Rift (2011)

 PC
User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 587 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 344 out of 587
  2. Mixed: 150 out of 587
  3. Negative: 93 out of 587
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  1. krammerlock
    Nov 21, 2014
    1
    The game is entertaining in the beginning. Like a lot of MMORPG's it is very easy early on and you can get sucked into building your character. But after playing for a while you realize that this game offers nothing more than a standard MMORPG experience and contributes nothing new to the genre. At least not anymore. The combat model is dated and boring. The map system is useless when youThe game is entertaining in the beginning. Like a lot of MMORPG's it is very easy early on and you can get sucked into building your character. But after playing for a while you realize that this game offers nothing more than a standard MMORPG experience and contributes nothing new to the genre. At least not anymore. The combat model is dated and boring. The map system is useless when you are underground. If you are bored and love the old-style MMORPGs then give it a whirl but don't buy any of the DLC or become a supporter until you have played it for several days. My experience was it got boring very quickly.… Expand
  2. tollo555
    Aug 29, 2012
    1
    Under shiny graphics hides a polished turd. Quests are typical bring/kill x numbers of [insert here a random mob/item name] from start to level cap 50. PvP is an unbalanced joke, and an insult to the players Trion didn't do anything when people exploited new Conquest war front during its launch period. I found a new synonym to word boring; Rift.
  3. Nick95
    Nov 13, 2014
    1
    Rift used to be a nice game before it became "Free to Play" (or better said: Free to Pay).
    Since a year the game is going downhill faster and faster in both gameplay and stability. On top of that, the Customer Support almost completely disappeared and don't be surprised if you report a serious bug and find it still there even after many months.
    That is, except when the bug causes less    Rift used to be a nice game before it became "Free to Play" (or better said: Free to Pay).
    Since a year the game is going downhill faster and faster in both gameplay and stability. On top of that, the Customer Support almost completely disappeared and don't be surprised if you report a serious bug and find it still there even after many months.

    That is, except when the bug causes less income for Trion (like too much exp of too many free gifts ingame) , because then they suddenly have enough capacity to patch within 12-24 hours.

    With the release of 3.0 the game lost even the last bit of balance and there is no point of doing the 1-60 zones anymore because of the low quality gear, low exp and the new "sidekick" system, which makes it possible to party with a lvl 65 and instantly gets your level set to 65 and run around in the new zone.

    i tried and level 1-50 now can be done in less than 3 hours (that is if you dont buy the instant-60 item that instantly makes your char lvl 60)

    Since the game became FTP, Trion has been slowly (and without even informing players) removinig more and more items you needed to make the game attractive for Free players.
    Sneaky because these kinds of changes never make it to the patchnotes so after every patch you have to wait and see if they didnt remove or disable something.

    Now it comes to a point where you either have to grind low level dungeons for gear (good luck in finding anyone even willing to do low level dungeons now all dungeonrewards are removed from the game)
    or spend real money to buy gear.

    If you are planning to switch from WoW to Rift because it's Free to Play and thus cheaper, you will be in for a nasty surprise.

    On top of that, the number of gamecrashes increased dramaticly since the release of 3.0. Even with newer game pc's and graph. cards you can endup crashing every 10 minutes.
    That is, if you didnt already got disconnected because of the huge latency spikes the game is experiencing since 3,0 (and not will be fixed since Trion keeps telling us it's not a serverside problem)

    Conclusion: The game was great in the beginning, but Trion moved on to a new (and more expensive) policy, so it's time for the players to move on to another (cheaper) game.    … Expand
  4. emseebee
    Jul 7, 2011
    0
    Terrible game. Had one of the longest and largest beta's yet still managed to have massive nerfs from the very first month of release. No end game other than running the same 5 dungeon instances that you've run through the whole levelling process - just on a harder mode.
    Everyone's gear looks identical - and poorly at that. The art design for gear is deplorable.
    PVP is just assist trains    Terrible game. Had one of the longest and largest beta's yet still managed to have massive nerfs from the very first month of release. No end game other than running the same 5 dungeon instances that you've run through the whole levelling process - just on a harder mode.
    Everyone's gear looks identical - and poorly at that. The art design for gear is deplorable.
    PVP is just assist trains running around.
    The game is just 6 months old and the server populations continue to die off rapidly - http://www.riftstatus.net/shards/na/stats

    Save your money.    … Expand
  5. Ugly_Bob
    Apr 7, 2011
    0
    Not since I tried WoW for the first time in the US closed beta have I played a MMO that so thoroughly got my attention and appreciation from the very first moments in-game. After Blizzard's behemoth started to get old and boring I tried Vanguard, Lineage 2, AoC, LOTRO, GW amongst others without satisfaction..

    ..now I finally feel like I found my way home. I initially bought Rift as a    Not since I tried WoW for the first time in the US closed beta have I played a MMO that so thoroughly got my attention and appreciation from the very first moments in-game. After Blizzard's behemoth started to get old and boring I tried Vanguard, Lineage 2, AoC, LOTRO, GW amongst others without satisfaction..

    ..now I finally feel like I found my way home. I initially bought Rift as a pastime in anticipation of SW:TOR and/or GW2, but now it might just be my next several-year-long relationship.    … Expand
  6. pazmacats
    Mar 10, 2011
    0
    Game has problems with connection and performance. 50 pages of tech problem thread in 7 days speak for themselves. Customer support is awful. Gameplay: Kill and fetch PvE quest system. Farm'n grind, nothing new. Several different currencies allow for specialized grinding. Rift events are permanently popping up everywhere and not challenging. PvP is chaotic, restricted, unbalanced andGame has problems with connection and performance. 50 pages of tech problem thread in 7 days speak for themselves. Customer support is awful. Gameplay: Kill and fetch PvE quest system. Farm'n grind, nothing new. Several different currencies allow for specialized grinding. Rift events are permanently popping up everywhere and not challenging. PvP is chaotic, restricted, unbalanced and pointless (no gain whatsoever if the other player was attacked by a mob). If I was able to play it I'd rate it 4/10. But I get disconnected on a regular basis, so the game is unplayable = 0/10. Continuing to wait for Guild Wars 2.â… Expand
  7. babylon
    Apr 25, 2011
    0
    WARNING: Same person who destroyed Warhammer Online - Adam Gershowitz - is in control of game balance here. Great game - up till "balance" patch 1.1, which destroyed a bunch of playstyles in a game which claims to promote versatility in how you can build your characters (this is now gone), and indicates future issues with how game "balance" will be handled. After this patch and the massiveWARNING: Same person who destroyed Warhammer Online - Adam Gershowitz - is in control of game balance here. Great game - up till "balance" patch 1.1, which destroyed a bunch of playstyles in a game which claims to promote versatility in how you can build your characters (this is now gone), and indicates future issues with how game "balance" will be handled. After this patch and the massive outcry from players, it has been revealed that the person responsible for game balance is the same person who destroyed Warhammer Online - Adam Gershowitz. Warning for all gamers intending on playing this game - with Adam in control of game balance. you can expect things to go very, very wrong very soon.… Expand
  8. femmefatal
    Apr 4, 2011
    0
    There is really nothing NEW here that hasn't been done before. The fanboi excitement reviews are just because they are bored with WOW or never played an MMO before. The first thing I noticed is the game is tooooo solo friendly and hardly anyone wants to group prior to level 50. The game is tooooooo EASY as I leveledup without worry and pretty much stomped everything in my path as I wasThere is really nothing NEW here that hasn't been done before. The fanboi excitement reviews are just because they are bored with WOW or never played an MMO before. The first thing I noticed is the game is tooooo solo friendly and hardly anyone wants to group prior to level 50. The game is tooooooo EASY as I leveledup without worry and pretty much stomped everything in my path as I was beating mobs 4 levels higher than me quite early in the game all the way to 50. The death penalty is a joke. You don't lose anything but a small amount of time getting back to your corpse and a few gold coins to get your abilities back to 100%. The market is dead because the leveling is TOO FAST. I went to level 12 the first day. To level 30 the first 3 days and level 50 by the end of 7 days. There's no challenge in that and the combat is so repetitive you can roll your face across the keyboard and beat anything. The skills and spells are dry and just don't stand out like say an Everquest version. In Everquest I really felt I was my character and really felt FEAR of dying and losing stuff. There's not a bit of fear in this game and as I said the death penalty is a joke.
    The colors for characters are bland as well.. Too much BROWN and Grays. THe weapons are horrible looking and there's no procs so nothing stands out as "OHHHHH I WANT DAT!". Boring colors, boring looking and just an overall boring game. To me this is a game for 8 to 10 year olds. It's that easy and then they can go..."Looky Mommy I beat dah bad guy Look Mommy LOOK!" lmao

    The community isn't really friendly especially on the official forums. I've never seen so many negative comments on a game in my life. I mean this game really sucks it's that bad. You're better off waiting for Guild Wars 2.    … Expand
  9. flovil
    Apr 5, 2011
    0
    With each patch the uniqueness of the game goes, the nerfs and buffs seem to hurt the game more then help it.
    They buffed the mages so high that you deal -damage to them and they one shot everyone, they nerfed rogues so bad no one wants them, they nerfed ranged warriors enough to force them to melee.
    There are many exploits going unfixed and people are doing them with no punishment. The    With each patch the uniqueness of the game goes, the nerfs and buffs seem to hurt the game more then help it.
    They buffed the mages so high that you deal -damage to them and they one shot everyone, they nerfed rogues so bad no one wants them, they nerfed ranged warriors enough to force them to melee.
    There are many exploits going unfixed and people are doing them with no punishment.
    The game feels like a beta test, there is still much testing and work too be done.    … Expand
  10. eulia
    May 14, 2011
    0
    Trion Worlds tries way too hard to have its cake and eat it too. With a slogan like "You're not in Azeroth anymore", you'd expect Rift to be a game bent on trying to break the mould and perhaps change the MMO genre. You'd only be partly right. You're not in Azeroth, no, you're in an even worse designed and staler world with much less to do. Class system - One of the main selling pointsTrion Worlds tries way too hard to have its cake and eat it too. With a slogan like "You're not in Azeroth anymore", you'd expect Rift to be a game bent on trying to break the mould and perhaps change the MMO genre. You'd only be partly right. You're not in Azeroth, no, you're in an even worse designed and staler world with much less to do. Class system - One of the main selling points of the game is the versatility of the classes, but it doesn't really exist, except in certain cases. The underlying theme in class customisation in Rift is similar to other MMOs - if you customise your character's talents in the wrong way or attempt to create an interesting build, you will almost certainly fail throughout the content, which seems to be almost the same philosophy of WoW, which Trion Worlds attempts to insist that they are not. The Warrior: the usual plate-wearing class which ends up being the only viable tank in the game, but also has the best overall damage by far, making it imbalanced. The Cleric: a hybrid class that can sort of tank, is great at healing, and only does okay damage, despite the majority of their talent trees being damage-focused. Also, if one wishes to heal as a Cleric, there are very few options available as any deviation from pre-determined builds will result in many party deaths. The Mage: The typical spell caster with a tree for healing allies via damage done and some great support talents, as well as very good damage, but still worse than the Warrior.

    The Rogue: Easily the worst class of all to play. Despite traditionally being a pure damage class, their damage is easily beaten by every other class, except for the Cleric with which they are equal. They have a tanking tree, but you can only tank one target with it and have very little survivability. They also have a support tree, but it is easily replaced by the Mage's support tree, which provides far more buffs, debuffs, and can cure allies, unlike the Rogue's. Magi also have the option to switch to their healing tree for more healing intensive fights, or to a damage tree and easily outperform a better-equipped Rogue. It is a truly useless class.

    Rifts - The namesake of the game, they are events that spawn enemies and provide reputation and experience. These are fun at first, but quickly become tedious and repetitive. There are also Invasions and Footholds, which are essentially rifts that don't despawn after a given time and usually take hold of a quest hub and/or certain reputation vendors, at which point all friendly NPCs disappear until the Invaders an/or Foothold are defeated. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but all too often 10 or more Invasion forces (individually they are solo'able) will occupy one particular point, making it impossible to clear out by yourself and therefor make it impossible to turn in and pick up new quests without begging in various chat channels for help. There are end-game rifts, however, the required tools used to summon them drop from dungeons which provide far better rewards, so it seems pointless to do them when the same time could be put towards running those dungeons again, or simply solo'ing normal rifts if you desire the reputation rewards. All in all, rifts are not really a fun and exciting community experience, but more of a repetitive nuisance.

    Dungeons: The dungeon experience in Rift is almost exactly the same as in WoW. The only difference is that at end-game, Expert dungeons (same as Heroics in WoW) require one of the DPS to fill a support buffer/minor healer role instead of the typical 1 tank / 1 heal / 3 DPS, but that is honestly where the changes end. Just as in WoW, you'll experience the same dungeons but at a harder difficulty with a couple of extra bosses and slightly different mechanics than the lower level version. You'll also get better loot than the lower level versions, and you'll earn tokens from killing bosses which you can turn in for even better gear or certain crafting ingredients. Sounds a lot like Azeroth to me. Crafting: The crafting is very easy in Rift but the trade-off is that the high end crafted items are worse than the random mob drops in Experts. The only reason to take on a profession would be to 1) make bigger bags, and 2) gather materials to sell on the auction house, which other people won't buy because the random drops are better than anything they can craft.

    Graphics: The graphics and overall look of the game is quite lackluster, and brings nothing special to the table. It's a very bleak and dead world with very few colours and little artistic work. The comparisons to WoW are usually seen as unfair and irrelevant among the Rift community, but they are completely valid. Trion made it clear that they wanted to be compared to WoW, and specifically on how different and better Rift is. However, they've merely produced an equally priced knockoff with nothing special or innovative.    … Expand
  11. Nenedrakolol
    Sep 11, 2011
    0
    from 10 to 0 I'll tell you why... Ok So you are tired of your current MMO and want to try something new , yet very familiar...then you remember rift that game everyone was talking about a few months ago and you decide it to try it now, after all these months, patches and updates it must be really good now right? doh think twice! keep reading... Ok so you start leveling your new characterfrom 10 to 0 I'll tell you why... Ok So you are tired of your current MMO and want to try something new , yet very familiar...then you remember rift that game everyone was talking about a few months ago and you decide it to try it now, after all these months, patches and updates it must be really good now right? doh think twice! keep reading... Ok so you start leveling your new character and quickly fall in love with the game: wow the character creation is outstanding, the graphics are really awesome you discovered the endless possibilities of the soul system, multi class at it's best yeah! and the rifts-invasions are just epic! oh glorious day you finally found a new home you are so happy and considering to pay 6 months in advance also that epic fiery mount looks yuummy so you should invite some friends to join the fun! right? no wait and read to the end! So you finally reach level 50 and you fell almost complete, so you decide to try some endgame...wait, most servers are not even bothering, and you realize even expert dungeons are an endless grind, if you pug using the LFG tool you also get a raiding token to get cool raid tiers! wow, uh oh... wait a second I get a token per run and I need over 500 tokens?! you gotta be kidding me! okay I'm going to try a faction rep mount! they look so cool, wait a second, months of pointless grind? ok ok pvp was so cool in the lower tiers so it's time I join the battle once again, you have enough favor to buy the first epic set, here you go. And yes there you go... to hell, just like rift. Believe me Rift's lvl 50 pvp is just awful, it should actually get the award for worst pvp system ever in a mmo, yes you are going to grind your hiney for at least two months playing non stop to get nearly competent and until then you are going to be daddy's toy and yeah you are going to suffer , you'll see, DEVS thought it was a good idea to mix rank 0-1 new 50s with all mighty god mode ranks 8 you will be in a train my friend, in a train of pain, get ready to jump in to the most frustrant experience a game can give you around. It is unbalanced, unfair and very awful, but I have seen that in other moo you say, ok not like this I can tell you, the difference between a rank 1-5 and a rank 8 is so huge a single r8 (no matter what class) can literally wipe a group of 5-10 low 1-3 ranks and I am serious about it, so if you want to play RIFT go ahead but stay away from 50 pvp, at least until they fix the unbalance, I left because I was so sick of losing all day for months, yes Trion messed it up with an otherwise awesome game.… Expand
  12. celerelery
    Dec 7, 2011
    0
    It started off as a neat MMO trying to go against the standard archetypes, however, it's essentially devolved into your typically generic classes.

    It tries too hard to not be WoW, but is basically a self-hating, shoddy WoW clone that has Trion Worlds funneling a huge amount of their resources into their other two games Defiance and End of Worlds. You can easily tap out previous    It started off as a neat MMO trying to go against the standard archetypes, however, it's essentially devolved into your typically generic classes.

    It tries too hard to not be WoW, but is basically a self-hating, shoddy WoW clone that has Trion Worlds funneling a huge amount of their resources into their other two games Defiance and End of Worlds.

    You can easily tap out previous content and basically end up with very little to do and just waiting for updates. The PvP is sub-standard since the majority of players focus PvE.

    The game started out strong, was fun learning, but once you're established in end game you really notice the blaring balance problems. Honestly would not advise getting very into it since there isn't really anywhere to go once you've finished raid progression and many guilds have pretty horrible retention so you just get stuck in progression loops.

    Fun game, just horrible class balancing and limited, redundant content.    … Expand
  13. vixxycrowe
    Apr 27, 2012
    0
    I have had bad experiences with their customer support if you go buy their lil thing to see if your computer is playable with the game I passed with flying colors only all my defiant toons constantly crashed... turn around crash, move crash... porticulum and crash I know people with crappy laptops that didn't have the problems I had and all they wanted to do was point the finger at me. IfI have had bad experiences with their customer support if you go buy their lil thing to see if your computer is playable with the game I passed with flying colors only all my defiant toons constantly crashed... turn around crash, move crash... porticulum and crash I know people with crappy laptops that didn't have the problems I had and all they wanted to do was point the finger at me. If there was any sort of compatibility with windows processes or my vid card shouldn't they want to fix it? If you look at their forums you can also see many people complain that on the deepwood server they had the same problems and all had great systems. I didn't raid so i didn't need to use vent but by what they kept telling me is the only thing that should be running is rift itself... what a joke. What games require you to not be able to use anything but their specific game while yer playing that is a bit ridiculous and I've played way more bum heavy games than rift as far as pc reqs go and NEVER had a problem with any of them but Rift. They refuse to give me my money back. Trion in my opinion is a bad company with bad customer service… Expand
  14. vistachiri
    Aug 20, 2014
    0
    Rift used to be a pretty good game. It still is in many aspects, but it's extremely hampered by both it's f2p nature, and the absolute refusal of the dev team to back down from things even when faced with impending disaster. The recent Auction changes are a clear cash grab and rather than address these problems immediately when they have a 100+ page thread of mostly angry players staringRift used to be a pretty good game. It still is in many aspects, but it's extremely hampered by both it's f2p nature, and the absolute refusal of the dev team to back down from things even when faced with impending disaster. The recent Auction changes are a clear cash grab and rather than address these problems immediately when they have a 100+ page thread of mostly angry players staring them in the face, they take a weeks vacation? Seriously?

    Then they proceed to double down and just reduce the listing fees again, rather than going back to the previous system and fixing the actual problems (absolute lack of any sort of meaningful plat sink because you can buy everything cheaper in the credits from microtransactions). All the while touting this as an improvement to the game. Keep in mind that you need to actually use credits to access this auction house in the first place, and at the same time they introduce limited slot buy orders that you can purchase with, you guessed it, credits.

    If this is any indication of how they do business, I'd recommend avoiding this entirely.    … Expand
  15. Fire-Demon
    Jul 22, 2017
    0
    Auto rendered r`us!! random enemy boss spawn on top of your spawn healer, killing you the moment you respawn! and each death cost money! also rifts spawns on idiot moments! auto rendered maps, with lots off places to get stuck in! and you can only use "un stuck" command once an hour! lazy development team who just renders areas, and don't check if its working or not! says its free to playAuto rendered r`us!! random enemy boss spawn on top of your spawn healer, killing you the moment you respawn! and each death cost money! also rifts spawns on idiot moments! auto rendered maps, with lots off places to get stuck in! and you can only use "un stuck" command once an hour! lazy development team who just renders areas, and don't check if its working or not! says its free to play but , forget that! you need to pay huge if you want enjoy this game, and community avoid you as the plague until you are lv 65… Expand
  16. metacritiq
    Nov 18, 2013
    0
    Get quest, kill 5/5 things, return, get reward. Repeat.

    This game is junk following in the WoW gameplay style, and brings nothing new to the table.
  17. Demonware_Corp
    Feb 22, 2014
    0
    booooooring! More of "kill 5 of that" or "bring me 5 of this". Nothing new under the sun. Its a ridiculous easy solo game, a bad copy or others MMOs. Bad colors, the armors and weapons looks horrible and forget to do nothing until level 50. Definitely overrated game. And remember, if Adam Gershowitz is there, forget the balance between classes.
  18. gathor
    Jun 3, 2015
    0
    A good game that went downhill fast with lots of bugs and performance issues even after months.
    Lots of balance issues since 3.0 from zones to classes and don't even let me start ranting about the $$$ shop where you can even buy new classes (rift calls them roles)
  19. AnSith
    Dec 11, 2014
    0
    Game going downhill fast. Persistent bugs, very poor performance (no multicore support) and lack of customer service. Every aspect of the game is being monetized to the point where any competitive play necessitates cash shop purchases. Items you purchase in the store are also changed without warning, rendering them useless as well. Gambling purchases are available without published odds.Game going downhill fast. Persistent bugs, very poor performance (no multicore support) and lack of customer service. Every aspect of the game is being monetized to the point where any competitive play necessitates cash shop purchases. Items you purchase in the store are also changed without warning, rendering them useless as well. Gambling purchases are available without published odds. Buyer beware. Many tricks, many traps.… Expand
  20. Devils_horn999
    Jan 27, 2017
    0
    this game is extremely amazing . I don't know why some of you are upset with this game. the idea ,gameplay graphics story line and endless adventure is somethings that make this game extremely crazily addictive.the game is superbly smooth except some of the times.but overall I give it a 4.9/5
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Awards & Rankings

27
#27 Best PC Game of 2011
31
#31 Most Discussed PC Game of 2011
50
#50 Most Shared PC Game of 2011

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
84

Generally favorable reviews - based on 59 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 56 out of 59
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 59
  3. Negative: 0 out of 59
  1. AusGamers
    Nov 29, 2011
    90
    There have been obvious comparisons made to WoW, with some even going as far as calling it a clone. But what makes Rift so special is that it goes out of its way to avoid falling into the same traps as the many that have fallen before it. It avoids the painful, mindnumbing grind, makes incremental patches everyday and listens intently to its rapidly growing community.
    Read full review
  2. Computer Games Online RO
    Jul 20, 2011
    89
    It's true that the soul trees offer outstanding flexibility for character development and the rifts bring a welcome sense of insecurity into Telara's everyday life, but for some players this simply might not be enough.
    Read full review
  3. Gamers.at
    Jun 28, 2011
    88
    Rift offers a really polished MMO experience but looks and feels much like a mix of many good MMOs like World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online.
    Read full review
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