WOW or Rift?

[SeaofRed]

Hey all...just looking for some advice...I'm gonna start playing again and I'm looking which route to go.

I know Rift is very new, so it may be harder to speak about, but I'm torn to either start playing WOW again, or look at something new in Rift.....any input is appreciated....seeing as I haven't played for around a 2 years.

[Ualaa]

If you've not played either, I'll suggest Warcraft.

Rift has a level of polish, which none of the major games in the genre have had coming out of beta and into the launch.
That bodes very well for the game.
A million pre-orders means it stands a chance to survive for a while, and possibly force warcraft to develop against competition instead of whatever direction they feel like going.

No one has a clue what the end-game will be for Rift.
There is a resilience equivalent for PvP, but we haven't seen end-game raids yet.

They have mentioned that their plans are to balance around PvE entirely, and to never balance the game based around PvP; essentially, PvP could be severely imbalanced but if the PvE balance is there, then there will be no changes.

Rift looks and feels a lot like Warcraft; at this time, it is the new "not warcraft".
There isn't really all that much that is new; biggest thing would be regular "world bosses" in the form of the Rifts themselves.
It is actually pretty good marketing on their part, to bring in a game that essentially feels like warcraft, to attract any of the player base who might be tired of the same thing over and over in wow; wow seems to have a lot of magic for a couple of expansions (4 years or so), but after that many seem to look to other gaming options.
Not a lot of innovation, just a slightly different feel.

However, Rift does not even approach the level of "polish" of warcraft.
Not even close.
Warcraft has features like Click to Move, Interact With Target, a much more developed macro system, the ability to use addons and such.

Rift is using a 10 year old engine, with graphical eye candy set far higher than the cartoon like Warcraft.
Basically, your computer will likely run twice as many warcraft clients as rift clients, and will run them more smoothly too.

If you're interested in one-boxing, either game works.
If you're interested in multi-boxing, Warcraft has more features for boxing and can handle more clients than Rift, and box those clients more smoothly.

[SeaofRed]

Thanks Ualaa...I was leaning towards returning to WOW, so I appreciate the indebth Pros and Cons of both....my experience already playing WOW and the refinement it holds over Rift looks like the better way to go.

Not sure if I will jump right into Multiboxing, re-roll one of my old characters, or purchase Tim's Leveling guide and start from scratch, but it should be fun.....thanks again.

[Drarkan]

I've seen a stream where someone was playing in a party, wasn't sure if they were in a dungeon or what level they were, It did look like it was built to last, but I myself haven't played it to measure the playability.

I personally love WOW. I came to the game from playing Atari's Neverwinter Nights 2 and before that, Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. I bought and purchased all the expansions for both and enjoyed playing on various multiplayer servers which were player run, and usually servers run out of people's houses, but usually on large servers capable of maintaining the load of 50-100 players at a time. The game didn't have the structure to handle a large player base, as it had a heavy load on systems just putting in content like buildings, NPC's and effects. This was one of my reasons for leaving the game, but the other was most of these fan-run servers were lorded by people who wanted their players to "play" and "role-play" a particular way. I didn't like this and when I found WOW I bought the game within days of playing the trial. Now I multibox 5 accounts cause it adds complexity and a certain amount of benefits at the same time.

[Baldecaran]

Man, I remember playing the Nordock persistent world in NWN. Great fun and it had a cool, if rudimentary crafting system.

[isa23]

I've been on hiatus from WoW since November or so. I played 3 of the Rift beta events and the release head-start.

Rift was novel for ~11 days and now it just makes me miss WoW. There are some nice things about Rift:

1. Graphical improvements (though I prefer the WAR graphical style by far over Rift), but this is mostly just resolution, shading etc.
2. AoE loot
3. Further evolution of WAR's public quest system for Rifts
4. The whole Rift/ invasion concept and the spontaneous teamwork required
5. Multiple skill tree configurations and the ability to do custom trios of skill trees.

But WoW still has:
1. Far superior graphical design. It is intentionally cartoony, but everything is superbly executed, with excellent variety across zones and complete, integrated design of graphical elements and 'feel' across cultures and regions.
2. Richness of experience. As with the graphics above, the lore, immersive feel and well-thought-out nature of the overall game experience is way beyond Rift (or anything else I've seen in the MMO genre)
3. Transparent gameplay. WoW has a clearer, more tangible connection between what you're doing on the keyboard / mouse and what's happening onscreen. Rift, like WAR feels like driving an American luxury car where there is a delayed response factor. WoW feel more like a sports car where you have a more tangible and direct connection.
4. Better community. What I've seen in Rift seems like novelty-seeking kids, even on the RP servers which tend to be more adult focused. WoW has taken a downhill slide since BC, but it's still got a better community than Rift. I think this will continue to develop as the kiddies move on to Rift following release.

So anyway, that's my assessment of the two. 3 days into release and I'm about to pull the plug on my Rift subscription. Hopefully, Blizzard will incorporate Rift's good ideas into their next expansion.

[Bobby79]

I hate to say it but wow just pulls you in everytime.

I played the last 2 rift betas and at first you try telling yourself this is really good, it has new classes and abilities, new quests and a new world to explore compared to the same old world of warcraft ( full title ) but i got really bored i dont like the graphicsbecause they are very nice it tends to be boring to look at, i love the cartoony style graphics of wow it works and does it very well lots of colours bright and dark where as rift seems like aion to me you get really bored of looking at it and thats not good.

I have topped up my wow account again and started a new class.

Dont think i will buy rift wow has me for now, until d3 comes out.

Also i have 5 accounts with cataclysm on one and wrath on the others so i have invested alot of money in wow and i plan on starting a new 5 man multiboxing team.

Everyone knows multiboxing is the way to go after 5 years of single char play.
and rift macro system dosent allow more than one ability in a macro, at least in beta it didnt so no multiboxing at the moment.

Enough said wow is still king

[Tim]

Keep in mind, RIFT is a new game, they will likely be making a LOT of changes in the next 1-3 months.

I think RIFT is a serious contender with some really big things to come.

[Nghtmr9999]

When I have the time to spare, (not for awhile sadly), I might give Rift a try. It looks like a well-polished game.

[isa23]

I reregistered for WoW and bought cata on all 5 accts, so Rift just served as a gateway drug to lure me back to Blizzard.

Tim, I agree that Rift is new and there will be many upgrades and improvements to it. However, we've seen this recently with WAR - no matter how many upgrades, addons, content packs etc are added it will not address fundamental deficiencies with the game. In WAR's case, world design was actually pretty good (much better than Rift) but they never fixed their real issues. In Rift, no amount of added garnishes and icing will fix crappy world design.

That said, I think Rift will do a lot better than WAR or Aion but is it in the same league with WoW vanilla at release? Absolutely not. This is the issue most game companies get into, they cut corners but in an immersive mmo environment people can't help but notice. No amount of gee-whiz features compensates for base level lack of quality and a compelling narrative.