Blizzard announced earlier this week that World of Warcraft has lost subscribers since the release of Cataclysm. The major changes to the game are either because of faults within WoW, or the new MMO on the block, Rift. With one of the smoothest and most professional launches to date, Rift is quickly becoming the game to play.
Trion refers to the game as a Dynamic Fantasy MMO. Dynamic isn't a new word to the MMO genre, but how Rift handles it is. Rift borrows from some previous titles. Invasions were tried in Tabula Rasa, and public quests were introduced in Warhammer Online. Various other parts of the game are influenced by past titles, like World of Warcraft and Everquest. Rift just takes everything, throws them into a bowl, and makes a delicious goulash. WoW is still the old dog on the block, but does that mean they can not learn some new tricks? Here are my top 5 elements of Rift that World of Warcraft could learn from.
5) Player base
This, by far, might be the most touchy subject on this list. Playing World of Warcraft since beta, I have seen the game's player base grow and change. With over 11 million people playing, you're bound to find some less than polite players. I feel that one of the major reasons in that drop of quality is the interaction of players in the cross server dungeon finder. Before, you knew who the bad players, loot ninjas and complete rude people were on a server. Now you could be paired up with anyone from a group of servers.
They say being anonymous brings out the worst in people online, and I have seen this often in WoW since the change. More recently, Blizzard has changed how the finder works and tries to pair you with people on your server more-so than before. This, oddly enough, comes out just two months after Rift's launch and that game's push to have communities based around each server.
On a PvP server, I have even come across far less uncouth people than I have in any game to date. As the player base grows, the amount of negative players might also, but with it being a one server setup right now, you will know who they are. Guilds and players will avoid playing with them and they will be either forced to move or reroll. Just because someone can not see your face, does not give you the right to be a complete ass for no reason.
4) Multiple Class Specs
World of Warcraft only has 3 talent trees, while RIFT has many different souls (Talent Trees). In WoW, you can dual-spec, allowing you to switch between 2 of those talent trees. Rift currently allows for 5 different spec choices, and gives far more 'per situation' flexibility.
Since the beta of WoW, I have played a Paladin and remember the days where you had one talent spec and that was it. The player base cried for more so that hybrid classes could tank and heal, or dps and heal, or dps and tank. Maybe you would want to have one setup for player vs player, and one for raiding.
Rift, with it's 5 spec soul system, allows for this far more easily than I believe WoW ever will. How many times have you been short a tank or healer for raid night, and would love that one druid, paladin, or shaman to not dps and heal instead? Blizzard, please, with all the changes from Cataclysm, just give us tri-specing.
3) Player Vs Player
PVP has always been a love/hate relationship in MMOs. Back in the day (in Ultima Online), player killers were feared and hated like the fantasy villains they were. World of Warcraft has reduced PVP to almost being sport-like event. Recently in Rift, I experienced what I missed for years in WoW. While a zone-wide invasion was going on, Defiants were purposefully camping an area to keep Guardians from completing an objective. Soon after, two small armys had formed, and then, like a scene out of a movie, they charged at each other and the masses clashed.
You would see long running back and forth battles like this in WoW back in the original release, typically refereed to as Vanilla WoW. For hours, the Alliance and Horde fought back and forth between Tarren Mill and Southshore. Yes, Rift has battlegrounds, but the game favors world PvP. Where has this world PVP gone in WoW? Blizzard, give back an excuse to go out and raid cities, and stop making the world so SAFE.
2) Graphical Upgrade
After being released over 6 years ago, World of Warcraft is looking dated. The minor graphical upgrades they have done to the environment are helping to make it look better, but this does not change the fact that original player models, NPC models, and some of the items look dated. WoW has used some interesting tricks. Using more detailed textures on the environment and the items distracts you from how bad the geometry of the models is. If you take a bare looking player model from Rift and Wow and place them next to each other, you can see the difference in detail like night and day. Players have been begging Blizzard to give them better models for the game's original races. The character creation tool is also far from acceptable compared to other titles.
1) Dynamic Content
This is the big reason, I feel, more people are joining RIFT. The game is not static and always the same when you log in. I have logged off in a safe little town, only to come back into the middle of a full-on death invasion. How exciting is it to log into a battle? Very! In World of Warcraft, all I have done since I hit 85, the current max level, is chat with people and maybe run some 5 man dungeons. A few days a week, the guild raids dungeons, and then its time to work on different character or log off and play something else.
In Rift though, there just always seems to be something to do. Zone-wide events, invasions, and rift hunting are all things that go beyond basic daily quests. The world doesn't seem as static and safe, like Azeroth has become (in fact it has become boring).
The game hasn't become boring, but the world where it takes place has. In Cataclysm, there is supposed to be a huge feeling of threat and war that I just do not see. Why not have some random Horde or Alliance raids attacking small cites on the borders of each area? With the world unbalanced by the elements, why not have some more events with them attacking randomly? The only time WoW didn't feel stagnant was during big pre-expansion world events. We need more of those, plain and simple. Trion has already done a major world event only a month after release. Granted, the conclusion wasn't what most players expected, but if I have seen anything from Trion, it's that they are trying to learn from their mistakes. I have high hopes that we will see some amazing content from them in the coming year. Hopefully Blizzard can learn as much from their competitors as so many of them have learned from Blizzard.
I would also like to add big thank you to reedit user
Tylerdurdon . Who helped me in reediting the article of his own free will. Check him out on reddit.com
