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Alternate thread title: I can't believe search doesn't reveal an existing thread

In the interim of waiting for SW:TOR to come out, I decided to give Rift a try. It's only $20 right now in most places, so why not?

I've poked around with some of the beginning areas, trying Guardian and Defiant. So far, I think I like Defiant more. The class system is a little overwhelming at first, and I suffer from being unable to decide how I want to build my character.

Anyone else playing? Have any tips for a beginner?

I just started playing on the 7 day trial the other day and I went Defiant as well. I'll probably buy the game when it runs out and mess around with it for a month or two. I was going to pick it up at work but it's still 40 dollars strangely.

I went through a 7 day trial but decided not to stick with it. Despite everybody claiming how much better than all existing MMO's it is, it felt very much to me like nothing more than a WoW-clone and I got bored with it quickly.

Been playing for a while on Greybriar.

I'd say that early on you get more bang for your buck if you focus points in to one soul, even though you get three to work with. Also as soon as you can afford them by the other souls in your calling that you don't get for free during the starter area. One you get to about 20 or 25 you can start playing around with where you place your points more.

I decided to go air giant (Bhani, I think?) warrior, and the three souls I started with are Champion, Beast Master, and Riftblade. I put enough points into riftblade to get the long range attack (which included a couple nice buffs), very little into beastmaster for the pet, and the majority into champion.

I'm enjoying it so far. I'm really liking the storyline, even though I have no idea what the hell is going on. Why didn't my time machine look like a DeLorean?

I played for a while back at the beginning of the release (and for their 1 week pre-release play). At first it was a blast, but it just kind of stagnated as you got to higher and higher levels and could never get any decent planar gear because large invasions never happened on our server. The constant comment from TrionWorlds was that the server pop wasn't high enough, but they wouldn't let us transfer servers (think they eventually changed that, maybe) and who wanted to play through the same content again on a larger server, when even the massive servers were complaining about the same thing? Even played through their first major world event, but it came off poorly (not really a surprise since it was basically like one of the old Tauren stampedes from back in the old days of WoW); and as servers crashed and burned or lagged into oblivion everyone just kind of gave up. It also didn't help that they had to patch right before they took it live and everyone got disconnected so a lot of people on the more popular servers missed the entire even while trying to log on and being stuck in queue.

It wouldn't have been a big deal - I mean, we all make mistakes, right? - but the way they handled it seemed so amateurish that most of my friends and I got really disenfranchised and just canceled a few weeks after that.

Gared said:

I played for a while back at the beginning of the release (and for their 1 week pre-release play). At first it was a blast, but it just kind of stagnated as you got to higher and higher levels and could never get any decent planar gear because large invasions never happened on our server. The constant comment from TrionWorlds was that the server pop wasn't high enough, but they wouldn't let us transfer servers (think they eventually changed that, maybe) and who wanted to play through the same content again on a larger server, when even the massive servers were complaining about the same thing? Even played through their first major world event, but it came off poorly (not really a surprise since it was basically like one of the old Tauren stampedes from back in the old days of WoW); and as servers crashed and burned or lagged into oblivion everyone just kind of gave up. It also didn't help that they had to patch right before they took it live and everyone got disconnected so a lot of people on the more popular servers missed the entire even while trying to log on and being stuck in queue.

It wouldn't have been a big deal - I mean, we all make mistakes, right? - but the way they handled it seemed so amateurish that most of my friends and I got really disenfranchised and just canceled a few weeks after that.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but in Trion's defense, it was their first world event that they released barely a month after the game launched and they learned from those mistakes. They also admitted that it didn't go as planned and gave anyone who had a paid account during the event a reward packet of items they might have won during the event. The second world event went much better.

On the server population I think Trion was damned if they did and damned if they didn't. At release, people screamed for more servers and Trion, wanting to be a good team, acquiesced and spread the population too thin. They have since repaired this by offering the free weekly character transfers so population shouldn't be as much of an issue and given this is a regular free service (one which other companies traditional charge for) I think they should get some recognition for making amends as quickly as they did.

Overall, I have liked Trion. They have monthly updates that add new zones/raids, new quests, and they constantly address bugs as well as players demands. They seem overall very willing to listen to the player base and make changes that even go against their original design to keep them happy (things like add-on support, LFG cross server, and appearance tabs were all added at player requests even though Trion stated in Beta that the game wouldn't have any of that).

I am enjoying my time in the game. Is it the best MMORPG ever, probably not... is it the best thing out there currently.... I think so.

I'll admit, freely, that TrionWorlds is much more responsive to their customers' wishes and complaints than any of the other MMO companies I've ever seen. I was just too disappointed by how fucking awesome the pre-release was (not really the beta, the free week you could play if you bought an advance copy of the CE) and how quickly boring the actual release got. I'm sure that they have fixed some (if not all) of my complaints, but I'm also kind of burnt out on MMO gaming at all. I'd rather have a good single player game with hours and hours of content than play any MMO - and I'm not entirely sure why.

A couple of days in, I have a level 11 Air Giant warrior, and a level 12 High Elf mage. Starting to feel more comfortable, started trying some of the crafting professions, oh hey, it works exactly like WoW, except now you get two gathering professions!

So far, I'm enjoying it. I've only done minor rifts and a few minor invasions, but they've all been a lot of fun. For anyone interested in giving it a try, or coming back, the 25th is their six month anniversary, where they're letting everyone play free.

Gosh darnit I'm logging back in for another try.