Ah, ty. 'fraid I'm going to have to skip this one, won't be able to play until about 5 hours or so after the end time ):
found a beta key in my e-mail, installing now
I'm trying to play it. Log in, still get the Patcher, just with an announcements page instead of the log in page. Hit Update, takes an hour to check local files, tells me I need a full restart, the first step of which is... checking the local files.Hopefully, unless this takes three days, I'll at least see some of the beta.
Welp, my desktop couldn't run it so I'm installing it on my laptop. I didn't wanna install it here because I'm running out of room because my music takes up so much room. =\Oh well.
Wow, just been looking at Rift. Can anything be more of an almost exact copy of WoW? Haven't Blizzard patented all their stuff? I am really surprised that it seems to be copying WoW so heavily.BTW: I would give it a go, but I'm on a Mac.Cheers.
my opinion after playing rift for a couple of hours:its exacly the same as wow, but prettier textures / lighting, but crappier animations and interfacealso the quests are soooo pre-cata (which is not good).. no immersion.no matter what you choose you get the same quests. theres only 2 starting areas. 1 for each faction. But theres not a different starting area for each "soul" / path / class or whatever. Which also makes rolling an alt quite boring.I do however, like the idea of the talent system. BUT theres way too many from them to be able to balance them properly (and they've even said they wont be bothered with it) so from a pvp perspective and .. eventually internal guild PVE perspective, its gonna suck.eventually everyone will just play 1 combination healer, 1 combination dps and one combination tank. which makes the point of the.. what is it, 8 * 3 * 4 class combinations completely pointless.I like the idea of something new, but why not just make another game instead ?Figure out a new quest system, if any at all? quests are still ... kill 6 of that, loot 3 of that, activate that item over there. loot 5 stones etc..And sure. that works. and we all know how to do those quests. But its really not original either.in cata though theres now phasing ("properly" used, wasn't very much in wotlk) and the cinematics really adds to the immersion IMO.However.. if you've been playing wow for a looooong time, and feel rift might have some nice features (which it does..) then by all means, go try it out.i still feel like they've taken the chocolate chips out of the wow cookie, and put it into a poo. Even though theres chocolate chips in it, its still poo. And nobody likes that.Thats just my first impressions of the game.IF i reached max level ofcourse, my opinion might change.. it also might stay the same. I dont know. so far the max level is level 30. and how many are they planning to add? i dont know.This all depends on the end level content, which really makes the game stand out compared to wow and the other few rivals out there. Are there enough raids? is the difficulty properly balanced? is there pvp? is it only "world"-pvp (the rift things?) or is there arena / battlegrounds too? (and is any of it fun or is it all just ... maraudon :D?anyways, good luck to the people changing from wow to rift. and ill see you all back in wow after some months. :p
I bought the digital collectors edition of Rift yesterday...that's right, I'm that ballsy.Oh...my...god...This game is amazing. Like...really. I am honestly at a loss for words.
My God what a game!I'd comment more on it but I'm too busy playing it. Maybe after the beta...P.S. It's awesome.
This makes me jealous )= I can't play yet.
As a long-time WoW player who is nearly burned out, I'm hoping something fresh comes along and improves upon what made WoW great. It's inevitable that something will eventually replace it as the top MMO. Maybe that is Rift, maybe not, but it will happen eventually. I like the idea of the rifts spawning anywhere. I think it's an improvement on what Blizzard has been trying to do with making zones feel more "alive" by doing things like putting NPCs that battle in zones. That stuff is cool I guess, but it really has no effect on anything. A constant threat to NPCs that matter would make things a lot more interesting. My question though, is if I complete a quest from an NPC that gets killed, can I still turn it in or is it gone? I could care less about there being only one starting zone per faction. Is there really a big difference in WoW's starting zones other than the look? Up until Cataclysm, every one of them has virtually the same quests (go here, kill this, loot that, return this etc). Before that, only one of them did anything truly different, being the Blood Elf zone with the Tranquillen rep faction. Even that was no big deal, and is pretty much irrelevant now with the crazy gear people get at lower levels. I could see there being some issues when the game launches with the availability of quest mobs and such, but any smart developer would hopefully work that out ahead of time.
Tanked that Iron Tomb place today on my Rogue(!).Having Blink and three separate shadow steps, all on different CDs, can be fun for tanking*, but the UI is sorely in need of a little tuning. I can't for the life of me find the button that gives me a nameplate over every enemy. I'm having to guess what I might be losing aggro on, and the facts that I have to start building combo points again from scratch if I swap targets, and that I have one AoE on an eight second CD makes the penalty for guessing wrong pretty high.I got a full level and a half for completing the place, and we skipped all the trash we didn't need. Would be less subsequent trips though, since a lot of that was quest XP.*side note: it's fun for tanking, and hilariously awesome for PvP. It's pretty obvious in War fronts that no one expects me to teleport into a crowd, reduce every enemy's output, then teleport back behind my own lines, all within maybe three seconds.
It is entirely possible that experience is faster than it will be on release, since they wipe characters with each beta even but new beta events cover new content at a higher level. I know for myself, I am not even done with the first major Guardian zone (Silverwood) but I am level 21 and still have quests to do, because doing even just a few invasions/rifts puts you ahead of the experience from questing. It'll be tough to balance because if they tone it down a little, people wanting to level exclusively by rifts or quests will complain that they must do the other, but if they leave it as is, people will complain that they cannot complete the content without outpacing it. For myself, I think I prefer the latter, assuming you can get past that completionist streak that most MMO players (see a quest, must do the quest). It gives you a little bit a of leeway to keep things from getting boring when you level another character. I also think the plainitite reward from completing rifts/invasions needs a little tuning. You get way more of "second tier" currency items (sourcestones) compared to plainitite; I had a dozen sourcestones before I could afford even a single gear item from the rare planar goods vendor.