Anyone playing Rift?

[Jubilee]

So had friends who were tired of WoW invest in Rift and a 60 day card for me to try it out. Seems that they have learned a lot of lessons from WoW, and incorporated that into their game. The ease of public groups, first person in an instance triggers a summons to everyone, lots of things to do with traditional questing, Rifter, pvp, etc. Awesome..

The only downside I really am feeling right now is alts. The guardian and the defiant zones are basically the same. A couple of quests in the very beginning change what mob to kill/item to collect based upon your race. That's it. Otherwise it is ALL the same. No real different paths to take in terms of questing. So right now, its all new and good. But I am finding when trying alternative roles that I am just clicking and not reading.

Just curious if anyone else was playing, and their thoughts. Currently mine is that its a game that will provide a distraction from WoW for a while, but unless they step it up, won't be a permanent distraction.

Fawna, Defiant, Fae Blight Shard

[DragonLensmanWV]

I never was attracted to online games. I like to pay for a game once, then never have to pay to play it. That's a great business model for the game companies - charge you for the game, then charge you to play it. Sweet for them!
Waiting for Crysis 2.

[Jubilee]

I can see your point Dragon. I have felt that way in the past. However, I view it now as $15/month for hours of entertainment. The games are grander in scale. It isn't something that most people will complete all available content in 40 hours. Then there is the assorted patches, etc that continue to add more content to the game. So it is ever evolving. That doesn't even take into consideration the different ways you can play through the game, or adding in player vs player content..

So while a friend played Dragon Age and finished it in a couple of weeks, he also spent $20 less on an MMO, and while he pays $15/month to continue to play.. the amount of game time per dollar is less for the MMO. Simply because he has more to do with it.

Granted I also like the social aspects. My two best friends in the world I met through my gaming. Started in WoW with some real life friends who went their own ways, and ended up in guild with mature/casual playing folks who like the camaraderie as much as the play itself. Now I am leader of that guild, and many of the folks in it are like family. We not only help each other in game, but "in real life" too. Assistance after hurricanes in rebuilding (have a slew of folks in TX), Supporting members as they deal with illness and the deaths of family members, and now my friends convinced me, and play host for me while I am in Baltimore taking care of health issues. In many ways.. it keeps me sane! (well at least keeps me from being certifiable :P )

Vent even replaces most of my long distance calling!

[DragonLensmanWV]

I totally get the online community thing. Look around here for example. In fact, part of my screen name is an homage to my first online group via usenet, and prodigy before that. Lost track of them when my ISP dropped newsgroup feeds, but my new one does so now I can reconnect with my old friends. But, I'm more of a solitary adventurer. I've been playing Oblivion for months, trying to not only complete all the sidequests, but to discover odd things you can do that the programmers never thought of. That goes back to Zork days when you'd try to find out the limits of their word parser (you'd be surprised what some Infocom games would respond to). Some things seem to crop up in a lot of games, even by different companies. I loved Ultima IX (more when the patch fixed several critical bugs) and one thing that happened in U-IX can happen in Oblivion. For example, in U-IX, you can discard a bunch of,say spears, and after dropping them on the ground, you can inexplicably stack them on top of each other and clamber up them to access areas otherwise unreachable, or shoot an arrow into the door, it sticks, then open the door, the arrow opens with the door, but then close the door and the arrow hangs in space (this can happen in Oblivion). Then you can climb up the arrow hanging in space and jump up to hard to reach areas. Of course what we did was to move your avatar (oddly called The Avatar) so that the arrow appears to be piercing your head, take a screen shot and you have Avatar Steve Martin. And when the brought out one of the first MMORPGs, Ultima Online,one day Lord British (The author's fictional name) appeared at a large public square for an in-game announcement, he forgot to make himself invulnerable as he usually was, and somebody threw a high-level fire spell at him and killed him. That caused the entire game to crash, since he was an integral part of the game.

[Jubilee]

I understand. That is actually one of the things I am enjoying in Rift currently. They have a few hidden gems, and some puzzles in lands/seas typically unexplored that it is interesting/fun searching every nook and cranny, instead of the "quest hubs" on the map. Thanks for sharing some of your earlier experiences.. reminded me of some of my earlier gaming days..

And yes, I agree Optiboard is also a close knit community and I have met many good folks in the optical community via this board.

[opticianbart]

How did you like Oblivion, Dragon? That's a game I'll play till my thumbs bleed. :P

[DragonLensmanWV]

How did you like Oblivion, Dragon? That's a game I'll play till my thumbs bleed. :P

I loved it. So far I've completed all the quests, and have installed Shivering Isle plug in (finished all those quests too), now I've installed the Knights Of The Nine plugin (have to go kill the big bad guy), then I still have several other smaller plugins to do.
I'm afraid I'll run out waiting till 11/11/11 for ES IV.

After playing Oblivion for a while, I installed Morrowind to see what it's about. Definitely inferior to Oblivion.
Check out the new trailer at http://www.elderscrolls.com/

[opticianbart]

I loved it. So far I've completed all the quests, and have installed Shivering Isle plug in (finished all those quests too), now I've installed the Knights Of The Nine plugin (have to go kill the big bad guy), then I still have several other smaller plugins to do.
I'm afraid I'll run out waiting till 11/11/11 for ES IV.

After playing Oblivion for a while, I installed Morrowind to see what it's about. Definitely inferior to Oblivion.
Check out the new trailer at http://www.elderscrolls.com/

still pretty good though. I remember arena and daggerfall. those were so epic for their time.

[DragonLensmanWV]

still pretty good though. I remember arena and daggerfall. those were so epic for their time.

I think you can download those for free from the Bethesda site. Just use DOSBox to run them.

[opticianbart]

I think you can download those for free from the Bethesda site. Just use DOSBox to run them.

Heh, yeah I use dosbox. Ever play Solar Winds?