Things I Think Bioware Did Right...

[Soluss]

Great.... now I'm blind from trying to read dark blue on black.

 

Please to fix.... for the sake of old eyes. Kay, thanx. There is a cookie in it for you if you do.

 

Yeah, sorry. I didn't expect the color to be that bad.

[Soluss]

I'll give a counterpoint on things I'm enjoying about Rift since going back for F2P.

 

One thing I just want to give them props for is their F2P is amazing. I suppose it's bad for the company, but for the moment I feel no need to spend any money to enhance my enjoyment. What it does do is build an immense amount of goodwill with me, and should I find reasons to give them money, I'm much more likely to do that. Frankly I haven't enjoyed watching the CM evolve and my goodwill with BW has been on the wane.

 

I enjoy being back in an open world. Going back to an old zone is easy (compared going back to an old planet), and some of my crafting quests will give me reasons to go back. (And I just like things like crafting quests) SWTOR feels very corridor-like in comparison. The world definitely feels more alive with NPCs wandering around and fighting things, rifts opening, mobs fighting rifts with you. As someone said rifts can disrupt things, which really put me off when I tried it at launch. But I think people complained because you can quest in peace much easier now if you like.

 

I have to say I'm kind of enjoying the old school questing. I really loved TOR's unique story stuff, in the same vein that Mass Effect and Dragon Age are probably my favorite games ever. But I've been kind of hitting a wall when it comes to Makeb. I'm trying to level my 3rd Imp from 50 to 55 and it's like pulling teeth. Leveling 5 or so characters to 50 was a blast, but now funneling them all through a single story planet (with a story I don't think is that good) is so bleh. The old school questing style is nowhere near as engaging as the first playthrough on TOR, but its replay value is much higher. I would never play Mass Effect four times quickly in succession, which is essentially what it would be to get my Imps to 55, except with worse writing. I understand a break is just in order, but the shame is I would like to be playing that Mara at 55, and if he were there already no break would be needed.

 

Other things: Quad-spec, appearance tab, support specs, mead, GMs sending out server-wide messages telling you they're working on stuff

 

I'm not max level in Rift yet so I can't compare the raiding experience but if they're not recycling content I'll be happy.

 

Things TOR got real right: inventory system, some of the crafting system is interesting but not enough is done with it, in-server LFG, I like the pacing of FPs better, class stories.

 

Good post. I like Rift a lot and it is my other MMO that I play. The raiding content is not recycled. In fact they have 10 mans and 20 mans. The 10 man raids are completely different then the 20 man raids. On updates, they kind of give a 10 man... then the next time a 20 man and they go back and forth. Some of the solo player chronicles are recycled raids scaled down to give solo players the ability to see it though but its still cool.