Goodbye World of Warcraft, hello Rift?

[LawlessSquirrel]

You know, people ask this same question every time a new MMO comes out and you know what? The answer is always the same every time. No, of course not.
I've never played WoW or indeed any MMO, but I do know one thing, no MMO is ever going to unseat WoW from the MMORPGer throne by doing exactly the same thing as WoW does. To unseat WoW, they're going to have to do something different.

This summarises my response very well, but I'll add that a good game isn't enough to kill WoW. The main draw is the community, which is self-sustaining regardless of new releases. Whittle away at it, maybe, but WoW may never actually be 'killed'.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

I don't understand where you're getting the feeling that it's trying to be realistic from. All of a sudden higher polygon counts than WoW = realism? In that case, I guess Okami was going for a realistic look too.

Quit trying, he will not stop defending World of Warcraft.

Realism as the shape of the figures, detail of the humanoids, boring color pallet etc etc

I am not talking about the genre.

If a boring colour pallet is using all the available colours we can possibly see (as that is what RIFT is doing), then yes.. I suppose the colours are boring and bland.

If "Realism" is bad and constitutes of anything that has a higher polygon count than World of Warcraft and lends itself to more detail than that.. then yes, I suppose RIFT has picked a more "realistic" take on things. (Why that is bad I do not understand, I have never liked World of Warcrafts comic style).

However as someone who has actually played (and is still and will until she's exhausted) and saw more than just a handful of screenshots and the starting zone, I can happily say that I have all the right to disagree with you and know that I am in the right.

RIFT does not take itself "too" serious. It might not be poking as much fun at itself as World of Warcraft, but last time I checked World of Warcraft has a fairly grim background story as well, and if you don't just pay attention to the hilarious quests, is actually very depressing.

It is the pot calling the kettle black. Admittedly the pot sees more action, but it doesn't change the fact that they are both made from the same material and have the same colour.

As a disclaimer: I have played World of Warcraft. I have 3 characters at level 80, and I will never return, not even for Cataclysm. Yes, there is alot to do, but most of it is just another "job" next to my actual one and I fancy none of that. Sadly RIFT will be exactly the same thing once I hit the max level, but that is what SWTOR and GW2 will be for.

Will RIFT kill World of Warcraft? Nah. Will it make a dent? Probably not. Here's me hoping though. *crosses fingers*

First off I don't play WoW anymore so I am not blindly defending it, I just know a WoW clone when I see one and it annoys me that people think WoW is something that needs to be killed. It is a video game, let people play what they wanna play and stop crossing your fingers that they will stop.

If you don't like WoW don't play it, but it just bugs me when people are so adamant about hoping a video game fails...

 

[Canid117]

Ha! I laugh at the foolishness of the question!

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

First off I don't play WoW anymore so I am not blindly defending it, I just know a WoW clone when I see one and it annoys me that people think WoW is something that needs to be killed. It is a video game, let people play what they wanna play and stop crossing your fingers that they will stop.

If you don't like WoW don't play it, but it just bugs me when people are so adamant about hoping a video game fails...

Agreed. Like I said in my first post in this thread, there's no reason that WoW needs to die. Other MMOs can co-exist.

But on the flip side, just because another MMO uses some of WoW's more polished ideas, that's not a good reason to dismiss it outright. After all, WoW took several of its cues from Everquest and simply improved upon them/added to them.

This is all very true. If Rift succeeds then good for it, I just don't like it when people "cross their fingers" for the failure of a video game. Hoping a game fails (and an arguably good one at that) does nothing, but hurt the industry.

 

[WrongSprite]

Try to copy WoW, you get killed by it. We need something new people.

 

[Bad Cluster]

I apologize in advance for my not so fluent English and possible run on sentences.
Here goes nothing!

I played Beta with some friends, most of us got bored to death near the second day of the last Beta event (7th), some even earlier.

The game is almost a carbon copy of WoW with some changes. You can see where Trion Worlds tried to improve on the idea, but it feels raw and unpolished, untested even.

Rifts, the key feature of the game, at first, they are good if you can get over the fact that this is something you saw in Warhammer Online (I'm ok with mixing games together). Further into the game they become less appealing, especially when you happen to be questing in the low populated zone. Have a big one spawn in your quest area and you might be forced to go and do something else unless you find people to help you.
Big Invasions are random too, sometimes they just happen to swarm the areas too quickly for people to even have a chance at decent defense resulting in some downtime until things clear up or forcing you to clean them up.
Its all ok if it would only happen every once in a while, but unfortunately in my experience this happened way too often. During last two Beta events I never seen a successful defense in Scarwood Reach, ever. It's hard to tell much about higher level zones because there wasn't not enough high level players around to populate them during the last beta event, at least on the server I was playing on(Shatterbone).

I was really interested in the class system with all those souls and possible talent builds. At first it looked like something which could keep you entertained for a while, something that could be very flexible. But unfortunately once you play a few classes and try a few combinations you realize that every tree for almost every class is built around the "combo point/energy" system which follows strict rules and most of the time changing the class will only change the cosmetics of it, names and types of damage you do. What makes it worse is that some skill descriptions are too vague and uninformative which can get really annoying with 3 talent trees in which you can put one of the 8 souls. On top of that some soul combinations would simply give you identical abilities with different names which are otherwise identical. That usually brings possible available builds down to the calssics, melee/ranged damage or tanking/support and player versus player roles.

I tried hard not to compare it to WoW but that's an impossible task especially when the game borrows so much from it. It all boils down to Rift being just another MMO trying to copy a successful model without the luxury of having the experience Blizzard has in their pockets.
This is just it, the game feels too raw to be worth a monthly subscription for me at this point. This might sound like neat picking, but I test games for a living and I just can't get over it, paying monthly subscription to test an unfinished game fries my brains. The game has too many issues which are not going to get magically fixed in one patch in such a short period of time.

I tried to like it, I don't know why, but it's not going to happen. Come back in a year? But what happens if everyone decides to do that? Switch to a Free to Play model most likely.

 

[Anah'ya]

This is all very true. If Rift succeeds then good for it, I just don't like it when people "cross their fingers" for the failure of a video game. Hoping a game fails (and an arguably good one at that) does nothing, but hurt the industry.

Ah, so you think I hope World of Warcraft fails? Where did I say that? If World of Warcraft fails, my boyfriend will be horribly unhappy, and so will his friends. What I do hope is that RIFT can make a dent into World of Warcrafts' subscription base, which would mean RIFT received a larger subscription base and could lead to further development down the road.

I do find it fairly amusing that you disregarded all my points about the "bad" things you mentioned about RIFT and latched onto the one single sentence that you thought was me attacking World of Warcraft, while subtle changing tone to be less aggressive towards the reason for this discussion: RIFT and your opinion that it is too bland and "realistic".

Try to copy WoW, you get killed by it. We need something new people.

True. But copy World of Warcraft to appeal to the masses that enjoy exactly that gameplay, and mix it up with other working mechanics from different games (which is all that World of Warcraft really did to begin with if you think about it), and you might have something sustainable. People enjoy the simple things in life, and they will enjoy the simple things in games just as much.

I like to describe RIFT as an illicit child born to World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, which was then given into the care of Warhammer Online (Public Quests) and Aion (it tries to be pretty, like a kid in front of the mirror failing to put on the facepaint of their dear mother).

What can I say, it works for me. It will work for other people and it won't for others.

I'm still going to cross my fingers to see it leech at least some players from the masses that are currently loyal to World of Warcraft. Least then it won't crumble and die until the games I am really looking forward to come out. (Which will then spark the same discussion again -- just like any other MMO ever released. Oh how I love you, population of the Internet).

 

[ultimateownage]

virtually the same as WoWs

If it's the same then how the hell is it 'trumping' WoW? This is just another MMO which is hyped at the beginning but then it shortly comes apparent that it's just aping WoW in almost every way and making the graphics better.

 

[Sejs Cube]

There are four classes...

Wow, four whole classes?

Slow that innovation train down man, because this shit's about to go off the rails.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I've heard that the game is really dull, so I doubt it.

There are four classes...

Wow, four whole classes?

Slow that innovation train down man, because this shit's about to go off the rails.

Sorry, but that made me laugh, well done, sir.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I don't like MMO's so I'm not concerned one way or the other. /shrug

Other than that, I hated it less than I hated WoW. I guess that's something.

 

[Aeshi]

It's just the most blatant WoW clone yet and I look forward to the day its smug little cover gets crushed.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Why would someone go to a game that does the same thing, only looking prettier?

Eh, I've looked at many-a screenshots and await the trial, but so far I prefer WoW's look by a mile. Not for it's technical prowess, but for it's art-style. Rift is leaps and bounds ahead of WoW tech-wise, but the art-style...it doesn't touch me one bit. It looks rather standard to me, rather run-of-the-mill fantasty fare.

and TOR is out next.

Please don't say that...you make my little fanboy-heart weep.

There are four classes...

Wow, four whole classes?

Slow that innovation train down man, because this shit's about to go off the rails.

Given, I've heard that there are multiple specialisations to choose from, sort of like WoW's talent trees only interchangeable between classes, apparently. So that means you have quite a lot of class-combinations to choose from.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I've heard that the game is really dull, so I doubt it.

There are four classes...

Wow, four whole classes?

Slow that innovation train down man, because this shit's about to go off the rails.

Sorry, but that made me laugh, well done, sir.

It's four whole classes in the sense that AD&D only had 4 whole classes. There's customization to be had in specialization, as of Theives, Fighters, Clerics, and Wizards, you could pick a theif that had some cleric in him and BOOM Bard.

 

[mechanixis]

Sorry, but you can't beat WoW with something that's just like WoW. Because the whole potential audience - people who want a colorful fantasy MMO - is already invested in WoW. They've been cultivating those characters and that community for years now; the last thing that's going to pull them away from that is something that's just like what they're already playing. Nothing's going to "kill" WoW at this point; the best new rivals can hope for is to not be redundant. And Rift is really, really redundant. That's why EVE is still around: you just can't get an spaceship economics simulator out of WoW.

If any upcoming MMO has a chance of surviving, I'd say it's The Old Republic. It's a different genre - science fiction - and more importantly it isn't trying to be the same kind of game. TOR places story and dialogue before teamwork and number crunching, and therefore will attract a different group of people.

 

[Lord Moustache]

WoW killer? Nope. However, it's more like a fresh version of WoW, let me explain.

I find the most fun thing about MMOs (PvP aside) is exploration and new ways to advance your character. This means expansions with new zones,quests and dungeons. Rift is like a really big WoW expansion. It is just like wow, down to the colours of the chat window, but with all new content and some mechanics (Rifts). However I find that it's also more fun to play because of the combat itself (disclaimer: I play rogue). I won't go into the details, but it just seems faster, more visceral and customisable.

I played WoW from pre-BC till a few months ago, I quit because once I got to level 85 it was the same as it was at 80, 70 and 60 (mostly). No doubt I will feel the same about Rift when I reach max level and have seen most of the game, with raids and gearing being the only thing left to do, but I'm enjoying the ride so far.


In summary; Rift is a WoW expansion.

 

[Cowabungaa]

In summary; Rift is a WoW expansion.

Only without the huge lore-history behind it, continuing story, political and persistant world developments, etc. And that's one of it's main weakness right there and one of the reasons I like WoW so much, why a new MMO, especially one based on a new IP, will have trouble convincing me of joining. I wouldn't be surprised of that counts for more people.

Age of Conan had a with me chance because Conan's world is quite well-known, WAR had a chance as it had the huge Warhammer franchise behind it, SW:TOR will have a big chance because it has Star Wars behind it (and I adore me some Star Wars). Rift? Ehhh... I'd rather just buy an actual WoW expansion then.

 

[mechanixis]

Brown...psht.

Here you go.

Spoiler: screenshot full of BROWN

Now go crawl back into your cave, troll.

I'm sorry, but this is too ironic...

That's from WoW. Both games contain areas of dreaded nightmare hue called brown. In all honesty, part of the reason I quit WoW (after about 10 levels) is that I reached the Barrens, and found it depressingly bleak and lifeless.

Really, this is stupid. Why is brown inherently horrible? Why does it ruin games? If a game only drew colors from the neon-pink spectrum, would that somehow be better than brown? I think what people are really concerned about is a lack of variety, and both games have pretty definitely displayed that they have variety.