Rift: Good But Not Good Enough

Rift: Planes of Telara.  I have a lot to say about this rare gem of development perfection.  When I first heard of "Rift" the very first thing that came to mind was yet another Korean grinder MMO.  And I've had quite enough of those.  The difference between the "Old Age" of MMO's and the current one seems to be based on the fundamental gameplay mechanics.  Old games like Asheron's Call, Everquest, and Dark Age of Camelot...These games all actively promoted unity in the community - a necessity to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME with more emphasis on the MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER part and less on the...whatever it is the current generation seems to be focusing on.

Rift started out fantastic - in the beta, the game was so incredibly polished, it felt like I was playing any of the other current MMO's on the market 1-2 years after they released.  The game was a masterpiece of design success.  The developers had actually finished so much of what they planned, I had read several times that they were already working on post-launch end game content that would go live within the first 2-3 months.  That's a damn miracle - even World of Warcraft - who's launch is scarcely remembered, was a pile of shit.  I remember waiting for the servers to come back up from downtime more than I remember playing WoW during it's first month.  In Rift's first month, server downtime has never been more than 10-15 minutes at a time.  Trion Worlds is literally one of the best, classiest and well organized developers I have ever seen, and I've been playing games, specifically MMORPG's, for 12 years.



But, while the developers had their heads on their shoulders and not in their rears, there are some flaws in this game which cannot be ignored and cannot be easily fixed.  When I first started playing, the game felt exactly like World of Warcraft, only the next step in evolution.  The mechanics and the combat, literally carbon copies except with different classes and abilities.  The graphics, improved dramatically...I actually planned out buying new computer parts to upgrade my rig because finally there was a good worth upgrading for.  When playing on maximum visual effect with Super Sampling on, this game is truly, truly beautiful.  Like, really good looking.  The irony of course is that it still doesn't look as nice as Age of Conan which released in 2008, but it is without question the current #2.

The game was incredibly fun while leveling, even if it did follow the WoW format.  Rift takes a little bit from every MMO released in the last several years and puts it all into a big smelting pot where it literally burns off the impurities that made those other games bomb out.  From World of Warcraft we have the combat and questing mechanics, from Warhammer Online we have the Rift system - which is a dramatically improved version of WAR's Public Quest system.  Of course, the little bits it takes from other games are mostly irrelevant, standard things that appear in most games, however Rift does them all so incredibly well it dwarfs it's competition.  Everything is this game is flawless.

However, that "shiny new toy" feeling you have while playing the game mostly vanishes when you hit level 50.
There are a very large plethora of long term flaws in the game that are definitely not immediately noticeable when you are leveling.

The PvE dungeons that you do at end game are literally the exact same thing as World of Warcraft, only they look prettier and are, in my opinion, more fun.  At least they are more fun the first time you do them.  After that first shining moment when you defeat that dungeon, it becomes the same gear grind as WoW.  Do every instance once a day, try to get all the purple loots.  When you have those purple loots, do the next tier of dungeons every day until you get all those purple loots.  When you have all those purple loots, try to cobble together 20 of the dumbest mother fuckers on the planet to try and go into the Raid instance and then do it once a week to try and get all those purples.

The grind is, like the mechanics, a carbon copy of World of Warcraft.  Admittedly it feels far fresher simply because of the visuals and the unique classes you can play.  However, Rift promised a wide  variety of classes, and they delivered.  Unfortunately, they failed at balancing properly.  It would be impossible for me to properly describe the balance issues in the game to someone who hasn't played it, so let's just say that at the end of the day, there is really only 1-2 valid combinations out of the 8 souls per archetype for any sort of PvE instance running.  When you hit 20 man dungeons, the flexibility changes somewhat as certain support classes that served no purpose in a 5 man suddenly are needed for 20 mans, but the 1-2 combos that do the damage remain the same.  This is especially true for Warriors and Rogues, who are, in my experience, not even invited to groups if they have a soul combo that is more fun than it is effective.

This flaw, while seemingly not a huge deal as you can always just play with friends who will let you play whatever you want, becomes VERY problematic in PvP.  The PvP in Rift leaves so much to be desired.  Dark Age of Camelot is the king of PvP/RvR online games and always will be to me.  I played that game for 8 years, and it is my iron standard.  It is the pillar with which I compare all others to.  The one thing they did absolutely right that no one else seems to have caught on to is having 3 factions.  Having 3 factions is an auto-balancer; imagine if there was a third faction in WoW, all those servers where there are massive imbalances in Horde/Alliance would be alleviated somewhat because if one is far too large and starts dominating one, the third one can step in and they can gang up on the other.  This is what helped make DAoC such a massive success.  The other thing, of course, was massive world PvP.  Dark Age of Camelot had battlegrounds just like every other MMO, but they did is so differently.  Instead of playing a 20 minute instanced round of capture the flag or point control, there was a giant fortress in the center of the map and your objective was simply to capture it or defend it.  It was the same open world pvp you could get at end game, only tailored to your current level range.  It was beautiful, you could chill out in those battlegrounds all day and PvP to your hearts content fighting over control of this fortress.

The other thing that they did that, for the life of me, I can't understand why no one else does, is NOT have any sort of instanced PvP at their maximum level.  This is the death of a game, by having such things.  Take Warhammer Online as a perfect example.  The game, built as a spiritual successor to DAoC by the same company, failed incredibly hard.  They had all the makings of a fantastic RvR game.  In fact, I personally lead a guild of 300 or so people and we did nothing but open world PvP.  It's been some of the best experiences I've had in any game, running around a zone with 100 or so level 20's and capturing forts.  Fantastic stuff.  Unfortunately, once you hit that max level and the only thing to do is get gear and get PvP points, no one wants to roll around in the open world looking for fun times when they can sit in a town, press a button, and magically appear in a capture the flag game that is 10 times as rewarding on a point scale.  Why would I, logically, spend 5 hours running around the open world looking for a CHANCE to get 100 realm points when by doing battlegrounds, in that same 5 hours I can make 1000?  The numbers are just examples, but the point remains.  Having these battlegrounds available at level 50, while offering some variety especially to those who don't have much playtime, utterly destroyed the main focus of the game and caused it to go from thriving to the verge of death almost overnight.

Rift suffers a similar problem.  Without any notable open world PvP objectives, people are forced into doing these World of Warcraft style PvP scenarios where the class imbalances become incredibly noticeable.  Rogues are nearly useless, Pyromancer mages are overpowered to the point of "why bother" and seem to only be getting buffed and buffed every patch.  Warriors had one class that was incredibly overpowered - and then got nerfed, except they nerfed all the other warrior archetypes as well.  Some of the class balances they've done in their first month really leave me concerned about the games future.  I realize it's still young, but if this is the type of balancing we can expect, I doubt the game will end up surviving.  PvE only gets a game so far.  The instances eventually get old, and the grind and repetition of the formula dries up in it's fun factor.

And another thing, Mages.  Fuck mages.  This current generation, I don't understand them.  I am a warrior.  I am wearing a full suit of plate armor.  If you hit me with a sword, it gets deflected.  It's fucking METAL armor.  You are a mage.  You are wearing cloth armor.  I hit you with a sword, you get cut in half.  Did mages suddenly forget that wearing cloth armor isn't actually wearing armor?  It's just fucking clothes.  You are wearing CLOTHES.  You don't get survivability, you are a glass cannon.  I don't mind getting one shotted by a mage - in any game - because that seems logical.   The magic user will beat you into oblivion if you don't kill him fast and furiously.  I don't believe anyone should have the power to deal such insane amounts of damage and then live through being attacked by 3-4 people at once.  But these are imbalances that do exist in the world of Rift.  I'm sure it'll all get ironed out eventually, but that's not what concerns me about this game.  The thing that concerns me is that someone had the idea that mages should be given such powerful damage and survivability, and that that idea was not rejected immediately.  It makes me question what will happen to the game in the future, and I hope it makes Trion question it as well.

As it stands,  Rift is a fantastic game.  The leveling experience is twice as good as World of Warcraft, albeit in hindsight WoW has so much more variety.  Leveling an alt in Rift is agonizing unless you are completely in love with your alts class mechanics.  Leveling in Rift is completely linear, it is the same zones and the same quests and the same rifts every single time.  No deviation what soever, which will give the game an incredibly short lifespan, as half the reason WoW succeeded early on is the diversity in leveling zones that made leveling alts fun.  But, you do get a certain amount of satisfaction when you are out questing and suddenly the sky goes dark and the world opens up and starts spewing monsters out of its ass at you.  Rift is probably the only game in existence where PvE raids YOU.

Overall, I'd say Rift is a pretty fantastic new MMO with potential the likes of which we really haven't seen yet.  Rift is the formula perfected, the question is how long will it remain perfected?  It's without question worth the $50 to buy the game, but I for one did not choose to subscribe.

If you are interested in trying Rift and formulating your own opinions, head on over to www.riftgame.com and check it out for yourself!