Why Rift may be the game for you.

[Lucavi]

^ This.

Edit: To clarify: People roll into games like these with entire guilds. Guilds that want to clear content and raid in a brand new setting. You're looking at the game from some "everyman" perspective, but a lot of people are playing strictly so they can recreate old favorite raiding guild moments with one another. Doing so involves grinding to 50 ASAP and getting right into the action before it gets "nerfed".

Try to think about the other side of the coin: just because you're into doing every quest and exploring every nook and cranny, doesn't mean everyone else is, and most guilds are farming dailies and doing old quests for rep once they hit 50 anyway.

[Meko]

Well I'm going to get the damn game, bastards. So with that being said, I'll need a home!

[Katlan]

Well I'm going to get the damn game, bastards. So with that being said, I'll need a home!

Join tearfall

A few friends alrdy playing and like 5 of us r going to start playing next week and gonna be building a guild for endgame

[Meko]

Oh sweet. My wife will be playing too. We're both WoW ports lol. What are the factions?

[Katlan]

Oh sweet. My wife will be playing too. We're both WoW ports lol. What are the factions?

guardian. Keep in mind only 2 of my friends are playing atm, but me and the rest should be when we all beat DA2 next week lol and we plan to start a guild at that time

[Eaglestrike]

guardian. Keep in mind only 2 of my friends are playing atm, but me and the rest should be when we all beat DA2 next week lol and we plan to start a guild at that time

Tell them all to reroll Alsbeth and join my guild. I have 5 friends with me from WoW and 1-2 other BG people there.

[ringthree]

Oh sweet. My wife will be playing too. We're both WoW ports lol. What are the factions?

Renamed Alliance and Horde with a less interesting and less interconnected back story.

I know some fan boy is going to hop in and say something like "How dare you! The guardians are from the past and the defiant are from the future! They are totally different from the Alliance and Horde! ZOMG!" but in the end it's two different factions that oppose each other but are working for the same general goal. I felt the story was pretty contrived compared to WoW where there the story organically developed over the three previous games and had infinitely more depth.

[Saga]

Renamed Alliance and Horde with a less interesting and less interconnected back story.

I know some fan boy is going to hop in an say something like "How dare you! The guardians are from the past and the defiant are from the future! They are totally different from the Alliance and Horde! ZOMG!" but in the end it's two different factions that oppose each other but are working for the same general goal. I felt the story was pretty contrived compared to WoW where there the story organically developed over the three previous games and had infinitely more depth.

Not gonna argue with you on that point, the story definitely feels watered down from WoW's, but keep in mind, Blizzard had tons. and tons. and tons of Warcraft lore already in place from previous games, books, novellas, a bunch of different sources that they could draw on and adapt to their MMO. Naturally, it's going to be more fleshed out and feel meatier than a story conjured mostly out of thin air.

[Meko]

I would assume WoW would have more to go off of based on 20 years. I think as long as the story can develop over patches/content/expansions, it might not be a big issue.

[ringthree]

I actually think the story line in general for Rift is pretty good and well fleshed out (if a bit low art). I am specifically talking about the factional difference which seems tacked on as an afterthought (even if it wasn't tacked on, it seems like the developers just thought of it as something necessary for the game rather than creating foundational story line reasoning for the split factions).

Yes, Horde vs. Alliance goes way back in Warcraft lore, but it never felt like it was strictly Horde vs. Alliance, there were many nuances. It ranged from a zero-sum struggle for survival to cultural competition. In Rift, it just kinda feels like it's more like "those are the bad guys, must kill!". FFXI launched with a much more interesting factional differentiation, and that was just based on friendly competition.

[Saga]

I honestly think most devs feel they need two or multiple "factions" in order to justify PvP in a modern MMO. Which sucks, cause it sometimes does come across as afterthought-ish, but PvP has become a necessary component of today's MMO. There's just varying levels of focus on it from game-to-game.

[ringthree]

I honestly think most devs feel they need two or multiple "factions" in order to justify PvP in a modern MMO. Which sucks, cause it sometimes does come across as afterthought-ish, but PvP has become a necessary component of today's MMO. There's just varying levels of focus on it from game-to-game.

I agree with you on this, obviously. The lesson to be learned from WoW on PvP is that if you are going to do it and if you are going to do factions, then you need to think about that from the start of game and storyline development. WoW already had a storyline perfectly designed for PvP and even then it was incredibly hard for them to balance PvP across factions.

[Lucavi]

Well I'm going to get the damn game, bastards. So with that being said, I'll need a home!

Haha, I hear ya, man. Hope you enjoy it.

Edit: Ring, if you don't do the "multiple factions want basically the same thing in the end but have to hate each other to allow for the villians of the world to play them against one another until both sides team up to defeat the boss", you wind up doing the TERA "one faction but you can either PK other people or you have to ask them on the field for a duel" PVP method. I prefer the former, even if the plot does start to blend in with other, similar games.

I see your point, though: I'm loving the actual "STORY", but I do get annoyed that games that use the two-faction system are always making it so damned easy for both sides to hate one another, especially when facing an easily identifiable threat. I mean, look at this shit: LOOK at Regulos. He's all over the fucking place, and so are his dragon buddies, who all pretty much hate one another, but want the world for their own individual reasons. You have Rifts (both gameplay-wise AND canonically) opening every minute; I think I could stop bickering with another faction of people basically just like myself (save for religious ideologies) for 10 minutes to fight the looming threat. They did the shit in the past, and it worked; do it again.

[shaddix]

I am having a hard time adjusting to using the mouse ;_;

I tried to set it up to where I could use numpad for movement but there's no way. I'm gonna be a noob for a good 6 months Q_Q

[ringthree]

Haha, I hear ya, man. Hope you enjoy it.

Edit: Ring, if you don't do the "multiple factions want basically the same thing in the end but have to hate each other to allow for the villians of the world to play them against one another until both sides team up to defeat the boss", you wind up doing the TERA "one faction but you can either PK other people or you have to ask them on the field for a duel" PVP method. I prefer the former, even if the plot does start to blend in with other, similar games.

I see your point, though: I'm loving the actual "STORY", but I do get annoyed that games that use the two-faction system are always making it so damned easy for both sides to hate one another, especially when facing an easily identifiable threat. I mean, look at this shit: LOOK at Regulos. He's all over the fucking place, and so are his dragon buddies, who all pretty much hate one another, but want the world for their own individual reasons. You have Rifts (both gameplay-wise AND canonically) opening every minute; I think I could stop bickering with another faction of people basically just like myself (save for religious ideologies) for 10 minutes to fight the looming threat. They did the shit in the past, and it worked; do it again.

I totally agree with you. The story itself if pretty epic and has a lot of depth (though I do think that Regulos could be better balanced with the other dragons in evilness, especially when they play up how evil the other dragons are, but that is neither here nor there), but it just seems like even if the factions were against each other, if someone was trying to wipe out the whole planet, they might put those differences aside for just a bit to settle that matter first.

I would feel better if it was a lot less black and white. And it would be SOOOO easy to do so. You have the Guardians that think they are doing the right thing by fighting Regulos, and then instead of the "hey, we are dickheads" Defiant, you could have a more wizened and beaten down group that fundamentally knows that they have to fight the Guardians because the Defiant have see then future and know they are going to fail. They don't want to have to fight the Guardians, but they know they have to. This would let the Guardians be the strong moral types, while the Defiant are the pragmatic, but emo types.

That is just how I would do it.

[Kiehl]

Also, this isn't a PvP game. It has PvP, about as much as WoW (instanced pvp) with the addition of world pvp with some sort of objective (rifts) but the primary focus of the developers is to keep releasing raid content.

I disagree with this to an extent. Last night Guardians were rifting in Shimmering Sands so we couldn't do anything. So we just went Guardian raiding. When they would open up a rift, we would let them finish the first 2 stages and then roll on them when they were fighting the third boss. Much lulz ensued. The exp wasn't the best but the favor was fantastic.

I think the best was a couple of them crying about losing their planarite bonus from being dead too long.

[Eaglestrike]

I'd prefer a 3 faction system. Just makes things more balanced and who wouldn't love a form of campaign/conquest based on PvP that mattered? Can you imagine using the invasion/rift system like how Campaign works in WotG?

[Viq]

Too bad most MMO makers these days don't realize that the best PvP in MMOs to date has come from games with no factions. L2's castle sieges were out of control fun, and the only factions were just guilds and alliances that people built themselves. EVE also has some great stories of epic battles and espionage all built on player-created corps instead of game-forced factions.

[arus2001]

Yeah, I feel like "faction"ing people should be better left to the players than a default story choice at character creation. In Rift's case, if was more along the Rift groups than just Guardian/Defiant, things could get more interesting. Oh well, fuck if story matters when you're DPSing.

[Lucavi]

Choice of factions roughly midway through the initial journey to max level in a MMORPG would be pretty bad ass, especially if there were tangible consequences to doing it, and if you couldn't go back on your decision once you made it (or at least for a long, long time - perhaps a few expansions later).