Mystic Worlds

Quiet – Not Gone

I’ve played less Rift in the past week.  Some of my family came in town weekend before last through this past weekend.  It’s been fun catching up and enjoying the weather that has been a little less humid. A couple of days after the completion of the world event, I hopped back into my usual nightly Rift schedule.

First PUG – Omen of things to come?

The first evening that I logged into the game DeSarazan, a guild member, asked me if I wanted to join a PUG for the dungeon under Lantern Hook.  I was a bit skeptical having given up healing instances for random players half way through my years in WOW.  I’d only done LH once before and didn’t get much of a chance to see it because we raced through hit so quickly.  I decided to give it a try and hope for the best.

Wow, I might have to change my tune about not healing PUGs.  This group was on it!  We ran through the dungeon twice in an hour – might have been less.  We had just one wipe.  It happened on the 2nd run where the tank was too enthusiastic about the success of our first run and attempted to pull too many groups.  We re-grouped with no issues, complaints, acquisitions, etc.    If fact, the tank said that he was at fault for pulling too much so he’d be more careful.  After that it was 1-2-3-over.

Ding 46

The next evening I dinged level 46 from a combination of finishing out some quests with DeSarazan in IPP and doing a guild run of King’s Breach.  I’m not one for remembering all the intricacies of instance encounters until afterwards.  Once people die then I remember, “Oh yeah, we needed to do… on this boss.”  It’s one of the reasons I don''t tank, a role that is usually the person leading the group through the content.  It was a bit of an adventure being the only person who’d done KB before.  We had deaths here and there and a wipe or two but what’s a little vitality loss among friends.  Along the way three of us leveled and got nice loot.

Rift Still My MMO of Choice

That was the last evening that I played.  Work, family and the holiday have kept me busy.  I’m also dabbling in a new hobby that I’m hoping I can turn into a side business some day, and clip some of the shackles keeping me bound to Corporate America.  It’s likely that my MMO gaming will slow down a bit during the next few weeks but when I sit down to play, Rift is still my MMO of choice and the only one I’m subscribed to for the foreseeable future.

P.S.

I've slowed down on taking screenshots because I can't figure out why they're so dark.  Adjusting the gamma in the game and/or my PC display settings makes no improvement.  Fixing it afterward on every picture became too time consuming. More importantly, I felt they did a disservice to the game's graphics which are so beautiful.  If anyone has any ideas of how I can fix this problem I'd appreciate it!!!

You can’t un-ring the bell

For me, at least, it was never about the loot.  It was about being there, participating with my guild, taking pictures and having tales to spin about that time when…  The River of Souls event has come and gone and Trion can’t un-ring the bell of the Phase 2 event that left many customers queued out of participating.

Scott Hartsman posted a message on the official forums that basically apologized to customers who had issues and outlined what they were doing to make amends.  Not a loot whore, it can’t replace being there but I don’t know what else they could do other than running it again.  I hope they take this mishap into account when designing events in the future.  

Even players who haven’t been as active will come for one-time only events.  You should expect mass participation from subscribers.  Oh well, the good news is that we’re playing on highly populated servers where we don’t have problems finding others to do content.  Bad news is that it’s not the place to be if everyone wants/needs to be online at a specific time.  Hopefully, Trion will refrain from intentionally orchestrating such a need in the future.

When I get over my hissy fit of paying for 3 accounts, where we each play on different servers yet none of us were able to participate, I’ll accept Trion’s peace-offering and move on.  I still look forward to what comes next and expect Trion to do it much better.

Fucking Furious about the handling of the Rift Phase 2 World Event

I mean seriously fucking furious that the delay has been combined with a free trial weekend, begins at a SINGLE PRESET TIME on a server and as a paying customer, I'm sitting in a 2 hour fucking queue (edit: the queue rose to an estimated 8 hours)!  Are you serious Trion?  RLY!?!

I don't give a damn about being compenstated with some welfare loot hand-out.  The whole idea was to see and participate in the content.  Can you imagine how annoyed people are who've been participating in the event since the beginning but we're now sidelined for the pinnacle event?  Talk about foreplay but NO SEX, NO CLIMAX!

Guild members who play regularly - almost every night and have done all the daily quests faithfully are sitting helpless in a queue, listening to the lucky few who got on talk about it in vent.  Wow just wow. I am absolutely livid and disgusted. You've got to be shitting me that this is how this has played out.

 

Rift has Soul and More

I’m still enjoying Rift albeit because of business trips and workload, I haven’t played as much I’d like over the past couple of weeks.  Guild instance runs, rift excursions and event participation, coupled with the large breath of content in each zone make it convenient and enjoyable for me to level.  At level 44.5, the end game is near.

I’ve yet to encounter a zone I didn’t like.  I’ve yet to quest in a zone where I needed more than ¾ of the content available.  In some zones I needed much less.  I still haven't stepped foot in a warfront, so there's that to look forward to when I have time.  

I log into the game with an expectation that I will be extremely entertained, highly engaged by the zone aesthetics, motivated by the quest content and moved to want to know more about the story unfolding around me. That’s what the previous zones have instilled in me as an expectation and that is precisely what Trion is delivering.

Where is the perfect MMO you speak of?

Is Rift a perfect game? No.  Is every class balanced versus another? No.  Is the death event taking place as great as it could be? No.  But I haven’t played a perfect game, seen a perfect movie, been invited to a perfect dinner party or had perfection in other form of entertainment the first time around.  Even so, Rift is pretty freakin close.   

The more that I’d like to have is player housing or guild halls, cooking as a crafting profession, guild banks and account-shared bank slots.  For gawd’s sake, I’m also in desperate need of appearance slots. One of my favorite gear sets of all time has come and gone.  It would have been great to keep the look while upgrading.  *Tears* 

I’d also like to have fishing added but if they do, there’s a distinct likelihood that I’ll never get anything else accomplished.  The scenery surrounding several of the lakes is so breathtaking.  I’d probably find myself mesmerized and lulled into a stupor if allowed to fish from them.

The end is a new beginning

When my leveling days are behind me, I still have a lot of content left to do.  I will go back to the zones I left prematurely, participate in warfronts, gear up to raid, raid, continue exploring, find and complete the puzzles, complete collections, etc.  It will still be as it is now – so much to do in so little time for the working class.  *Smile*

I’m not an achievement chaser but knowing that I’ll get them when going back to lower level content is good.  Seeing all that I missed is the motivation.  Knowing that I’ll get achievement dings instead of XP is little bit of sugar.  Diabetics notwithstanding, who doesn’t want a little sugar?

I usually skip a majority of quests in a game.  I’m all about killing mobs, interacting with objects and finding things.  Wizard101 was the first game to make me change my ways.  Warhammer was a close second.  In World of Warcraft, I often chose to grind, as do many others.  Rather than chasing down quests, searching for AOE grinding specs was popular as far back as vanilla WOW.  I’ve yet to do that in Rift to level. I do the quests while they’re level appropriate and then I move on.

Rift has Soul

Soul – a quality that arouses emotional sentiment, strong positive feeling or reaction

I’m too excited by the prospect of seeing the next zone to stay once the quests mobs are white to me. I can’t wait to see and do what’s over the next hill, mountain and horizon.  I have not been this enthused by the virtual world around me since Asheron’s Call 2.  I’m sorry if others don’t find the game to their liking.  For me however, the art direction, music, ambient sounds, Steampunk elements not sprinkled but consistently interwoven throughout the game, busy NPC communities, active surrounding mobs, invasions and rifts make this world feel alive! And I'm playing a mutherfuckingkickassclass where I can change roles to suit the situation.  When we enter an instance we can ask who WANTS to heal, tank or DPS versus  who MUST.  

The Telara zones feel like a real place.  Each zone is better, more polished than the previous one. Some games take whole expansions to improve, Trion was applying knowledge gained as they created the zones and they continue to improve the game at an unprecedented rate.  Granted, NPC quest-givers are still standing around with enemy mobs in reach yet they do nothing until I come along but NO MMO has cracked that nut yet.  I leave it to suspended disbelief and move on.

The biggest disappointment of my second world tour will be that while I can go see the Guardian zones, I can’t experience them on my character.  But that’s on me and is because I have no intention of ever being anything other than Defiant.  Seeing but not touching will have to suffice.  *Sniff*

If by having soul people are looking for the breadth of lore and infamous characters like they have in WOW or LOTRO, they’re kidding themselves.  Those games have lore from the preexisting IPs, not the games.   For those games, the egg was certainly there long before the chicken.  Even so, as much as I love Lord of the Rings and have read the books multiple times, the strong IP couldn’t get me to stomach the game.  Lore isn’t enough.  

No lack of players here

I’m definitely still enthralled and in for the long run with Rift.  It’s nice to be excited and satisfied by the MMO I’m playing.  It’s even better be doing it with players equally as happy and entertained.  Our server at least, still has small queues on certain days during prime time and I’ve yet to encounter a dead zone.  And RP is alive and well in Merdian to say the least.  I don’t participate but it’s another layer of immersion that adds authenticity to the world.  It’s also rather funny to read while you’re doing small tasks in the city.  Rift is still scratching my itch and I’m not going anywhere any time soon.

P.S. Excuse typos or grammatical errors.  I wanted to give a quick update - nothing I post is quick and I have little time for editing.  Cheers!