It has only been 10 weeks but it feels like more, the incident who remarkably reduced my real-Id activity and made Azeroth a little bit more empty. I am talking about one of my closest WoW friends leaving game, some refer to him as the great hunter Silverhawk, to me he will always be just Tom.
Tom and Epixx
Feels like ages ago the night where our two young paladins ran the down the golden hills of Westfall, our shields reflecting the moonlight, surrounding us in a soft, shimmer glow as we slaughtered everything that was foolish enough to get in our way.
We didn’t make it much further than this, well expected since I always knew Tom’s presence on Bronzebeard was temporary. His hearthstone was set far away, on another realm called Vashj. Some ore, a handful of gems and a stack of linen cloth in my backpack is everything he left behind, but only physically. We may not have faced the greatest adventures together, considering our greatest encounter was a sharp-toothed, furry thief, also knows as Hogger, but there was laughter, fun and most important of all, friendship. Good memories, which no backpack is large enough to carry.
Tom and Tribecius (!)
It is not the first, and probably not the last time I have seen it. It happened with Lord of the Rings, Age of Conan, Aion and now Rift. New games are released, leaving Stormwind’s trade district a little less crowded. For a while. Then it’s usually back to normal, with a few exceptions, those who don’t come back at all. Little did i know Tom was going to be one of these exceptions, swapping Azeroth for Telara, without looking back. I am only one of many who feels his absence, but I follow his adventures on his blog, and he also made a little guest post for me, writing about his Rifting. Enjoy!
So, here I am again writing a guest post at my favorite blog… I am one of those who chose to move from Azeroth to Telara (RIFT) and stay there. I went to Telara with a few of my friends but some of them went back to Azeroth. I guess they missed the place… I on the other hand didn’t.
The only negative thing I can think of changing game scene is the fact that you lose touch with most of your old friends as we kind of stop communicating when you move on. I guess gamers are more acquaintances than friends really. 6 years in WoW and then moving on… feels like you left the family behind in search of a new life. The odds for me going back to Azeroth has gone from high probability to zero in less than 2 months.
I was über bored of World of Warcraft when I heard rumors of Rift and the longing for something new and exciting was more than enough for me to sneak by and check out the beta. 2 hours into beta I preordered RIFT and cancelled my WoW account and I haven’t looked back ever since. I giggle to myself every time I get phishing mails about WoW now… Tho now I get both phishing scam mails from Blizzard and Trion (well, people who think I’m stupid enough to believe they are Blizzard and Trion that is).
So why do I like Rift better than World of Warcraft ? Well, first of all I feel like a total noob again since everything is new and all… you know the feeling you had when you first started out exploring the world of Azeroth and all that. It is a good feeling… Secondly I think the professions in Rift are more exciting as you have the possibility to add stats with augments and change the color of the armor.
The fact that they have more stuff to do in-game than Azeroth is also a huge plus. I have only done 2 dungeons in Rift till now because I’m to busy going for Rift event invasions and looking for artifacts. Artifact hunting is insanely addictive and it’s nothing like the WoW Archaeology where you feel like eating a bullet from all the travelling for nothing. In Rift you actually see the artifacts, they are hidden among rocks, in bushes, on mountain tops etc. Basically it’s like puzzles.. when you have all artifacts of a set you hand it in and get rewarded with a lucky coin, a bag with goodies (sometimes epics) or potions. You can also get books with lore which you can add to your collection.
The rewards you get (like surprises from chests, achievements and artifact bags) are always an item that suits the class you play when you loot it. This means that you’ll never get plate or cloth if you play a rogue. Sure in dungeons it drops randoms as it does in Azeroth and you can be unlucky with drops… but not on the single player scene.
Right now there is a 3 stage event going on in Rift and they had to postpone stage two of the event with a week because the server couldn’t handle 100 people in the same zone fighting the same boss… not really a big surprise. An epic fail event if you will… I personally was a bit disappointed with constant disconnects and stuff but I don’t care. I still love the game (which is new so you have to forgive the few flaws the game has as it will be even more awesome in time). Trion is way better at hot fixes and updates and service than Blizzard is. The servers are down in shorter periods and the updates are not set to one day of the week. They added new content less than a month after release… now that was unexpected.
I still don’t have a clue why some of the people would go back to boring Azeroth after trying out a day or two in Telara. I guess the main reason is they miss the people back in Azeroth. Personally I’d rather have fun in Telara than be bored shitless in Azeroth, friends or no friends. I wish I had 4 more friends playing tho so that I could get to see some dungeons.. but for now I’m more than happy to be an artifact/Rift hunter.
ShammyLove 