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Rift: Worth the time and effort
I'm old school. EQ was my first MMO, and I played a mere month after launch, and that only because I spent time overseas.
I didn't have a clue about Rift, I got a beta invite because I bought a new PC and Nvidia sent me the link. I gave it a try blind, and came out pre-ordering the CE. Now that the Beta 5 is over, I've had two beta's to really decide if I had made a snap decision or a good investment.
It's pretty clear for me that I'm making a solid investment. Beta 5 added something I thought was needed when I played in 4, "Join Public Group" for Rifts. This made it "mo'better" to take out those pesky rifts. I played mostly Defiant because I intend to be Guardian at release and want that side of the game a surprise.
The Soul System is quite ingenious, and allowed me to find "me" in the game. I almost ALWAYS play pure casters, with the exception of EQI where I played a druid, I play a fireball tossing mage. WoW? Check. WAR? Check. You get the picture.
Rift? No, not so much. In fact, I have yet to find a Mage soul that fits me. So what to do? Cleric Druid with Warden? Yes please. Rogue Sabo-Bard-Ranger? HELL YA. Now I'm torn between which will be my main at launch!
As far as crafting goes, I was initially unimpressed. The same old "gather X combine to make Y" scheme. But as I poked around and tried it out, I discovered there is a lot more to the crafting then initially presented. Being able to deconstruct items for mats, breaking greens and above for runecarving... the possibilities are endless. I'm actually thinking I will have a gathering and a crafting set up. One character to make it, one character to collect it. Not really sure yet. We'll see if I have the patience for that 
Funny thing is, I can't play WoW anymore. The cartoon style never really sat well with me, and after playing Rift, I just... can't do it. Rift has plenty of pretty and solid performance. Granted there are a few bugs, the occasional disconnect and the like, but that happens in any beta. But over all, the game is running smooth as ice.
A nice touch they added along with letting you join public groups as I mentioned before, is that if you are queued for a War Front, you don't lose that. You can pop in, take out a rift and not have to re-up. This IMHO was a wise move.
Is the game revolutionary in its concept? No. It takes from many a games and combines them for a great experience with nice touches that make it a solid entry into the Genre. They haven't made wild claims they cannot keep, and appear to be taking lessons of past failures to heart. I think Rift is setting up to be the first game in the fantasy subscription model since WoW to have legs. WAR failed because it tried to be too many things and failed at them all. AoC died because it was rushed, poorly designed and lacked polish.
I'd readily pay now for the game to go live and "pay to beta". Because for me, the money and time are worth it from what I have seen.
Always change your signature.
Comments
Yeah... I'm screwed...
I'm addicted to Rift.
Ill be counting the days until the next event.
Good write up OP.
I wanna play my Cleric... now.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Can't wait to actually get in this game on release and see how my soul tree set up works out...
So far so good, but that is only at low levels. I got up to lvl 21 in the course of 2 beta's. I may have to tweak my souls a bit just to be viable in pvp, but we'll see how it goes.
Yea this game is definately worth the 50 dollars.. Not gonna get the CE , but the 50 dollar deal seems well worth it.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
To be honest, I'm debating on not doing any more beta's... but I know that when the servers are open, I'll be there.
Now that I'm in the teens on my Rogue, I'm spending a lot of time "smelling the flowers" as it were, just poking around and seeing what's out there. I can't help myself when I see a little sparkling ball of light tucked away, I must have it my precious!
Always change your signature.
That's the only thing I am concerned about with beta. I'm not gonna get to keep my character and starting over again may feel like been there and done that, so I may just pvp for the next beta event and do nothing else.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
I hate how the rift forum gets spammed by people that tried the game in the lvl 1-9 brakket. and found it generic and linear.
Its a freaking tutorial and noobie zone. You are expecting end game gameplay right from the start is just silly.
The game had way more depth then anything seen in other mmo's lately. There are loads of ways to lvl up and sooo much to do.
People that say its linear shoud get there head out of there ass. Get on there mount. And start exploring! if you actualy new anything about rift. You would know that there are
a) Secret quests all over the place
b) achievments to be gained from lots of different things around the world
c) artifact hunting
d) and the biggest exitment of them all. Secret mini games and loot chests EVerywhere! i think i lost count how many purple items i found at lvl 20. From exploring and finding stuf. Even in the middle of nowhere like in the giant lake in the center or at the beaches. Or even in the huge mountains. Explorers can find wonderful things. and whats even nicer. These items scale with your lvl that you do them!
This!!!!!!!! ^^^^
It was wonderful finding all these little secret things. In fact I spent a lot of time just knocking about getting into the little nooks and crannies and found many hidden things in game. Take archeology. Blizzard got archeology completely wrong...in fact it sucks. Sorry but it is boring, tedious and not fun. In Rift...I love it. They did it right!
There is no way you will be able to sit out betas 6 & 7. Not gonna happen!Agree. I was sad when beta 5 ended. I didn't want to stop playing.
After playing both Open beta for RIFT and Korean Open Beta for Tera. I have to said if you are looking for something new and next gen MMO wait for TERA. RIFT is not much different from WoW in some sense is much easier to play. Tera on the other hand bring new game play style since EQ1 came out.
Here is some video
Cool tera looks like bloodline champions xD, anyway tera beta is far of. and i think with everybody's bad aftertaste from aion. We wil use a stick to toutch that game. a very long one. But i wil toutch it.
We wil let tera speak for itself when it comes out. like on christmass or something
Asian based MMO's are notoriously grindy games, with poor NA customer service, and they never westernize them. People in NA and EU are a different breed of gamer and that is why games like Aion and Lineage's never do very well over here.
Once Tera begins their open beta test for the western audience, and when it launches I'll certainly give it a try. These are the Rift forums though.
I refuse to play Tera simply based on the over the top female character models and armor designs. Personally I find it just sad that they need to use girls with DDD breasts in order to try to get people to play it. I was actually surprised in Rift when the females are actually shaped like they are fighters, not dressed up like they are going to a night club in high heals while carrying a 6 foot long claymore.
But I digress, personally I love the way Rift does what it does. Ill be honest I actually hated it and uninstalled it after the 3rd beta and skipped the 4th. I got another key for the 5th and decided to give it another go seeing my guild is moving into it. All I can say is that the past week was a blur, and I became completely addicted to the game. Just something about it is extremely fun.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/02/the-soapbox-you-have-an-hour-to-grab-my-attention/
If people feel the game isn't fun in the beginning then they are not obligated to keep playing it because someone else says that it opens up at a later level. People shouldn't feel the need to reach a certain threshold to start having fun.
I was kinda set to start off Cleric Druid, until I tried Rogue Ranger-Bard near the end of Beta 5. O.M.Freakin.G. All I can say is I'm so tornnnnnn. Loved the Ranger-Bard combo.
I don't typically enjoy warrior classes as much, but gosh golly gee I even had fun with the dual-wielding Paragon soul and the Beastmaster.
Decisions decisions.
pie.
Hasnt your mother ever told you not to judge a book by its cover
well i say to bad for those we simple give up because the cover isnt the most awesome thing ever. I'm happy they didnt waste huge resources to make the first 10 lvl's awesome. and then turn into a horrible game. Remember AoC starter area?
where you only spend your first 1-2 hours wich in mmo terms is what of the total play time? 0.001%?
Atleast now the game only becomes more and more intresting. Wich makes me enjoy it more and more
Very nice write up OP.
I am in pretty much the same exact boat. I hadnt heard of Rift until the day before Beta when old DAoC buddies texted me with a vip key, asking me to come join them. I also am pre-ordered now. Is the game revolutionary? No. Does it look solid in terms of polish and good PvP? Certainly. It just takes the best of some of my fav MMOs (DAoC class diversity, WAR PQs, WoW BGs, Aion quality graphics) and throws them into a game im certain will not be a huge "success" in terms of raw subscribers, but will find a place with a lot of vet gamers who can appreciate what they are doing here.
Lewk- Healer of Legacy Gareth
McDee- Spiritmaster of Maelstrom Percival
Murgu- Skald of Mordred
I agree OP.
Rift is home for me now. I spent 30 hours this week playing Beta 5, and when the servers went down the only thing I felt was... "MORE RIFT PLEASE!"
This game has such a fun flow to it, plus all of the little things mentioned, and Trion really seems like a great company on top of it all. Not very often we get all of those ingredients at once.
I'm extremely happy with this game. I can't wait for beta 6 and eventually head start.
There's a nice video here and for some saying the force is stronger listen carefully around the 14 minutes mark
What sucks is that I just started getting into the game last night, and then the beta event ends. It hasn't changed my opinion as of yet that I think it's an average, run of the mill MMO, but I think it might be able to stand on its own feet.
My main problem with the game is mostly graphical. While I think the graphics are amazing, the animations need a lot of work. The only characters I was really able to play were the Humans and Elves, because a lot of the animations for the other classes felt unfinished/shoddy.
I'm warming up to the class system, though. Being able to mix and match whatever combination of class mechanic you want seems very DCOU/Champions, which I like.
Groovy.
I understand fully that some of the animations aren't doing it for you for some races/classes. I'm the same way with WoW. there are certain race/class combo's that just, meh. the animation sin't right, they look wrong...
With as much variation as there is to the classes and races in terms of what you can do, it's worth the shot to find the one or two that just "woah, this is it" for you.
What's really neat with the souls? When you get that second role opened. Then you can take that third hanger on soul you have and jack it, the cost of respeccing is very low. So they encourage you to give different things a whirl. And after you hit the main city of your faction of choice, you can open MORE souls to tinker with. That IMHO is something worth the effort. I plan on getting a character of all four class mains with the souls unlocked so I can really play with the combinations to find the ones that meet what I need for what I do.
Always change your signature.
Actually have til Monday, and a week after that will be another 20% off deal, but any Fileplanet member gets the 15% off anytime regardless. But use the Redeem code: wetkitty
And you can have the Rift Collectors Edition for $50, or the Standard Version for a little less.
$47ish
That's the only thing I am concerned about with beta. I'm not gonna get to keep my character and starting over again may feel like been there and done that, so I may just pvp for the next beta event and do nothing else.
I thought the same too. In two beta events I've played through the sub 20 content Atleast three times each on each side. One would assume that I would be bored by now but I find the overall experience so well put together that I look forward to running through I a few more times as launch. Also even though I'm using the character I plan on leveling first he doesn't have one of my normal mmo names and isnt the race or faction I plan on playing at release so that helps.Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Close but wrong.
RIFT Digital Collector's Edition
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