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Jokersvirus
01-05-2011, 09:58 PM
This is a preview of the game through my eyes and what i experienced with my limited amount of time on there. I made it to level 13 before the beta ended and the following are the notes I took on it.


Starting off you can pick between 4 races and several different classes. As the game begins you start off with one soul tree, which defines what you will be playing as. For example, I am playing a warrior, I can be several different types of a tank, dps or even a healer. I chose rift lord, warlord and paladin. Rift lord is a mix between magic and melee where I can fire projectiles’ at people and use the elements. Warlord seems to uses abilities to weaken enemies and help his or her allies. Lastly, paladin is my tanking class where I use abilities to protect myself and to keep targets pissed off at me and I have abilities to heal myself and smack the crap out of the enemies.

As a warrior, I have a unique way to activate more powerful attacks, this way is by using certain attacks to gain attack points, I get a max of 3. I can use my special abilities at anytime as long as I have one attack point, but obviously if I have more points the more damage that will be done. From what I can tell, you get all your abilities throughout the game from your soul tree. Pretty much after you invest enough points into a tree you get a new ability. From leveling you get one - two souls to invest into the tree. When trying to decide what combos to pick for your classes the game gives you recommendations on what to pick, I’m not entirely sure what they base it on but I am bond to believe it is on how they work together, or variety of classes.

When you enter the game for the first time you learn there is a war going on between a few different parties, defiant and guardians and humanity and the Regulos, some douche bag hell bent on destroying the world. Coming into the beta for the first time out of three trails so far I do not know much about the Guardians and Defiant. All that is given is the guardians believe in the path of the gods and they follow their word, and the defiant believe they have the sole choice in doing what they want. Regulos is just the main bad guy the two sides will come together and destroy then go back to kicking the crap out of each other.



The game has a World of Warcraft feel yet its better, the storyline is more interesting, you feel more involved instead of just feeling like a piece of a puzzle, you are but it’s not as noticeable than in Wow. Unlike Wow, there is no phasing meaning that once you’ve completed a task the world around you changes to the quest you’ve completed. For example, I kill or make active a defense barrier to help protect something the world will not change to show the place is protected and we’ve got it under control.


Starting off as a level 1 the game in general is very helpful in getting you use to the controls and help you understand your class and the souls you pick. There is a learning curve where you have to figure out the best combo of attacks to kill faster, to do more damage, and to take less damage from enemies but this is a given in any game of this type. The game itself is very open and free feeling, this game doesn’t make you keep a race and keep a class and run with what you got. IE, going back to WoW, you keep a Warrior and you can only be a DPS and tank nothing more. Here, you can be a warrior with trees in DPS, Healing and Tanking, so you’re making yourself more open and useful in a general view and opening yourself to more interactions to try different things. If you get tired of being a DPS you can tank, if you’re tired of tanking you can be a healer. It’s very interesting combo ability.


After starting up a Rogue Ranger soul it seems that all class combos use a point system in order to use more powerful attacks to destroy enemies.

Another interesting concept thrown in by the creators is if you kill a lot of enemies you don’t have to loot them all to gather stuff just loot one and you will get gain all items from all the enemies you’ve killed that are within a close proxy.

Something interesting about the game is that it has a Chronicles of Riddick feel, it’s a time long past and has advance technologies involved, this is an interesting concept, as this has been seen in WoW it feels more natural in Rift that it belongs here in this game and helps with the game's storyline somehow. It’s a combo of magic and technology it works well with the game. The togetherness of old school and new school, old being the world setting and new being the technology, is rarely seen in this manner but is used in all MMOs.



The use of this "Feel," as I will define it, is common in wow you have the use of magic, and technology, but they were never together, IE you have motorcycles in that game yet it seems to be set in a universe that is in the past in a world of magic and wonder not technology. Here the technology and magic is used as one, IE, the current quest I am working on I have to disable morbid infusers, and the technology is combined with magic to harm innocence around the town.


Quests in Rift are obviously involved in advancement of level and storyline. Both sides have different quests in which they need to complete in order to help their side. There are different types of quests in general for any MMO, Killing, gathering, finding, escorting, talking and listening. As the quest are repeated hundreds of times over the storyline is what will help the advancement, but if you don’t want to read and just want to level that is fine to but you will miss out on what’s going on, as I am right now. The game gives you the location and the general area, which is highlighted by a yellow circle, of where the object or what you need to kill is at. The quests are straight forward you, the quest giver is on the map.


One of the most interesting aspects, as Shixx can atest to, is the invasions. There was a major invasion on the last day of beta testing, or a little before it ended. First invasion was of Regulos having some of his battlions invading which was fun and pretty much lagged the entire zone to hell and back, and the second invasion was much smaller and it was the guardians attacking different cities. overall it was fun and well worth it.

gnomeo
05-08-2011, 06:27 PM
interesting. I thought about playing RIFT but honestly after being spoiled with eve so many years and not having to pay for my MMO of choice, that monthly bill looks pretty grim.

nice, review.

Saph
05-08-2011, 06:32 PM
Nice addition to the RIFT review for sure! Still though, don't think RIFT is one for me.

As gnomeo said, After being spoiled by WoW for 6 years I dont think any other MMORPG will catch my eye for a while...Aion online did, and it was a huge damned failure(read my review)