Month: January 2011

I managed to get an invite for Beta 5 of Rift, and after hearing friends raving about the game decided it was worth trying out. I was not disappointed in the game, but after playing LoTRO so long, I experienced some shellshock with the community therein. This is bound to happen in this day I suppose, but the sheer amount of people who logged in to seemingly do nothing but deride the game and every other player that talked in public channels was a big alarming. During the day, the channels were largely free of this, with advice, random jokes, and comments about specific elements of the game that they liked or didn’t like, with reasons why. Night, however, is when the trolls began to roam the land.

That said, I’d like to give my feedback on the game itself. I’d recommend you first read Ravious’ post here about the Defiant side and his Beta 4 impressions, as you can see some of the issues he mentioned have been retuned, and others have not. After that, come on back and let me tell you about my view, as I played my time exclusively on the Guardian side.

Continue reading Rift Beta 5: Rifts Ahoy

Anybody who has read a mere handful of my blog posts since I started writing here knows that I am a zealot in the war against subscription MMOs. I hate subscribing for content. This is a highly debatable subject, but my belief is that most subscription MMOs barely qualify as a service anymore than say a working single-player game. I feel that my subscription fees should pay for reaction and growth in a sustained manner. Yet, there are so many differing opinions on what the customer is owed when paying the monthly fee. Some people are simply happy to shell out a subscription fee as an access fee regardless of the stagnation of the game’s content (until a buyable expansion releases, anyway). If that’s how they want their money to talk… more power to ’em.

Initially I had written off Rift because it was a subscription game, and, once again, I didn’t want to pay a monthly fee for a theme-park ride of content. I decided to play in the beta because it was a free sneak peek, and first impressions were “more of the same.” There was a fervor in the MMO community that had me come back to try it in a different light, and the result was glorious. Now, I am really looking forward to picking Rift up in March, and I am looking forward to paying them a subscription fee.

There is one big reason (besides, of course, having a fun game), Trion Worlds is so far showing potential customers that they intend to provide a Service. They will respond in a timely fashion to players’ feedback, and continue to expand the content. They will not simply collect a monthly access fee to pay for bandwidth and servers. Rift now has a public grouping system, a streamlined character sheet, itemization changes, and so much more. It’s like a breath of fresh air to actually see change during the beta when so many betas before simply accepted the feedback. I’ve also noticed that they are continuing to refine and expand the invasion content, and they are hinting that invasion events are just the start of their dynamic content features.

I know that what they have done in this beta crunch time may not be indicative of the level of service Trion Worlds will provide at launch, but they have a customer right now. Keep it up Trion!

–Ravious

I plan to make a nice long Rift post tomorrow, as I managed to sneak into the Beta 5, but while I try to enjoy my last testing day I’d like to appeal to my fellow testers to be strong and just ignore the “this game is just like Game Name Here” people which seem to be quite heavily popping up, especially in the evening US time. Explaining how all games borrow/copy successful elements from predecessors is something they either cannot understand or simply choose not to. It’s how evolution works, but the concept is lost on them. Don’t waste your time.

/soapbox

Last night was a very wonky night in RIFT. The servers were going crazy, whereas in prior betas they ran pretty well. Many wise voices in chat kept repeating that this was beta, and this is the best time for Trion to optimize servers. So, my playtime was constantly interrupted, and I didn’t get to play in a big event. I did get to play in a few small invasion events, where I was able to test two new features.

The first was the open grouping feature. It is pretty good, but I wonder about whether it is an artifact, rather, of the decision to keep conventional MMO grouping mechanics in the open world.

Continue reading [RIFT] Untethered from the Group