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RIFT


Nadril

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http://www.riftgame.com/en/

 

 

So yeah, another MMO. I've been debating making a thread on this for a while now and after a few days of playing the open beta I figured why not. I'm just not going to try and gush all over it this time :P.

 

 

So, what is RIFT?

 

Rift is a new MMO by TRION, a relatively new company to the scene. The game, especially upon first glance, draws a lot of inspirations from current generation MMOs. Indeed RIFT doesn't seem to be looking to "shake up" these like some other major MMO releases coming down the road but instead they are just trying to use these mechanics to their fullest.

 

That isn't to say, however, that RIFT is a carbon-copy. The game has a couple features that stand out from other MMO games on the market and give it a bit of a unique flare. Those include:

 

 

Rifts

 

Rift's are sort of the bread and butter of what RIFT (surprise?) is all about. What are these? Well the best way to put it is they are sort of like a more dynamic public quest from warhammer. For those who don't know public quests were basically these large quests that would happen in a certain spot of a zone and have several stages. You were graded on how much damage, healing and damage taken you did.

 

Well the rift's in this game are somewhat like that. You have major and minor (and then raid rifts later, IIRC) that will "randomly" spawn around a zone. These act like a public quest where you go through the stages and stuff. At the end you clear the rift and get a reward. The rift's are all based off of elements (death, water, fire, ect.).

 

The difference is that RIFT takes it further than that. For example if a rift is left uncheck the mobs from it will start building footholds and encampments around the zone. They have the possibility of taking over a zone if left unchecked. Of course on beta the mobs don't tend to get far due to the zone being crowded, but I've seen them attacking and such.

 

In addition to this there are zone-wide events that will trigger that involve rift's. Some are basic ones, others are actually epic events that may last 30 minutes to an hour. One in the starter zone has the map get covered in death rifts all of the sudden (I'm talking like 30 of them) and have bosses and stuff wandering around trying to take the map over. It becomes this kind of cool thing where groups are forming up and fighting off different rifts, some are fighting off bosses and some are clearing and taking back footholds.

 

Speaking of groups it's really easy to get into one for a rift. When you walk near one it gives you an option to join any group nearby the rift and it has made it really easy to get large raid groups going clearing these things.

 

 

Soul Trees

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html

 

Soul trees are RIFT's answer to both classes and "talents". In RIFT there are 4 basic class archetypes: Warrior, Rogue, Cleric, Mage. Each of these 4 archetypes have 9 soul trees, 8 regular ones and 1 PvP specific tree. Every character can have a maximum of 3 soul trees "equipped" to make up their build.

 

Above is the soul tree calculator. As you can see part of it is a standard, talent-tree deal. You put points, get talents to improve abilities, move up the tree. The difference is that these soul trees are also tied to the abilities you get. What this means is that you have a lot of customization options when it comes to how you want to build your character and lets you create a very personalized class. I have been able to recreate the "idea" of a lot of different classes from various MMOs through these combinations. It's actually a really cool process and is RIFT's largest feature to me.

 

It should also be mentioned that you will be able to have up to a maximum of 4 specs (have to buy each one with gold) that you can swap between, much like a "dual spec" in WoW. This means you could have, for example, a PvE solo, PvE group, PvP solo, PvP group.

 

The other cool thing is that a lot of classes have abilities to do different roles. A cleric, for example, can heal and dps. A rogue can tank and DPS. A mage can DPS and heal. A warrior can tank and DPS.

 

The worry, of course, is that balance might be an issue. I haven't actually had much experience with that but it will be interesting to see how they handle that.

 

 

So is it any good?

 

This is always the million dollar question. It's no surprise to some people that as of recently I've been pretty jaded to MMO releases. WAR, AoC, Aion.. they all really bit me hard with various issues. I initially looked at RIFT with a lot of skepticism, and I still do look at it like that.

 

 

That being said I do think it is a worthwhile game to buy if you're bored of something like WoW but want an MMO that doesn't drastically change everything. Trion does seem like they have their [cabbage] together and have responded to issues quickly in beta. The game runs well for me on a modest laptop and the network code has actually been excellent. (getting 50-75ms to an east coast server from Kansas).

 

So I'm not going to fully review a game that is still in beta but I thought I would give a fairly brief list of pros and cons I've found about the game so far.

 

 

Pros

 

- The soul tree and class options are actually really cool. There is a nice amount of customization that lets you play around with how you want your character to be.

 

- rift's, while I was initially skeptical to them, actually turned out to be cool. They are a bit "zergy" with a ton of people in them currently though.

 

- You don't really have to level through quests. You can level through PvP or rift's.

 

Cons

 

- I'm not 100% sure how keen I am on some of the animations currently. Melee especially seems a bit iffy sometimes when a lot is going on in PvP.

 

- The early levels (like 1-6 or so) aren't that interesting at all. After 6 it certainly picks up but 1-6 are very tutorialized in nature.

 

- I'm not sure what opportunities there will be for world PvP while leveling. At max level it seems like there are a lot of reasons to do it, leveling I'm not sure aside from a few specific instances.

 

 

 

So yeah, RIFT isn't going to drastically change anything. However I feel like it's got the best chance out of any MMO in the past few years to make a bit of an impact on the market. WoW is stagnating due to a lot of people bored with cataclysm and most other modern MMOs have been hemoraging players. It seems that RIFT has a stable amount of content ready for a release. I'm not going to say that this game is incredible but truth be told it is a fun game. As an avid MMO player I feel like, at the very least, this will be an interesting game to play for a bit to tide the time to the major releases such as Guild Wars 2.

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I tested out the open beta, and even though the whole 'We're not in Azeroth anymore' ad thing kinda left me thinking the game was going to be awful, it was actually pretty enjoyable. The open beta seems to be going much better than most other MMO open betas I've tried, too. I think there was only one crash when I was playing, which I think is a record, har. I'm getting tired of WoW, so depending on when this comes out, it may bridge my MMO gap between WoW and SWTOR/GW2.

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I tested out the open beta, and even though the whole 'We're not in Azeroth anymore' ad thing kinda left me thinking the game was going to be awful, it was actually pretty enjoyable. The open beta seems to be going much better than most other MMO open betas I've tried, too. I think there was only one crash when I was playing, which I think is a record, har. I'm getting tired of WoW, so depending on when this comes out, it may bridge my MMO gap between WoW and SWTOR/GW2.

 

Yeah they did have one crash the first day lol, servers were getting overloaded. Like every server was high/full pop.

 

Been running quite smooth though even with these big events going on. I agree too that the ad sort of left me thinking it was just another garbage MMO but I was pretty surprised.

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Thanks for writing this :) I had seen ads for this and it definitely intrigued me but I never really got involved and have not tried it yet. Maybe I'll give it a go now.

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:thumbup:

 

If anyone is playing Open beta US I am playing on the Deepstrike - PvP server. Characters are Nadril, Cyrant, Gatoraide on the Defiant side.

 

Mostly just testing out classes to try out for release.

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Rogue. Lvl 20 now.

 

Right now I'm a sab spec and then my second is a bard. Did your guild want to roll on Briarthorn? Thats where I wanted to go to but it had like a 2600 queue line. Regulos had just opened up so said [bleep] it and went there.

 

 

 

They're still adding servers though. I hope people stay so that they don't have to merge a bunch later on.

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Rogue. Lvl 20 now.

 

Right now I'm a sab spec and then my second is a bard. Did your guild want to roll on Briarthorn? Thats where I wanted to go to but it had like a 2600 queue line. Regulos had just opened up so said [bleep] it and went there.

 

 

 

They're still adding servers though. I hope people stay so that they don't have to merge a bunch later on.

 

 

Oh lawdie, I'm playing the same. Having SO much fun.

Yeah, we had decided on Briarcliff beforehand, but today when the queues were only slightly better than yesterday's most of us just moved on. I'm hoping trion has free character transfers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm a rogue, level 15 here. Having a lot of fun on this game. It's nice to play a fresh release and not be 10 years behind everyone else. :)

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>>was invited to beta

>>didn't try it

>>didn't regret it

 

 

but now that other people are talking about, its capturing my vague interest. if it starts to look more and more promising, I might hop onto the bandwagon, but as it stands I simply don't have time to have my life force drained by an MMO....again.

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I'm really looking at playing this, but I've never really played an MMO apart from Runescape before, so this is a big jump. And whilst I didn't get addicted to RS, from what i've seen these are much more addictive, and considering I have uni next year I don't fancy ruining my life just yet.

 

So, is it worth playing or should I just forget it as it's not possible to regulate?

And is there like a Noobs guide to hotbar MMOs or anything out there? Terminology, character types and such?

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The terminology and everything isn't that bad, youll pick everything up pretty easily.

 

Anybody done any endgame?

 

I rolled a mage (rogue is 36 atm) so nah.

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After some research, I think i've got it.

 

When making a character you pick a faction, which then is split into three unique races you can choose from, each with their own abilities (such as brief flight for elves)

 

After choosing your Faction and Race, you then choose an archatype, out of Warrior, Mage, Rogue or Cleric. These then have "Souls" which move your player towards a certain role within the game and can be switched at certain times.

 

How am I doing so far?

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That's pretty much right.

 

Don't worry too much about being a newbie. JJ is a huge noob and still having fun.

 

 

Mage is 23 now, having fun with him. Nice not being one of a million rogues.

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[hide]eZ2uB.jpg[/hide]

 

They're ok.

 

 

Seriously though reason they are cried about is because its a hard class to play well. If you're good they can do some nasty stuff, otherwise... gg. Also pyro relies a bit hard on procs.

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