Rifting and WoWing

A few days ago:

Yes, I did buy Rift, and yes I like it....it's actually grown on me quite a bit. But I'm not going to get ahead of myself....I am still only questing after all. I never planned to take a look at Rift and was only made aware of it by a close friend of mine, literally a few days prior to release. Then one day on vent with current and former guildmates and good friends, the decision was made to give Rift a go. All of us had gotten a little disillusioned with World of Warcraft and saw this as an opportunity to try something new. Will I quit WoW? Not right now, but I will not count out the possibility.
WoW has become very monotonous for me with the release of Cataclysm. Leveling to 85 was too short for my liking. In Wotlk It took a week to get to 80, in Cata I was at 85 in a day and a half. It also didn't take very long to get all Cata reputations maxed. So that left little else left to do besides raiding and the AH game. As mentioned in previous posts, I had taken to finding rare pets, but that also got pretty boring after 2 weeks of flying the same routes over and over again. So at the moment my WoW time is dedicated to 1-2 hours of Auction House, JC daily and raiding. The rest I spend on Rift leveling, the Rift equivalent of a hunter...a Ranger/Marksman. I am currently at level 27, so just over halfway to max level 50.

Rift has taken the basic WoW principles and tried to improve upon them. Your Talent tree, known as Soul tree is the same as the old WoW talent trees were, allowing hybrids and all sorts of builds. There's an Auction house with an almost instant mail system - no wait times after auctions, yay! - mounts available at level 5, with faster mounts at 40 and 50 and you have 3 profession slots. I've chosen Butchery, which is skinning, to support my other profession Outfitter, which is a combination of Tailoring and Leatherworking, and finally Mining as my 3rd, which is just there as a income source as I am levelling. I've also done a couple of instances, their lengths were perfect (about 45mins to an hour), with plenty of dungeon quests to make you go back for a second run. The Rift story quest chains can truly be called epic, and the regular Zone-wide Invasion events are immense fun to participate in and highly rewarding.
So will I switch to Rift full-time?


Fast-forward to today:

It is official. I have switched to Rift full-time. My WoW subscription was cancelled last night. I just can't get enough of Rift right now, it is just that good. In the beginning my only complaint was that it didn't have a damage meter but now that I have downloaded the Rift combat Parser, I am all set to work out rotations and specs.

My toon curently sits at level 41. He is a Ranger/ Marksman/ Saboteur which is effectively a cross between a WoW rogue and hunter. I am a ranged class with a pet, but stack my attacks with combo points like a rogue. Make no mistake about it though, he may stack combo points and wear leather but this toon feels very much like a WoW hunter.

So far I've tried every aspect of Rift to some extend. I've obviously quested, I've done several dungeons (which have been nothing short of spectacular design in my opinion, perfect length perfect difficulty), I've raided (albeit just the Rift raid bosses), I've played the Auction house game with some success and I've PvPed (which is just like WoW).

In comparison to WoW there really isn't that much fault Rift for. They've taken WoW's winning formula and seeimingly improved on it in every facet. Most recently they've introduced there anti-hack system, called Coin Lock. If your account is accessed from a location other than your usual location, it will be coin-locked meaning mail system cannot be accessed, toons and gear cannot be deleted, AH cannot be interacted with, etc. Best of all though this feature is absolutely free. No need to buy an authenticator. No need to install external software on your mobile.

As you can tell I am obviously immensely impressed with Rift. I do realise, however, that this may just be the honeymonn period of playing something new, magnified with the sense of lacklustreness left behind by Cataclysm. I will not rule out returning to WoW. This isn't the first time I left WoW for another MMO. For now though Rift will be my MMO of choice. For those of you interested in continuing to follow my journey through Rift and information on the Rift hunter-equivalent, I have started a new blog at rifthunters.blogspot.com so feel free to check it out.

Thank you for reading this blog and making it worthwhile for me. Your support was very much appreciated. Enjoy your time in WoW and continue to fly the hunter flag. May it rain epics for you all.

Until next time, whenever and wherever that may be, keep on hunting,

Serebihm