It's the taking part that counts

Photo: Hans-Petter Fjeld (CC-BY-SA)

I've been playing quite a bit of Rift recently. For all the accusations of it being a WOW clone (not a fundamentally bad thing, by the way), it does differ in one important respect: the approach to grouping.

Most group content in WOW is tightly regulated: five-mans are tuned for ... errr ... five people; raids are designed for ten or twenty-five. If you've got 11 people available for raiding tonight, someone has to miss out. You can't just wander up to an instance and help out, either - if your name's not on the list, you're not coming in.