MMORPG fans are strange

[Don]

It's the only industry where doing the right things to grow your business means your product is dying. RIFT has had a different promotion every other week, and in the MMORPG world promoting your product is apparently a sign of weakness. I actually see post like: "If the game is doing well they shouldn't have to try to get more people in" Again the Internet is usually full of ridciulous posts but I don't think I have ever seen people say: "If Nintendo is so great they shouldn't have to advertise their games!" I think the census-counting psychos puts RIFT at around half a milion, which roughly supports what the official press releases said. Certainly the number of servers in the game is consistent with that estimate unless you think Trion is opening a lot of empty server with fake population bots. That'd put it at around #2 or #3 out of the primarily English-speaking MMORPGs (this rules out anything from Korea and Asia that has unfathomable subscription numbers) in history so that seems like it's doing pretty well. WoW said they lost about 600K people between whenever the last time they announced their numbers (prior to Cataclysm) to know, and all those guys had to go somewhere.

I actually haven't played RIFT in a while since I'm not into the raiding stuff anymore since it's basically like memorizing a build order as the DPS rotations for a modern MMORPG is well beyond what any person can reasonably figure out. I got a full copy of the client to give away from one of their promotions. It comes with 5 days of playing time and after that you got to pay the sub but I guess you don't have to pay for the client and it expires in July 31. If anyone wants it you can PM me for the key.

I think Trion is the only one who figured out that since WoW makes an unbelieveable amount of money (check ActivisionBlizzard's quarterly earnings), that means you can settle for something less than 'unbelieveable amount of money' and still do pretty well. MMORPGs make so much money off subscriptions, it's not like they're hurting for giving away the client for free anyway. With SWTOR coming soon, and GW2 having a lot of hype fthat I don't think they can deliver(what it promises sounds pretty amazing, but then FF14 sounded pretty amazing too before you played it), it's probably a good idea to entrench yourself as much as possible since the MMORPG market may be due for some significant shakeup. Even WoW recently have the unlimited trial thing, even if it's not saying much to get to level 20.

On the subject of SWTOR, is anyone in the beta? This is probably the most hyped MMORPG since WoW, but I actually have no idea what the gameplay is like beyond that there are people with lightsabers.

[Shrinweck]

SWTOR is still in a very, very closed beta and I'm guessing the only non industry insiders in it right now would basically have to LIVE on their forums for the past few years. I ordered the digital deluxe version solely because of the vehicle you get out of it. It seems INSANE to get a $150 ($170 to pre-order before shipping) Collector's Edition even if you're a collector since the stuff included doesn't seem that interesting. They should have charged something crazy like $750 and included a lifetime subscription or something.

I got bored of Rift and stopped playing it altogether when I went away for a weekend and came back and never felt like getting back into it. The farther I got into end game content the more it bored me.

I actually picked up Star Trek Online again kinda for the hell of it to see how much better it had gotten since launch since I bailed after the free month. It's pretty fun even if the level advancement is a breeze even when compared to how crazy fast Rift was. I don't think I'll be playing it for much more than this month and possibly the next but it has its moments.

[Don]

I heard the $150 version comes with a statue and those thing cost a lot, but yeah $150 sounds pretty crazy. Based on the Internet I thought I was the only guy in the world not in the SWTOR closed beta. I think the problem with all MMORPG right now is that excellence comes down to extreme memorization. It is simply impossible for you to figure out what is the best way to build the best DPS class in RIFT on your own, and we're not talking about the best number cruncher being 2% better. It's more like 200% better and that'd make you useless if you try to do it on your own. It's a problem in all MMORPG minus EverQuest (though EQ is going this direction too) where the skill level needed to play at the top level is simply unobtainable because the mathematics behind optimal play is not something a normal human being can figure out.

So you end up almost a RTS fashion where you have to fish for 'secret builds' and 'secret macros' or you end up being useless at a competitive level. Sure you can say just don't play the game competitvely but even the most noncompetitive guy probably wants to see big raids just to see what it's about. I think this has to do with the whole E-Sports concept, that they have to make pushing buttons in a certain order the 'skill' as the draw, but because pushing buttons isn't very hard, they end up making the game hopelessly convoluted so that no normal person can ever discover the optimal sequence.

RIFT is adding Chronicles of Telara where you partake in raid-like enviornments with legendary NPCs, so you're basically solo/small group a raid guy. I think this has potential to really take off. To me I don't actually care very much about the uber loots from the latest raid boss but I want to see those bosses, but I'm not willing to work through a second job with another 19 guys just to see those bosses. Besides, fighting alongside Asha Catari is a lot more interesting than fighting with guys who insist on being on Vent to go over their useless strat. I might even pay attention to what Asha has to say. I got like 2 or 3 months left on my RIFT sub, so either this Chronicles things will work or maybe another MMORPG will come out that's worth playing.

[Eric]

Collector's Editions are getting crazier and crazier

[Zeus]

Collector's Editions are getting crazier and crazier

Kinda strange with the impending doom of the physical media, ain't it?

[Shrinweck]

Oh, right, the major wall for Rift for me was I got the feeling that I would have to use macros in order to be useful so, yeah, not doing that.

Also, yeah, there's a statue that comes with the CE but who gives a shit (other than, well, collectors and I guess that's why they call it that). There's also an in-game vendor that only CE people have access to, which is the only thing that intrigues me. I don't mind spending $20 for a mount on all my beginner characters because that can potentially save me hours in travel time, but spending $70-90 more for a vague vendor that might just sell something as useless as fireworks is something I'll pass on. I used to buy collector's editions but at a certain point found them all disappointing. Plus I'm not the type to display a Star Wars statue. Especially not a Star Wars MMORPG statue.

[Eric]

Collector's Editions are getting crazier and crazier

Kinda strange with the impending doom of the physical media, ain't it?

I'm not gonna bite. :p

*enjoys my glorious pc gaming master race steam sales*

[Don]

Well RIFT's macros aren't really that bad but then I do program for a living. You basically just make a priority queue of your abilities and iterate from top to bottom. If you didn't do that you would end up having 35 buttons to press and that's crazy too. I got it down to about 3 buttons to push for most of my stuff. But then there's still the question of how you're supposed to spec. In this sense it's worse than WoW because in WoW if you're a mage you basically have 3 choices and sure you can allocate points slightly differently but if you're an ice mage your points is still mostly in ice, and most of the obvious combinations are at least somewhat competitive even if they're not the best in your function. With RIFT the number of combinations is staggering. Before the SLI nerf you have to have 2 points into Paragon as a Warrior. You probably still need 30 points in Champion for 2H mastery though at least prior to most recent patch. Most builds are just not remotely competitive without X points in soul Y and most of this stuff isn't something you can easily figure out on your own.

And of course if you play RIFT without macros then it really sucks to be you.

[Eric]

I mean even WoW simplified it down, before the latest expansion I think there were 61 or 71 talent points, and they chopped that down to 41, forced you spec 31 into 1 tree before you can go into other trees, and made it so some talents were downright worthless in pvp or pve, so people wouldn't be confused about what to take, and even the worst player who randomly specs can still function at least 85%-90% of a properly spec'd person.

I don't know if the WoW trees vs the RIFT trees shows choice is a bad thing.

[Shrinweck]

and made it so some talents were downright worthless in pvp or pve

Wait, that was a change? That's kind of why I left in the first place in 2005.

[Don]

Well in WoW it's pretty obvious the skills at the top of the tree are good so you're probably not going to have someone spec like 20/20/21 or similar nonsense. The problem with RIFT is that they want to encourage people to mix and match classes so the top of the tree skills aren't really necessarily that good, so it's much harder to figure out what skills you need to be competitive.

[Eric]

Well in WoW it's pretty obvious the skills at the top of the tree are good so you're probably not going to have someone spec like 20/20/21 or similar nonsense.

The problem with that statement is that you vastly underestimate how awful your average MMO player can be. I have seen it many times when I'm forced to pug before blizzard dumbed down the trees where people would have nonsensical builds like that, and I don't mean 1 or 2 people out of 100 groups, I mean every other group I'd see some ridiculous build. Most people who game are bad and do it casually, like Zeus for example. ;P

Blizzard even thought they could make the game harder after they made the trees so straight forward, but people were still failing in the 5-mans @ the start of this latest expansion.

[Don]

Well at least the top tree skills are actually worth getting in WoW. The same cannot be said for RIFT. I know what they're going for (if top skills are good you'd never spread your points out) but it's just too complicated for the average person to figure out. If you just mindless put enough points to get the top skill in your tree and then distribute the rest in a random way you'll still end up with a halfway viable character in WoW. If you did that in RIFT you'll most likely end up with a useless combination.