With Rift I’ve found, when I join a group to do a dungeon, having rifts to do gives me something to occupy myself while I wait for the group to form up. Sure, doing the dungeon may get delayed for a scheduled run, but taking into account those are often late waiting for people to get ready, the bad effects of dynamic events (delays) are counterbalanced by the benefits (something do to while waiting.

Anyway, the only events which really get in the way of anything for me is taking down the invasion bosses for the rare currencies, good loot, and the achievements for killing them. Eventually, that novelty will die down and I imagine even those lures of dynamic events will be weak in comparison to planned events.

In WoW, from a roleplaying perspective, the “golden times” were before raids, raid calendars, weekly and daily quest grinds. If you scheduled a RP event, lots of people would show up, since the only thing that was “missed” was another run on Scholomance or Dead Stratholme or the like. It didn’t feel like showing up to a dynamic event (albeit player created) was a big sacrifice… you neither had to make excuses to the other folks that signed up for this week’s raid nor “slip behind” in the power curve.

Personally, I loved the zombie invasions in WoW pre-WotLK. I guess that is why I’m enjoying Rift as well. With that said, I play with my husband who lately seems to want to avoid the Rifts and just level. I told him that I was still going to stop and help groups close rifts. That is what sets this game apart after all from most others and what pulled us to it in the first place.

It is all about expectation management. Designers and marketing need to make sure that players play the game with the right attitude. Just like playing Fallout 3 with a first-person-shooter attitue doesn’t work, nor does one single zombie event work in the static world of Warcraft.

But this is no reason to forget about events. Random opportunities and disaster add spice to the world/game. I don’t see player run events doomed because of dynamic events. I think we would see more player run events if MMO mechanics would allow for more than simple crafting, gathering and killing. I can imagine player organized reactions to dynamic events. City X overrun by Zombies, Zombie Horde moving towards Y, strange things going on at Z, where do you want to go? Now imagine how happy people would be if their actions would have a certain impact on the world/event.