There are a number of wow players who, for various reasons, decide that they have had enough of world of warcraft and want to try out a new mmorpg. The problem with any new mmorpg, is that wow now has 8 years of development behind it. With a design and feature list based on information gained from feedback from millions of subscribers, it is not surprising that other mmorpgs, that may only have had a years development typically, will be lacking in many features that wow has.
The latest mmorpg contender is Rift by Trion Studios. Rift has a similar theme to wow, in that it is set in a fantasy world, with two opposing forces, the Guardians and the Defiants, ala Alliance and Horde. Thankfully, Trion did not make the same mistake that Blizzard did in the past, by making different classes for each faction. This mitigates balancing problems in PvP, as well helps even the population number per faction.
Rift is set is in the Planes of Telara, and the first issue you may have is that graphics use a different rendering engine to wow. Where wow is more cartoony, Rift is more realistic, similar to FPS games. So be prepared to have a beefier graphics card when playing Rift. Thankfully, Rift has a lot of options to tone down the rendering, so you should be able to find a good balance between quality and performance.
What Rift Borrows From WoW Online RPGS, have been around for quite a while now, so there is a minimum feature set is assumed by players when they start a new mmo game. These features are
What's Missing Now on to missing features that you may have become accustomed in wow. Though remember WoW had a number of years to implement their features, so anything missing may be implemented at a later stage.
Rift leveling is similar to wow, you gain experience by doing quests and killing mobs. You can also gain experience in PvP. The maximum level is 50.
Items types are similar too, with grey, green, blue and purple drops and quest rewards. You cam also purchase weapons with pvp points. Interestingly, you can loot fallen players in PvP, and choose to roll for items with need and greed options.
What Sets Rift Apart Two major features of Rift, that will make Rift very different from WoW are the public quests and the class setup.
Public Quests These are quests that appear more or less randomly in a given area, and are known as Rifts. The quests have a number of stages, each stage spawns a new set of mobs to kill, with a boss mob on the final stage. What makes them public, is that anyone in the area has a pop-up appearing allowing them to join the rift raid group, without needing a special invite from the raid leader. Completing rifts is important, as more and more rifts appear which eventually leads to an NPC invasion.
Class System Callings are the rift equivalent of classes. Rift differs from WoW, in that rather than having a large number of classes, it only has 4, mage, rogue, cleric and warrior. However, Rift has the talents and skill tree rolled into one system called souls. You can have upto 3 souls, but there are a total of 9 souls to choose from, for each class. This allows a great number of variations per class, more than Wow. Like wow, you have a limited number of points that you can use for the souls. However, there while there is dual specs for WoW, Rift allows you to have up to 4 different specs.
So for those who are tired of wow, but still want a mmorpg with the main features, but in new and freasher game, then Rift is a good choice. If your thinking of trying out Rift, or need to know more about Rift leveling techniques, www.fastlevelingguides.com highly recommends the Rift Stragegy Guide.
