So whats the plan boss?

Dear family - do we have actually any organized plan for the future?
My WAR subscription expired few days ago, and to be honest I'm not so keen on renewing it - not that I'm not enjoying playing with you - quite contrary, playing WITHOUT you is very painful and pretty boring. T2 and T3 is all about "finding a rat group", T4 is a pleasure similar to breaking wall with your forehead, and thats not mentioning balancing issues.
So is Gascioch migrating to Rift? From what I've seen our presence there was pretty big - I could safely say that we were biggest guild in beta on our server and I know that many people here are as well tired of WAR. I just hope this game won't end as such disappointment as AION was... Also I hope I can squeeze enough power from my crappy old PC to run it smooth enough to have better quality than slideshow.

For just to kill some time I'm playing WoW Cataclysm free trial - looks cool, but when I think about effort that this game requires on long run (reputation/professions/dungeon grinding) it makes me feel bit sick, especially if I would start from beginning (made cuuuuute goblin female rogue!).
I don't know... Feel torn apart between those 3 games, and the fact that I'm getting married next month doesn't help.

Fog has stated a few times that when Rift comes out we will have 1 Rift Family event and 2 WAR Family events. Does that mean we'll play 2x as much WAR as Rift? Probably not, but it does indicate that we are still committed to slugging it out in WAR for the time being. He's also stated that when GW2 goes live, that we may abandon WAR completely for GW2 or adjust family events accordingly. Now I love Rift alot. I've spent countless hours in Alpha with it. But it's not a PvP centric game. It won't even ship with any oRvR which means it will be many months before we see a fully functional oRvR system implemented. And even then, it will always remain a PvE centric game. Considering that objective based world PvP is kinda what we do, I think it's unlikely we'll move full scale over to Rift. Guild Wars 2 however reportedly will have the oRvR goodness that we so love and crave. If I were a betting man, I'd probably bet on the Patriots vs Jets game. But if I had to bet on which game ultimately replaces WAR for us I'd probably bet on GW2 at this point. With emphasis on 'at this point' lol. Things can change, who knows we might all be playing KOTOR in 6 months. Stranger things have happened. ;0 Have I confused you enough yet? lol.

*blinks* ooookaaay... *goes to play minesweeper*

Its kinda funny - after browsing a bit I noticed that quite a few pages are trying to compare Rift to both WAR and WoW. Well, my three pennies here: 1. Graphic - no argue here that "more serious" in Rift than comic-like WoW but at the same time much prettier than "I fired graphic designer" style in WAR. As for now we couldn't see anything such "fantastic" like underwater/space cities like in WoW but it still looks great - personally I love Lovecraft-style tentacles from rifts. I wonder did they try to add something from Cthulhu mythos here (remember C'thun and Yogg-Saron?). That leads to point... 2. Story - So far my biggest disappointment - WAR has tons of literature behinds its name (I've been playing pen and paper WArhammer RPG in times when Amiga 500 was best computer available to players), Warcraft made its own story over the years and IT IS interesting - I was often browsing WoW Wiki just to get some more information about Sylvanas or Titans for example... In Rift we have some sort of generic Bad Guy who wants to destroy the world and we should stop him... It sounds like B class fantasy, especially if we are on Guardian side (oh yay, chosen by gods to save the world... like in hundreds games before), bit better on Defiant side - I really liked the whole idea of time travel from dieing world. 3. Character creation - biggest disappointment in Rift are races since there are only 6 and nothing really innovative: humans, dwarfs, elves and... bit bigger humans and... umm... yeah... And they all start in the same zone, going through the same quests (at least for pretty long time probably) - this makes alt making pretty boring. Of course if consider ... 4 Character development - its kinda moot point because of amazing flexibility - its simply mind blowing! , but still even if in theory about 2 characters (I can be wrong here) would let you cover all roles (tank, healer, dps) and you can switch easily, different callings offer different playstyle, so at least I would like to try them all. 5. Community - well, today I played low level Arathi Basin in WoW and for a while I was wondering while my chat window was full of "#$#%#$" until I noticed that my profanity filter was on. Asking someone on global chat was pointless from the start... WAR is bit better, of course if you ignore /Advice channel, but in Rift community was surprisingly REALLY helpful and quite mature. Question that I still want to know is: - PvP - even if its a pve based game, I wonder how good it is - PVE - what I love in WoW (especially after Wotlk) is the fact that my actions actually change world, its not a simple "go kill x of y and take reward" (so far the only "epic" quest that I've seen was last one in Defiant's future). Also WoW's pve "zoning" mechanic is amazing (after progressing in certain quests, surrounding area will look permanently different to you than to people that just entered there, i.e. Death Knights starting zone) - Grinding - how much of it is required to progress? I don't want to be forced to spend 10+ hours or I will miss 50% of the world, from the other hand getting everything without effort is as bad. Well, Rift is still in beta and I haven't seen much of it, thats just my general thoughts and concerns about this game

» Edited on: 2011-01-12 21:06:25

» Edited on: 2011-01-12 21:11:28

If you only play/test Rift on a PvE server (Alpha) you won't see much PvP, that's for sure. I much prefer PvP over PvE so I spend most of my test time on the Omega server (PvP). I have 6 level 50s on Omega. The main (MacDeath of course) has over 2500 Plat. I look forwand to more from the family joining us on Omega, so I've been saving Plat to help ya'll get started.

as far as i like PVP, dedicated pvp serve is not for me - not sure how it looks like in Rift but still got nightmares about my first experience with WoW PVP server - 60s around starting area, corpse camping for 30 min, ganking groups... No thx - pvp lake, battleground - perfect for me. At least in WAR tier gives you a nice limitation. Btw, I've heard that beta characters will be wiped on start of full game, no?

» Edited on: 2011-01-13 03:12:15

[empty post made by accident, nothing to see here, please move on...]

» Edited on: 2011-01-13 03:13:15

We'll I think I got some good responses here. You managed to post while I was out buying a car for my lady. It brings me great joy that I have so many people willing to help out and answer questions. The Gaiscioch Plan March 1st we will be Launching Gaiscioch (Initially) on a PvE-RP Server (For the mature crowd, not requiring roleplay). We will also be joining a Tuatha channel which I will post details later about. Those who wish to roleplay on our server I will be arranging a global roleplay channel for anyone seeking to roleplay and working with the roleplay community leaders to get them all setup to help allow the roleplay community to flourish. Roleplaying will be an option and not required so before I get the "I hate Roleplaying" please realize teenrage doesn't have the patience for roleplayers. If you want a calm fun and friendly server in my experience you'll need to be on a roleplay server. Core servers tend to be more "my epeen is bigger than yours". Starting March 1st we will be hosting 1 RIFT Gaiscioch event per week where we will gather as many people as possible and flood a zone to try to make the RIFTS go nuts. Later on we will organize large scale PvP/RvR fights out in scarlet gorge or the other contested zones with the Defiant on our server. For the first couple months we want to focus on building community and transitioning our reputation onto RIFT. OUR FUTURE WITH WARHAMMER ONLINE While times look bleak at the moment we are going to wait this out. Starting March 1st we will run 2 Trinity oRvR events a week rotating between T2, T3, T4. I will continue running these until one of 3 things happen. 1. Warhammer Goes Offline 2. I can no longer field a warband 3. Guild Wars 2 is released and WAR has not recovered THE DISTANT FUTURE In the long run we will have a presence in RIFT and Guild Wars 2. RIFT being our pay to play title where we likely will focus on PvE events and some oRvR if it becomes available. Guild Wars 2 will be our Free-2-Play title where those of us who are low on funds can still be a part of the family. Guild Wars 2 will be entirely our oRvR front. Our trinity events will be migrated to GW2 for their server vs server vs server combat. It is confirmed that Siege Warfare, Territorial control, and Siegecraft are all a big part of Guild Wars 2. From what I've seen in videos and played at PAX the game is a great product and a ton of fun. Even not in alpha yet what I played was very solid. THE BITTER TRUTH Warhammer is dying. Not because players are killing the game but because Mythic has a track record which is moving backwards not forwards. We have less things in the game now than we had at launch. While they add things they take bunches of things out. The development cycle is on it's head. Mythic is making no effort to innovate anymore, they are not countering anything being done in other games, they're communication with the community has declined to next to nothing, and they have alienated the PuG by making Premades gods. RIFT is built for Premades, Being the PuG's are ragequitting as we speak, the only thing surviving and thriving in WAR is the Premade. When RIFT launches those same Premades are already planing on switching to RIFT. When that happens Mythic will have lost their target market which is hideous being its a total nitch market. There are 9 Puggites to each premade player. Why they decided to make their product focus on the minority is beyond me. It will ultimately spell their doom. NOW PLEASE REALIZE I have heard AION mentioned quite a bit. I want you all to think about my reputation. I want you to think about my actions. I know you all know me very well. Did I support AION? No. When Aion went into testing I played the beta and while the concept seemed neat, the 3 Guild Ranks, and 90 character cap seemed very anti community. At level 20 you find rank 40's sitting on your epic quest line hubs waiting for newbies to come turn in quests. Then Bam your dead. over and over and over again. IN BETA, I told Ainwe that she would be running the family over there and that I will not plan any events for the game because I knew it was going to fall flat on it's face. I did not support Aion. I am not a person who jumps to the newest best thing. I ran Gaiscioch on DAOC for 5 years, and Now WAR for 2.5 years. We have had 2 Chapters of our family. When I say were going somewhere I mean we are going somewhere. Our Guild Wars, WoW, and Aion branches were scouting parties to see if it was Gaiscioch friendly. All of which failed to pass our tests. Ainwe, Yulishka, Pulitzer, Bashir and so many other family members gave me a good glipse of Aion and verified my fears. Within 6 months the entire Gaiscioch family was dissolved and moved to other games. WoW we were there about 6 months and Don, Yuilishka, and I were bored off our arses. Caelliu & Breel brought us into Warhammer after testing it. The day I got my hands on it I knew it was Gaiscioch material and we found our home. I do not take expansions lightly, If a game does not lend itself to harvesting community we will not expand into it. If it does not allow players to level as they like we will not expand into it. If people are not having fun playing it we will not expand into it. Many guilds fall prey to branching out into too much and they lose control. We are not that guild. I take very careful precautions when selecting a branch and the ONLY reason I considered branching into RIFT was because Warhammer becomes less Gaiscioch Friendly every patch and is on a collision course with the list of remember when MMO's. Before Warhammer goes Offline I have searched for a title that can carry us on. My goal is to keep us together. Over 60% of our membership is currently unsubscribed to warhammer. More than 20% of this offline membership is planning to joining us in Rift. My goal is to keep the family together. Players are growing more and more frustrated with WAR and leaving it by the dozens. IF we don't have a backup plan then these people will fall through the cracks and we will begin missing our friends and family we have grown to love. We are Family and we will stick together. Right now RIFT is the most solid product that is sure to be a successful place to generate a community. It has all the tools needed to be successful, it's easy to pick up and play, it has fun PvP, Fun PvE, and even Fun Crafting. Players can play how they want, when they want, and as long as they want. It's casual friendly, and competitive friendly, and even roleplay friendly. It's relatively bug free and has a plan for constant expansion. It's got an all star team behind it, excellent investors, and the passion for gaming. All of the key members in the company have more than 10 years experience in the MMO field. They know it's failures, and its successes. If any game company is going to bring a A list epic MMO my money is on Trion. I DO NOT vouch for games that are hear today and gone tomorrow. I have never thrown my weight behind an MMO Other than DAOC, WAR, and Now RIFT. If you want to be part of Chapter 3 of the Gaiscioch Family story you know where you'll find us. My current spreedsheet shows 272 players which will be (Confirmed) joining us on RIFT. Comparing RIFT to AION is like comparing Outback Steakhouse to McDonalds. Why have a microwaved burger when you can have a steak? RIFT is NOTHING like AION. RIFT is also an AMERICAN (WESTERN STYLE) title not a imported afterthought and poorly translated Korean title. So you can leave your grindface at home. I have never had so much fun in PvE before. I look forward to having some good times in RIFT.

Great to hear your response Fogh, just two things: 1. I mentioned Aion only once as an example of yet another potentially good game that was disappointment (with hope that Rift won't follow that path). 2. If Rift is made for premades it WILL follow the same path as WAR since always premade will be better than PUG which will again lead to ragequit of casual players. I'm sorry but from that fragment it seems that playing alone in Rift (and seriously, we won't be always playing together) is bit pointless. [dit: BBCODE {Quote} breaks the post]

» Edited on: 2011-01-13 11:47:11

Andine and I will eventually make it over to Rift and leave 'Hammer. The family's been great during the short time we've been in and we certainly want to transition with them wherever they go. It's nice to see that a lot of thought goes into planning for the future. Unfortunately, it's going to require several hundred bucks to make the transition and money is tight. With the cost of the game, memory, and CPU upgrades for Andi's system, switching is going to be expensive. I'm not complaining. We'll be there, but it'll take some time. 8)

LOL I was there when we migrated to AION. I assure you guys that the effort of this guild expanding into RIFT is enormous compared to when we expanded to AION. AION, while I enjoyed the game, was just a brain fart. Honestly, it was just us, Ainwe's B-Teamers and Pomona (and her brother). Fog and the rest, I think were just goaded by Ainwe to move. But, yeah, our presence there dissipated really quick when Ainwe fell of the grid. She was the only one in the guild with leadership material.

Well she did have a baby! That kinda changes the dynamic a bit. She's wonderful and did a great job while she could. Babies are more important imo. Betodor, the aion comment wasn't directed at you. I've seen dozens of mentions and people compairing rift to aion and quite frankly I get a wee bit offended by it. Aion wasn't worth the box it came in and rift is the first title in 3 years I actually believe in and see they've got the product and staff to win. Nowhere close to aion in compairison. When I said its premade focused I might also add they're making raidqueue vs raidqueue / group queue vs group queue. Premades was in direct relation to warfronts. Open pvp is a whole other ballgame and is not official yes but I believe their version of orvr will lean more twords daoc than war. Which was very pug friendly.

This is my take on Rift: I haven't had this much fun in a mmo in about a decade. I'm an altaholic, so I'm used to the long boring trudge it takes to level ever single #$#@@! class through the same content. With Rift it's a bit different. If you roll all four callings and split those four characters onto two different sides (2 Defiant / 2 Guardian), you will be able to experience all 32 classes the game has to offer with only repeating the same content ONCE on each side. And if they add new classes? Just add it to your existing leveled character and respec. I don't know how PvP outside the warfronts work because they don't allow PvP (even on PvP servers) in the starting zone. So you are already level 20, have your mount, and probably have all the souls available to you by the time you enter gankville. There will always be the level 50 $%##@ hanging out waiting to kill the easy marks. As far as the PvE side goes, the Rifts and Invasions are fantastic! I love having to defend the zone from invading forces. It makes the game fresh. You never know what to expect or what big nasty you'll see coming around the corner. You actualy fear for your safety everywhere instead of just the mob lakes. I will be playing Rift for the forseeable future. At the $10 a month deal, I'll be keeping that current as long as possible. Even if GW2 turns out to be the second coming of Christ like everyone says it will be, it will be free to play once bought, so I won't have competing monthly fees in case I want to play it.

To answer your questions on Rift: 1> There are no oRvR lakes as compared to WAR implemented yet. But the other things like battlegrounds and their warfronts are very well done. It's enough I think to satisfy the casual PvPer. 2> I know what you mean about how WoW uses phasing to change your environment as your progress. They're a little bit ahead of Rift in that regard. But Rift is by no means a kill 10 things or collect 15 things game either. I found alot of the quests quite fun and innovative. 3> I never grinded to level in Rift. You have enough quests to just do those only. Also, you can level pretty easily just opening and closing Rifts. I didn't do much PvPing to level but I'm told you can also do that too. 4> I think there was a typo by Fog there. He's referring to how premades are the big winner in WAR 1.4. Rift is casual friendly but like any game, if you're better organized and better geared then you usually win. That doesn't mean it'll be like WAR tho. If you remember WAR was beset with bugs and had to scale back or eliminate alot of things right before launch. Rift has done nothing like that.

@Fog: Yeah, I know. That was a surprise when she announced it in the guild last year that she's pregnant. We have many good leaders in this guild and Ainwe is one of them. She kept the guild together for a while in Aion (and she's also a great duelist. never saw her lost a duel in Aion). Hopefully, she'll be with us in RIFT or in GW2.

It would be nice to have her coleading with me again. She was a blast. Still hoping to steal Pomona back to the family as well :D

@Rindou I'm quite an altaholic myself. Only thing (so far) I've found with rift is doing the same starting quests for every race on each side is a bit boring. I am hoping they might add some other questpaths. For my I like to have replayability, where I can start 6 toons and not be bored of the starter quests. Yes I like playing the higher level toons but often there's a lot of drama and annoyance at the higher levels (takes me forever to reach max level in any game with my main/s).

Sheesh... i go MIA for a month and thing goes nuts here @_@ lol Anyway, PvP on Rift, Rindou, is pretty much like any other game where youn don't have a zone cap flagging limitation, like WAR. As in, if you're flagged, you can and probably will be hit by whoever from the oposing faction crosses paths with you, regardless of level difference. (self experience here. I usually go around flagged on alpha, and had some unpleasant 50 vs 30 encounters with my rogue).

Celebtyr! Good to see you! :D I pretty much agree with everything Rindou said. Even though I will definitely be buying GW2 when it comes out, I'm not really all that hot on it at this point. I don't really like that you are limited in your character's backstory. This is one thing I don't like about the Guardian starting area in Rift. *I* want to create my character's backstory -- I don't want the game telling me how/where/where I grew up and what my personality is. Yes, I realize in GW2 you have choices. Personally, those choices aren't enough for me. The other thing I don't like about GW2 also relates to choices. (I'm an Aquarius and I'm an artist -- so sue me for being a free spirit. :P ) The thing is, I don't like having alts. You have no idea how hard it was for me to log in my alts in WAR just to play with you guys. So yeah, after experiencing the soul system in Rift, I'm not really sure I can go back to a class-limited game, even though I play GW1 and I know that you can choose what skills you have at any moment. A Ranger will still always be a Ranger, and a Mesmer will always be a Mesmer, with the clothes and hairstyles and way of standing that goes along with it. :(

LIkewise Ariel. Things have been quite chaotic here on my end. Year passing = *tons* of work at the place i work at. End result, me grumpy as hell for having to pull over 80 hours worth of extra shifts since December 17th, just to make sure we could get our part of the job done in time. Doesn't helps that we have presidential elections this year, so, whats already hectic became chaos incarnate lol. Needless to say that impacted rather seriously on my online time. DST in Brazil means we're, at the best scenario, 3 hours ahead East Coast, so, add that to the excessive work and i just couldn't get enough energy to remain awaken longer than needed to shower and swallows something whole :) Fortunately, things have settled down a lot now that everything is done, so, who knows. I might even show up on alpha again, time allowing :)

I never stay on General Chat. My window is always tabbed to combat and/or guild chat.

I've never been ganked before on the Alpha server. For some reason, I always seem to run into the nice and friendly Defiant who just wave at you and run along. I find myself torn on alts and Rift. On one hand, you really only need 4 characters, one for each archetype, to play all the many different class combinations. On the other hand, I find myself having trouble sticking wiht one character because it's so much fun messing around with all the soul combinations. So I'm not sure if Rift helps cure alt-itis or makes it worse lol. I couldn't help myself and bought Aion from Steam when it was $10. It's a very pretty game. But the mechanics are a bit stiff for me. And when WAR, Rift, WoW, and LotrO are all competing with it for my limited gaming time, it quickly became low man on the totem pole. But gameplay wise, it's nowhere near as polished as Rift.

@Fal we could do that but ya gotta be ok with playing on a PvE server ;).

which is our main target, if i`m not mistaken Fal ;)

Fantastic thread, I wanted to quote and reply to a few of you but there is just too much I was laughing at lol. you guys rock, cant wait till launch.

I have, until recently, been in the... "crap, I'm sick of WAR, I guess I'll wait for GW2 to come out to play with the family again" camp. Not so, since I've been in the Rift beta. I will definitely be picking up Rift as until GW2 comes out....if Rift proves to be as great as it has been in testing, I intend to move to the "playing both" camp.

After having read many reviews, watched videos and all... I have to say Rift seems actually VERY polished compared to the likes of WHO, I expect a few bugs of course... but everything i've seen and heard about Rift is uplifting... and I'd really like to join the family there... To be honest, i haven't been active in Gaiscioch since like... 2003 or 2004~ish... when we were still strong in DAOC... But I have an urge to play with people who aren't going to yell at me because i can't make a 8:00pm raid time every Thursday because i have work on that one out of four Thursdays in the month (ie. my wow guild i was in...) I want to play the game to have fun... If Rift or GW2 gives that to me, I'll be very very pleased... So I'll be buying Rift... ~~~

Hello everyone... Think it's about time to come out of the woodwork and do a bit of gaming again. Life over the past year has been rather hectic, and with the changes to Warhammer not progressing in a direction that I like, I've been left uninspired. I do manage to run around UO from time to time, so I'm not totally deprived in the Online gaming world. :P With the launching of Rift in the near future though, (and having some free time now), I would like to migrate to the new world and help the family with their endeavors there. I've been participating in the Beta, and have a few characters on the Faeblight Server that would like to join the family. If there is a Family Member Contact I could reach for recruitment, that would be greatly appreciated. Look forward to seeing you all there for many adventures! Gilgrim

So many new and old family members joining us for Rift! I just have to post that this is so awesome!!! <3

@Gilgrim, I have always been online fro the first minute for Beta Tests. I live in Europe where the Beta starts for us at 7PM CET. Whenever you get in on 25 Jan, send a tell to Macdeath for an invite. North American server list, Faeblight server.

Thanks Mac. I've a character on the Guardian and Defiant sides. I assume we will play as Guardians, so I'll send you a Tell from that character when Beta begins again. Thanks for the reply....I look forward to seeing you and others of the family in game soon! @Arieltalia...I think it will be awesome too, but for now, it's back to UO to build my house..lol Gilgrim