Trion Worlds' new MMORPG, Rift, is doomed to fail.
The subject line says it all. This game has zero long term appeal. Rift, in essence, is a re-skinned World of Warcraft with public quests, similar to those first seen in Warhammer Online. The UI, the PvP instances, and the “soul system” all resemble traits WoW has. Even the rogue’s “combo points” and finishing moves are a direct rip off from WoW.
If you’ve visited any video gaming website in the last couple of months, you’ve undoubtedly seen a Rift advertisement boldly claiming “We’re not in Azeroth anymore.” I’ve also seen several television commercials for Rift as well. I’ll give it to Trion Worlds. Their marketing efforts peaked my interest enough to pick up the game. They even got me to initially sign up for the “Founder’s discount” 6 month pricing plan. I figured I might as well invest 6 months into the game since I probably needed a couple of months to reach the level 50 cap. I ended up cancelling that subscription plan today and I doubt I’m the only person doing so before the first “free” 30 days expires.
I’m a level 22 rogue after a week of play and everything I’ve done feels like I’ve done it in WoW already. The rifts that open up randomly and create the opportunity for public quests happen so frequently that I feel like I can’t quest normally without being sucked into fighting rifts from hours on end. Frankly, once people begin to unsubscribe to the game as I predict, rifts will be that much more of a nuisance to the players still playing. If the rifts in the game are ignored, they eventually kill the town NPC’s that give out quests; making leveling more difficult.
Before you Rift faithful try and dismiss my opinion by citing the positive reviews Rift’s received already, understand the point I am making. The game itself is polished. My client never once crashed and I didn’t notice any latency issues. If Rift was released before the original World of Warcraft debuted, it would be an absolute hit. However, that isn’t the case – WoW has been out for over 6 years. Case and point: Warhammer Online received very positive reviews as well and had a “successful” launch, yet Mythic Entertainment ended up having two rounds of layoffs a few months after the release. To date, more than half of Warhammer Online’s original servers have been removed/consolidated.
If you haven’t picked up Rift, don’t bother. You might be logging into an empty server.
-Nauticaboy