RIFT MMO
Yet another MMO was released beginning of last month: RIFT.
If you've read reviews of it, this is just yet another one - but it's from my perspective, for my friends.
Summary is: I think RIFT is cool, and am tempted to jump over.
It's got a dynamic world with the Rifts and Invasions, and your options of playstyle is much greater with its soul system.
I've gotten to the point I really don't pay much attention to the announcement of yet another MMO. So it skipped by me without notice. And even if I did see anything on it, I assumed it was yet another WoW knock off, some company trying to get in on the scene.
Ivan's been harking on about it, saying he's shifting across, and gave me a weekend buddy key to give it a go.
Well, it might be a WoW knock off. They certainly make it as easy as possible for people to shift across. Similar interface, similar play styles. A WoW player can happily sit down, roll up a new character and be into it using the exact same controls.
Most of the basic play style is similar to Wow as well. Grab quest from guy with mark over his head, run off to X location on Map, do something (usually involving killing things). It's got 5 man dungeons (didn't get to see them, max level was 15, dungeons start at 17), 10-20man raids (again high level) - apparently same as WoW. And battlegrounds .. sorry warfronts - not my interest, ask Ivan if you want details, but I heard him telling Anita they're the same.
So why am I writing about this game?
Differences
They've taken WoW as the base game, taken all the lessons from it, and adding their own couple of unique things.
Oh yeah, and they didn't release too early, like too many dead MMOs we could name. Started Dev in 2006, apparently, and the final thing seems very polished.
So it's got shinier new graphics. And I do mean shiny.
It loads faster ... impressive given the shiny graphics.
Both nice, but meh compared to shifting away from WoW.
In addition to your normal questing, PvP, dungeons, etc. you have rifts and invasions, which dynamically change the world and your interaction with it.
Rifts
Rifts are areas of the map, that another reality is breaking into. These can pop up anywhere, as far as I've been told, even in towns. They regularly pop up (almost always at least one on the map somewhere), and stick around for a decent amount of time, unless destroyed.
Oh, and they spawn groups of monster which wander into the rest of the world causing havoc.
Closing down rifts is in your interest. You get XP, and items for doing so ... So it can be done as part of your levelling or item gathering. And stopping the monsters wandering the world, getting in your way and taking out your quest NPCs is a definite bonus (respawn seem decent, I've never had an issue finding the quest hand-in guy when I've got rid of the monsters).
Minor rifts seem soloable ... a challenge, but not too hard. Bigger ones probably require a group, but that's not a problem.
Rifts are dealt with in stages. Go into a rift area, and it'll give you a mini-quest telling you what the current stage is, and the goal to complete that stage. Complete all the stages (last one usually a boss mob of some sort), and the rift closes.
Public Groups
Now here's the next neat thing. You can form groups as in WoW, for dungeons, or questing together etc. But you don't need to go find a group to deal with a rift.
Get close enough, and you'll automatically get an option to join a public group, if you so desire. You can take it on as a bunch of small groups/individuals, and seem to do fairly well and still get the bonus for closing the rift. Grouping up in the public group gives you all the benefits of normal groups - shared buffs, watching other people's health, a chat channel to scream at each other and say how they're doing it wrong.
It's very nice for a casual gamer like me to grab/join a group quickly just for the rift/event (see below) without having to wait, find people, etc. And I can drop, move on as soon as its done.
Invasions
Invasions are like kinda like events in WoW. Except they occur regularly (every few days or so after the last one completed).
Each event seems to run similar to a Rift, except the mini-stage quest is always on your hud, not just when you're close to a Rift.
It also involves more monsters of a type spawning from various rifts and heading to game objectives ... usually your towns and quest hubs. Or X number of monster hubs spawning across the map, which need to be destroyed.
Getting near a hub, or a group of monsters does the public group thing. And the bigger monsters and hubs need groups.
Each stage/event seems to happen every few hours, and the current invasion story line runs over a few days (maybe longer).
From the descriptions I've heard from current, and Beta players, they're all pretty unique so far.
Soul System
Initially looking at the class system, you'll only see four classes, and think the options are very small: Mage, Rogue, Cleric, Warrior.
Well, each of those have 9 "souls", of which you can choose 3 (apparently eventually 4 at higher levels). Each Soul is kinda like one talent tree in WoW ... kinda.
The tree branch will be what you're used to. The root system is the new thing. From your choice of your 3 chosen trees to put your points into, every time you point a certain amount of points into a given tree, you unlike a new spell/ability - which are shown under the tree - hence the name "roots".
Most classes have some was of doing each task, with one of their souls. Warriors don't have a healing soul (although they do have ones with some reasonable self-healing, and ones with buffs to reduce party damage), and Mages don't have a tanking Soul (but can apparently do reasonable off tanking with an elemental/necro pet) - but other wise each class could be a buffer, a healer, a tank, single target dps, AoE dps ... etc.
You have a dual talent system kinda like WoW, in which you can save your points, and have a separate choice of not only the talents you picked, but also the souls you picked.
And I'm told you can buy 2 more "saves" later in the game. Swapping between saves is a 2 second cast time - of which I've got the impression can be done in combat ... haven't confirmed.
Respeccing at any time is free ... at a trainer. The options of variety are huge.
There's no agreed cookie cutter builds for any given role on the forums yet. Hell, they can't even determine if it's worth maxing out one tree to get the big abilities, or splitting your points between them for more synergies. And after over a month, I think that's a sign of reasonably balanced choices .. of which you have a huge number.
I've found this a big welcome change from WoW ... which seemed to be going down a root of more and more homogenisation with the latest updates - forcing you to take X amount of points in a given tree, and honestly even there not much in the choice of your talent selection if you want to be effective.
Conclusion
So yeah, I found it enjoyable again, after I was getting rather bored with levelling yet another class in WoW, or doing daily quests/dungeons.
A massive choice in playstyle, dynamically changing world, easy quick public grouping system for casuals for on the spot events.
If I can get my ISP to sort out their traffic shaping for the heavy traffic areas, I'll be very very tempted to switch over.
Links
Game main home page
Interesting summary on why RIFT is different from previous WoW clone MMOs
Another nice summary review
Damn useful chart summarising the Souls and their basic roles
If you've read reviews of it, this is just yet another one - but it's from my perspective, for my friends.
Summary is: I think RIFT is cool, and am tempted to jump over.
It's got a dynamic world with the Rifts and Invasions, and your options of playstyle is much greater with its soul system.
I've gotten to the point I really don't pay much attention to the announcement of yet another MMO. So it skipped by me without notice. And even if I did see anything on it, I assumed it was yet another WoW knock off, some company trying to get in on the scene.
Ivan's been harking on about it, saying he's shifting across, and gave me a weekend buddy key to give it a go.
Well, it might be a WoW knock off. They certainly make it as easy as possible for people to shift across. Similar interface, similar play styles. A WoW player can happily sit down, roll up a new character and be into it using the exact same controls.
Most of the basic play style is similar to Wow as well. Grab quest from guy with mark over his head, run off to X location on Map, do something (usually involving killing things). It's got 5 man dungeons (didn't get to see them, max level was 15, dungeons start at 17), 10-20man raids (again high level) - apparently same as WoW. And battlegrounds .. sorry warfronts - not my interest, ask Ivan if you want details, but I heard him telling Anita they're the same.
So why am I writing about this game?
Differences
They've taken WoW as the base game, taken all the lessons from it, and adding their own couple of unique things.
Oh yeah, and they didn't release too early, like too many dead MMOs we could name. Started Dev in 2006, apparently, and the final thing seems very polished.
So it's got shinier new graphics. And I do mean shiny.
It loads faster ... impressive given the shiny graphics.
Both nice, but meh compared to shifting away from WoW.
In addition to your normal questing, PvP, dungeons, etc. you have rifts and invasions, which dynamically change the world and your interaction with it.
Rifts
Rifts are areas of the map, that another reality is breaking into. These can pop up anywhere, as far as I've been told, even in towns. They regularly pop up (almost always at least one on the map somewhere), and stick around for a decent amount of time, unless destroyed.
Oh, and they spawn groups of monster which wander into the rest of the world causing havoc.
Closing down rifts is in your interest. You get XP, and items for doing so ... So it can be done as part of your levelling or item gathering. And stopping the monsters wandering the world, getting in your way and taking out your quest NPCs is a definite bonus (respawn seem decent, I've never had an issue finding the quest hand-in guy when I've got rid of the monsters).
Minor rifts seem soloable ... a challenge, but not too hard. Bigger ones probably require a group, but that's not a problem.
Rifts are dealt with in stages. Go into a rift area, and it'll give you a mini-quest telling you what the current stage is, and the goal to complete that stage. Complete all the stages (last one usually a boss mob of some sort), and the rift closes.
Public Groups
Now here's the next neat thing. You can form groups as in WoW, for dungeons, or questing together etc. But you don't need to go find a group to deal with a rift.
Get close enough, and you'll automatically get an option to join a public group, if you so desire. You can take it on as a bunch of small groups/individuals, and seem to do fairly well and still get the bonus for closing the rift. Grouping up in the public group gives you all the benefits of normal groups - shared buffs, watching other people's health, a chat channel to scream at each other and say how they're doing it wrong.
It's very nice for a casual gamer like me to grab/join a group quickly just for the rift/event (see below) without having to wait, find people, etc. And I can drop, move on as soon as its done.
Invasions
Invasions are like kinda like events in WoW. Except they occur regularly (every few days or so after the last one completed).
Each event seems to run similar to a Rift, except the mini-stage quest is always on your hud, not just when you're close to a Rift.
It also involves more monsters of a type spawning from various rifts and heading to game objectives ... usually your towns and quest hubs. Or X number of monster hubs spawning across the map, which need to be destroyed.
Getting near a hub, or a group of monsters does the public group thing. And the bigger monsters and hubs need groups.
Each stage/event seems to happen every few hours, and the current invasion story line runs over a few days (maybe longer).
From the descriptions I've heard from current, and Beta players, they're all pretty unique so far.
Soul System
Initially looking at the class system, you'll only see four classes, and think the options are very small: Mage, Rogue, Cleric, Warrior.
Well, each of those have 9 "souls", of which you can choose 3 (apparently eventually 4 at higher levels). Each Soul is kinda like one talent tree in WoW ... kinda.
The tree branch will be what you're used to. The root system is the new thing. From your choice of your 3 chosen trees to put your points into, every time you point a certain amount of points into a given tree, you unlike a new spell/ability - which are shown under the tree - hence the name "roots".
Most classes have some was of doing each task, with one of their souls. Warriors don't have a healing soul (although they do have ones with some reasonable self-healing, and ones with buffs to reduce party damage), and Mages don't have a tanking Soul (but can apparently do reasonable off tanking with an elemental/necro pet) - but other wise each class could be a buffer, a healer, a tank, single target dps, AoE dps ... etc.
You have a dual talent system kinda like WoW, in which you can save your points, and have a separate choice of not only the talents you picked, but also the souls you picked.
And I'm told you can buy 2 more "saves" later in the game. Swapping between saves is a 2 second cast time - of which I've got the impression can be done in combat ... haven't confirmed.
Respeccing at any time is free ... at a trainer. The options of variety are huge.
There's no agreed cookie cutter builds for any given role on the forums yet. Hell, they can't even determine if it's worth maxing out one tree to get the big abilities, or splitting your points between them for more synergies. And after over a month, I think that's a sign of reasonably balanced choices .. of which you have a huge number.
I've found this a big welcome change from WoW ... which seemed to be going down a root of more and more homogenisation with the latest updates - forcing you to take X amount of points in a given tree, and honestly even there not much in the choice of your talent selection if you want to be effective.
Conclusion
So yeah, I found it enjoyable again, after I was getting rather bored with levelling yet another class in WoW, or doing daily quests/dungeons.
A massive choice in playstyle, dynamically changing world, easy quick public grouping system for casuals for on the spot events.
If I can get my ISP to sort out their traffic shaping for the heavy traffic areas, I'll be very very tempted to switch over.
Links
Game main home page
Interesting summary on why RIFT is different from previous WoW clone MMOs
Another nice summary review
Damn useful chart summarising the Souls and their basic roles
