Rift and Me

It has dutifully been brought to my attention that it’s been a few posts since I have talked to you guys about my adventures in Rift.  But the primary reason for this is mostly because the word adventure can’t really be used to describe my experiences with Rift lately.  To put it simply…I haven’t been playing much.  Knowing myself as I do, this is not a good sign only a few weeks out after Rift’s launch.  But much like Werit said over on his blog, the reason for me not playing has more to do with my own preferences than anything else.

 

 

As I said in my previous post, I realize more and more every day that the MMO I really want to be playing right now is Warhammer Online.  Well, a Warhammer Online that exists in an alternate reality where the RvR is not nearly as frazzled and poorly designed as it is in this one.  But not knowing any Gnomes who could build me some sort of infernal contraption that would whisk me away to such a reality, and not having the Doc around to help me get to…

 

 

…so I could properly warn Mythic of future troubles during WAR’s early development, I find myself faced with something of a dilemma.  Rift is a fine game to be sure, both well-made and polished, with a great Soul system and a few interesting concepts of its own.  But all in all, the more I play it the more I find my mind wandering.  Rift has just not connected with me in the way an MMO needs to in order to secure my subscription beyond the first month.

When I play Rift I can never shake the “been there, done that, have the t-shirt” feeling I get that courses through my veins until I am about to scream.  The world of Telara does very little to rile up my imagination at the end of the day.  I wish I could give you guys more than that, I honestly do.  But Telara has failed miserably to strike any sort of profound chord within my soul.  Worlds such as Norrath, Azeroth, and Middle Earth were all able to do that and I am forever grateful.  But Telara on the other hand, gives me pause.

Since Rift does very little that is innovative on the PvP-side of things, it falls to the concrete world of Telara and the basic game mechanics to immerse me in the setting so I will continue to log in.  But the world has fallen flat with me, and the game mechanics are so shockingly familiar that I become more certain with each day that my time with Rift will always be somewhat on the low/casual side.  But before anyone shows up here to flame, allow me to repeat something I have said for while now.

 

 

I still think Rift is a good game overall and will become a solid hit for Trion in the years to come.  Though I might not always be there to witness the ebb and flow of Rift’s growth firsthand, I still consider myself a fan and will be cheering for them every step of the way.  They have a great deal of work ahead of them, this cannot be discounted.  Creating a solid MMO is just the beginning of the process.  Now they have to maintain the game’s success and find intuitive ways to add content/mechanics that will both entice newer players and excite the current player-base almost simultaneously.

I have faith that Trion can do just that, and I will still be popping my head in to see how things are coming along from time to time.  But Rift and me…we had a good thing and some great laughs in the very short time we had together.  But in the end it was just not meant to be.  There has been no harm and no foul to either of us, as they say.  But I hope that those of you who are loving Rift continue to love it and enjoy yourselves to no end.  It’s a solid title and well worth your time.

But as for me, I’ll be back to exploring the games I have always loved (WoW, EQ 2, Lotro, Eve, War) until something new comes along that shows some real promise of transforming the genre in a positive way.  Rift adds to the genre by taking much of what has worked in the past and refining it, then sprinkling a touch of their own on top.  That is also what WoW did when it was first released.  The problem for me is that I am genuinely happy with the games I have, and so I am looking for a little more from newer titles.  So will it be Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, or perhaps Swtor that captures my fancy?  Who can say at this point?

But no matter where I go, I’ll be sure to post my thoughts as I stroll along this bewildering and always entertaining road that defines the life of an MMO gamer. 

 

Over the hill?

From an MMO perspective, this is truly something I have been wondering as of late.  Have I just been around the block one too many times?

 

 

Am I forever destined to be a jaded gamer who wanders from title to title, hoping something might actually knock my socks off the way Everquest once did?  Will I stroll through the fog of my MMO memories without reprieve, searching endlessly for a transforming experience that will forever change the way I look at online games?  Maybe that’s all too much to ask at this point.  Perhaps I am the problem, not the people who make these games.

Or perhaps it is a little of both.

I may well be in need to soften my expectations when I step into a new MMO for the first time.  But in return for me lowering the bar, MMO devs really need to get their butts in gear and heighten their ambitions a little bit.  That’s the deal I am willing to strike at this point.    Historically, my time in any particular MMO has always varied and that is by design.  I do tend to hop around some to help fight the onset of MMO burnout, which can strike people like me rather viciously I am told.  But let’s face facts for a moment…I have been playing MMOs for over ten years now.

I have always loved them and probably always will.

But as the coming of each new game passes, I find myself slightly more turned off by the genre than turned on by it.  I keep looking for a game that will bridge the gap between what we once had and the advances we have made since those early days.  I honestly feel that the closest we ever got to an MMO of that caliber was Vanguard, but it was fraught with so many other problems that it just crumbled beneath the weight of them.

But this all brings me to the present and where I stand with Rift right now.

Rift is the most polished MMO to be released since World of Warcraft, this is without question.  It is fun, well constructed, and offers some wonderful class options with the Soul system, not to mention the fun that can be had with the rifts themselves.  The rifts are basically like Public Quests 2.0, and that is a compliment.  WAR gave us Public Quests and it was a wonderfully unique idea.  Now Rift has taken them slightly further, though I still think they are destined to suffer from the same problems that WAR’s did.  Basically, once you do them 100 times the bloom is going to come off the rose a little bit.  Trust me on this.

 

 

But for someone who has played so many MMOs, the taste of  Rift as a whole strikes me as just too familiar.  It’s like going to a pizza parlor that isn’t the one you enjoy the most.  What they serve you may be very tasty and certainly worth your money.  But you will always be thinking about the kind of pizza you really want and how what you are currently eating is good, but not different enough to make it special.  So with Rift, I find myself enjoying the game and appreciating the fact that we finally have a new MMO that was actually released when it was ready.

But I also find my thoughts gradually drifting to other places when I play Rift, haunted by the nagging feeling that I could enjoy Rift on a casual basis, but not really sure if it’s something that I want to sink my teeth into the way I have with other MMOs in the past.  Some examples of that would be Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Eve Online, and Lord of the Rings Online.  Those are all MMOs that I dove into head first and explored just about every facet of gameplay they offered me.  Each one is dear to me in different ways, and I will probably always pop back in to check on those games from time to time.

So while it would not be strange for me to do that while still playing Rift, I now find myself a little troubled by the idea that my mind is already wandering as I play.  It just feels…I don’t know…too soon for me to be having these sorts of desires.  I fully expected Rift to sweep me away for at least a few months, with no thought of playing anything else even entering my mind during that time.  But it just hasn’t happened, even though I have found pleasure in playing Rift and exploring this exciting new world that Trion has given us.

I also have to say that if Rift does possess and ace in the hole, it’s Trion Worlds.

 

 

These guys have their act together in a big bad way, folks.  No company is perfect so don’t kid yourselves, and Trion will have their missteps as all developers do.  But I don’t think I have ever seen a group of devs this on the ball so early in their game’s release.  It not only bodes well for the future of Rift, but for other titles that Trion will undoubtedly make as time goes by.  The thought of how well Trion has responded to player concerns heartens me greatly, providing that warming touch of hope I need to keep plugging away.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much fun I am having and whether or not Rift delivers in the ways I need it to for my own personal enjoyment.  Right now I give the game very solid marks, but I do fear that there might not be enough new spice to keep me playing heavily in the months ahead.  Deep down I think what I really want is an MMO with Rift’s polish combined with the heavy PvP focus that Warhammer Online brought to the genre.  So if Trion can develop the PvP in their game and turn it into something more than what the average MMO offers, then they just might find me subbing for a very long time.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

 

A Second Chance to Carve your Skull

Now if only I could temporarily change my blog’s background to something like this…

 

 

Poor old Ingvar…doomed to countless amounts of farming by a bunch of bunny hopping, foaming at the mouth MMO addicts.  But getting back to the point here.  If I could just change my background to that picture then I could say to hell with the long-winded post about where I’ve been, what I’ve played, and why I have suddenly decided to return, as that image would tell you all you needed to know about my status.   But that just wouldn’t be my style, now would it?

So yes indeed, my interesting gaming compatriots…I’m back.    Would someone please que the bloody inspirational music?  It’s awful quiet in here.

 

 

Now that’s more like it, thanks Mr. Jablonsky.  So out of the depths of Middle Earth I am come, or at least the earth part is within the vicinity of accurate.  Nevertheless, I am going to make the naive assumption that kicking the tires around here will be just like riding a bike again.  And though I highly doubt I will reach the heady days of early 2010 as far as post count goes (my keyboard has already filed an injunction against me for the times when smoke was frequently spotted funneling out between the keys).  I do hope that I’ll at least be seen here at headquarters with a little more regularity.  But fear not in any case, dear readers.  My intentions are full of rainbows and win.

 

 

Now I know what most of you are probably thinking right now.  Nightwreath, you incessant windbag, why the hell should we care whether you’re back or not?  The answer to that question is simple and contains no misrepresentation or innuendo whatsoever.

You shouldn’t give a rat’s ass.

But just in case a few of you might be reading this and have allowed yourselves to become intoxicated enough to care…then why don’t we begin with a summation of my life over this past year.  It will be brief, I promise you.  The tale goes a little something like this…

 

 

Hello again.  Welcome back!    It’s a little scary out there, isn’t it?  We’re talking about places where angels fear to tread, that kind of thing.  So why don’t we just stay here for a while instead?  The weather is much more forgiving in these parts anyway, and I have it on good authority that we’ll have access to cookies if we keep our voices down.  But now we’ve got the boring crap out of the way, right?  That alone tells me that it’s time to move on to more substantial things.  So let’s talk MMOs.

Yes, those dastardly time-sinks continue to be a part of my life whether I like it or not.  Usually that counts as a positive, but if I get any grayer in the hairline as an MMO-Vet I fear that I might completely loose the ability to enjoy them at all.  That’s a scary prospect in and of itself, but in some ways I think I’ve just played too many MMOs to be truly awestruck by them anymore.  I still enjoy them immensely, please don’t misunderstand me.  But I do find that the overall experience has become somewhat diluted for me as the flow of time has pushed the genre forward.

That’s not to say that I’m one of those cranky old cooks who thinks that MMOs should be just like they were in the old days.  But I do recognize that something is missing within the core of these games right now, but placing your finger on the point and then trying to talk about it with people is much like trying to hold a civil, intelligent discussion on the topic of politics.  About three minutes into the conversation something like this always happens…

 

 

So what am I playing right now, anyway?  The answer to that query would be somewhat surprising, given my history.  But I currently do not hold any MMO subscriptions at all.  I’ve gone cold turkey.  Over the past year I have seen much happen over the MMO landscape.  I watched Warhammer Online slowly devolve with a heavy sense of regret, I had some good fun with the Cataclysm expansion, and popped my head in a few other places here and there.  But all of that has brought me to the point where I am now, just an MMO gamer with no place to hang is hat.

As for WAR, it’s a game that I will always love and hold dear to my heart, but I have finally reached a point where I can no longer convince myself that it’s worth my subscription in its current form.  I’m not going to get into the what, where, when, and why…as I think there are plenty of great WAR bloggers out there who can give you a sense of why the game is stuck in a rut.  Perhaps that will change someday, but for now WAR and I have reluctantly parted ways.  I wish Mythic all the best in their future endeavors, and I hope they know that I’ll always be cheering for them no matter what course they take.  *cough – DAOC 2 – cough*

As for WoW, I greatly enjoyed hopping back on my Warlock for Cataclysm and also found the new 1-60 questing to be quite fantastic in many ways.  But once I hit 85 and with the prospect of a raid schedule looming, I decided to take a step back before I got overly committed.  I have plenty of responsibilities in RL as it is, and I just wasn’t sure that a raiding schedule was going to make any of that easier on me.  What I really wanted was just a place to level, explore, and hopefully find a little PvP while I was at it.

So where does that leave me now?  Funny you should ask, but given that if you’re reading this blog then you’re probably an MMO player…and if you’re an MMO player and you look at the current date, then you’ll most likely know what’s drifting out there just on the edge of the horizon.  Though I see many different positives and negatives regarding it, the beta has been far too polished and smooth for me to say no at this point.  My gaming instincts quickly took hold of me and I pre-ordered the Digital Collector’s Edition before you could say the word spineless.

 

 

Yes my fellow gamers, I am here to declare that I will be playing Rift beginning on February 24th (headstart).  For the lone person here who has no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to explain.  Rift is a new MMO due to release on March 1st, with those of us who pre-ordered getting the opportunity to play it slightly ahead of that date.  (Feb 24th)  As to Rift’s core identity as an MMO, I’ll let the folks at Trion Worlds (the developers of the game) fill you in.

 

 

Much like before, I will be here to report and comment on my various adventures both within Telara and elsewhere.  So I hope that some of you will pop in from time to time and enjoy reading about them.  I won’t be blogging nearly as much as I did back in the day, but I’ll do my best to carve out some time when I can.  It’s good to be back, though, that I can say without hesitation. 

So until next time…