Although my blog has been awfully quiet of late, my gaming certainly hasn’t stopped. I reached 80 in GW2 for a start. Why didn’t I jump up and down and post about it? To be honest, reaching max level in GW2 didn’t feel like much of an achievement.
I was really looking forward to GW2, I spent many many hours in GW, striving to reach a whole ton of goals and earn myself some Hall of Monuments points. GW was hard, it was strategic, getting anywhere in that game felt like an achievement. In contrast I found it really hard to feel any sense of roleplay in GW2. Despite the story quests I didn’t feel emotionally immersed in the world. I actually missed the more standard quests and some quiet time doing things like fishing (I love in-game fishing for some reason). I was (and presumably still am) in a great and active guild, but even having friends couldn’t make it feel more like home unfortunately. After the initial excitement wore off, bouncing from heart to heart and jumping into events got old quickly. I made it to 80, but that was simply from pushing myself to get there, not from wanting to get there. That’s not to say I won’t continue to play occasionally but it will never be my main MMO.
So where to from there? I had no compulsion to play Wow whatsoever, so I decided to sub to Rift for a month instead. The upcoming (awesome!) housing in Rift was enough for me to want to jump in again and see if I felt any different this time around. To my surprise I loved it! I took my level 35 Rogue from ages ago and levelled her to 50. Once I got to 50 I hunted around for a guild, found a really nice, helpful guild and am currently having a ball running some instances with them and listening to chat (learning a ton while I do so). Unfortunately most of the members are in the US, but for weekend events it should work well and even in my evening there always seems to be some people on-line. My main aim before next week and the release of Storm Legion is to get all my crafting skills to 300 so I can hit the ground running on at least one character.
What I’m liking about Rift ….
Rift feels a bit like returning home. It’s that comfortable feeling. Kind of reminds me of vanilla Wow a bit, the Wow that no longer exists (‘kind of’ mind you, there is a lot of cool stuff packed into Rift). There are quests and crafting and fishing and everything you expect. I die, fairly regularly, and that’s a good thing :). I care about my character. There’s so much to do and I want to see it all!
I love that my Rogue is able to change souls at the drop of a hat. When I’m soloing I tend to go sneaky backstabbing, but in a Sanctum adventure or dungeon I switch to my mighty bow build and stay a bit safer at a distance. It’s done in a couple of seconds. And that’s just 2 souls, each character can have several.
Yes, combat is all hotkey based, and there’s no dodging like GW2, but personally I play MMO’s to relax. I don’t necessarily want to be jumping around like a blue ass fly all the time.
In Rift you have it all, collectibles, fishing, crafting, rifts, questing, dailies, instant adventures, rep, dungeons, raids, gear to collect, mounts to collect, pets to collect, everything you could expect. I enjoyed EQ2 because it had everything as well, but I like the atmosphere in Telara and Trion really are superb at regularly adding new content. EQ2 has terrific housing and by the looks Rift housing (Dimensions) will be even better. MMO Gamer Chick has a great blog on dimensions.
Not everything about Rift is great of course, they still have annoying quests hubs that you return to 3 or so times to hand in quests and get new ones. Apparently Trion are working on changing that though, and by the high levels I was noticing a lot of quests being picked up from dropped items, or NPC’s with quests in the middle of nowhere so that was a relief.
Anyway, that’s this month! I’ve only subbed for a month at a time, don’t want to jinx my current enjoyment :P. I have a new Cleric that needs to get to 50 too!
There’s a storm coming ….
The Butterfly Gamer 
Glad to see another post of yours. 🙂
It is interesting though how our experiences in Guild Wars 2 seem to be vastly different. I am still loving it and still feel more attached to the game world than previous games. I guess it might be because of the personal storyline and having a more clear sense from day 1 of why my character is going through this hero’s journey. That and how the world doesn’t feel just very rigidly structured I guess. And definitely because my friends are playing too and enjoying the game.
Despite all that I have been aching for other gaming experiences too, in true butterfly gamer way. So far I’ve been satiating that with single player games but I am also craving for something more creative like decoration…. I am pondering about doing it with EQ2 as a free player. Just not sure how feasible that is. That and after Guild Wars 2, EQ2 graphics just feel so primitive.
Then there is the temptation of the upcoming housing system in Rifts… What is putting me off about it is having to buy the expansion and pay a subscription. The latter more because I am not sure I will enjoy the rest of the game (tried it during beta and release) and it just feels silly to pay one just to play 1/3 of the game. @_@
Anyway, glad to see that you are still blogging and still having fun with games. 🙂
Hey Rakuno. Work tired my brain out too much to blog for a while, but recovering now :P.
Yes, Rift is one of the ever decreasing number of games with a sub these days. But when you consider the number of hours played (as long as it’s your main MMO at the time), it’s extremely cheap per hour. Rift has added so much to the game since release, I was amazed. It’s really coming of age now. I initially jumped back in by starting a new character for free with their ‘lite’ deal. It’s a way to see up to 20 and not have to pay anything. Even without the super exciting upcoming housing I’d stay subbed for the moment. As I said in my post, it’s kind of like coming home.
I’m glad you’re still enjoying GW2 :), I wish I was because I have friends playing it (and husband :P), but it just didn’t grab me long term I’m afraid.
*nods* Good to know that work isn’t as hectic now. 🙂
That is a good point. But that is exactly the point that worries me. I am afraid I won’t enjoy the number of hours played. The decoration part I would, certainly. But I am not sure about the hours it would take me to make anything interesting with the decoration. Thanks for reminding me about the “lite” deal though. I think I might give it a try, make a new character and see how I feel about the game. It might not be as bad as I am imagining and my fatigue with more traditional MMORPGs might not be as bad nowadays since I have Guild Wars 2 to play.
Good new, the full game is free from now until the 11th I think, in preparation for the expansion. There are lots of people back playing from what I can gather in chat, and most people are saying how much it’s changed since release, for the better :).
Dive in for a few days for free, I’ll be interested to see what you think 🙂
Well, seems like I got 3 days free from reactivating my account. I created a new character since my old one was 1) In a server I didn’t care about 2) a faction I didn’t care about and 3) was very low level too. All those because I was going to play with friends back at release and do to the server of our choice being full we made characters in another server.
Anyway, I never got too far in the game to begin with so I haven’t noticed too much of a difference so far. Only one I noticed were that we begin with 3 souls now, one of our choice and 2 other already chosen for us. Fishing and Survival professions are new. Fishing being surprisingly addicting… Besides that I didn’t test any of the new stuff that I can participate in at these levels, like Instant Adventures and so on. Everything else feels the same so far. I noticed the beta for the expansion was open for everyone and tried to get it to test the housing. But I guess I am too late for it now. Oh, well. I will play for a few more days and then might wait for the expansion to release and test the housing as Rift Lite player.
Fishing is awesome, got all my skills including fishing to 300 yesterday. It is still Rift when it’s all said and done, just with improvements and more variety of things to do.
There’s an interesting article up on MMORPG today, http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6856/The-Problem-No-Ones-Talking-About.html. Talking about systems rather than or including content, to retain players for longer. Maybe this is why I’m a butterfly gamer! Maybe EQNext will be our shining light.
Yeah. And it isn’t a bad game per se. Just not the kind of game I am looking for anymore. Oh, well, if the housing turns out to be good I might consider it, I guess.
Interesting article. I agree that a more system-driven, as the article puts it, would make MMORPGs far more interesting. It is what kept me playing EQ2 far longer than what I would naturally have played, after all. So I guess it does help to keep around butterfly games if I am any indication of it.
And personally, though I am not looking forward to EQ Next. Partly because I am pretty happy with Guild Wars 2 right now. Only reason I am not happier is the lack of housing and not knowing when they will implement it or what form it will have. The other part is that my trust on SOE is on shaky grounds for a lot of reasons. The latest being that ProSieben fiasco.