RIFT-Putting the MM back in MMO

Hello all!

So, I was thinking today about what it is about RIFT that I found compelling.  I’ve tried several MMO’s out there over the years, and though I saw many features I enjoyed, nothing has been able to pull me away from WoW until now.  So why did I stay with WoW for so long(and truthfully, I’m sure I’ll return here and there), and why did RIFT finally convince me to cancel my subscription to WoW?

I’ve thought about if a few times over the years as I’ve gone through the highs and lows of WoW.  I’ve contemplated leaving before, and always got drawn back in.  One thing that kept me going was the fact that I am a raging altoholic, so if I got tired of one aspect of the game, I would switch over to another.  What really kept me there, though, was the guild I was in (Knights of Legend, Steamwheedle Cartel, Alliance-US–I love you guys!!).  I was a founding member of the guild and a Senior Officer.  I have made some good friends there, some who have become RL friends.  It was this sense of community that really held me in over the years.

S0 what could pull me away from this great group of people?

First off, the game itself.  I was excited to explore a world where I didn’t already know where everything was.  But other MMOs had that.

Second, the soul system-I was intrigued by the flexibility of trying new and varied roles.  But other MMO’s have different talent systems (like EVE in particular).

Thirdly, I think I stumbled across the answer:  Community

This may seem like a strange way to look at it, since if community was that kept me in WoW, then why was I looking for community?

What I realized I was really missing in WoW was community as a whole.  Even though I had a great group of friends, that was pretty much it in WoW.  Gone were the days of grouping up with other people and working together for a single goal.  As a player with limited time on my hands, when the dungeon finder was released in WoW, I was ecstatic; I was finally going to be able to see more content that I previously wasn’t able to do much of since I didn’t have time to spam trade chat and find a group.  But, though I enjoyed the thought behind the dungeon finder, runs turned into silent rush-kill-leave scenarios.

Enter RIFT.

As I was running through Freemarch working on quests at, oh, level 10 or so, I see a rift in the sky ahead of me.  I think, “I’ve got a pretty good handle on my character now, I’m going to give it a go and see what happens”.   As I run up I see another character working on closing this rift.  Being the kind soul that I am, I run in and help out, making sure to take out the mobs that he has already tagged first; I don’t want to ninja his rift or anything, I just wanted to see how the whole rift thing worked.  Then I looked to the top of my screen, and my world changed.

At the top, was a button: “join public group”

So I click on it, and we are now in a party.  As we go about killing the mobs to seal the rift, two more people join up.  We seal the rift, get out loot, every says “GJ”, “gratz”, and the like.  We then, after a bit of discussion, decide to stay together and complete a few quests together.  We chat a bit, and later go our separate ways, all on each others friends lists.

Over the next few days, similar scenarios play out, sometimes with rifts, sometimes with invasions.

We don’t always stay together after the rift is complete.  Yes, there are players out there who are dickheads.  I have had similar experiences in WoW’s dungeon finder.  But the fact that RIFT makes joining a party for an event so easy and unobtrusive is one of the key things that sets it apart for me.  Even though I am a member of a great guild here in RIFT(Alea Iacta Est-Shadefallen Defiant), and have grouped up with guildies for events and dungeons, this simple feature of RIFT makes it so easy to build a community of players on your server.

This, to me, is what an MMO is all about.  If I were playing one of these games as a single player RPG, I would soon tire of it, since honestly it is quite repetitive.  And even though I find the story intriguing, the gameplay couldn’t hold me for long without the people to play with making it all come alive.  Getting to know the people on your server outside of your circle of friends is a great part of any MMO.  After all, it is a Massive Multiplayer Online experience.  So if you haven’t taken the time to do things outside of your circle of friends, go ahead and hit the “join public group” button.  I’m not promising you will never get burned, but chances are good that you’ll be glad you tried.

–Gerj