WAR vs. RIFT
As a former and fairly prolific Warhammer Online blogger, my enthusiasm and coverage of WAR has become part of my online resume. It doesn’t usually come up in normal conversation, but a week or so ago I noticed a few people dismissing my excitement over RIFT because I was (and this is paraphrasing) also excited over WAR and that’s tainted my judgment or somesuch.
Now I do try to keep my ego reasonable, so if you feel that you have to read my words with a healthy spoonful of wariness, that’s okay. Nobody has the same tastes or histories, and at the end of the day, I’m just a gamer like you. I’ve liked good games and bad games, I’ve dropped money on purchases I’ve regretted, and I have joystick thumb disease.
But the one thing I’ve always tried hard to be open about in my blogging is that I’d rather err on the optimistic side of anticipation and enjoyment of games than the pessimistic side. That isn’t to say I’m blindly optimistic or have no capacity to criticize, it’s just that I’d rather look forward to games and enjoy this hobby — warts and all — than treat it like a hostile witness.
So this brings me back to the WAR vs. RIFT comparison, as I challenged myself to look back to my attitude in 2008 to WAR and my attitude now with RIFT. Is history repeating itself with me and/or with this title? Am I just getting swept up in the launch month frenzy without a rational synapse in my brain?
Let’s take a look at where I think history is running parallel here and where it is diverging:
Similarities:
- I got hyped up for both titles. Sure, it’s not like I hid this or anything. Both WAR and RIFT got me excited in advance, and I particularly latched on to the new ideas (WAR’s Tome of Knowledge, Public Quests; RIFT’s dynamic content and soul system) that these MMOs were bringing to the table.
- I purchased the Collector’s Edition of both, got into both betas, and was there for the head start of each.
- I was/am pulling hard for the success of each. WAR certainly had a gangbuster first month — 750K boxes sold — and the PR team had us convinced that it would do at least a million if not more, and take a good bite out of World of Warcraft. Thus far, RIFT looks similar, with a massive media coverage, huge amounts of players, lots of servers, and little new game competition.
- Both teams had big amounts of funding and a lot of great talent.
- In 2011 as well as 2008, many gamers felt the time was ripe to steal WoW’s thunder as the WoW playerbase became listless and disenfranchised with Blizzard’s behemoth.
- I liked both games at launch. Don’t forget, I played and covered Warhammer Online for over a year (2008-2009), and certainly got quite a lot of gameplay out of it. I took a character up to the cap, had a blast with the secret unlocks, and tried my hardest to get into the PvP. With RIFT, I’m equally enthralled with what I’m seeing, and I’m in it for the long haul.
Differences:
- I spent the better part of a full year writing about, anticipating, analysing and solely focusing on WAR as a blogger. With RIFT, my attention only started to focus on that game two months beforehand, and I certainly did not talk about it to the exclusion of all else.
- Because of this, I never became plugged into the RIFT blogging community as I did with WAR. I still think that WAR’s blogging community was something incredibly special, and perhaps one of the best effects of the game was that so many terrific bloggers got their start with WAR and continue on today in various formats.
- I saw, even back in 2008, that WAR was not nearly as finished in the beta as we’d hoped. I think what some folks forget is that I and other WAR bloggers certainly levied a lot of criticism at Mythic and EA for faults as much as we praised them, and no one thought that cutting two classes and four capital cities for launch was a good sign. In fact, WAR had quite a few more red flags at launch than RIFT does.
- Something to keep in mind is that there’ve been a lot of MMOs released between 2008 and now, and I’ve played quite a few of them — and none have gotten me as buzzed as RIFT. With experience comes the ability to discern quality and personal preference that much better, and I think I’m in a more mature place in 2011 than I was back then.
- WAR was primarily a PvP game, RIFT is primarily a PvE title. I tend to like the latter much more than the former.
- And finally, it’s hard to exactly explain it, but RIFT’s release feels all-around much more spot-on than WAR’s. I’ve read more enthusiastic and encouraging words on blogs for RIFT and far fewer criticisms (in fact, most people who don’t like RIFT — and that’s their preference — can’t fault it for not being properly assembled and polished in a way we haven’t seen major MMOs done for years). With little on the horizon to take the spotlight off of it, RIFT has a good chunk of time to continue to gain an audience, and I think it will do so.
Ultimately, I can say this with assurance: RIFT is not WAR, and while it’s fun to try to draw parallels beyond “what Syp said/says”, predicting the future by looking at a different game in the past is a flawed approach at best. RIFT may succeed huge or it may be a much more modest hit — only time will tell. But let’s also not forget that for all intents and purposes, WAR is a success by the virtue of still being up and running 2 1/2 years after launch, still making money for EA, and still being a home to many players and several bloggers that I continue to follow. We as a game community are so quick to judge a game as “failed” by the definition of “it’s not WoW/EVE/Guild Wars-type numbers”, but the fact is that any MMO that makes it to launch and retains enough subscribers to keep it profitable is a success story in this highly cutthroat industry.
- Posted in: RIFT ♦ Warhammer Online
While there were those who were “lauding” WAR for it’s uniqueness, I on the other hand saw it’s faults and felt it would be too niche, and would lose immensely in the end.
Rift on the other hand..I see a game that does not try to be too niche, and offers a wider range of gameplay in a less buggy and stable environment with a company who cares about their product, and are not trying to be “rockstars” (sorry…Paul Barnett thought he was in a rock band for sure…)
That is why Rift WILL be different than WAR.
A better made product for a wider audience.
As one of the ones who made those comments, Syp, you either misunderstood or chose to misrepresent the point most of us were trying to make.
Which is simply this: Judging success or failure of an MMO in the first month is pointless. People will flock to the new shiny, and abandon it just as quickly. Pointing to WAR as a comparison point was meant to be a reminder of that, but it seems nothing will put a dent in the blind enthusiasm.
Will Rift keep the numbers? Dunno. I tend to think not, as all the polish in the world can’t conceal the real lack of depth in the game’s innovation. But maybe I just want more out of MMOs than most. I do think Rift is going to be the groundhog of the MMO sphere, however. If it doesn’t hide back underground, we’re in for ten more years of clones.
I started reading Syp’s blog back during the WAR days. I, too, was in the closed beta of WAR and was extremely excited about its release. It was easy to do – the first 10-15 levels of that game are, in my opinion, some of the funnest, best designed introductory experience of any MMO I have played.
I think the issue presented in this post is more about the paradigm someone uses to evaluate Syp’s past blogging experience with WAR in comparing it to what he writes about today regarding Rift. I thought it was great that he was excited about WAR. That’s why I read the blog. I was excited too. For the same reasons, I think its great hes excited about Rift. That’s the sweet part about blogging. You can write about whatever you want, and you can read whatever you want.
In short, a blog post is exactly what it is. A snapshot in time, if you will, of what the author was experiencing. Sometimes you are at the same intellectual spot at the author, sometimes you are not, and certainly everyone’s opinions and experiences change over time.
On that note, I am loving Rift. Keep up the great posts!
I think a big difference is that there is no Snafzg in Rift. GAME CHANGER! O.o
For many gamers and even bloggers, WAR was a big eye opener. No MMO had such pre-release hype and no MMO fell so far afterward. We’ve all certainly learned a lot since 2008. I feel that Jan 2008 until now has basically been the “Dark Ages” for MMOs.
Who’s to say it’s over yet? Back-to-back successful titles might help.
Fantastic post – I too have been comparing your thoughts on WAR to RIFT in my own memory. I agree the big test will come when everyone hits the cap. Hopefully the game continues to shine at that point.
Another big difference:
Within days Mythic was dealing with a huge design issue: scenarios were more rewarding than open-world PvP and PvE combined. This was the first (of many) design issues that a worldwide release brought to the surface. Mythic was basically thrown into reaction mode immediately.
Has Rift had to deal with such a huge issue yet?
I suspect the majority of your readers are more interested in the width of information you provide and it’s just that comments tend to fall into the “versus” mode. Although it is an entertaining read to see the comparisons.
For the comparison, the key element IMHO is that Rift is a PvE focused game, something that WAR should have done, because once the veil on public quests was lifted, it was clear Mythic barely made the minimal effort there (aggro itself was too simplistic). I’ve always argued that even the most PvP oriented MMORPG needs a good PvE foundation.
Warhammer Online WAS a success — for me. I played it for about 7 months until I grew tired of it. I enjoyed it until I didn’t. That is usually enough “success” for any game.
For an MMO to be good does it need to hold your interest for the rest of your life?
Maybe you answer should be: I like Rift EXACTLY the same way I liked WAR. And that feeling is transitory.
@Snafzg: On issues like that, I think WAR’s oppositional nature made balance issues a HUGE deal that people threw massive fits over. Rift doesn’t seem to have that so much.
I’ll freely admit that Rift is shiny and polished out of the gate. My serious question is whether or not it has legs. My experience with the soul system was that it was a slightly more flexible talent tree with a lot of duplicated abilities and huge balance headaches. My first Rift was a mindless zerg-fest. And that’s really where the innovation in Rift starts and stops.
Will those things hold people long-term? That’s the question some of us are trying to ask, which is getting drowned out by the rabid gibbering as bored MMO players latch on to any tiny shred of innovation they can get.
That’s the elephant nobody seems to want to talk about. Will the mindless zerg fest of raids be as cool after you’ve done a dozen a week for the next month? Will the soul system still be quite so cool once the shine wears off and the standard builds are all posted and known? I honestly don’t know – I’ll freely admit that I never found either one impressive in the first place, so it’s hard for me to judge. But nobody has really addressed WHY they think Rift has legs, except to say that they aren’t seeing the same bugs WAR had.
I guess the core of the issue for me is that Rift will prove whether the MMO community will actually require innovative, new gameplay, or if polish is actually the only thing it takes to make them happy.
I’m the opposite of squin. If I like something, I like it forever, as a rule. Applying that to MMOs, if they’d just stop making enticing, new MMOs I’d happily go on playing any of the many that I’ve already played and enjoyed. Indeed, I do try and keep playing as many as possible.
I think if all production of new MMOs stopped today, most of the same MMOs we have now would still be up and running in a decade from now. And indeed, I think many of them will be anyway.
I felt about RIFT in beta similar to how I felt about WAR, and they really feel quite similar to me. I ultimately chose not to purchase RIFT because it would just be a time sink for me between now and SWTOR.
A lot of my friends and guildies feel this way, even those who are playing RIFT. I think it will be a solid MMO, but I’d be surprised if you’re still hearing much about it a year from now.
“# Both teams had big amounts of funding and a lot of great talent.”
Ummm. I think this is a tad generous. Other than hype generating I’m not sure there was any talent on the WAR team.
Otherwise though I agree. I don’t think you can put WAR and RIFT even in the same galaxy as far as quality control and level of polish go. While I like a lot of the ideas behind WAR much better, the execution in RIFT blows it away.
WAR also had a much better backstory and lore to it, but not many people care about that.
I just wish a non-themepark paint-by-numbers game would get the type of budget and love RIFT has. Ah well, best of times playing it!
p.s. Yes you are an incurable optimist but that’s one of the reasons I read your blog
I think the ultimate difference between WAR And RIFT (and i actually followed the old Goblin blog and all that) is that with WAR even after it launched the emphasis was on “POTENTIAL” and “If they do this , this game will be great” . You know kind of a “it’s ok now, but it can be better in the future IF IF IF”
In contrast, RIFT it’s all about “This game is good NOW” . No one is actually complaining about anything major and i don’t here people say “you know, this game will be good in 6 months” ….that’s what people in WAR said.
WAR had major design flaws right from the start, people ignored it in favor of having fun, but it was there and glaring. RIFT does not have this.
The fact that people in RIFT are complaining about getting DISMOUNTED by lowbie months, or not having a Guild Bank and the Saboteur needing a nerf tells me “things are fine” . If they complained about Rifts “not actually working” or “not enough content” or “pve is boring” or “missing classes” , then i’d be more concerned.
just wanted to say its an interesting perspective blue. enjoyed the read. don’t often get to say that.
WAR had at least 10 times as much hype as RIFT. When a game actually delivers what it promises you can’t really call it hype. The interesting thing with RIFT is the amount of anti-hype that was going around the blogs.
we are incredibly harsh on new mmos/games these days; real fails imho are games like APB where they have to turn off the game far earlier than expected