Rift: Planes of Telara | Impressions

Whoah.  It's not a Guild Wars 2 post!  What kind of sorcery is this!?

Rift:  Planes of Fire Invasion.  Mobs nearby can be imbued with special buffs from the Planes of Fire.

A couple friends bought me Rift a month ago, telling me to play it while waiting for GW2.  At first, I was pretty reluctant, as I had already done all research on the game, and had seen multitudes of screen shots + gameplay videos.  My initial conclusion was that the game simply took all the familiar stuff from WoW and prepackaged it with a couple new gimmicks i.e rifts and invasions.  However, after realizing that I still had a couple months to fill that MMO void in my life, I opened the game box and proceeded to install the game onto my trusty little laptop.

For those of you who are not familiar with Rift, it is a (MMORPG) created by Trion Worlds, a relatively new triple A MMO developer.  The game was released last year, during March 2011, and was met with relatively positive reviews from the gaming community.  Anyways, it has been a month of Rifting, and here is a simple rundown of the game, based on my experiences so far.  I won't go into super tiny details, since this is just a general impression.  I don't even think I have the right to do an in depth review if I've only been a "one month veteran".

Character Creation:

This is your standard MMO customization screen.  You get the hair/face/body options with various sliders to further control how your character looks.  Prior to actually creating a character, you are presented with two factions; the Guardians and the Defiants.  Choosing either faction will determine the beginning cinematic, as well as the tutorial area for new players.  Spoilers aside, I would have to say that the Defiant's starting storyline is the coolest.

Hmmm....I've definitely seen this interface somewhere.

Graphics:

To be perfectly honest, the graphics don't bother me at all.  I realize that for many people, graphics can be a deal breaker.  Personally, I think the graphics in Rift are very good for a MMO, especially if you crank it up to "Ultra" on settings.  Something interesting to note here is that even the "Ultra" option does not automatically max all graphics options.  You would have to go full out custom to max out every single shadow and AA quality.  From what I understand however, the reason why MMOs are not automatically maxed out, even for good gaming rigs, is that in the case of many players or clusterfrak PvP situations, the amount of lag spikes up and even brings the most beastly of computers to its knees.

Interface:

If you've played World of Warcraft, then you are VERY familiar with the interface in Rift.  There is literally nothing new here in terms of innovation.  You get the same skinner boxes for looting, and the same sort of frames for all the health/energy bars and skill action bars.  This is just your general MMO interface, which enjoys cramming as much disorganized info as it can onto the screen.

Gameplay:

Production value here is pretty damn nice.  The skills and animations, as well as the run and walk animation, are all very nice and tidy.  However, the way one engages in combat is still identical to that of WoW.  You get the "in/out combat mode", as well as those casting bars that forbid you to move while shooting fireballs.  For a seasoned WoW player like myself however, this felt right at home.  So even though I was annoyed at the lack of newness in this department, I simply forgot about it after a couple minutes.

The most glaring new feature in Rift is the Planar Invasions, which happen randomly across the map.  Sometimes, these situations manifest themselves in the form of Planar Tears.  These tears open up at random, and any player can choose to use an universal ability which turns these tears into "Rifts".  Once these rifts have been activated, you will see some sort of change to the landscape around the rift, usually associated with the rift's particular plane i.e fire, life, water, earth.  If a rift is not sealed properly, it will begin spewing forth minions, led by stronger creatures, who travel around creating footholds and attacking NPC settlements.

Rifts provide a dynamic change to an otherwise static landscape.

Other times, you get a map event.  When these events happen, all players who are currently playing within the affected map will see an emergency broadcast.  Tons and tons of tears, rifts, and footholds will appear, spawning countless numbers of trash mobs and elite mobs.  The objectives of these events appear on the usual spot for quest information, as all players, regardless of level or gear, are automatically thrown into the map event.  Although it's a pretty unique feature that allows players to have nice breaks in between questing, the levels of the mobs are sometimes too much for players who are freshbies in the map to handle.  A simple gap of five levels or more can mean the mob doing some serious steamrolling over your character.  For this reason, the Rifts system is both good and bad.  Obviously, for players who can handle such mobs, teaming up and saving the map from destruction is a very good feeling.

Story:

I love lore.  I love story.  The reason I play games is to become lost in a different world, a world that I can fantasize about even when I'm not playing.  That's why I love high fantasy games, whether they are MMO related or not.  The story in Rift, is pretty generic, although I do appreciate the amount of lore and information that can be acquired simply by speaking to the many NPCs that populate the world.  Basically, the story is about you, the chosen savior, who ultimately has the destiny of destroying this very evil villain named Regulos.  It's a used and used theme, but the presentation of the theme was still pretty damn neat as far as I was concerned.

Endgame(Predictions):

Looking at my guild's activities, the endgame of Rift is your standard WoW endgame, plus the rifts and invasions.  The formula of gear grinding is here, along with your lovely little Dungeon Finder toolbox and all the honor and token grindings that you can experience.

One aspect of the game that I am still pretty inexperienced on is PvP.  Playing on an open-PvP server, I've ganked and been ganked.  It's pretty much the same feeling as when I was playing WoW.  Playing as a Cleric however, really upped my chances of survival, much to the annoyance of my assassins.  Unfortunately, I have not played Rift long enough to give a good impression on overall PvP.

Impression:

Try it.  Play through the demo to level 20 and see if you enjoy it.  For those of you who are long time WoW fans, you will find this game interesting.  If you are burned out from the standard MMO formula, stay far away, because this game is still using the good ol' fetch quest and kill ten rats formula.  However, if you want to see some refreshing features, such as the spontaneous rift tears and world invasions, then you'll probably want to come on over and try yourself at this game for a couple hours.  Who knows?

I'm sure many of you have already played it and moved on, or possibly stayed and became committed, but for those of you who are still on the borderline, I would definitely try out the free trial.  It is a solid MMO that has its charms.