I also think most players got bored out of their minds at some point, quit and didn't come back. It's a good game, a lot of polish and the content updates were very good. The problem is there is nothing unique about it. The leveling process is probably one of the most dull treadmills you'll find and end game is a lot of grind. You may look at it as a success but I look at it as a disappointment, to what could have been.

Most ex-WoW players (the ones Trion actively were trying to attract) don't want to play WoW 2.0. If that was true they would of just stayed with WoW.

I quit because everyone else I knew did quit as well. There is no specific reason listed, except the "I was already playing this game" (meaning it was a wow clone down to the names of talents and skills in some cases).
I even tried to look around for guilds, but eventually gave up and left and even stopped playing MMOs for a little while.

I liked Rift in the early days, lots of people, huge rift events (stupid tagging and "contribution system aside), lively world and all that jazz, then gradually the shine wore off, starting from the soul system.
I played rogue and it was enjoyable, but after a while nobody wanted bards in group content, archers sucked badly, nightblades weren't much better, so I had to jump through hoops with assassin/riftstalker/something else builds and mantaining so many self buffs via finishers it almost sounded stupid to say it out loud.
Then came the marksman patch, where I could outdamage 80% of the playerbase with 3 macros and mediocre gear, ecc.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can't even remember the exact timeline of nerfs and buffs, but for a game that got me through the flexible soul system, allowing me to do whatever I wanted (on paper)... let's just say I was quite disillusioned.

I levelled also a mage and a cleric to 50, enjoying them both in multiple specs, but as I said, playing a MMO just with a LFG tool is a tad sad.

Now, if Rift is f2p, I may even check it out again, dungeons were well done, I'd run them again a couple times.

In hindsight I think a lot of the things we liked about Rift originally turned out to be really, really bad. Like the souls/ten thousand talent trees per player thing. It's actually just dumb at the end of the day. It's a convoluted mess for any new or returning player, and it's a matter of copying popular builds for anyone else. It's a shitty, tedious system that originally looked like it was going to result in tons of variety.

A lot of Rift ended up tedious, like they copied only the worst parts of wow and then made them even less palatable

Damn, who replaced BAYR with someone who makes complete sense? Where's the fun in that?

Yeah. a big reason I left Rift were the nerfs and overall desire to over balance shit. The changes to Chloromancer and Rogue were just really bad from a player perspective. Couple that with the very boring talent trees and lack of alt fun and there was little reason to play except to raid, and I was somewhat over that after years and years of doing it in EQ and WOW.

I'm coming back to this. Any specific server I should join for Rerolled fun times?

Zhaun_sl said:

My friend is pushing me to play, I'm reluctantly getting back in as it seems my class has been quite changed so I'm futzing with the builder thing.

Anyone know if macros have changed from before? So can I just slap 4 attacks in one key and it cycles through as they refresh?

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The macro system is still the same. It will use the first available ability on the list. If it is on cooldown or whatever, move to the next. Pretty simple. If you have a lot of cd abilities you can add a lot more than four into one macro.

To add to the actual discussion: I played Rift for about a year and a half total, with a 6 month break after HK. I like the game fine, and I believe it was the best available MMO for most of that time, but it is just missing . . .somthing. I ended up quitting when my guild when MIA for 3 weeks to play other games and I was the only one logging in. At this point I don't see myself going back. All my favorite souls were nerfed repeatedly until they were basically unusable. Repeated "balance" patches due to pvp imbalances that took all the flavor/fun out of pve as well.

The game also falls prey to the "powergamer" syndrome, which is that despite however many options you have, there is going to be a #1 top dps/tanking/healing build, and most people that have a clue will just run that, removing any advertised variety. Trion fed that with Storm Legion by making all the 61 point builds the best rather than allowing hybrid builds to continue to shine.