MMO

It’s been an interesting journey post-World of Warcraft. I have in the last week gone through quite a few MMO’s, ranging from Lord of the Rings Online to Eve Online. But tonight, I came across Rift. Now let me say I was initially holding back on Rift as I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to get into another situation where there was a monthly fee associated to gaming. Some of the glamor that came with the other MMO’s was the whole free to play model, although I will say I will pick up City of Hero’s when Freedom drops later on this year as that was one of my favorite games when it first came out.

Playing Rift has got me thinking about a few things so I figured what better place to put them but on here!

First off, where Rift beats out the free to play MMO’s it’s quite easy to lay out:

1. All the keybindings are the same. So “C” opens the character screen. “M” the map. “P” your skills, etc. You get the idea.
2. The layout is VERY similar. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Rift took a chapter directly from the WoW playbook when it comes to the layout of the various screens.
3. Straight forward questing system. This is the one that drove me crazy with some of the free to play MMO’s–it was like learning a whole new language and overly complicated for new players to get started in the game. Take Eve Online, I spent 2 hours this afternoon playing the game only to become frustrated at the initial learning curve because I was having a hard time dealing with one particular quest and there wasn’t proper guidance in-game to get me through it.
4. Good NPC layout. I can not tell you how frustrated I was walking around the LoTRO world trying to find a particular NPC. The layout of the towns were just terrible.

Now let’s take a look at World of Warcraft. I’m going to skip any indepth coverage, but I will highlight a few area’s where I think Rift certainly has advantages over WoW (and this will probably change as I’m only looking at this from a few hours of in-game play):

1. The graphics. Way better. But this is to be expected from a game that is released this year, opposed to one that is running on a 10 year old graphics engine. So we can’t really say this is a clear difference; however, Blizzard has had ample time through several expansions to update their engine beyond the cartoon-like graphics they are currently running with. Although I will give Blizzard designers a lot of credit that they have done some really impressive things with an aging graphics engine.
2. UI is polished. The UI in Rift is what I would like WoW to have been. Pretty much at this point in time, I wouldn’t have any desire for add-ons as the UI is just that good.
3. Make use of the world and not zoning into a private instance. This was something that Blizzard had struggled with and is still struggling with. Personally I hated the dungeons. You were grouped with people that you didn’t know or didn’t like or most of the times both. Additionally it go so repetitive that even though the people changed, the scenery was the same. Now in Rift, the game adds some new mechanics for zone events and rift. So now we are taking advantage of the world itself to engage players on that shard to interact with each other.
4. Instant groups. One thing I disliked about WoW was the idea of groups. Groups took forever to form and maintain. There was a top down structure to them, and just an overall feeling rigid feeling. Now in Rift they have introduced the concept of you being able to form groups on the fly. So if there is a zone event or a rift incoming, I can join a public group and come and go as I please. No more squabbling, no more dictator top down groups, just get in, get handled, get out. I would even compare this to the dungeon queues in WoW which are in itself another point, but can easily be wrapped up into this one. No more queues, period. A rift forms, you can handle it yourself or someone else is bound to just be wandering by or some rift junkie out to get his shards. Nonetheless this imprompt type of game play is actually quite enjoyable as it just feels like there is a better flow to the game. I can quest about, work on professions, hop into Rifts, and the flow is very nice.
5. Talents. One of the major changes to WoW in Cataclysm was the introduction of a streamlined talent tree. The idea was this would prevent bad players from being a tank by forcing a certain number of talents into the main focus tree, before they are allowed to branch out. In Wrath of the Lich King expansion you saw more and more Protection Paladin’s dropping Protection talents in favor of Retribution talents for the increase in damage and threat. Cataclysm changed that completely, and many (including me) saw this as sort of limiting as it provides an easier model for cookie-cutter players. Now in rift you have 3 talent tree’s to mix together! This combination allows for a HIGH degree of customizability and hybrid game play. For instance, I am a healer by nature, but having a talent tree of Inquisitor|Cabalist|Warden, it gives me a really interesting game play of hybrid ranged dps, healer, and utility.

All in all, I think at the moment Rift has some really solid win’s over WoW. Now this all depends though as we get to end-game content, does it match to the same degree of the raiding environments in WoW? How are the social systems developing in Rift as opposed to WoW? Does gear, spells, and talents, scale well as you level higher in the game and still provide players at the top tier things to do? Is an ever changing or influenced world more of a gimmick or really something that makes the game unique as the players have direct control of how and where things go? These are all really good questions, things I will be interested in finding out as the game progresses.

I’ve told myself apart from the initial game purchase, I’ll give it a month and see how things go from there!