Sometimes I wonder why I am going through all of the headaches I am having with Rift. I mean really, why should I bother? It is only a game after all. With all of the time I have invested in WoW, why should I put up with the hassle of a new game?
As far is WoW is concerned I have multiple toons at max level. I have a healthy bank account and jump right back into the auction house game. I feel that my skill level is adequate enough to join any respectable raiding guild, so why am I screwing around in Rift? What is the point? In the end it is all basically the same thing right? Both games are comprised of questing, instances, raiding, pvp, guilds and so on. Essentially they are the same experience, right?
Then I logged in. Now before you get your hackles up I did not log into my WoW account. My WoW accounts are still well into cancel status. No, I logged into a family members account to help them with the transition from Burning Crusades to Wrath of the Lich King. But I digress.
I logged in and all of the old frustrations started creeping back in. It took less than 2 or 3 minutes for me to start disliking the experience of WoW all over again. Not only that, but everything looked strange. I have grown so accustomed to the graphics and color pallet of Rift that WoW’s cartoonish world looked odd.
As I played (?) for those few moments I had no real desire to log into my trusted old feathered companion. Even though that Boomkin will probably always be my favorite MMO character, presently there is nothing the WoW universe that I feel like I need to experience with him. In some way I feel that my gaming needs have outgrown anything he and his world have to offer.
I guess as I write this I am answering my own questions. I bother with Rift because even if the game play is familiar, the Rift experience is very different than the WoW experience. It is that Rift experience that keeps me logging in. While I do have a significant investment in WoW, the experience there has become bland enough (for me at least) to have my interest piqued by other things.
Let me be completely honest here. Rift just happens to have come along at the right time. I have a feeling that Trion’s sense of timing was perfect for the games release. I am willing to bet that there are plenty of folks out there who are just like me. We are playing Rift primarily because it is not WoW. I would drop MMORPG’s in an instant if there was a modern FPS that mimicked Delta Force IIs game play.
DFII is my favorite online game of all time. It was the perfect blend of FPS action, large maps and no vehicles. As far as I am concerned the best of the FPS genre died when combat vehicles were added to the mix. DFII afforded the player the opportunity to play up close and personal (think Counter Strike) as well as the ability to spread out. DFII is a far cry from the linear FPS games we have today.
I am not sure the Rift experience will keep me invested the way WoW did for 5+ years and that is okay. For now it fits the bill. I have challenged myself with new things in this game and even though I complain at times, I am having fun. In the end that’s what it is all about for me, fun. All of my long time friends are well aware that when I stop having fun, I make a move.
It’s interesting how different games feel to different people. I’m in an absolute WoW malaise since my guild cleared all the T11 content and then went inactive, so I’m one of those people who were perfectly timed for Rift’s release. Only problem was, I found that not only was the gameplay familiar, but the experience also offered absolutely nothing new – and I was bored within one weekend of the open beta. The idea of buying the game when it released never even entered my head after that point.
I’ve actually been playing Guild Wars lately, for the first time! Always meant to check it out but never really had an opportunity, and all the buzz around the upcoming sequel put it back on my radar. And, five years old or not, it feels a hundred times fresher than Rift did to a done-it-all WoWer like me.
I also went back and looked at wow, I agree I could not play on that game engine anymore, But as of tomorrow both Rift games accounts run out. Thinking this will be a great time to take a hiatus away from online games until swtor comes out.
So in the meantime, I will enjoy Blogs like gtfootf and general gaming forums.