Rift: Is it still alive?

So I'll be going through my opinion of rift and a little bit of it's history to help people make a decision to whether or not it is worth their while to get the game. I have over 500 hours on it so I've had my fair share of fun with it, but even so, I've stopped playing for quite some time now.

Where to start? The game is very similar to World of Warcraft, so if you like questing, stories and dungeons/raid events etc... Well then what are you waiting for? The game can still be very viable to play as a solo player, however, the problem is that it's mainly actually become a solo game. The population heavily died out due to a falling out between the developers and the community, pushing a lot of the main hardcore players away from the game some time ago. Visited the game recently to check on how it was doing, and they've attempted to merge all the servers together in an attempt to bring it back to life, but really it is still quite inactive.

Never the less! The game is still quite outstanding and can be incredibly fun to play, just by yourself. There are lots of fun things to do, such as Rift openings, where you can go and fight enemies to close a Rift, earning some pretty nice rewards. The questing is quite enjoyable, and the combat is very satisfying. As far as combat mechanics go, I think it even tops WoW. 

When you play, there's a certain way you can go about things that will make it more enjoyable for you. There is a premium feature called Patron, this Patron can be received for 9 days for free at the beginning of your account. Comes with some pretty nice bonuses and perks, so its really worth getting it. Then when you use this patron you also get other extras as you level, such as XP boosts, free mounts, bags, gear all kinds of beautiful things that really make the game more enjoyable. This game is kind of a P2W in the sense that you can just buy the top tier gear from the shop at any time. It actually used to be a subscription based game, then it became free-2-play, in this time, the population increased, and the game was actually at one of its peaks. 

There are guilds, which give you perks for being inside them, so as long as you get into any guild from the get go, you'll get cool perks like raid resurrection, reduced soulwalk cool down, increased currencies and more.

I mentioned raid resurrection, let me get into that for you. One of the funnest parts of Rift for me was the inclusion of everyone, regardless of the level. Once you hit a certain level, I believe level 10 now, you can enter a raid finder. You can go through all of Rift's raids and dungeons with players of other levels and you will be given the appropriate damage and level to clear that particular raid/dungeon. This means you don't have to grind to the end game to see the end game content, you can actually begin right away. That was one of the most attractive parts and kept me fulfilled with Rift for a really long time. 

Now one note to mention, I know I said the population is small, but still the population is extremely helpful and friendly, because they don't want to push away the little amount of people that are in the game. Instead it is a very warm and welcoming community and you will be able to find people to afk in town with if you are like me! :)

So my point on this is that, if you can get through the fact that there isn't really a lot of people on the game, and you would like to play an MMORPG with great graphics and instant access to end game content, where you can actually contribute rather than just being boosted, then give it a try. As always, peace and love to all my fellow gamers, hope you have a good time regardless!