Fel

@Hockster there's your "problem" - Asmo side is in trouble, but they're supposedly working on a way to fix that. Time will tell.

@Beau Hindman Looking forward to it! Thanks!

Hey Beau, I've got a Duo.

I love the thing... at times it is sluggish, but the fact I can run actual work apps can be nice at times. The docking station is cool and I basically use it to watch TV on hulu and the like. The extreme versatility is really it's best feature.

I'm curious about what tweaks you found for it - might you be willing to share?

Anyone else thinking Gav Daragon is back?

@Addfwyn It's worth trying. The one thing Rift appears to do that few MMOs have before it is take features from across the genre and present them in a polished way. The game is smooth in many ways and overall an enjoyable experience.

Anyone who plays for an hour will not have experienced very much at all... because I doubt they will have tried rifts or defending invasions, and there is no way they did any of the instances.

Speaking of the instanced dungeons, they are beautiful and fun.

The game is a solid, fun title... but if you are looking for reinventing the wheel, this isn't it. It's a good idea to remember, though, that games coming out are still "the wheel," even if they are trying to reinvent it.

What Rift does, though, is expand gameplay beyond your usual "wheel." The quest based leveling is linear, and likely the fastest way to level solo. However, there are other options... at a low level, they range from rifting to grinding, and after level 17ish, you can hop into dungeons and do instances to 50. The instances are a ton of experience.

Ultimately, though, Rift's success or failure will depend entirely on it's endgame, and not on it's first 20 levels...

If you're looking for a new game in the same genre then this could very well be it. It is for me, though my long-term loyalty will be based on endgame.

something you may not know about utilities if you don't pay for them is that often, the amount you use factors into the cost of them. so, using them as an analogy for a subscription service is largely inaccurate...

Not only that, but microtransactions are everywhere, even on top of subscription services, and they are an effective business model outside of just gaming.

PWE's money loss likely has less to do with F2P, and more to do with their market and their products. Now, you can argue about how those relate to F2P, but there are other companies that are still posting a huge upturn from F2P... so maybe it's just that with some superior quality F2P games out there, it has drawn players away from some of the.. ah... less than stellar ones.

if you go to http://www.battleforbadlands.com/battles.php you can see the details. Basically, once a week, a tier is targeted. Any time anything is flipped in those tiers, a side gains points as you see listed on the site. Warlords are basically the people organizing it.

Battle for Badlands is put on by one of the greatest group of internet gamers out there. They're the only reason I still play WAR.

Different situation, don't you think? You said that because they made an in game item available for purchase you feared they'd start selling pre-leveled WAR characters.

That's different than saying that because of the fact some other game they now own does it, WAR will, too.

Dumac:

...The stuff that is IN the game is still IN the game. I think you are confused. This is no change in "treatment," there's no change in "subjecting" us to things we can already get. If another player wants to pay for what I can get for free, I'm not going to object. I have no problem with the general idea of microtransactions, and every MMO I've played recently has them, even *gasp* WoW!

The speed boost also comes from a pet, so you get a vanity pet if you want one. *shrugs*