RIFT

>Decide to try Rift >Join German Server on accident >WhateverTooLateNow.jpg >Make boss looking character, log in >Spawn in starting zone, start walking towards first quest marker >Game mod spawns, starts screaming at me in german. >"SIE KÖNNEN NICHT HIER!! SIE KÖNNEN NICHT HIER!!" >WTFAreYouSaying.jpg >GM Adolf is still screaming SIE KÖNNEN NICHT HIER >Ignore him, go to quest marker pick up quest >Game client instantly closes. >Banned for 3 days. >10/10 would play again

I genuinely do not know how to review RIFT in its current state without feeling like I am writing an obituary for a game that technically has not died yet. I recently came back to RIFT after years away, and the first thing that strikes me is just how much of a contradiction this game has become. Because underneath everything, underneath the tiny population, the neglected feeling, the expensive DLC packs and the uncertainty about its future, RIFT is still a genuinely good MMORPG. That is exactly what makes this so frustrating. What RIFT got right RIFT had ideas that many MMOs still have not matched properly. The Soul system remains one of the best class systems I have experienced in an MMORPG. The ability to mix and match Souls and create your own builds gave players genuine freedom to experiment rather than simply picking a fixed role and being stuck with it forever. RIFT allowed you to build a character around how you wanted to play. The world was also one of its biggest strengths. Dynamic Rifts opening across Telara, invasions, open world events, dungeons, raids, crafting and exploration made the game feel like something was actually happening. There is also an enormous amount of content here. That is the tragedy. RIFT does not feel like a bad MMO that failed because nobody liked it. It feels like a good MMO that was allowed to slowly decay. The population is the elephant in the room At the time of writing, the visible Steam player population has fallen to extremely low numbers, with a 24 hour peak of around 255 players. Steam numbers do not necessarily represent every single person playing RIFT. Some players may still use the standalone Glyph launcher. But the problem is difficult to ignore. This is an MMORPG. A game built around: Group content Dungeons Raids Open world events Guilds PvP Invasions Other players When the visible population is this small, the game has a fundamental problem. You can have twenty years of content, hundreds of zones and thousands of quests, but an MMO without enough people starts becoming a single player museum. And that is increasingly what RIFT feels like. You can see the incredible game it once was everywhere you go. You can see the systems. The zones. The raids. The dungeons. The classes. The content. But you can also see the empty spaces where the players should be. "No tricks, no traps!" This is where the Steam description becomes almost painfully ironic. RIFT proudly advertises itself as: "Absolutely FREE TO PLAY! No tricks, no traps!" And then you look at the DLC and package structure. That is where I start raising an eyebrow. Because the game is technically free to play, yes. But the storefront surrounding it does not exactly reflect the idea of "no tricks, no traps". There are expensive DLC packs and premium packages attached to a game that currently feels like it is receiving nowhere near the level of investment those prices would suggest. That is the biggest problem with RIFT's monetisation. It is not simply that a free to play game sells things. Most MMOs do. It is the feeling of: The game appears to be slowly fading away, but players are still being asked to spend serious money on it. That is a very difficult proposition. If you are asking people to spend money on an MMO, players need confidence that the MMO actually has a future. At the moment, RIFT does not inspire much confidence. The gaming industry has a preservation problem And honestly, this is bigger than just RIFT. We are watching games disappear. Servers close. Publishers shut studios down. Online worlds that people spent years living in simply vanish. An MMO is not just a game you finish and put back on the shelf. It is a world. People build characters over years. They join guilds. They make friends. They collect things. They experience events that never happen again. And then one day someone somewhere decides that the server is shutting down. Gone. That is something the gaming industry is increasingly poor at preserving. And RIFT feels dangerously close to becoming another example. Not because the game deserves to disappear. But because the people responsible for keeping it alive do not appear to be giving players enough reason to believe it will survive. The frustrating thing is that RIFT could still be worth saving That is what I keep coming back to. This game has value. The Soul system alone is something worth preserving. The world is worth preserving. The dynamic Rift system is worth preserving. The raids, dungeons, classes and years of content are worth preserving. RIFT does not need to be thrown away and forgotten. But it also cannot continue indefinitely in its current state and expect things to magically improve. A handful of players logging in every day is not a healthy long term future for a massively multiplayer game. The game needs attention. It needs communication. It needs development. It needs confidence. It needs players. And most importantly: It needs someone to decide that RIFT is worth saving. Because right now it feels like the game is being kept alive just enough to continue existing, rather than being actively developed into something with a future. My verdict RIFT is simultaneously one of the easiest MMOs to recommend historically and one of the hardest to recommend in its current condition. The game itself? Still good. The class system? Excellent. The world and amount of content? Massive. The current population? Deeply concerning. The future? Unclear. The monetisation? Hard to justify when the game feels this neglected. That is RIFT in one sentence: A genuinely good MMORPG trapped inside a service that feels like it is slowly being forgotten. I do not want to see RIFT disappear. But I also do not think selling expensive packages while the visible player population sits at only a few hundred is a sustainable answer. RIFT needs to be saved. But not in its current state. It needs investment, communication, development and a genuine plan for its future. Because if nothing changes, eventually this will not be a review of a dying MMORPG. It will be people looking back and asking: "Why did we let RIFT disappear?"

Ignore the hours played, as I didn't play this game through Steam. This was my favorite game ever when it first came out. Then it went Free to Play and immediately took a never ending nosedive into being the worst joke ever told. I remember logging in one day, right after the Free to Play update, seeing my hard earned raid gear in their brand new F2P store section for someone to acquire with the swipe of their credit card. I logged out, and I never logged back in. God that feels like a lifetime ago.

You download the game to only realize its now a launcher that requires registration. You click register account, you are sent to a broken website that does not allow you to register. If your game is on steam, make sure it works at least the create account part...

I won't lie, it is a niche title, but it is a wonderful time capsule of the 2010s MMO peak. Here is my experience with the game: Character customization is not bad, pretty solid for the time the game came out. I wouldn't say I have made characters that I felt were artistic beauties, but they are tolerable enough. You can spend some decent time making a unique enough character for yourself. My Bahmi looks like a Mongolian Thanos, which is cool for me. Skill trees are absolutely fantastic. There are basically three trees of sub classes from your main class called Souls that you get to pick from a list of options, so making a workable build is a very satisfying experience. Not every Soul is free to play so keep that in mind. Content is great! The story is old school which requires reading a lot for the questing experience. If that's not your thing then this game might not be for you. Trying to run dungeons as a solo in the classic MMO way is very difficult. No one really wants to group up and run dungeons, and the player base is not very helpful for assisting new players in that way. A big bummer in my opinion. It takes away from the experience. Also, the player base is very small, so queue times are pretty much infinite unless you run Instant Adventures. Inventory slots are limited as a F2P player. I got lucky and had a max level player give me a 20 slot bag so I don't have issues with the limitation. Genuinely that person was an angel and should be given all the good vibes. The inventory limit is a bit too punishing in my opinion. It gets better as you level and find more bags, but if you want to get into crafting it can be demoralizing. You do get a free bank slot that holds enough inventory space to store items so that does help. I just wish it was a bit more generous. If you don't want to pay a subscription for classic WoW or really any MMO but you have the itch to play one, give Rift a try! It was awesome back in the day and it still holds up!

It was a good game in its day, but it is clearly dying. The community is absurdly toxic.

This is insane, I love it, how can I not know gem like this existed, it's like a flashback to the best era of MMORPGS and it's really active, like even starting zone had this random zone invasion and all these people popped around closed rifts, killed a boss what is even going on, amazing and very nostalgic experience that I've been longing to relive and this hidden gem gave it to me, just hit 40 level, community is just lovely too, received tons of free stuff from random people, like gigantic premium bags that cost 50$ if you were to buy them from shop lmao, I'm seeing this one through for sure, I'll probably play this game until it closes servers, because it apparently haven't changed or "modernized" like many titles like WoW do while losing their soul in the process, finding a real OG like this with active community is amazing, thank you whoever is still keeping this alive.

Downloaded on a whim. Created an account. Authentication failed. Reset password. Authentication failed. After the third try to actually log in after going through their reset process and having to prove I'm not a robot every time, I gave up. The whim has passed and so will I on this game if their account management system is so trash.