sleaker

I'm kind of echoing the sentiments of the first commenters here. At first I thought this game was very good, and it was. This was back in beta before release. I decided to purchase one of the game packages despite it being a free game to play overall. The game showed promise and seemed to have good support from the devs.

After a while it just seemed like the game wasn't going anywhere, so I took a 4 month break, then decided to start playing again.

The game as it stands right now seems to have taken significant steps backward. Riot can not release a proper patch to save their life, and each patch seems to cause more issues with more of the user base than the last. When the game wont even auto-patch cause it can't download files properly, there are some serious issues with how your patcher works. On top of this, and as stated above. Riot consistently shows they are in it for the money rather than to support users. The forums break consistently, support very few features, and are hands down the worst official forums I've seen of any game to date. The bug report system is horrendous, and there is very little support feedback on issues that completely break the game. Riot chooses to consistently push new heroes rather than fix issues in the game code, or provide features they've promised from the beginning. They push new UI 'improvements' through, while the core game sees nothing. And as stated above no replays, no observer mode, no LAN support (for tourneys), no new maps, and Riot has explicitly stated the AIR platform is good for an online game. AHahah what a joke.

The community has started getting more and more toxic on top of all this. From people who just plain rage when other players do poorly. Or people that just completely disregard their teammates. It has become nearly impossible to find a game that is not decided either at the champion selection screen (because Riot forces explicit team comps), or simply because one of the players in the game disconnects or feeds.

For any onlookers, I'd say to skip this (or at least not spend any money on it). And wait for Valves DoTA.

I think it's a little naive of console owners to get up in arms over an MMO not allowing them to trade in their game. CD-Keys and online accounts pretty much killed the PC Used game market, and my hankering (especially with SOE and other studios stance) is that it's going to get more and more common. Being interconnected at all times with accounts is already a big part of Computing and consoles could benefit a lot by going this route, even if it would destroy the used game market.

After playing DA, I was horrible disapopinted with the graphics. Nearly all of the blood textures were toned down for the console release, and no optimizations were put in for PC. I remember watching circles of blood expand out of bodies, and texture levels of players being pretty low.. Can't say I was impressed very much, in fact I think NWN2 had better graphics in a lot of instances.

I would say something akin to 'no way?!' this is a service and what's the monthly sub for! But this game just went Free to play so that argument doesn't work. I do believe though, that the high cost of service based character changes is a bit ludicrous. It really makes me wonder how much it actually costs to undelete a character in terms of man hours if you can have one guy do 10 of these (or more) in an hour that's some serious money.

I have to say that Runic Games does the Raving Fan thing pretty dang well, talk to anyone that's played Torchlight! Mmm speaking of Torchlight, If you haven't gotten it you should get on steam and go get it, cause it's awesome.

@Valdamar I do like innovation and I do know what I want. Rift has some things I like (PQs, running around and jumping into the action etc) and some things that I think are executed horribly (Soul synergies, how specs don't feel like they mesh together, etc). But about other games and people not liking them:

Tabula Rasa felt much like the current incarnation of Earthrise. Laden with bugs, not fun combat systems. But with new elements that didn't stand out enough. It failed. Not because of it's new innovation, but because it couldn't execute properly. Earthrise feels like it's going down the same road. SWToR developer listed some things that you don't do with an MMO and I feel like it's less of an innovation thing and more of a user friendly thing. (Things like Key Bindings, Controls, UI customization, Server Stability, etc)

DDO was good, even before it went F2P. But when it did switch Turbine got a huge revenue increase. Don't bash this as a forced move to f2p to stay alive. When DDO moved that direction it opened up the game to people that wouldn't necessarily play the game in the first place, making it more accessible. Accessibility of your game can increase revenue, which obviously worked for both LoTRO and DDO. AND they didn't sacrifice any innovation. In fact you can say this was an innovation in itself. CO and EQ2 both have tried to do this, but their moves to F2P look like they are choking horribly.

APB was innovative. But like Tab Rasa you can't blame customers for not liking it because of the innovation. It suffered from huge gameplay issues, server problems etc. This game is being revived, and we'll see if the innovation coupled with proper servers/bug fixes will actually work.

Global Agenda suffered from the same issue as Hellgate (but survived because the game play is better). They released a game for $50 then expected their customers to shell out a monthly fee for participation in extra online services (competing on a large map with guilds). I played at launch and felt jilted pretty hard when they were asking for this. The game I feel can be compared more to Guild Wars, has the same business model now, and feels much more like a Futuristic version of it.

Auto Assault was good, I really enjoyed it. But it had technical and depth issues. The game in general was just really shallow and suffered from technical issues.

World of Tanks is hardly innovative. It's an online shooter just redone with different move speeds and damage calculation. In fact there have been a slew of battletank sims released on the market over the ages. And this one isn't even that much of an MMO, it's just an experience calculator tacked onto a storefront, with a TeamDeathmatch playground. Sure nobody has made the exact game before, but the game itself doesn't really push anything new.

I remember when both Earthrise and Fallen Earth popped up on the radar, and how people were a little bit dismayed with Fallen Earth, but looking at this now I can say that if none of you liked this release you can still go over and checkout Fallen Earth which seemed to be pretty similar, and much much more polished.

I don't really compare Rift to WAR simply because of the Public Quest styled gameplay. I compare it to WAR because the game plays and feels (combat and movement) much much more like WAR than WoW. Channeling attacks, running, multiple ways to slow/kite, and the speed of all of these things put together makes RIFT just feel like a polished up version of WAR.

I want to like the class system, but the lack of real synergy between souls makes it extremely annoying to find combinations that work well. Sure you can swap in and out of different specs very quickly, but beyond getting slightly different passive skills added from your non-primary souls, they don't add much oomf. The souls in my opinion end up being too varied in type. For instance it would be nice to see abilities/talents that would increase damage or give alternate abilities on Soul abilities from other souls. The only ones I've seen that seem to do this are the rogue souls that trigger extra abilities on combo finishers or abilities that add combo points, but that's the closest I've seen to skill synergies other than your basic +Crit Strike or +Damage.

@Jeromai Fallen Earth is a pretty good example of this. It's skill based, but if you don't focus properly on a specific weapon set and it's subsequent abilities you get pretty hosed.

I enjoy skill based systems a lot, but the problems I've found with that have generally been attributed to too slow advancement or lack of newbie areas. The game having too difficult a learning curve etc etc. EVE is just so big I don't feel as if I can be in the action, Darkfall just felt too slow, and Mortal again too big with little direction.
Wish was probably the only game that I've truly liked for skill based MMOs other than Star Wars Galaxies (which was subsequently butchered by SOE)

All this in the end leaves me stuck playing Class based games quite heavily.