When Trion Worlds chose to use the slogan“We’re not in Azeroth anymore” to market their new MMO Rift, they knew what they were doing. You don’t throw down for a battle with the world’s most popular MMO unless you have a few tricks up your sleeve. And boy, does Rift know how to do some fancy tricks.

People are calling it “the WoW killer”, and the general consensus around the community is that it's shovelling dirt onto WoW’s grave as we speak. With Cataclysm driving many casual players away from the World of Warcraft franchise, Trion Worlds couldn’t have picked a better time to release this game. I’ve sunk 45 blissful hours into it so far, and now I get to tell you guys what I’ve thought of it.

My Story

My first experience with an MMO was almost four years ago now. I’d bought a season of South Park that included a free trial of World of Warcraft. To silence the inner nerd within, I installed it on my laptop, spent about eight hours patching it and then started playing. And I fell in love.

The game was so easily addictive and so easy to get into. Though I had pretty much no idea what I was doing until about a month later, I was having the time of my life. Before my ten days were up I purchased the full game along with Burning Crusade and set off on my journey through Azeroth.

I remained loyal to WoW through the Burning Crusade, though I was too low of a level to enjoy any of the end game content. By the time I was of level, Wrath of the Lich King had come out, and I moved straight onto that.

My level 80 mage and I had some very fond memories over the years. Like the time I got lost in Undercity, my raid on the alliance cities and of course; the devastating realisation that Mankrik’s wife was, in fact, dead. (I’m not joking. The first time I did that quest I honestly thought I’d find her alive, and when she wasn’t I was actually quite sad for poor old Mankrik).

Because I have such fond memories of Azeroth, when I found out that the whole point of Cataclysm was to destroy it, I found myself quite turned off. Sure, I had the odd urge to resubscribe every now and again (who doesn’t?) but the thought of seeing my little world torn to pieces wasn’t appealing. And so I didn’t go back when it came out, I haven’t gone back yet, and I don’t think I ever will. Especially now that I have Rift.

The Story

In Rift, you are an Ascended, sent to save the world of Telara from rifts, evil dragon kings, enemy invasions and a plethora of other things. In the opening of the game you are transported to a world in the middle of a war. Everything is hectic, and the very earth is blowing up around you. The future is beyond hope, and thus you are sent into the past to save Telara from the devastating rifts that seek to destroy everything we know.

What I Like

Character Creation

The character creation screen is surprisingly in depth for an MMO. Finally, my characters won’t all look the same! Firstly you are asked to choose a faction; Guardian or Defiant, and then choose a race. Each faction has three different races; the Guardians have High Elves, Dwarves, and Mathosians (the “humans” of the faction) and Defiants have the Eth (the “humans”) the Kelari (the dark elves) and the Bahmi (the huge, funny coloured humans).

Classes

Classes in Rift use the ‘soul system’. During character creation you pick whether you’re going to be a Warrior, Rogue, Mage or Cleric, and then in game you get to customise these roles even more. Within each class are eight different ‘souls’. For example, if you decide to pick Rogue as your class, you have the soul options of bard, assassin, ranger, saboteur etc. Being able to choose three different builds means variety. It means having three mages in your party is no longer a bad thing, because chances are they all have very different strengths and weaknesses.

Another plus about the soul system is that each class now has the option to heal themselves. The beauty of this is that if you’re questing alone you no longer need to worry about having your ass kicked. Bards can play tunes to bring their health back up, warriors have the option of being paladins, clerics have pretty much every option under the sun, and even mages have a healing soul they can choose if they so wish.

Playability

This game is quite graphics heavy, but if you have a PC that can run it with everything on full, it’s worth it, because the world is gorgeous. I upgraded my graphics card simply so I could see Telara in all its splendour, and I’m not regretting it. However, even before upgrading my card the game ran quite smoothly if I had everything on low. Also, playing with everything on the lowest settings doesn’t make the game look awful either. Sure the details aren’t as crisp, but it’s not like you’re running around in a blurred blob of a world.

Rifts

I can’t write anything about Rift and not mention the rifts. Rifts are tears in the plane that randomly occur in the world. When you enter one you are given criteria to meet before you can advance to the next stage of the rift. Criteria is simple, and often consists of ‘kill x amount of these creatures’ or ‘defeat this boss’. When you fulfil the criteria for the last stage of the rift it becomes sealed, and you get to reap your rewards. Commonly rifts reward players in planarite, which is traded to vendors for gear or items; however they can also award artefacts and other random goodies.

If you have a decent group of people, rifts are a fun way to gather planarite and experience points. However, that being said, rifts can also be incredibly annoying. When they open on top of you and you get ganked, it sucks. When a quest item you need is right in the middle of one, it sucks. When you log in to find your camp overrun by monsters, it sucks. Still, they’re something new in an MMO, and you get used to avoiding them when you need to.

What I Don’t Like

So.Much.Undead

In this game I play a character on both factions; Guardian and Defiant. In the Guardian world I have fought fawns, faeries, treants and humanoids, and loved it. The world is beautiful and green and the accompanying soundtrack is peaceful and relaxing. It’s the kind of world I love to quest in, as even when I’m getting my ass kicked, I can still appreciate how lovely the thing killing me looks.

The Defiants on the other hand, have their stories closely tied to the undead. So you end up fighting skeletons, ghosts, zombies and the like constantly. Just when you think you’ve moved on to a different sort of enemy they drag you straight bag down to a crypt. I’m not a fan of the undead, but even if I was I think I’d be sick of killing them by now anyway. However there are brief periods where they aren’t seen, and this is a welcome change. Plus the Defiants half of the map is still an interesting place to be in, even if it is surrounded by dead people.

Constant server maintenance

Every single night that I have played this game the servers have gone down for “brief updates”. Now I understand that this is a brand new MMO, and the fact that Trion Worlds is going to the effort to fix issues daily is a good thing. However it’s still annoying when you just start an epic story quest and get told that the servers are going down. The longest period of downtime I’ve seen has been 2 hours, whilst the shortest has been 15 minutes. Fortunately this seems to happen late at night, between the hours of 1-3am Aussie time and 5-8am server time, so it could be worse. And everybody seems to love the sound that chimes every time the server makes an announcement. There’s something just so happy about that dinging sound. I can’t explain it, but I really like it.

Invasions

Every so often Telara will be invaded by someone. Depending on who and where you are, the invading forces differ. Sometimes it’ll be trolls, sometimes it’ll be undead (surprise surprise), sometimes it’ll be fire elementals or even the opposing faction. When invasions occur it is up to everybody to band together and defeat the invaders, lest they overrun the area. Unfortunately, this doesn't always go to plan. Sometimes people just can’t be bothered protecting Telara, instead opting to quest or run instances. Of course, this means the invaders win, and take over everything. Camps get wiped out, NPC’s die and merchants and quest givers disappear completely. Today I spent 15 minutes watching an invading mob kill the person I needed to turn a quest into over and over again. And there was nothing I could do, because five elites versus one little rogue equals death in any circumstances. If everybody had put as much effort intodefeating the invasions as they were avoiding them, they would have been beaten in a jiffy. But I guess you can’t have everything.

The Little Things...

• Currency: 100 silvers make a gold, 100 gold make a platinum, 100 platinim makes you rich.
• When my character runs she breathes heavy. When she’s close to dying I can hear her heartbeat. When it’s raining, her clothes darken to show me that she’s wet. When she’s stunned, she sees double and everything slows down. It’s a nice touch.
• Artefacts are collectible items around the world. Find all the artefacts in a set and get a lucky coin. Get enough lucky coins and trade them in for companions and pets.
• Guilds have quests to complete now, and each successfully completed guild quest raises the guild a level, entitling it to cool perks.
• Communication channels include the regular Area, Guild, Trade etc, but Level channels have also been introduced, which is especially handy when recruiting for instances or asking for help with a quest.

Is it worth it?

I told a friend of mine the other night “If you played WoW and hated it, you’ll play Rift and bear it. If you played WoW and loved it, you’ll enjoy Rift even more. If you’ve never played WoW, I’d suggest waiting for a free trial before spending any money on it.” And that’s how my opinion stands. I never thought anything would replace WoW, but Rift has definitely done that for me. Even without comparing it to something else it is a brilliant game by its own merits. It brings unique gameplay aspects into a creative, living world, providing us with interesting quests and places to see along the way. Rift is definitely marked on my list of successes for 2011

When Trion Worlds chose to use the slogan“We’re not in Azeroth anymore” to market their new MMO Rift, they knew what they were doing. You don’t throw down for a battle with the world’s most popular MMO unless you have a few tricks up your sleeve. And boy, does Rift know how to do some fancy tricks.

People are calling it “the WoW killer”, and the general consensus around the community is that it's shovelling dirt onto WoW’s grave as we speak. With Cataclysm driving many casual players away from the World of Warcraft franchise, Trion Worlds couldn’t have picked a better time to release this game. I’ve sunk 45 blissful hours into it so far, and now I get to tell you guys what I’ve thought of it.

My Story

My first experience with an MMO was almost four years ago now. I’d bought a season of South Park that included a free trial of World of Warcraft. To silence the inner nerd within, I installed it on my laptop, spent about eight hours patching it and then started playing. And I fell in love.

The game was so easily addictive and so easy to get into. Though I had pretty much no idea what I was doing until about a month later, I was having the time of my life. Before my ten days were up I purchased the full game along with Burning Crusade and set off on my journey through Azeroth.

I remained loyal to WoW through the Burning Crusade, though I was too low of a level to enjoy any of the end game content. By the time I was of level, Wrath of the Lich King had come out, and I moved straight onto that.

My level 80 mage and I had some very fond memories over the years. Like the time I got lost in Undercity, my raid on the alliance cities and of course; the devastating realisation that Mankrik’s wife was, in fact, dead. (I’m not joking. The first time I did that quest I honestly thought I’d find her alive, and when she wasn’t I was actually quite sad for poor old Mankrik).

Because I have such fond memories of Azeroth, when I found out that the whole point of Cataclysm was to destroy it, I found myself quite turned off. Sure, I had the odd urge to resubscribe every now and again (who doesn’t?) but the thought of seeing my little world torn to pieces wasn’t appealing. And so I didn’t go back when it came out, I haven’t gone back yet, and I don’t think I ever will. Especially now that I have Rift.

The Story

In Rift, you are an Ascended, sent to save the world of Telara from rifts, evil dragon kings, enemy invasions and a plethora of other things. In the opening of the game you are transported to a world in the middle of a war. Everything is hectic, and the very earth is blowing up around you. The future is beyond hope, and thus you are sent into the past to save Telara from the devastating rifts that seek to destroy everything we know.

What I Like

Character Creation

The character creation screen is surprisingly in depth for an MMO. Finally, my characters won’t all look the same! Firstly you are asked to choose a faction; Guardian or Defiant, and then choose a race. Each faction has three different races; the Guardians have High Elves, Dwarves, and Mathosians (the “humans” of the faction) and Defiants have the Eth (the “humans”) the Kelari (the dark elves) and the Bahmi (the huge, funny coloured humans).

Classes

Classes in Rift use the ‘soul system’. During character creation you pick whether you’re going to be a Warrior, Rogue, Mage or Cleric, and then in game you get to customise these roles even more. Within each class are eight different ‘souls’. For example, if you decide to pick Rogue as your class, you have the soul options of bard, assassin, ranger, saboteur etc. Being able to choose three different builds means variety. It means having three mages in your party is no longer a bad thing, because chances are they all have very different strengths and weaknesses.

Another plus about the soul system is that each class now has the option to heal themselves. The beauty of this is that if you’re questing alone you no longer need to worry about having your ass kicked. Bards can play tunes to bring their health back up, warriors have the option of being paladins, clerics have pretty much every option under the sun, and even mages have a healing soul they can choose if they so wish.

Playability

This game is quite graphics heavy, but if you have a PC that can run it with everything on full, it’s worth it, because the world is gorgeous. I upgraded my graphics card simply so I could see Telara in all its splendour, and I’m not regretting it. However, even before upgrading my card the game ran quite smoothly if I had everything on low. Also, playing with everything on the lowest settings doesn’t make the game look awful either. Sure the details aren’t as crisp, but it’s not like you’re running around in a blurred blob of a world.

Rifts

I can’t write anything about Rift and not mention the rifts. Rifts are tears in the plane that randomly occur in the world. When you enter one you are given criteria to meet before you can advance to the next stage of the rift. Criteria is simple, and often consists of ‘kill x amount of these creatures’ or ‘defeat this boss’. When you fulfil the criteria for the last stage of the rift it becomes sealed, and you get to reap your rewards. Commonly rifts reward players in planarite, which is traded to vendors for gear or items; however they can also award artefacts and other random goodies.

If you have a decent group of people, rifts are a fun way to gather planarite and experience points. However, that being said, rifts can also be incredibly annoying. When they open on top of you and you get ganked, it sucks. When a quest item you need is right in the middle of one, it sucks. When you log in to find your camp overrun by monsters, it sucks. Still, they’re something new in an MMO, and you get used to avoiding them when you need to.

What I Don’t Like

So.Much.Undead

In this game I play a character on both factions; Guardian and Defiant. In the Guardian world I have fought fawns, faeries, treants and humanoids, and loved it. The world is beautiful and green and the accompanying soundtrack is peaceful and relaxing. It’s the kind of world I love to quest in, as even when I’m getting my ass kicked, I can still appreciate how lovely the thing killing me looks.

The Defiants on the other hand, have their stories closely tied to the undead. So you end up fighting skeletons, ghosts, zombies and the like constantly. Just when you think you’ve moved on to a different sort of enemy they drag you straight bag down to a crypt. I’m not a fan of the undead, but even if I was I think I’d be sick of killing them by now anyway. However there are brief periods where they aren’t seen, and this is a welcome change. Plus the Defiants half of the map is still an interesting place to be in, even if it is surrounded by dead people.

Constant server maintenance

Every single night that I have played this game the servers have gone down for “brief updates”. Now I understand that this is a brand new MMO, and the fact that Trion Worlds is going to the effort to fix issues daily is a good thing. However it’s still annoying when you just start an epic story quest and get told that the servers are going down. The longest period of downtime I’ve seen has been 2 hours, whilst the shortest has been 15 minutes. Fortunately this seems to happen late at night, between the hours of 1-3am Aussie time and 5-8am server time, so it could be worse. And everybody seems to love the sound that chimes every time the server makes an announcement. There’s something just so happy about that dinging sound. I can’t explain it, but I really like it.

Invasions

Every so often Telara will be invaded by someone. Depending on who and where you are, the invading forces differ. Sometimes it’ll be trolls, sometimes it’ll be undead (surprise surprise), sometimes it’ll be fire elementals or even the opposing faction. When invasions occur it is up to everybody to band together and defeat the invaders, lest they overrun the area. Unfortunately, this doesn't always go to plan. Sometimes people just can’t be bothered protecting Telara, instead opting to quest or run instances. Of course, this means the invaders win, and take over everything. Camps get wiped out, NPC’s die and merchants and quest givers disappear completely. Today I spent 15 minutes watching an invading mob kill the person I needed to turn a quest into over and over again. And there was nothing I could do, because five elites versus one little rogue equals death in any circumstances. If everybody had put as much effort intodefeating the invasions as they were avoiding them, they would have been beaten in a jiffy. But I guess you can’t have everything.

The Little Things...

• Currency: 100 silvers make a gold, 100 gold make a platinum, 100 platinim makes you rich.
• When my character runs she breathes heavy. When she’s close to dying I can hear her heartbeat. When it’s raining, her clothes darken to show me that she’s wet. When she’s stunned, she sees double and everything slows down. It’s a nice touch.
• Artefacts are collectible items around the world. Find all the artefacts in a set and get a lucky coin. Get enough lucky coins and trade them in for companions and pets.
• Guilds have quests to complete now, and each successfully completed guild quest raises the guild a level, entitling it to cool perks.
• Communication channels include the regular Area, Guild, Trade etc, but Level channels have also been introduced, which is especially handy when recruiting for instances or asking for help with a quest.

Is it worth it?

I told a friend of mine the other night “If you played WoW and hated it, you’ll play Rift and bear it. If you played WoW and loved it, you’ll enjoy Rift even more. If you’ve never played WoW, I’d suggest waiting for a free trial before spending any money on it.” And that’s how my opinion stands. I never thought anything would replace WoW, but Rift has definitely done that for me. Even without comparing it to something else it is a brilliant game by its own merits. It brings unique gameplay aspects into a creative, living world, providing us with interesting quests and places to see along the way. Rift is definitely marked on my list of successes for 2011

Rift is awesome.  That is all. 

nah

I really wish people would stop using the phrase "WoW Killer". 

dang those broads are anything but classy. i know when i want to save the world from forces of evil, i just want to wear heals, a thong, and something see through. i am glad youa re enjoying your time in the game, but i am over games that try and appeal to 13 year old boys and older that want to ogle pixelated chicks from all camera angles. it's creepy.

fuck, i really hope I don't like this game because I just started getting back into WoW.

I stopped reading after "Cataclysm driving many casual players away from the World of Warcraft franchise" because it is the only reason I started playing again, and it will be the only reason for me ever resubscribing. 
 
Also you are implying that WoW can be killed. 
 
So yeah. 
 
It can't. 
 
It can't be killed.

Good write-up, though your opening was a bit melodramatic ;P Rift fans saying it's shoveling dirt on WoW's grave? Big surprise! Why can't the two co-exist? D:
 
Cataclysm's goal was not to destroy the world, but to change it (from a design standpoint, of course. From a story standpoint the bad-guy has ALWAYS been out to destroy the world in Warcraft lore) and I think a lot of people, including those who had quit like myself, were actually curious to see how the areas they had fond memories of had changed and resubscribed to see those changes. That said, Cataclysm went stale for me really quickly. Another shadowy group is hell bent on destroying the world, just like in WotLK and there seem to be more insane denizens of Azeroth content to listen to some malevolent force than there are sane people wanting to live in peace and harmony. Seriously, where the hell did the Twilight Cult get all of these recruits? Was the Cult of the Damned having a discount sale after the Lich King died and Cho'gall bought them all in bulk? Ultimately, it wasn't the fact that areas changed but the fact that the story was poor and there's a sense of futility behind it all that ruined it for me -- if the world is hellbent on its own destruction, what's the point in trying to save it? May as well just move to the Outlands. Nagrand seems peaceful enough. 
 
That and it's just more of the same grind that's been going on for years now. And that's the real question I'm always left with when it comes to new MMOs that attempt to dethrone it -- How is the end-game grind? What does it offer besides monotonous dungeon running, daily quests, and PvP? I had a lot of fun for the first 20 levels of Aion, for example. It looked gorgeous, the combat was enjoyable, and the landscapes were varied. But then the grind hit in full force and the realization that there wasn't a ton to do became glaringly apparent. Will that be the case with Rift? It sounds like you're still leveling so you probably can't answer that, yet.
 
You mentioned the character customization being fairly robust. How robust is it? Are there different body types? Heights? Tattoos or scars? Piercings? How many hairstyles are there to choose from (and are there actually any decent long hair styles -- something that seems to be lacking in every single MMO)? How is the equipment design? Are there decals or dyes? Vanity clothing that doesn't have stats but looks nice?
 
Hearing there's a bard class did pique my interest. I loved playing a bard in FFXI and have always wished more games offered that class.  
 
Anyhow, I'd enjoy reading more of your excursions into the world of Rift as you progress, and finding out what the game offers down the road. especially at end-game

Uh...no. Not a WOW killer. Nothing is bringing that puppy down short of the new Blizzard MMO or The Old Republic being mindblowing.

For future reference, here a quick check list to see if something is the "WoW killer". 

1. Is it WoW?
If no, then it's not the WoW killer.
 
Annnnywhooo, I played some of the beta and enjoyed what I got to see, which wasn't much. I'm glad it's turning out well and hopefully it'll be successful.

" @LordXavierBritish: Everything can be killed. Every.thing.   But to each their own. Glad Cata is being enjoyed by some. But they took my barrens away, and that cannot be forgiven.   Plus wow got to the point where you had to fake achievements to get into any decent raid (on my server anyway) and that's just not fun. At least because Rift is new, we're all on the same page. Kind of. Except for those power levelling people giving everyone a bad name "

On the many forums I hang on, looking into Rift threads pre-release, pre-beta, during-beta and a week after release it is clear that the WoW killer is not Rift, but WoW itself, much like how Call of Duty is committing a very slow suicide.

If a product is labeled as a "______ killer" it has already lost.

I guess I'll say it again. 
 
 

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AN (INSERT GAME) KILLER!

I don't think anything can kill WoW at this point. It's too big to fail. Even if it does, it'll just get bailed out. Just like those banks. Yeah. That'll totally happen. 

The market is big enough to sustain more than one MMO. Nobody needs to kill World of Warcraft in order to make money.

l o l (laugh out loud)

" l o l (laugh out loud) "

I'm enjoying RIFT, but I don't know. 
 
As much as WoW players would never admit it, WoW is the Wii of MMOs. I just don't see people jumping ship unless Blizzard themselves release something new.

How do you kill that which has no life?

I would love to think that something could kill WoW, and I will admit that Rift is great, but seriously dude. The World of Warcraft will never die.

Omg, how many more months do we have to put up with the Rift vs WoW nonsense?

There is no "WoW killer" its been around and will stay around for a long long time. 

Thanks for the post Jennacide! I have been kind of thinking of giving Rift a fair shot, and as I have never really played WOW, it looks like this game would be alright for a total newbie such as myself

Dude, how fucking epic would it be if Rifts started opening up in World of Warcraft, and the invading Rift players started taking over towns and zones and shit. Hmm, wonder if the citizens of WoW would even miss the old world? 
 
Anyways glad you're enjoying the game. So far my experience has been a delight. If you're looking for some gbers to play with most of us have settled on Molinar.    

Rift is not "the WoW killer." The only thing that can kill WoW is Blizzard deciding they want it to die. WoW is too big and to a lot of people it is the only MMO. I know plenty of people who only play WoW. They like WoW, they are comfortable playing it, and they aren't looking at branching out. Another reason that a lot of other MMOs have no chance of killing WoW is their graphic requirements. Almost anyone can run WoW on their little family computer they bought at Walmart, and that just isn't true for games like Rift and FFXIV. They may not know a lot about computers and don't want to put the time and money into figuring out how they can play what they probably consider just to be WoW clones.

" @extremeradical: True, but they do need to knock it down a peg to take some of it's share.  When you compare just how many people play WoW vs. all other MMO's you begin to see just how huge WoW is.  For a game to steal players permanently from the giant would be a big accomplishment. "

The WoW killer is WoW 2. 
 
But I really enjoyed RIFT.

We could go down the list of mmos that have been labeled wow killers in the last 7 years, it's a very, very long one.

But I don't care that much. Most your points about why you dont like wow amount to someone who could find a good group of people to run around with. And from what I hear Rift is so similar to wow I expect you will run into the same problems in it's end game.

I'll give Rift a whirl. When it's free to play. Like every other "wow killer".

Also they didn't take your barrens away, they made it vastly more interesting and rich in lore and quests. It's actually fun to quest there now.

I forgot to dd the biggest reason why Rift will fail. Because if anything it does is amazing enough to truly pull players away from wow, blizzard will just add that in the next patch.

Like it or hate it, that's the beast.

ive been playing WoW since launch and i find pretty funny that new MMO's use the WoW format as sort of the bare bones for their game and just build on it. it kinda says a lot about WoW.....