Curse

Editor's Note: Massively multiplayer games are a unique beast. While initial impressions are important, the most meaningful and long-lasting experiences in the genre do not take place right away. To that end, Zyuu has taken it upon himself to share his thoughts on RIFT from Trion Worlds after playing it for two months.

I’ve been pretty good at dismissing games the past few years. The main factor playing a role here is because I’ve played games since my youth and it’s hard for games to compare against Meridian 59, EverQuest, World of Warcraft and similar games - and at the same time - live up to the standards of said games.

Regardless, after having played Meridian 59, EverQuest, Lineage 2 and World of Warcraft at the absolute top level in each MMO, it was time for me to put my adventures on the shelf and focus on other things in life, afterall, they’re just games, right?

Well, years later, RIFT: Planes of Telara appeared at Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, Germany. I was there, and I tried the game. I got hooked. I felt this game would have enormous potential and watched it closely since then. Eventually I entered the beta and I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It reminded me of EverQuest, with a mix of the good features from MMO’s that have been released after and it also has some new features that hooked me even more. It wasn’t to my surprise that it felt like EverQuest, since one of the main guys at Trion (the developers of RIFT) use to work on EverQuest.

Come release, I made a cleric, with the focus on being a healer. I also enjoy PVP, so I made sure my newborn character would wake up on a PVP server (called shards in RIFT).

Note that this article is based on experience from the beta, also the live game where I’ve leveled a cleric to level 50, done all normal and expert instances, plus cleared all raid content.

RIFT has a lot to offer. And it's far from a copy of other games. Comparing to other MMORPG's, RIFT approaches many things in a different way, which makes the game feel very refreshing. The backend of the game is levels, though. And loot, questing, classes, dungeons, raids, achievements, pvp and so on. If you've played that other MMO, you will feel very familiar with RIFT.

Trion is playing a safe card here, taking the good features of other MMO's and improving upon them, but also adding in new things.

Moving on, RIFT is a very impressive game. It feels incredibly polished, and comparing to other MMO's that had to struggle to stand on their feet during their release, RIFT had no problem standing up. Albeit at times, it got a little bit shaky, but that is to be expected from a studio's first game. Not to mention the very release. Again, this is a very impressive production.

The server technology that RIFT uses has been featured in major newssites and I'm not surprised. It's rocksolid, yes, there's been restarts of the servers, but they're rare. Also, there was queues at the release, which is a problem many other MMO developers would love to have, I'm sure. Trion have worked hard on improving this, which is another thing; Trion really listens to the players and are swift with releasing updates. At the writing of this article, there's been 21 hotfix patches released and one major patch with a whole new raid dungeon and world event. Also, at the test server there are another major patch that contain a lot of more tasty features. They're quick and know this is needed in other to compete!

Another thing RIFT manages to give the player is a dynamic world. This is a big thing and something that will make you feel drawn into the world in a different way than you might be used to. It's exciting. Less static things and more dynamic events that happen, invasions in zones, the opposite faction invanding areas and making your life tough. Larger planar invasions that require the players in the zone to work together to repel! These are also dynamic in the sense that they scale according to the number of players in the zone. Again, this is part of the server technology I mentioned briefly earlier.

So, in the world of Telara there's Regulos, the main evil guy, who's constantly sending his troops through rifts (cracks through the world from the planar dimensions) to invade. RIFT's play a large role in the game for obvious reasons.

Anywhere in the world (except for inside the main cities of each faction), RIFTS can appear and monsters will come through. There's different types of RIFT's, some that are major, others are minor. You can also open your own group RIFT's and even raid ones exist. The RAID rifts are quite amazing and they require good strategy and execution.

Additionally to this, everytime a RIFT spawns or an invasion is nearby you, there will be the option to join a public group. E.g if you're nearby other players you can group up by simply clicking one button. This is a great feature and allows you to coordinate and mobilize larger raids very quickly. Inutiaive. 

The classes in RIFT works a bit different than you might be used to, but the basics are the same. They're called callings at the character screen; cleric, warrior, rogue and mage. After chosing your calling, they're divided into eight different souls. Souls basically work like the talent-tree's in World of Warcraft. There's a twist, though! You can combine the different souls, to get a teleporting rogue for instance. Each character can have three souls active at the same time, so you can imagine the possibilities and the theorycrafting behind this. There's already tons of different guides and theories out there, one is the "Justicar" a melee healer that can use some really powerful abilities to heal and even do some damage. Oh the horror!

The world of Telara has excellent artwork and it's breathtaking at many areas. You can tell the graphic and artist team at Trion know their stuff. Scrap that, they're amazing. If you play on the Defiants side, you get the whole steampunk machine feel, that reminds me of Final Fantasy 3. However, if you pick the Guardians there's a much more high fantasy feel, which also feels great. Reminds me a bit of the High Elves in EverQuest. The world is fairly big for being a new MMO and there's plenty to explore, for instance there's artifacts to collect which are hidden at the most strangest places, this will definately make you explore and find places you wouldn't have thought existed before. It also feels very alive, much thanks to the dynamic content, but also the overall artwork and graphics.

When it comes to the dungeons and raids in RIFT, it's a whole chapter by itself. There's the normal dungeons, the first ones starting at around level 17, and the last two at around level 50. The design of the dungeons are quite impressive and you get the actual dungeon crawling feel. The challenge lies in the expert dungeons, though. These are accessible when you hit level 50 and they're harder versions of existing dungeons. There's tier 1 and tier 2 expert dungeons. Tier 2 being the hardest ones. Here Trion has outdone themselves, expert dungeons not only have harder versions of existing trash and bosses, but there's whole new encounters and areas of the zones. Really cool and definately something you must do. The mix of challenge and reward feels about right after all the adjustments that the patches have done.

Raids in RIFT are currently two zones, Greenscale Blight and River of Souls. You need 20 players for these. There's also several different Raid RIFTS that can be done by 10 players each. The learning curve of the raid dungeons are quite balanced and after the numerous tweaks to the encounters, and Trion learning a lot, it's quite fun to raid! River of Souls being released very recently in the first major patch, was beatable after just a few days, this show us that Trion learned a lot and made sure not to release 'broken' encounters, so to speak. In the pipeline there's an upcoming raid dungeon which will have a two-digit amount of enounters, while the current ones have less. All in all, raids are well designed and the mechanics of the encounters are interesting and well thought of, you can only imagine what future encounters will have.

Trion has succeeded with something that many other MMO developers only can dream of, they have released a rocksolid title, a MMORPG that for the first time in a long, long time feels finished and ready to be released. They're using traditional mechanics and features and have managed to make them feel very refreshing.

RIFT is a amazing example on great game handywork and have succeeded to prove that not all MMORPG's have to be buggy when they're released. RIFT definately put pressure on other studios that have upcoming MMORPGs in development. Those should polish their coming MMORPG's at least as well as Trion have done. And why not? Why should we, the paying players, be happy with anything less than that?

PVP in RIFT exists in the form of open world-pvp and warfronts. Warfronts are instanced PVP “dungeons”. There’s four different ones, one is a capture the flag one, in a winter-themed area. There’s one called Black Garden, which is a small instance with a fang in the middle. Pickup the fang and hold it as long as possible, and as close as possible to the middle to increase the points for your team. While carrying the fang, you take damage that keep on increasing. Additionally there’s a Domination-themed instance with a fairly normal enviorment, some water, mountains and open landscapes. Finally, there’s one that has several objectives which plays out in a Town by water, I’m not saying ‘by the sea’ since I’m not sure it is. However, this one has the most players involved on each side and there’s numerous things to do, such as invading a ghost mansion to kill a lich that scores you extra points, you can capture a ‘flag’, you can kill the other teams leader, etc. Overall, PVP in RIFT is very enjoyable and you can grind PVP faction (honor) and reputation for rewards and titles.

Trion has succeeded with something that many other MMO developers only can dream of, they have released a rocksolid title, a MMORPG that for the first time in a long, long time feels finished and ready to be released. They're using traditional mechanics and features and have managed to make them feel very refreshing.

RIFT is a amazing example on great game handywork and have succeeded to prove that not all MMORPG's have to be buggy when they're released. RIFT definately put pressure on other studios that have upcoming MMORPGs in development. Those should polish their coming MMORPG's at least as well as Trion have done. And why not? Why should we, the paying players, be happy with anything less than that?