Moth

I recently re-subscribed to RIFT after an absence of some months. The amount of new content is pretty astonishing. I like that they are clearly pursuing multiple paths of advancement, which is what keeps me interested in an MMO. I was hoping that there would be more single-player Chronicles for times when I only have 20 minutes to play, but I'm sure those will come with time.

@Sunlover I agree. I played this game for a while and found it very weirdly klunky. It was really fun for a short while. Then the annoy synthesized music, bland character models, and unbelievably grindy quests really started to get to me. Some of the crafting professions are punishingly boring (farming!) and much of what you can craft is useless to you because, by the time you can craft it, you've outleveled it.

I am waiting for EQ Next, hoping that it lives up to the standard EQ II set: orchestral music, at least some voice acting, gorgeous visuals (for their time), accommodation for many styles of play, player housing, and a really huge, varied world to explore. I sincerely hope it will not be free-to-play.

I won't argue that developers have a right to use whatever kind of payment models they like and that gamers in their millions clearly choose to play F2P and RMT games. That said, I personally find that RMT ruins the immersion in a game as well as the fun of aspiring to gain some item. I struggled so hard in EQ2 to have a full suite of Master-level spells. I never achieved it. If it'd been a matter of paying $20 to SOE, I might have succumbed to my baser instincts and given in. And that would have ruined all the fun of the struggle for me. I prefer games in which I don't have to think about money every ten minutes. I've tried playing Order and Chaos, for example, but I find it unfun to sit there thinking "Well, I could grind for item X, or I could go dig out my credit card." It's not a fun model for me. Or millions of others.

So, I don't think there's any question of whether Bigpoint's payment model is 'okay' or not, only of whether it's fun for everyone.

I think I'm okay with games like EQ2 and LOTRO that use a hybrid payment model, so that those who want to subscribe can do so, and also get some 'cash shop' points every month.

Well, it's been a long while since I played Aion (more than a year, I believe). I played soon after launch for several months and then gave up. I don't remember the rez fees, but I do remember that some cost associated with PvP deaths was dissolving my budget for other expenses. I seem to remember that there was some adjustment in the death penalties while I was subscribed. I definitely remember that, night after night, I'd log out further behind on the gear and XP curve than I had been when I logged in, getting further and further from having actual fun.

@(Unverified) I believe I was level 43 when I left Aion. I had been level 43 for a long time at that point because I couldn't progress. I had been trying to farm nodes for materials to craft better armor but opposing players were farming me for AP. It was just ridiculous. There was definitely not a community of people in my faction (Elyos) who were protecting me from highly-geared level 50s.

Some might hope that social mechanisms will spontaneously develop to halt griefing, but in months and months of playing Aion, I saw no evidence of it.

I left Aion specifically because the relentless PvP turned me off. I got tired of logging in for a half-hour of fun on a weeknight and ending the evening in serious debt due to all of the rez fees I'd paid to the people 15 levels higher than me who'd entertained themselves by two-shotting me all night. It was not fun at all. I *never* won in PvP, because the only people who attacked me were those who were way above my level and sure to win.

The amount I had to spend on PvP-induced rez fees totally negated my ability to save up to buy or craft better gear so that I could take on those who so frequently killed me.

I'd only ever play another open PvP game if there was some built-in mechanic to prevent high-level players from ruthlessly farming low-level ones. I know I'll be flamed for being a 'carebear' and told to go back to WoW (a game I've never played). I think there are a lot of other PvE carebears like me who find that games like Aion are totally ruined by PvP. I liked a lot about Aion. It had features I've never found in other games and I was sad to find that the PvP ruined it for me.

Blah blah blah...stuff about guns and war and shoot-em-ups. WHAT ABOUT EVERQUEST NEXT? I had so incredibly much fun in EQ2, I can't wait to see what EverQuest Next will be like.

@(Unverified) I was wondering precisely the same thing.

@Dunraven

What kind of endgame activities are you looking for? I am really curious about the range of existing endgame activities. It seems to me that the endgame in all of the games I've played (EQ2, LOTRO, Aion, STO, Rift) is all about grinding for some form of item or stat bonus. That bonus may be achieved through crafting, combat, PvP, collections, or achievements, but ultimately it always seems to come down to grinding for some kind of currency which is converted into better "stuff". When I reach that point, I get bored and quit.

EQ2 and LOTRO partly dodged "the grind" by having so many alternate advancement paths and so many cosmetic customization options (clothing, housing, mounts, etc.) that it took a long, long time for me to get bored. But eventually I did run out of fun things to do and (sadly), left the games.

Are there games with substantially more to do at the endgame than "grind"?

A lot of people say that Rift is a lot like other games, as though this is a bad thing. I think there's a big difference between being "conventional" and being "derivative". Every year, millions of Americans tune in to watch the Superbowl. Every four years, even more people tune in for the World Cup. Every time either of those events is played, its the same rules, the same equipment used, the same configuration of the venue, and generally the same style of coverage. The Superbowl and the World Cup are highly conventional events. What changes are the teams, the people involved, and the superficial presentation.

I see RIft in this same light. Sure, it has many similar features to previous MMOs. I'm *happy* about that. I *liked* those previous MMOs. But I'm ready to see those same conventions presented in a new form: new talents, new skill trees, new vistas, a mix of new and old races, new dungeons, and, hopefully, new friends. In the same way that it would be dull to see the same two teams face off in the World Cup in the same city, with the same fans and the same announcers, year after year, it gets dull to play the same MMO for years. But that doesn't mean that the conventions of the genre are exhausted, that it can't be made new again.

Rift looks really fun to me, in part *because* it's conventional.