Rift

What, you don’t know what Rift is? What rock have YOU been hiding under? (probably World of Warcraft, although that’s more of a mountain than a rock).

Rift just completed it’s last beta and will be available for purchase on March 1.

First, to the most often-asked question : Is it a WoWkiller?

Answer – stop asking silly questions. I don’t think anything is a WoWkiller. Even Everquest is still alive and doing VERY well. Better question : is it fun? YES oh YES.

Talent Trees

Talent trees in Rift are slightly different than you might be used to. Instead of a single tree, each character can have THREE active trees at any time (and you can swap out trees and respec very easily).

Instead of “trees”, though, they’re called “souls”. Each class has a variety of souls available to it, which you (the player) mix and match to create your favorite combination of abilities. Do you sink most of your points into a single soul to reach the top of the tree or do you dabble, placing balanced points in each tree to get a wide variety of buffs and abilities?

It’s totally up to YOU.

Some Groundwork

In Rift, you choose one of four classes (note that these are called Callings) : Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Mage.

Want to be a tank? You can choose Warrior … but also Cleric or Rogue. Want to be the best all-around tank? Warrior is probably the safest bet, though our resident tank found a Cleric tank build that he sounded keen to try out.

Want to be a healer? Try Cleric or Mage or even the Rogue! Best all around is Cleric, but the Mage healer (the Chloromancer soul) is a TON of fun and can be really powerful, so don’t discount it. I haven’t tried the rogue-based Bard yet, but you can bet I will.

Rogues can be ranged or melee dps … but they also have the Bard class, which does great buffing and support. Oh, and they’ve got a tank soul, too. You know. Just in case you know a rogue who also likes to tank (*cough*Zasp*cough*)

EVERYONE has dps options.

In other words – the Rift developers tried to give a lot of options to every class and keep the possibilities pretty flexible.

It Takes Some Time

This is actually the worst part of the game – the first 8 levels. These are the introductory levels, the ones that set up the story, give you your first three souls, and introduce you to your character.

It’s not that this part of the game is done poorly (far from it) it’s just that it’s so exactly like every other game as far as gameplay goes. You pick up a quest, you do the quest, you move on to the next hub. It’s predictable.

It’s an introduction, and for someone who doesn’t bleed theorycrafting, it’s necessary.

… it’s just not “the fun part”. *grin*

Rifting

The game isn’t called ‘Rift’ just because it’s catchy. Once you get out of the introductory areas, you’re foisted into the world, where you can continue doing the quests … but you can also Rift.

Periodically, tears in the fabric of the world will open and tentacled, crazed monsters will creep through and try to take over the world.

These rifts appear randomly throughout the world and have mobs that are level-appropriate to where the rift appears.

Rifts are world events and the hope is that everyone in an area will drop what they’re doing to join the fight against the rift monsters. You can join the public raid group fighting the rift easily and you are rewarded for sealing the rift. In my experience, this is exactly what happens. Everyone nearby rushes the rift to help out and it’s a real treat to see so much participation.

Additionally, there are larger events that shake the world and give you a quest – these are invasions. Stop the invasion and complete the quest or stand by as your quest hubs are ransacked – it’s up to you.

Rifting was chaotic and crazy and SO MUCH FUN. They’re like mini, public raids that happen whenever you want them to. They don’t take much time, the rewards are great, and they’re WAY more fun than questing.

Particularly if you have support souls equipped, the game really doesn’t get fun until you start rifting.

Instancing

There are also instances AND high-end raids (which, from what I’ve heard, are private rifts) but I didn’t get a chance to play that high in the beta.

I’ve heard they’re a lot of fun, though. =]

Factions

There are two factions in the game – Guardians and Defiant.

Defiant are technomages and mad scientists. The end justifies their means, but they are not the “evil” faction. They’re just not as noble as the Guardians. (Case in point, my favorite character on the Defiant side – the Faceless Man.)

Guardians are chosen by the gods and have a bit of religious zealotry going on. These guys are the goodie-two-shoes of the game. They’re also (in my opinion) prettier. Also, they get horned lions to ride on. HORNED LIONS. Poor Defiant with their armored mechano-horses, they don’t even realize what they’re missing.

HORNED LIONS! *flail*

Anyway, it looks like Defiant is going to be the side that’s more populated than Guardian, at least based off of beta activity. That means more people to help out with rifts, larger guilds, and … well, more people. Oh, and they’ll probably do better at pvp, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

PVP

Speaking of pvp – there are dedicated pvp servers and dedicated pve servers (and also a sprinkling of rp servers as well).

There’s some great additional info on pvp for a pve server in the comments.

Qoth Commenter Daria :

As for the PvP issue, I do believe that NPCs are attackable. However on PVE servers, you cannot attack an opposing faction’s Wardstone (which are in quest hubs) and the Guards in quest hubs are beefed up. In theory this would discourage people from trying to take out quest givers just to be mean. I also like that you can choose to turn auto pvp-flagging off, so if you tried to heal a pvp flagged friend you just wouldn’t be able to heal them instead of getting automatically flagged. But on PvP servers, anything goes. :)

Graphics

The game offers a low-end graphics setting.

In my opinion, the game is pretty ugly when using this setting. I don’t enjoy playing it as much, so we actually ended up dragging our high end gaming boxes out of the closet and hooking them back up because I needed it to be pretty.

With high end graphics turned on, the game is VERY pretty. =]

Nuff said.

Is too much, I sum up

Rift’s recipe took the generic MMO structure and added the awesome spice of rifting on top. It’s fun to play, encourages interaction, has super-flexible class trees, and sounds like it has a robust end-game as well.

I am impressed enough to pre-order.

Maybe I’ll see you in game. =]

Leave a Comment

Name*

Mail (will not be published)*

Website

Comment

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail