WARNING: Same person who destroyed Warhammer Online - Adam Gershowitz - is in control of game balance here. Great game - up till "balance" patch 1.1, which destroyed a bunch of playstyles in a game which claims to promote versatility in how you can build your characters (this is now gone), and indicates future issues with how game "balance" will be handled. After this patch and the massive outcry from players, it has been revealed that the person responsible for game balance is the same person who destroyed Warhammer Online - Adam Gershowitz. Warning for all gamers intending on playing this game - with Adam in control of game balance. you can expect things to go very, very wrong very soon.… Expand

There is really nothing NEW here that hasn't been done before. The fanboi excitement reviews are just because they are bored with WOW or never played an MMO before. The first thing I noticed is the game is tooooo solo friendly and hardly anyone wants to group prior to level 50. The game is tooooooo EASY as I leveledup without worry and pretty much stomped everything in my path as I was beating mobs 4 levels higher than me quite early in the game all the way to 50. The death penalty is a joke. You don't lose anything but a small amount of time getting back to your corpse and a few gold coins to get your abilities back to 100%. The market is dead because the leveling is TOO FAST. I went to level 12 the first day. To level 30 the first 3 days and level 50 by the end of 7 days. There's no challenge in that and the combat is so repetitive you can roll your face across the keyboard and beat anything. The skills and spells are dry and just don't stand out like say an Everquest version. In Everquest I really felt I was my character and really felt FEAR of dying and losing stuff. There's not a bit of fear in this game and as I said the death penalty is a joke.
The colors for characters are bland as well.. Too much BROWN and Grays. THe weapons are horrible looking and there's no procs so nothing stands out as "OHHHHH I WANT DAT!". Boring colors, boring looking and just an overall boring game. To me this is a game for 8 to 10 year olds. It's that easy and then they can go..."Looky Mommy I beat dah bad guy Look Mommy LOOK!" lmao

The community isn't really friendly especially on the official forums. I've never seen so many negative comments on a game in my life. I mean this game really sucks it's that bad. You're better off waiting for Guild Wars 2.… Expand

- Very boring and repetitive questlines. - PvP instances are really mediocre. PvP is quite often premades repeatedly steamrolling pugs, and this is apparently working as intended. Both sides have what is basically a Warhammer Bright Wizard locking down the battlefield with mass AE and mass CC.

- While the class structure initially looks great, it in fact is a nightmare of min maxing players vs. devs. Yo-yoing balance patches and random nerfs are pretty commonplace, but they seem to break more than they fix. - The Rift events (their signature "thang") are either nonexistant or overly in your face, locking down entire zones with 12 total players in them with no chance against the NPC invaders. The loot from Rifts sort of sucks relative to other lvl 50 gear so its no surprise people dont really seem to bother.

- The "elite" PvE instances (the ones you run to grind tokens for gear, just like WoW) are rehashes of the instances you see from lvl 1 - 50 with yet more trash to clear.

- Crafting is a luck based system in which you grind dailies to get tokens to get uber patterns. So are some of the gathering "recipes" - random luck based drops off nodes. Yay for luck based MMOs.

- The devs seem sort of out of touch as to what the players are actually doing in PvE, PvP and with the construction of their characters using the "unique" soul system. One example is that there are two main healing classes and the one that is the better of the two cannot even queue as heals using the (now in Alpha) looking for group tool. This is apparently working as intended.

- While gathering or traveling expect masses of gray mobs to aggro you, slow you down, dismount you and force you to clear them. All while trying to get your luck based crafting daily done so you can once again not get a tablet that is necessary to get the good patterns.

Try it if you gotta, but I highly recommend a one month sub because thats about all the gameplay Rift has in it.… Expand

Game has problems with connection and performance. 50 pages of tech problem thread in 7 days speak for themselves. Customer support is awful. Gameplay: Kill and fetch PvE quest system. Farm'n grind, nothing new. Several different currencies allow for specialized grinding. Rift events are permanently popping up everywhere and not challenging. PvP is chaotic, restricted, unbalanced and pointless (no gain whatsoever if the other player was attacked by a mob). If I was able to play it I'd rate it 4/10. But I get disconnected on a regular basis, so the game is unplayable = 0/10. Continuing to wait for Guild Wars 2.â… Expand

Honestly don't see what the fuss is about, Rift is a average game that has done nothing to progress the MMO genre. It's just so bland, boring and dull with the same old same old kill 10 badgers quest system. Animations are clunky with overuse of glow effects, PvP is unbalanced due to many souls. Dungeons lack imagination and are far to easy, the game doesn't offer a challenge at all and the Rifts just get in your way and become tedious.… Expand

The only way to get even close to objectivity, I have attempted the past few days to take a step back and make a list of things I like about the game. On the same sheet of paper I tried to record day to day what the Official Rift Forum Community says most about the gameâ

Rift is a game that fails to live up to it's potential. It has a few interesting concepts: multiple "souls" (aka talent trees) to play around with, and world events in the form of rifts or gateways to elemental planes, which spawn monsters and must be combated. The soul system at first seems like a good idea, but it quickly becomes clear that spreading your talent points between more than 2 trees actually hampers you, and there still is an "optimal" build that you should be using if you want to maximize your effectiveness. It also suffers from talent point bloat, similar to WoW prior to 4.0's talent reorganization - you will spend 5 points to increase the damage of an ability by 5%, for example. The rifts/invasions I felt were fairly well done, if a little simplistic. Even if you shut one rift down, another will open in a short while. I was disappointed when, after closing several footholds on a beach, I turned around to see the first one open again.

The rest of the game, I'm sorry to say, is horrible. For one, there is virtually no replayability. If you've played one Defiant character, you've played them all, and questing is crushingly linear. Except for dwarves and bahmi, the races are virtually identical and consist of a fair skinned human and elf for Guardian and a dark skinned human and elf for Defiant. Boooooring. Questing is 100% the stereotypical 'go here, kill X, click on Y and talk to Z' fare. You will also encounter many instances of finishing a quest in an area, only to get a follow up quest that takes you back into that same area you just cleared. Also, I hope you enjoy the way you look at level 2, you will be wearing that same outfit up through your 20's, not to mention if you are a pet class such as a beastmaster, that creepy purple cat will be with you throughout the entire game.

In closing, you might find a few features you like, but they will be drowned out by the negative aspects of the game.… Expand

Definitely overrated game. Certainly better than other MMO releases within the last 3 or 4 years, but nothing special or new. Pros- beautiful graphics; great scaling with system compatibility; extreme character variety; smooth launch and updates; fresh take on PvP; non-instanced raids; takes the best from well-played MMOs and bundles them.
Cons- the grind: same old linear quests; single player is far too easy, no one forms parties or even chats; PvP is chaotic and unbalanced-but at least it is not WoW garbage; horribly convoluted lore; character classes have too much variablility- I wanted to build a melee healer (Justicar) but the lack of abilities and DPS forced me to cast (Purifier) ranged spells all the time. Most character builds oddly end up performing in a similar fashion despite the vast breadth of choices for development. ---I wish this game luck because WoW veterans (I started in 2004) have been starving for a decent MMO again.… Expand

The game has balance issues in both pve and pvp, there are many talents in tree's that don't work, one was giving 100% armor penetration instead of 1% how this gets through alpha, beta and has been in the game for awhile is baffling, the only pvp in the game is a grind and the maximum pvp level can be achieved in a few days.
There are no arenas or rated clan vs clan warfronts and they have stated in interviews they will not add them, so the new problem is premades are vsing public groups which is unfair.

The good thing about the game is that it only takes 3 days played time to hit max level. It doesn't feel like to big a waste of time when you realize you've rolled the gimp class(rogue).… Expand

I played the beta and this should have been a clear indicator of what was in store, but there was a group of gaming friends still interested in playing so I tagged along on release. Here it is a month later and I'm bored to tears of the end game content, fed up with repetitive key mashing for DPS and lackluster PVP. It was a great idea of Trion to learn from their peers in the gaming world, to simply create a frankenstein game that just mashed together parts of others is a bit weak though. The leveling was a series of 'quickly get to the yellow ring and kill everything, never mind WHY I'm doing it' that was simplistic and short lived (thankfully). You are rewarded at endgame with tedious dungeons littered with trash mobs, weak loot and the never ending quest for items with purple frames. Trion did add new class structure and features, but these are not enough to overlook the boring old shell of a game this is. It's environments are generic and cliche, its encounters are the same old formula and the story is lacking on so many levels (as well as utterly unimportant), They had the chance to make something amazing, and instead spit out a WoW clone.… Expand

Not since I tried WoW for the first time in the US closed beta have I played a MMO that so thoroughly got my attention and appreciation from the very first moments in-game. After Blizzard's behemoth started to get old and boring I tried Vanguard, Lineage 2, AoC, LOTRO, GW amongst others without satisfaction..

..now I finally feel like I found my way home. I initially bought Rift as a pastime in anticipation of SW:TOR and/or GW2, but now it might just be my next several-year-long relationship.… Expand

With each patch the uniqueness of the game goes, the nerfs and buffs seem to hurt the game more then help it.
They buffed the mages so high that you deal -damage to them and they one shot everyone, they nerfed rogues so bad no one wants them, they nerfed ranged warriors enough to force them to melee.
There are many exploits going unfixed and people are doing them with no punishment.
The game feels like a beta test, there is still much testing and work too be done.… Expand

i played it got to level 50 first week of the "head start"

this game is the grindfest to end all grindfests

not to mention it runs on gamebyro; its like warhammer online 2 bascially except minus all the fun RvR stuff that made warhammer great - theres nothin next gen about it

The hype was amazing. The graphics are amazing. In a few words, you get to level 30+ and you suddenly realise that everything is getting teadious. You find yourself grinding over and over again the same areas. The variety of souls that you pick to create your character skills unique in many ways, is all that was keeping me playing to be honest. You can level to 50 in 5 days. Pity, it could have been a wow killer.… Expand

This game is terrible. The graphics are just not as pretty as these reviews make them out to be. The gameplay is generic, leaving you with almost too many options. It's such a shameless WOW clone, just play wow... I can't believe I fell for that and bought this. I fell through giant bugs in the map at several points, and then the servers were down like half the time I wanted to get on to play. I played appx. 3 hours and I never plan on touching this game again. I wish I could take it out from my steam account.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Alrite guys I'm going to break this down into simple sections based on PvP, PvE, whats available in the market and why I would give this game a 4 and why it would seem like a troll score compared to what others are saying.

1: PvP. If you are buying rift for PvP, do not buy it. I cannot stress this enough. It is a PvE centric game with PvP tacked on in a horrible way that is horribly unbalanced. If you send me a message I will send you a link to show me deleting my top rank level cap Warrior for PvP. Warrior just cannot be used in PvP at end game. Its that simple. Other classes have had similiar nerfs/buffs completely changing your ability to play the game overnight with little to no community feedback before going live and even months after the change and hundreds of threads, they will not change a thing. The Second part of PVP - Gear. You gain gear by pvping, but the gear gap on the PvP is insane. I have seen players go afk in the highest tier gear vs people who are FORCED to fight them because of no tier seperation and not die to lower tier gear players only to have the player return, use a potion or skill, and then go about killing the 2-3 players that were on top of him for the last 30 seconds. You MUST go through this process in order to obtain gear and it can takeup weeks upon weeks of basically getting beaten from an unfair advantage until you are better. That is statistics speaking, some may say it isn't like that, it really is.

2. PvE: For PvE, this game is not bad. It has horrible graphics and really bad rendering problems due to the water in the maps but I'm not going to comment on graphics and optimization because I'm not a tech junkie its not what you want to read about. The major draw for PVE is end game Raids and partying, and of course RIFTs what this game is named after. Raids: Simple, scripted encounters based on gear and hotbar setup just like other games of the genre. Not hard, not easy. Just a normal setup.
Partying: Very easy, not even required until end game. Can solo most of the game and most players do.
RIFTS: These will seem very 'random' and require a team at first. After reaching lvl 30 and being competent in how you go about PvE, Rifts are no longer requiring a team except for the final bosses which are extremely OP based on what class you are. The 'loot' they offer and other shinys are next to worthless compared to forced PvP and Raid end gear. Otherwise useless little things added to the game to try and attract people and if you play and enjoy rifting I'm not meaning to hurt your feelings, just pointing out that its a content void, like a death rift.


What else is on the market: There are alot of other games and if you haven't tried some of the higher rated more fan related and better % of happy player games out there, I suggest you would go for that one before this one. This is a large mix of what is on the market, and while it is captivating for 50 hours, it becomes very stale. The developers also have no ability to speak to the playerbase and do not attempt to help them out or listen to their concerns at all. There are multiple posts with people deleting their highest tier characters and unsubscribing due to what they feel is unfair and the developers will not speak with the players or even attempt to fix anything. They post feedback threads and delete actual feedback posts and stick with the players agreeing that its not broken. I'm not speaking of troll posts, I'm speaking of posts of people who do the math and do care about the game.

So like I said, its a decent game worth trying if you have nothing else. It is not worth staying subscribed to for long and I believe most of the 10's on this website are lies and fake reviews written because if these people played as long as they said they did and play right now, they would not be posting that. Just check the public forums on the game site.… Expand

I feel there's something missing. Rifts and invasions were fun for a little while and I liked tinkering with the soul tree, but after that it was just another mediocre MMO.

Developers need to stop cloning World of Warcraft. This game could have potential but they need to have a new form of game play that is not a clone of WoW or Lineage 2.

Part of the issue is that the game cloned wow far too much, while it did add a new multi-class system, the simple fact of the matter is, its been done many times before. In the end it leads to only two or three builds per class that is viable for anything.

The developers completely screwed up PvP, the PvE is repetitive and monotonous, this game seems intended to be played by the new "amateur" gamer's of this world. Yeah I know mmorpgs are for the community these days but listen, if the community is full of idiots and bullies (since I dont want to swear in my review) then why bother?

If you are a real gamer, you might enjoy it for 20 to 30 levels, but after that, go seek an actual challenge. The questing is pretty much the same as WoW, the rifts are ok, havnt been done in an mmo but still, they need some work to have more variety.

Part of the issue could be the world events do not happen enough, if there was one always going on at all times it would be so much better.

I bought the game for a friend since they really wanted to play, I played a bit, to level 28 actually, but after 28 I just cant stand to connect to the game now.… Expand

Terrible game. Had one of the longest and largest beta's yet still managed to have massive nerfs from the very first month of release. No end game other than running the same 5 dungeon instances that you've run through the whole levelling process - just on a harder mode.
Everyone's gear looks identical - and poorly at that. The art design for gear is deplorable.
PVP is just assist trains running around.
The game is just 6 months old and the server populations continue to die off rapidly - http://www.riftstatus.net/shards/na/stats

Save your money.… Expand

For those who have played World of Warcraft for the majority of their MMO carry, Rift will feel like a breath of fresh air by the very nature of being different. Unfortunately, for veterans, such as myself, who have dedicated countless hours to every major MMO release since before the dawn of the WoW behemoth, there isn't anything new under the sun to see, here. Additionally, there are plenty of glaring balance issues, and server shards go down on an almost daily basis with very little prior info (usually a 10 minute prior announcement). The whole game feels defined by imbalance. Additionally, while the graphics are better in terms of polygon count compared to WoW, other games ranging from Everquest 2 to Age of Conan have much better engines and don't have an almost constant problem of armor clipping on characters. Likewise, the character animations look lethargic and stilted and loose their appeal quickly. While I will give Rift credit for having a better more recent MMO launch, it is sadly not the savior of the MMO genre that I am looking for, nor is it even compelling enough to permanently keep me from playing what still remains the best of the genre: World of Warcraft.… Expand

The good:
Some of the dungeon mechanics are refreshing. The environment and UI both are pleasing to the eye. The music in some of the zones is excellent. The in game community is both helpful and friendly.

The Bad:
The class system is still under development. It should have been handled in alpha. Itemization needs some work. Crafting system still needs some work as the numbers on the green gear are bellow quest rewards and random green item drops. Mats for some of the crafting tiers are sparse and are in zones higher than what your questing in. End game is the standard grind dungeons and BG's for faction to get gear for next tier of faction grind. Gold spammers are a little more prevalent than I would like. Overall leveling was fun until about level 40. That is where it went stale for me as I did not see too many new quest types or mechanics. New MMO players will like it . Vets that expect something more might not. If you have a interest I recommend the 7 day free trial before you drink the cool aid… Expand

Trion Worlds tries way too hard to have its cake and eat it too. With a slogan like "You're not in Azeroth anymore", you'd expect Rift to be a game bent on trying to break the mould and perhaps change the MMO genre. You'd only be partly right. You're not in Azeroth, no, you're in an even worse designed and staler world with much less to do. Class system - One of the main selling points of the game is the versatility of the classes, but it doesn't really exist, except in certain cases. The underlying theme in class customisation in Rift is similar to other MMOs - if you customise your character's talents in the wrong way or attempt to create an interesting build, you will almost certainly fail throughout the content, which seems to be almost the same philosophy of WoW, which Trion Worlds attempts to insist that they are not. The Warrior: the usual plate-wearing class which ends up being the only viable tank in the game, but also has the best overall damage by far, making it imbalanced. The Cleric: a hybrid class that can sort of tank, is great at healing, and only does okay damage, despite the majority of their talent trees being damage-focused. Also, if one wishes to heal as a Cleric, there are very few options available as any deviation from pre-determined builds will result in many party deaths. The Mage: The typical spell caster with a tree for healing allies via damage done and some great support talents, as well as very good damage, but still worse than the Warrior.

The Rogue: Easily the worst class of all to play. Despite traditionally being a pure damage class, their damage is easily beaten by every other class, except for the Cleric with which they are equal. They have a tanking tree, but you can only tank one target with it and have very little survivability. They also have a support tree, but it is easily replaced by the Mage's support tree, which provides far more buffs, debuffs, and can cure allies, unlike the Rogue's. Magi also have the option to switch to their healing tree for more healing intensive fights, or to a damage tree and easily outperform a better-equipped Rogue. It is a truly useless class.

Rifts - The namesake of the game, they are events that spawn enemies and provide reputation and experience. These are fun at first, but quickly become tedious and repetitive. There are also Invasions and Footholds, which are essentially rifts that don't despawn after a given time and usually take hold of a quest hub and/or certain reputation vendors, at which point all friendly NPCs disappear until the Invaders an/or Foothold are defeated. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but all too often 10 or more Invasion forces (individually they are solo'able) will occupy one particular point, making it impossible to clear out by yourself and therefor make it impossible to turn in and pick up new quests without begging in various chat channels for help. There are end-game rifts, however, the required tools used to summon them drop from dungeons which provide far better rewards, so it seems pointless to do them when the same time could be put towards running those dungeons again, or simply solo'ing normal rifts if you desire the reputation rewards. All in all, rifts are not really a fun and exciting community experience, but more of a repetitive nuisance.

Dungeons: The dungeon experience in Rift is almost exactly the same as in WoW. The only difference is that at end-game, Expert dungeons (same as Heroics in WoW) require one of the DPS to fill a support buffer/minor healer role instead of the typical 1 tank / 1 heal / 3 DPS, but that is honestly where the changes end. Just as in WoW, you'll experience the same dungeons but at a harder difficulty with a couple of extra bosses and slightly different mechanics than the lower level version. You'll also get better loot than the lower level versions, and you'll earn tokens from killing bosses which you can turn in for even better gear or certain crafting ingredients. Sounds a lot like Azeroth to me. Crafting: The crafting is very easy in Rift but the trade-off is that the high end crafted items are worse than the random mob drops in Experts. The only reason to take on a profession would be to 1) make bigger bags, and 2) gather materials to sell on the auction house, which other people won't buy because the random drops are better than anything they can craft.

Graphics: The graphics and overall look of the game is quite lackluster, and brings nothing special to the table. It's a very bleak and dead world with very few colours and little artistic work. The comparisons to WoW are usually seen as unfair and irrelevant among the Rift community, but they are completely valid. Trion made it clear that they wanted to be compared to WoW, and specifically on how different and better Rift is. However, they've merely produced an equally priced knockoff with nothing special or innovative.… Expand

Despite the seemingly innovative rift system for dynamic content, I found that Rift was one of the least imaginative, most formulaic MMO I have experienced in some time. It looks gorgeous on a high-end PC, but the game has little substance. The setting isn't very immersive or memorable, and there is almost no attempt to provide any mission content beyond the bog standard "hunt X of Y" stuff. The game is linear to the extreme; there's not much opportunity to cut your own path through the world. The dynamic rift events turn out to be context-free grinding...chaotic and not all that fun. The character customization is one of the more impressive features, but it is not as robust as it first appears since here are only certain soul combinations that are practical...a small minority of the technically possible combinations.… Expand

Rift has a decent lore, graphics and a unique soul system that allows customization beyond other mmo games. Unfortunately that is about all it has above the rest because the rest is just good old fashion grinding and same old boring dungeon runs. Yes you will have to grind reputation, many different currencies and the rift feature is also just another form of grinding and are just really quick public quests that aren't anything special. You should be pulled into a rift, that would be much cooler :P Even warhammer had public areas similar to the rifts so its nothing that hasn't been done.

If you are a pvp junkie (like myself) then Rift will let you down completely. The potential for great pvp play is in Rift but with the amount of stunning, silences and confusion along with spammable "polymorphing" and severely overclocked souls pvp play becomes frustrating and boring very quickly. PVP also has no affect on the game world as its just arena scrapping in small, chaotic and simple warfront maps. Once again, even Warhammer has this beat as well.

Even though the game is all around plain and identical to the rest, the player base is very friendly and can be a lot of fun to play along with, so if your just a casual gamer this game is for you, but if your more hardcore and don't leave your basement often, I wouldn't recommend investing your time in it. Even at 50, raiding is just the same old stuff, nothing new at all. You will just once again have characters on a game that will eventually be behind within a year or two.

We need something original! Rift gets a 3 for its effort at graphics, soul system and decent enough lore.… Expand

Did you play WoW? Did you enjoy WoW? Would you like to play WoW again, with slightly improved graphics and completely improved and innovated, well, nothing else? If you answered yes to these three questions, then perhaps Rift is for you. The game features loads typical MMO fare, replete with endless grinding, enemies completely devoif of personality, shoddy combat animations, weightless weapon strikes, repetitive click fests while fighting and a never-ending need to craft items for the sake of crafting items. As for the game's namesake, the Rifts are an interesting mechanic. Unfortunately, you really just end up staring at the same invasion time and again, day after day and even hour after hour. Watching the same mobs and same boss invade 10 minutes after you just defeated that invasion really kills the fun. If you can find any in this endless grindfest to begin with. A must play for hardcore MMO lovers; a must avoid for everyone looking for a game with any sort of personality.… Expand

Don't bother with this one. It's so derivative that it fails to create it's own uniqueness. It may have fun technical features, but it lacks soul. Borrowing heavily from World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, it fails to be better than either and instead settles as a solid "time filler" while you wait for better games to come out. The animations are poor, the music is generic, and the performance is all over the place. The community is also the absolute worst I've seen in a MMO, and I've played many. When I made a new character on the Seastone, I said "Hi, I'm new to the game" on local chat and everyone told me to "GTFO." So after giving this game 3 weeks of my time, I decided I'd rather not play with a bunch of immature kids who bought time cards at Walmart because they're not old enough to use credit cards, and find something better to do with my time.… Collapse

from 10 to 0 I'll tell you why... Ok So you are tired of your current MMO and want to try something new , yet very familiar...then you remember rift that game everyone was talking about a few months ago and you decide it to try it now, after all these months, patches and updates it must be really good now right? doh think twice! keep reading... Ok so you start leveling your new character and quickly fall in love with the game: wow the character creation is outstanding, the graphics are really awesome you discovered the endless possibilities of the soul system, multi class at it's best yeah! and the rifts-invasions are just epic! oh glorious day you finally found a new home you are so happy and considering to pay 6 months in advance also that epic fiery mount looks yuummy so you should invite some friends to join the fun! right? no wait and read to the end! So you finally reach level 50 and you fell almost complete, so you decide to try some endgame...wait, most servers are not even bothering, and you realize even expert dungeons are an endless grind, if you pug using the LFG tool you also get a raiding token to get cool raid tiers! wow, uh oh... wait a second I get a token per run and I need over 500 tokens?! you gotta be kidding me! okay I'm going to try a faction rep mount! they look so cool, wait a second, months of pointless grind? ok ok pvp was so cool in the lower tiers so it's time I join the battle once again, you have enough favor to buy the first epic set, here you go. And yes there you go... to hell, just like rift. Believe me Rift's lvl 50 pvp is just awful, it should actually get the award for worst pvp system ever in a mmo, yes you are going to grind your hiney for at least two months playing non stop to get nearly competent and until then you are going to be daddy's toy and yeah you are going to suffer , you'll see, DEVS thought it was a good idea to mix rank 0-1 new 50s with all mighty god mode ranks 8 you will be in a train my friend, in a train of pain, get ready to jump in to the most frustrant experience a game can give you around. It is unbalanced, unfair and very awful, but I have seen that in other moo you say, ok not like this I can tell you, the difference between a rank 1-5 and a rank 8 is so huge a single r8 (no matter what class) can literally wipe a group of 5-10 low 1-3 ranks and I am serious about it, so if you want to play RIFT go ahead but stay away from 50 pvp, at least until they fix the unbalance, I left because I was so sick of losing all day for months, yes Trion messed it up with an otherwise awesome game.… Expand

Under shiny graphics hides a polished turd. Quests are typical bring/kill x numbers of [insert here a random mob/item name] from start to level cap 50. PvP is an unbalanced joke, and an insult to the players Trion didn't do anything when people exploited new Conquest war front during its launch period. I found a new synonym to word boring; Rift.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It's a good few months now since the release of Rift and the flaws within it and the ineptitude, incompetence and sheer lack of experience by Trion in the MMO scene is so shockingly evident at this stage.

The PvP in the game and the state of it, is absolutely dire and has been since the start, with no effort from Trion to even show a modicum of change to set things right.

The instanced PvP (warfronts as they're called, similar to Wow's Battlegrounds) although fun for a while, get very boring and repetitive - I should know, my main character is Rank 6 prestige in pvp.

That boredom and repetitive nature of the warfronts (coupled with Trion inexplicably and inexcusably allowing premade groups to farm those that have joined the warfronts as solo puggers) makes your goal toward the higher ranks in pvp an absolute horrible grind - and after all that, there's nothing to aim for other than going back to those same warfronts to compete against those same premades again and again - zero fun.

In the latest patch (June 2011) 1.3 - Trion attempted to address the premades wrecking everyone else's fun in the warfronts by splitting the queue system, so premades had to play premades and the solo pug players could just enjoy the fun of the warfront and the balanced challenge that they bring without premades destroying it for everyone.
Lo and behold though, not a week passed with that patch being implmented when Trion reverted on their change to the queue system and we're all back to square one.
When the 1.3 patch first hit, the queue to get into a warfront if you were solo was instant, even in the early hours of the morning, instant queue, decent enough fun.
When Trion reverted the change in the subsequent hotfix 5 - the queues have gone from instant to between 10 minutes to an hour or more, worse even outside of primetime hours.
This was mainly due to players just giving up at this stage, having had enough of the incompetance shown by Trion and coupled with a large majority of players boycotting the warfronts or just quitting the game completely - it really is that bad and it really is that big of a deal. That Trion have failed miserably to even forsee this, shows how bad and inexperinced they are to the MMO scene and the contempt with which they view the majority of their own paying customers.

World pvp is almost non existent and that which does exist is baseless and tiresome. There's no goal to any open world pvp, no point and no fun. Trions response to this was to introduce some daily pve based quests, kill this mob, collect this stuff, lalala, oh and as your reward ? Here, have some free pvp favor and prestige points (WHAT THE HELL!!!).
Oh, there was one daily quest which required you to kill members of the opposite faction - though the point of same on a pve server seems to be lost on Trion as that daily and none of the others auto flagged a person for pvp - seriously, face, palm, wall, head, bang, repeat...

From a PvE perspective, there's a bunch of 5 man dungeons which you will need to farm constantly (yawn...) to get plaques/tokens for Tier gear, most just skip the T1 dungeons and go straight for the T2's due to Trion making them so much easier in a previous patch - bad mistake. The Dungeons were fine as they were, they were hard, they were a challenge - now they're just another boring grind, something you have to do to get the gear to allow you progress your character for raiding purposes.

As for the Raids, they're a challenge at the start but generally, they're also fairly boring and lacklustre.

There is no real end game in Rift, there really isn't, no matter how many Trion shills will post otherwise on forums et all, there is no end game. At this moment in time in Rift, there is no point and nothing to aim for after you've hit 50, ran the required dungeons to gear up and got yourself into a decent raiding guild. Once you've done the raids a few times you're left wondering what the hell do you do now ? So you dabble in pvp maybe ? Oh no, no no no, just don't go there. I mean sure, you can throw a guild premade together maybe and steamroll all over a bunch of solo players - but honestly, how fun is that after a few times ? There's no competition, no fun, no challenge.

Rift had an awful lot of potential but alas, as always it seems the case these days, the developers themselves kill the game off before it's even had a chance to settle down to pull in the required amount of serious followers.

Don't bother with this game, don't waste your time. It's just another poor clone of Wow, badly implemented, badly supported and full of utter fail.… Expand

This game is nothing more than a WOW clone with some improvements and fine touches here and there, few bugs and a very prompt developer studio when it comes to patches and adding content so far. the graphics are very nice although while running the game using the recommended hardware, FPS starts to drop at medium settings. The Soul engine is a nice addition to RPG, but it does not work very well and it confuses players ranging from newbies to mmo veterans. The crafting is an absolute joke, there is nothing new here, the same professions you can find in any other fantasy mmo and leveling them up is a child's play. The quests add nothing new to the genre, same kill X, gather Y time intensive tasks to keep you more in game. The gear and items are basically the same as in most mmos, I encountered dozens of profession items that have the same icons and names and probably even prices wow has. I have to admit the Rifts are probably the best addition especially because it really makes players group together via the auto grouping feature so at least they are trying to not make it another solo rpg. All in all it is not worth it, either if you want an alternative to wow (and I'm comparing it to wow because Trion marketed this game as a better, more polished alternative to the giant). So in conclusion this looked to me as a game especially made so that Trion can grab a big share of the mmo market and grow some capital. Honestly, you get more atmosphere and involvement from LOTRO (which is free) that this game. On the other hand, I am more curious on their upcoming game Defiance, I hope it will sur class this yet another second hand fantasy mmo.… Expand

It started off as a neat MMO trying to go against the standard archetypes, however, it's essentially devolved into your typically generic classes.

It tries too hard to not be WoW, but is basically a self-hating, shoddy WoW clone that has Trion Worlds funneling a huge amount of their resources into their other two games Defiance and End of Worlds.

You can easily tap out previous content and basically end up with very little to do and just waiting for updates. The PvP is sub-standard since the majority of players focus PvE.

The game started out strong, was fun learning, but once you're established in end game you really notice the blaring balance problems. Honestly would not advise getting very into it since there isn't really anywhere to go once you've finished raid progression and many guilds have pretty horrible retention so you just get stuck in progression loops.

Fun game, just horrible class balancing and limited, redundant content.… Expand

I have had bad experiences with their customer support if you go buy their lil thing to see if your computer is playable with the game I passed with flying colors only all my defiant toons constantly crashed... turn around crash, move crash... porticulum and crash I know people with crappy laptops that didn't have the problems I had and all they wanted to do was point the finger at me. If there was any sort of compatibility with windows processes or my vid card shouldn't they want to fix it? If you look at their forums you can also see many people complain that on the deepwood server they had the same problems and all had great systems. I didn't raid so i didn't need to use vent but by what they kept telling me is the only thing that should be running is rift itself... what a joke. What games require you to not be able to use anything but their specific game while yer playing that is a bit ridiculous and I've played way more bum heavy games than rift as far as pc reqs go and NEVER had a problem with any of them but Rift. They refuse to give me my money back. Trion in my opinion is a bad company with bad customer service… Expand