Curse

When I received an invite from "Trion World Network" more than a month ago for last week's Trion Connect event I had no idea what was in store, and now after the fact I'm still trying to digest all of the things that took place. For one, Trion is now known officially as Trion Worlds, a developer whose overarching goal is to create massively social games and usher in new genres in doing so.

In addition to this, their first project Heroes of Telara is now known as Rift: Planes of Telara, a much better name in my opinion; though it's not quite as HoT anymore. But you care less about the name and more about gameplay, right? Good, then -- let's get on to that.

An unlikely hero

Telara is a planet under siege due to a weakening in a protective ward that separates the planet from its multiple otherworldly planes. It's up to you to help fight off the invasions while leveling up your character, conquering dungeons and generally helping the populace.

But you'll be playing an unlikely character. In Rift: Planes of Telara you're what's referred to as an "Ascended"; someone who has already died and been brought back to life for the very purpose of defending Telara. You'll take up allegiance with one of two factions, either the Guardians -- those who were appointed by the Gods of Telara to watch over the planet -- or the Defiants, who believe the Guardians are to blame for this mess in the first place.

The Rifts between us

All the while you'll encounter rifts -- tears in the fabric due to the ward's weakened state -- which are dynamic content events that can take place anywhere in the world. These rifts will literally alter the world, and the significance and duration of this transformation all depends on you. When the rift opens, hordes of denizens of that particular plane will pour through, and the magics will change the terrain near the rift to look similar to that plane. It's visually awesome when a rift is opened.

Each possible rift event is hand-crafted by the team at Trion and is set up in a multiple stage format. You'll start off with smaller minions and culminate in a boss fight to finally seal off the rift. The bosses all appeared to be scripted encounters on the level of World of Warcraft, so it won't be your generic "AoE / tank-n-spank" content of the early part of last decade.

Should you happen to fail at sealing the rift, the effects of that particular plane will linger and -- while Trion wasn't ready to go into details yet -- it sounds like there may be extra content based around sending those otherworldly creatures back home. In the event you manage to seal the rift, you're rewarded with experience and loot -- all your own. Trion felt that these types of events in other games weren't social due to the competitive nature of rolling for loot, and this game is all about being social.

The first of its kind

Scott Hartsman, Chief Creative Officer of Trion Worlds, feels that this is the first MMO of its kind -- one built from the ground up to be HD. What this means is beautiful visuals, spectacular effects and incredibly detailed textures. This all comes together in a seamless world with very little loading (there are zone lines, but typically just to enter instances), supported by another first of its kind -- an in-game world map designed like Google Maps.

A classy affair

We started off the demo at character select, and while only four classes were on display when rolling into the actual gameplay demo, my spidey senses were tingling at the sight of other classes already created on the selection screen. While I only had a chance to visit two of the four demo booths (each had a different class), I'll recap what I jotted down from the two I saw as well as an overview of the other two.

The first demo kicked off with the Blade Dancer, a dual-wielding rogue-like class who has some stealth capability, but to fully take advantage of the arsenal of abilities you must weave in combination attacks from your left and right hands. It's a bit more involved than, say, playing a rogue in World of Warcraft where you simply mash a single button until you've built up five combo points.

The Reaver was the second class I saw. While I didn't have as much time on this as the other, I do know for a fact this class is designed as one of the tanks for the game. His armor was very gothic, similar to a Chosen from Warhammer Online, for those familiar with it. He uses a shield and a one-handed weapon, though he also looked to have spell attacks as well.

The other two classes shown were the Inquisitor (a healer) and the Elementalist (a caster / pet class). However, I also caught glimpse of a couple classes at character select: Champion, Shaman, Warlock and Assassin. It's entirely possible these are faction alternatives.

Beyond that, Trion isn't prepared to discuss in-depth the class system just yet, though the class system is planned to be revealed in the near future.

More to come

Of course this was only a demo; there's still quite a bit to come for this game before beta begins. Trion will be at E3, and we've been told that the game will actually be playable. We'll be there and awaiting a healthy dose of Telara from a hands-on perspective.

Mark your calendars for June 15th-17th, 2010 as that's when E3 will be underway!