Rift: Planes of Telara - Page 10

To start off, let me present my MMORPG experience so that you can have an idea of where I am coming from. I played Ultima Online through the Second Age, for about 2 years. Then moved on to Dark Age of Camelot until the release of World of Warcraft. I have been playing a Rogue in WoW since release and am currently still an active raider. I am a progression oriented player, with a high focus on end game content. I played a Paragon/Riftstalker for this review, which is a melee dps.

The first thing I'd like to hit is the Graphics and the UI. The UI, as most of you can see, is pretty much a blatant rip off from World of Warcraft. I, personally, have no issue with this whatsoever. Why re-invent the wheel? It's streamlined and has decent functionality. You can scale the UI to resize and drag any window or bar anywhere you would like, something that WoW does not offer without use of addons. My one gripe with the UI is the key bindings. I was unable to locate, which is not to say that this does not exist, a function to keybind my non-primary action bars. This function absolutely needs to be implemented.

The graphics are pretty darn good and I found myself staring at some environments and just thinking "Wow, this is gorgeous". That being said, the game does not currently offer AA and because of that some of the models remain a little rough. I am not sure if they plan to support it or not, but it would definitely help. I had poor frame rates on Max settings in the first beta event, but this has been rectified. Trion did an excellent job of working out the performance issues and I was able to get 70+ FPS in high traffic areas with ease. The MOB models looked pretty nice and there was considerable variance, though I didn't get past level 22 content, so there could be some reuse of models later on. All in all, I'm pretty pleased witht he visual experience that Rift offers, though I do not put much weight personally into graphics when determining whether or not I will play a game.

Combat was pretty common place. Not a whole lot of shiny new stuff here. Rogue classes work off of combo points, exactly like WoW. Warriors use some sort of stamina, similar to energy, and can generate "Attack Points" to use to unleash various finishers. The one gripe I had with the Warrior resource, was that I had a seemingly endless supply. I never had to stop to think about what skill I wanted to use or pool them. I just mashed the buttons in what seemed to be the most effective order. Mage classes use Charge, which is built up by casting spells. Each spell gives a set amount of charge. Charge can be used to do a bunch of neat things, like blow stuff up or reduce mana cost of your next spell. There is no penalty for having a full bar all of the time, other than you do not generate more. It does not drain while in combat once it is gained unless you use it, but once you are out of combat it depletes rapidly. Clerics have no extra resource other than mana.

I found a lot of stuff pretty well in place. The combat animations are much more fluid than World of Warcraft, but they aren't perfect by any means. Damage and healing is displayed in a manner similar to scrolling combat text from WoW, which I prefer, so that is a plus. All in all, I pretty much feel like I am playing any current age MMO when engaging in combat. This may or may not be a positive depending on what you prefer.

PvE was pretty much common place when compared to Warcraft as well. Questing was very similar and I oftentimes would have forgotten that I wasn't playing WoW if the game didn't look so much different. There were some neat quests here and there, but I digress, it's nothing to write home about. The one nice thing about leveling, is at least at the levels that are available, grinding was a viable option for gaining experience. Sometimes I just want to kill things mindlessly and level up and it was nice to have that option. There are also other ways to level up, including PvP experience and collecting Artifacts. Artifacts are remotely interesting, in that they encourage you to explore and try to jump around and do neat stuff with the environment. They work basically, by completing a set. Each artifact will require a set amount of items, which when collected, will form the artifact. I have not found an artifact that works as an actual piece of gear or item yet, but the ones that I have found can be turned in for reasonable experience as well as some good like gold and potions. Artifacts are placed in locations around the world and must be picked up. They are often hidden and require you to be looking out for them. I've found a few in really random places, like in trees that I've climbed while I was jumping around waiting for friends, or ontop of mountains that didn't look like they were meant to be climbed. Pretty neat feature.

Now for the money PvE feature, Rifts. If you are not familiar with the concept, basically what happens, is that randomly, a rift of a specific elemental plane will open. There are stages that you must beat, that require defeating monsters, to close the rifts. They are generally pretty powerful and can be solo'd, but it would take some time. If you successfully close the rift, you are awarded with items, ranging from gear to tokens that can be traded in for crafting materials and neat little clicky items, such as life steal consumables or damage absorbs. If you fail to close the rift, mobs will begin pouring out and begin their warpath to take over any quest hub or town in their vacinity. These can be quite brutal, especially if multiple rifts go unchecked, as you are battling quite a few mobs. I have never been able to successfully solo one of these. It may be possible to do with a self healing class, but I did not have any sort of ability to heal. If they succeed in taking over the town, they will spawn a sort of "mini rift" that spews forth more mobs. They will remain there until killed. One of the cooler features is that different elemental mobs will battle each other. If Fire takes over my town and Water decides it wants to send a force over, they will battle. It's remotely entertaining and highly chaotic. You always have to be aware of where the forces are moving if they are on the map and really shouldn't go afk in a town, as you're likely going to come back dead. It made for a pretty interesting experience. I will admit I was frustrated at times, like when I would go out questing and come back to my hub with 40 + mobs that are 3 levels higher than me dominating the NPCs. All in all, I find Rifts to be a pretty entertaining feature and allow something for you to do other than just mindlessly grind quests or mobs. The rewards also seemed to be pretty powerful, so there is incentive to participate.

I don't really see a NEED for auto grouping for rifts, because everyone gets credit for anything, even if they do not tap the mob. It certainly couldn't hurt though, I suppose. I'm not aware if healing does not contribute to your reward for Rift participation, but if it doesn't, it really needs too and I would imagine that would get changed before release.

The class system is very robust and I found it quite enjoyable. I had a pretty difficult time finding a class since there are so many options and I'm not sure I've really found "my" class just yet. Really, any type of traditional RPG class you can think of exists or can be created through the soul system. If you want to be a caster that does shadow damage and has an elemental pet, you can do that. If you want to be a melee dps that shoots fireballs, you can do that too. It's quite flexible, and even though it may take some time, I feel like anyone can find a class that appeals to their play style.

There are obviously still some balance issues right now and I would imagine that they are being fixed. Rogue damage seems to be too low and Clerics, particularly ones of the DPS tree, seem to be very well off, often being able to stay alive 2v1 and 3v1. It has yet to be determined as to whether or not this is because Clerics are too good or the damage classes don't do enough damage. I am reserving judgement on this until release. The generalizations above were taken from quotes by the devs.

PvP seems to be very straight forward as well, too. The first "Warfront" was available this weekend for testing. Warfront's are basically battlegrounds with objectives that must be achieved for victory, aka WoW's PvP. The one that was available was a hold the flag for points type deal. You got points for killing, but the majority of the points were from holding the item. It seemed reasonably fun for what it was, but I was personally hoping for something a little more unique. I will not be discussing PvP balance, because I am totally clueless on the subject and it would just be purely speculation.

I did play on a PvP server, so Rifts often generated some inter-faction conflict. I was pretty happy to see both factions fighting for them and hope that it continues into release. It adds another dimension into an aspect of the game that I was already pretty happy with.

Overall, Based on my experience through 4 beta weekends, I would say that if you are looking for an alternative to WoW, Rift can definitely be that. If you like the basic fundamentals WoW has, Rift did an awesome job of just transposing them into a new game, with new environment, new story, and some new classes to learn. The class system is phenomenal and if they can balance it reasonably well, I will be a large advocate of the system. The Rifts are fun and are generally rewarding.

If you are looking for something brand new and totally innovative, this game will not be your cup of tea. You're probably already entrenched in WoW and unless you just want a change of scenery, this game may not do it for you. I feel like the game will garner a reasonable amount of support soley from disgruntled WoW players, but it certainly will not be the WoW killer.

Feel free to direct any questions to me and I will do my best to answer. I apologize for the huge wall of text and hope you get something out of this!