Post by Adydar on Feb 22, 2011 15:20:19 GMT -5
Rift is a new MMORPG from Trion. Open beta ended on 2/21 and the official release date is March 1st in the US, however, if you preorder, you are allowed early access starting on 2/24.
After playing beta for several days, I decided to go ahead and preorder. The game, even in the beta stage, is very polished. From everything I tried, I encountered no broken skills, quests, etc. I did fall through the world once, but I was messing around swimming with the clip plane. All the below info is based on what I found, it could be incorrect or actually implemented different. I also mainly played a caster in beta so I do not have a lot of melee info, so just a heads up.
Game Setting
To me, the main idea behind the game is Rifts. Your land is being invaded by beings from another realm via these Rifts. They can open anywhere on the map and monsters start streaming through them. The longer the rift remains, the more it spreads to different areas. Eventually mobs make their way to cities and towns and will start killing off the townspeople. You also have 2 factions, which allows for PvP, to be discussed later.
Characters/Classes
Character classes are interestingly done. You select a primary class at character creation (mage, rogue, warrior, cleric). Underneath those, you have sub classes called souls. You choose your souls as you progress though the game allowing you to learn skills from up to 3 different areas. For example, I chose a mage class and focused on being an elemental caster (pets and DD) as my main. I then added a class called Chlormancer (sp?) which gave me some dots, reverse damage shields and a heal. I didn’t get far enough to really get anything into a third soul, however, this structure allows for a very large amount of variation for people to choose from. The initial level cap will be 50 and you will have 65 points to spend on your different soul trees.
Combat / Grouping
When you approach a rift to fight, you got a pop up allowing you to join a public group. This eliminates the need to have to coordinate invites, etc. You simply join up with who is there and team up for the fight. They seem to work in waves, after you beat a portion of the rift, another stage may occur, eventually leading to a boss to end it. You gain some form of planar credit for participating in rifts. You can use that to buy gear and items from a special planar vendor.
Single groups are of 5 people, I’m not sure about a raid maximum size. There is a clear XP bonus for grouping, you see the actual bonus listed separately on each kill.
Combat is typical MMO fare, you have an auto attack and then your skill buttons. These range from instant attacks, to spells, to channeled attacks, etc. Caster run off of mana, tanks have something like endurance that they use for their abilities. They also can build up combo points in melee allowing them to do other special attacks and for greater damage.
Leveling
Leveling was fairly typical for an MMO. You can quest your way up or if you really wanted to, straight grind. The quests were plentiful and helpful in guiding you to the next area to explore as you level up. Most were kill X number of mobs or collect Y items. There were a few follow an NPC around and make sure they live ones as well. The mini map helps you find where your areas are for quests as well, a nice feature for newbies.
Regarding leveling speed, from my recollections, it is slower than WoW, however, faster than EQ1.
PvP
There are PvP and PvE servers, I played on a PvE server.
On PvE, there are2 types battle grounds. Both are a race to a number points. The first is a 10 v 10 battle and you pick up a fang, whichever side is holding the fang, gets points. While in your possession, the fang acts as a DoT, so you are taking damage from holding it as we as the other faction trying to kill you.
The second is a 15 on 15 in an area with 4 bases, all starting neutral. You have to capture the base and hold it, the more you hold, the more points you get. To be successful, you need to have a good defense, offense and distraction techniques.
There is also some way to get to the alternate factions area. At one point there were people from the opposite side killing newbie quest givers, so I had to take them out It appears that you cannot harm another faction in their area unless they attack you first.
You gain favor (and perhaps more) in doing PvP, I never made it far enough to determine if you can purchase things with this.
Travel
You can purchase mounts, however, I did not see any sign of automated travel (bird routes, teleport spells, etc). Some classes/races have limited ability to increase run speed or small shadow step type abilities.
Other Stuff
I did not dabble at all in tradeskills, but there were lots of vendors, items labeled for skills, things to forage and mine, etc so it appears to be ready for prime time.
There were items called artifacts to collect. I’m not sure the significance, but I found a whole bunch of them. You collect them in sets. I do not know if there is a payoff or this is just another thing to do.
There are achievements in the game, I didn’t look much at them, but you would get them for doing certain things (attaining a certain level, capturing a flag in PvP, etc).
Summary
That’s about it for now, I’m sure there is a lot of stuff I have missed. As soon as we get a server and side picked out, I’ll post here and let everyone know.
For the record, if you sign up to a subscription before Mar 15th, you get lower rates for the lifetime of your subscription.
After playing beta for several days, I decided to go ahead and preorder. The game, even in the beta stage, is very polished. From everything I tried, I encountered no broken skills, quests, etc. I did fall through the world once, but I was messing around swimming with the clip plane. All the below info is based on what I found, it could be incorrect or actually implemented different. I also mainly played a caster in beta so I do not have a lot of melee info, so just a heads up.
Game Setting
To me, the main idea behind the game is Rifts. Your land is being invaded by beings from another realm via these Rifts. They can open anywhere on the map and monsters start streaming through them. The longer the rift remains, the more it spreads to different areas. Eventually mobs make their way to cities and towns and will start killing off the townspeople. You also have 2 factions, which allows for PvP, to be discussed later.
Characters/Classes
Character classes are interestingly done. You select a primary class at character creation (mage, rogue, warrior, cleric). Underneath those, you have sub classes called souls. You choose your souls as you progress though the game allowing you to learn skills from up to 3 different areas. For example, I chose a mage class and focused on being an elemental caster (pets and DD) as my main. I then added a class called Chlormancer (sp?) which gave me some dots, reverse damage shields and a heal. I didn’t get far enough to really get anything into a third soul, however, this structure allows for a very large amount of variation for people to choose from. The initial level cap will be 50 and you will have 65 points to spend on your different soul trees.
Combat / Grouping
When you approach a rift to fight, you got a pop up allowing you to join a public group. This eliminates the need to have to coordinate invites, etc. You simply join up with who is there and team up for the fight. They seem to work in waves, after you beat a portion of the rift, another stage may occur, eventually leading to a boss to end it. You gain some form of planar credit for participating in rifts. You can use that to buy gear and items from a special planar vendor.
Single groups are of 5 people, I’m not sure about a raid maximum size. There is a clear XP bonus for grouping, you see the actual bonus listed separately on each kill.
Combat is typical MMO fare, you have an auto attack and then your skill buttons. These range from instant attacks, to spells, to channeled attacks, etc. Caster run off of mana, tanks have something like endurance that they use for their abilities. They also can build up combo points in melee allowing them to do other special attacks and for greater damage.
Leveling
Leveling was fairly typical for an MMO. You can quest your way up or if you really wanted to, straight grind. The quests were plentiful and helpful in guiding you to the next area to explore as you level up. Most were kill X number of mobs or collect Y items. There were a few follow an NPC around and make sure they live ones as well. The mini map helps you find where your areas are for quests as well, a nice feature for newbies.
Regarding leveling speed, from my recollections, it is slower than WoW, however, faster than EQ1.
PvP
There are PvP and PvE servers, I played on a PvE server.
On PvE, there are2 types battle grounds. Both are a race to a number points. The first is a 10 v 10 battle and you pick up a fang, whichever side is holding the fang, gets points. While in your possession, the fang acts as a DoT, so you are taking damage from holding it as we as the other faction trying to kill you.
The second is a 15 on 15 in an area with 4 bases, all starting neutral. You have to capture the base and hold it, the more you hold, the more points you get. To be successful, you need to have a good defense, offense and distraction techniques.
There is also some way to get to the alternate factions area. At one point there were people from the opposite side killing newbie quest givers, so I had to take them out It appears that you cannot harm another faction in their area unless they attack you first.
You gain favor (and perhaps more) in doing PvP, I never made it far enough to determine if you can purchase things with this.
Travel
You can purchase mounts, however, I did not see any sign of automated travel (bird routes, teleport spells, etc). Some classes/races have limited ability to increase run speed or small shadow step type abilities.
Other Stuff
I did not dabble at all in tradeskills, but there were lots of vendors, items labeled for skills, things to forage and mine, etc so it appears to be ready for prime time.
There were items called artifacts to collect. I’m not sure the significance, but I found a whole bunch of them. You collect them in sets. I do not know if there is a payoff or this is just another thing to do.
There are achievements in the game, I didn’t look much at them, but you would get them for doing certain things (attaining a certain level, capturing a flag in PvP, etc).
Summary
That’s about it for now, I’m sure there is a lot of stuff I have missed. As soon as we get a server and side picked out, I’ll post here and let everyone know.
For the record, if you sign up to a subscription before Mar 15th, you get lower rates for the lifetime of your subscription.