OrganiClockwork

@J Brad Hicks Fantastic question. Oh well. Thus the trend continues. :/

@TheNexxuvas

Please, whatever you do, don't roll on an RP server, because you're clearly entirely (and more than likely willfully) ignorant to what they're like. I've played on RP servers since I began playing MMOs ages ago, and not once have I encountered a single person who spoke Olde English, much less in general chat, and even much less tried to enforce it upon other people.

Learn what you're talking about before you comment next time, would you kindly?

@Nucleon Agreed. The way I think they should have done Rifts is instead of having the Rifts open up and invade the public quest area, where anyone and everyone can come upon it and start wailing, they should have required players to ENTER the rift, taking them to a separate zone/instance that would only allow so many people.

As a healer whose contribution score is directly related to my healing, I absolutely hate being in zerg groups because no one takes damage, ergo I get no contribution, and ergo I don't get good rewards. Other healers feel the same way.

So I'm with you. I'm hoping they do some tuning to make sure zerg-rushing doesn't end up being the be-all end-all strategy for Rifts.

@Ayenn I'll try to find the official post, but one of the devs did post that they were spawning more Rifts than usual for the beta events. Along with the automatically-spawned Rifts, devs were actively spawning them.

I'll try to hunt down the official post on that but I dunno if I'll be able to.

@YeOldeFool

"There are so many bad, buggy and stupid (Bulletstorm anyone?) games out there but I guess it is ok because smart didn't make them."

For one, Bulletstorm hasn't even been -released- yet. I mean, come on. Couldn't have chosen a better example?

And for many people here, the issue isn't that the games are bad so much as it is Derek's attitude. He acts like he knows everything there is to know about game development and refuses to acknowledge that perhaps the players may be on to a thing or two.

@dsmart

And one more thing:

"There is ZERO empirical evidence or research to suggest that more than two factions makes a game any better..."

No, there's not. There's also zero empirical evidence to suggest that having two factions makes it such. It's a matter of what the players want, and many players want three factions. Ever try listening to what your potential players might like? Might work in your favor.

@dsmart

Your post reeks of arrogance, man. I'M A GAME DEVELOPER AND I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING SO WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO LISTEN TO WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS?

How about addressing the foremost concern here: The item shop. Your quote about how you're "not concerned about buying power," due to the fact that it's all about how people, "choose to play," just screams, "Yeah, we're going to put powerful items in the shop that will give people with more buying power an advantage."

It's really -not- about how you "choose" to play the game, it's about how much the items available in the item shop affect game balance. Despite the obvious controversy that comes with your name being attached to the project after the whole Alganon debacle, I'd be willing to say this game could be successful, but not if it's going to turn into something like Battlefield Heroes where if you want better weapons, you have to pay for them, and if you don't have the spending power for it then you're left out in the cold.

So instead of touting your arrogant, "I know what I'm doing so shut the fuck up," stance, how about you provide some evidence and reason for -why- what you're doing is the right thing to do, and how spending power will supposedly not be a factor?

"I'm not too concerned about "buying power" because, at the end of the day, it all depends on how you choose to play the game."

By which he means, "You can either choose to pay us gratuitous amounts of money for the better weapons, or you can choose to be vastly underpowered compared to those who did."

How does he expect to be taken even remotely seriously after the debacle that was Alganon?

It really depends, for me.

If I'm going to be roleplaying the character, it's important to me that they have a unique name I haven't used before. If I'm not, or if I'm just rolling the character as a trial character for a game or something of the sort, then I usually fall back on "Alir," which is the name of the first character I ever played in WoW.

Pulled a 36 hour session with my then-boyfriend. I mean, there were naps so maybe it doesn't really count, but I mean like... Over the course of those 36 hours, I got maybe an hour or two of sleep. So I'm counting it. >:(