RIFT's Ashes of History world event begins tomorrow

@hereafter

Accursed downvotes... I might as well explain; I'm currently subbed to Rift, so I think I'm allowed to make observations.

I was simply reading the description here and it sounded like the last few events: cultists fiddling with something, rifts and daily quests giving out special currencies, etc. I dunno... it's always "cultists." Nevermind.

Upon further reading, I see the other changes coming with the patch and they're not insignificant, so I shall tip my hat to Trion and be on my merry. I'll probably check things out when they start. Maybe if any of my friends played this, I'd care more.

@hereafter

Cultists are what virtually every single enemy in the game (other than Defiants or Guardians depending on your faction) is though. I think you're reading into the term a bit more than was intended. Cultist is basically interchangable with "army" and you've got to remember that the six overarching planar factions are at war with each other as much as the players, and that there's intra-planar conflicts as well.

To say "cultists again" to me sounds similar to someone saying in response to "N. Korean Army did ___" or (in WoW terms) "Kael'thas's/Illidan's/Sargeras'/Deathwing's Army did ___" that it's "just an army again", which glosses over the most important part of the situation - WHOSE army? You've got to have conflict to drive the story, and this is where it's going to come from for probably the entire lifecycle of the game.

I know you play the game and I'm not trying to attack you personally, but I feel like the biggest issue Rift has is loyal customers making absolutely no effort to become immersed in the lore and world because it's not based on an existing IP. The cultists are basically the only bad guys - but we've got 6 major planar factions and countless splinter factions of them. If you lump every one of them as "another cultist" messing with "another thing they found/created" then the game is going to seem awfully shallow and uninteresting. There's only so many ways you can introduce new content and antagonists, and introducing the latest MacGuffin is 99% of that.

@Caerus

It's cool, I'm not immersed in the lore and maybe that is my fault. But I'm not the only one who Rift's lore has failed to enchant and I don't think it's the players job to become immersed; it's the game's job to encourage it through good writing and storytelling. All the player needs to do is suspend his disbelief.

Unfortunately, I don't think they've done a great job of differentiating these armies. They all have some dragon as their leader (which in itself is unimaginative, but I'll overlook it) they all have basically the same goal of invading the real world and they all go about it in basically the same fashion. though with a few different monsters and color schemes. I think they need to remember the rule "Don't tell me, show me" which I learned in reference to film and animation, but applies to any visual storytelling medium. I don't want to be told the lore in text, I want to see it come to life by playing.

I want to make clear that this isn't just a Rift concern, the heavy reliance on quest text in WoW causes similar problems, but the difference there is that they have more clarity in their designs that keeps the major factions from blending together. I like Rift better than most MMOs I've played, which is why I care to critique its methods, but unfortunately it's not going to be one of those long-term stays for me.

@real65rcncom

Was that supposed to be funny?

If so, you failed......miserably.

@esloan
aww. sorry man

@Ren54
I heard that too Ren!

It's going to be awesome, probably around 3 million orders!

On a lighter note, it's nice to see Trion finally worked out the bugs of 1.5 so that they can finally release content from 1.5 like Ashes World event.... two weeks later.

now the fun starts as we read the Trion boards and see how buggy this event is compared to the first or the third one, because those were colossal studies in bugginess. :)

@Spacegrass

I hear ya.

@Meganerd

Well, you know the saying in Rift according to people like June aka Ren54:

"Bored? Did you complete all the achievements yet? No? Then you're not bored. You're just refusing to do the content."

@Ren54

So that's why you hate SWTOR.

@Ren54

Wow, really? Isn't that people say about you on the SWTOR articles? Or am I mistaking you with a different Ren54?

@BigAndShiny

Good. Less whiners.