A Weekend of Rift
So thanks to a friend I got to try Rift for a weekend. Since I have a number of gamers on my LJ I thought I'd give my impressions.
At start up you pick one of two factions, the holy Guardians and the more technology based Defiants. Then you get three race choices which are basically human, elf or dwarf although each side has its own flavor in that regard. You then pick from four classes (Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Mage) and zoom, into the cinamatic!
Each side gets its own cinamatic. Basically the world was torn asunder by a really nasty guy named Regulos who is apparently a death god of some sort. The awakening of dragons is largely responsible for the victory of the death god. Each cinamatic throws responsibility for the awakening of the dragons on the other side. Then Zoom, off you go!
The game play is pretty much EXACTLY like WoW. The layout is basically the WoW GUI and the commands are all basically the same as well. I guess its familliar to 12,000,000 MMO players and so why move off a good thing. If you are playing a Guardian you are back in the past trying to prevent the King from siding with Regulos and stopping the civil war. If you are a Defiant, you are from the future, being prepared to be sent back into the past to save your world... I went OMG I'm a terminator!
Questing is made easier by the fact that you can see circles on your minimap where groups of mobs you need to kill are and Xs where you need to kill or interact with something specific. There is a lot of "break this machine" questing and those give you X's. I like this. WoW finally did that on their MAIN maps but not the mini maps. (though if you have to kill a certain guy, he will be marked on the minimap in WoW). So I do like that if i have to kill 10 rats, I can see it. Also, if I have multiple quests in the same area there are overlaping circles. WoW did NOT do that. And so its nice to plan out better where I need to go to finish multiple quests.
Once you get going, you get to chose your "Souls" This is basically subclasses. Each of the 4 classes has 8 subclasses and from that you get to pick 3 to make your character. This customization is rather nice. I do fear eventually there will be a cookie cutter (these are the good classes to take) build for each thing but at least right now it looked like lots of people were mixing and matching classes a lot. I made a Warlord/Paladin/Riftblade and a Pyromancer/Stormcaller/Elementalist.
As you level you get talent points ala WoW. You place these talent points in talent trees in each soul. Much like the three speccs in WoW. You are forced to spread out a bit, but you can go pretty deep in one class. Not only does the talent tree give you special advantages, but when you spend enough talent points in a single tree you unlock abilities. So rather than getting new abilities at each level you get them when you spend points in your soul. This may benefit going broad because at first you get new abilities relatively quickly, then later have to spend more talent points per ability unlocked. Again, very nicely customizable.
Once you get past the starting zone you get sent backwards/forwards in time to the current day. You start doing actual questing for your side and factions start immediately.You get reputation in factions that lets you buy better gear and stuff in addition to questinng. Also the titular rifts are there.
Rifts exist mostly to be closed by intrepid heroes. It generally takes completion of like 5 stages to close them. You generally need 3-5 people minimum to finish a stage. When you get close to a rift it will ask "Do you wish to join World Group?" or somethign like that, so it automatically groups you up to help close the rift. Rewards are pretty good for helping so its generally a good thing to do. They are open constantly so you can almost always find one to mess with if you want. If you ignore a rift long enough, it will send out large groups of decently high level monsters who will go and slaughter nearby towns. This can be bad if you are in the town, or would like to turn in quests or sell at said towns. I got wiped out a couple times before I realized exactly what was going on there.
Unfortunately, the trial did not let me get out of the newbie zone. It level caped at 15. So I did not get to see any instances or PvP. I think that might have helped me form opinions on the game. Aion was fairly interesting until at level 30-40 it turned into a gankfest where level 50s run around and 1 shot you. I don't know if that is an issue here.
The graphics were significantly better than WoW which tends to be cartoony. The story was interesting and a bit more cohesive than WoW tends to be (although WoW has gotten better and better with that each expansion. I really liked that each zone in Cataclysm was essentially one long quest line)
If I had to chose now between the two, I would pick Rift, but it is not so much better that I would leave my friends over it. In addition, I still need to know how Instancing, PVP and endgame plays out.
At start up you pick one of two factions, the holy Guardians and the more technology based Defiants. Then you get three race choices which are basically human, elf or dwarf although each side has its own flavor in that regard. You then pick from four classes (Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Mage) and zoom, into the cinamatic!
Each side gets its own cinamatic. Basically the world was torn asunder by a really nasty guy named Regulos who is apparently a death god of some sort. The awakening of dragons is largely responsible for the victory of the death god. Each cinamatic throws responsibility for the awakening of the dragons on the other side. Then Zoom, off you go!
The game play is pretty much EXACTLY like WoW. The layout is basically the WoW GUI and the commands are all basically the same as well. I guess its familliar to 12,000,000 MMO players and so why move off a good thing. If you are playing a Guardian you are back in the past trying to prevent the King from siding with Regulos and stopping the civil war. If you are a Defiant, you are from the future, being prepared to be sent back into the past to save your world... I went OMG I'm a terminator!
Questing is made easier by the fact that you can see circles on your minimap where groups of mobs you need to kill are and Xs where you need to kill or interact with something specific. There is a lot of "break this machine" questing and those give you X's. I like this. WoW finally did that on their MAIN maps but not the mini maps. (though if you have to kill a certain guy, he will be marked on the minimap in WoW). So I do like that if i have to kill 10 rats, I can see it. Also, if I have multiple quests in the same area there are overlaping circles. WoW did NOT do that. And so its nice to plan out better where I need to go to finish multiple quests.
Once you get going, you get to chose your "Souls" This is basically subclasses. Each of the 4 classes has 8 subclasses and from that you get to pick 3 to make your character. This customization is rather nice. I do fear eventually there will be a cookie cutter (these are the good classes to take) build for each thing but at least right now it looked like lots of people were mixing and matching classes a lot. I made a Warlord/Paladin/Riftblade and a Pyromancer/Stormcaller/Elementalist.
As you level you get talent points ala WoW. You place these talent points in talent trees in each soul. Much like the three speccs in WoW. You are forced to spread out a bit, but you can go pretty deep in one class. Not only does the talent tree give you special advantages, but when you spend enough talent points in a single tree you unlock abilities. So rather than getting new abilities at each level you get them when you spend points in your soul. This may benefit going broad because at first you get new abilities relatively quickly, then later have to spend more talent points per ability unlocked. Again, very nicely customizable.
Once you get past the starting zone you get sent backwards/forwards in time to the current day. You start doing actual questing for your side and factions start immediately.You get reputation in factions that lets you buy better gear and stuff in addition to questinng. Also the titular rifts are there.
Rifts exist mostly to be closed by intrepid heroes. It generally takes completion of like 5 stages to close them. You generally need 3-5 people minimum to finish a stage. When you get close to a rift it will ask "Do you wish to join World Group?" or somethign like that, so it automatically groups you up to help close the rift. Rewards are pretty good for helping so its generally a good thing to do. They are open constantly so you can almost always find one to mess with if you want. If you ignore a rift long enough, it will send out large groups of decently high level monsters who will go and slaughter nearby towns. This can be bad if you are in the town, or would like to turn in quests or sell at said towns. I got wiped out a couple times before I realized exactly what was going on there.
Unfortunately, the trial did not let me get out of the newbie zone. It level caped at 15. So I did not get to see any instances or PvP. I think that might have helped me form opinions on the game. Aion was fairly interesting until at level 30-40 it turned into a gankfest where level 50s run around and 1 shot you. I don't know if that is an issue here.
The graphics were significantly better than WoW which tends to be cartoony. The story was interesting and a bit more cohesive than WoW tends to be (although WoW has gotten better and better with that each expansion. I really liked that each zone in Cataclysm was essentially one long quest line)
If I had to chose now between the two, I would pick Rift, but it is not so much better that I would leave my friends over it. In addition, I still need to know how Instancing, PVP and endgame plays out.