Rift: Planes of Telara Preview

I have a World of Warcraft account, play EverQuest II with my wife, and though I’m sure it will have its growing pains, I haven’t been this excited about a new MMORPG for a long while. But why Rift? Why would I want to sign up for another fantasy MMORPG when it admittedly feels so familiar and WoW-like in its play? The reasons are actually surprisingly clear – and fourfold.

A New World

Rift’s new world features a brand new beautiful, seemingly fully fleshed out experience to explore – and by beautiful I mean stunningly vibrant and continually interesting. There’s typically plenty of fireworks going on in the background whether Rifts or faction assaults, lush (explorable) vistas stretching vast distances everywhere you look, and varied terrain: rolling fields, scorched earth, impressive architecture, realistic and swimmable water, huge bridges, dense flora, etcetera, etcetera. It’s graphic euphoria, especially if you have a powerful enough computer. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has some impressive scenery as well, but it’s done in a style that isn’t quite as pretty as this in my humble opinion. It’s like they took WoW’s vibrant palette and pixelated that scenery into lots more realistic yet still fairy-tale-like imagery.

A Day in the Life of an Explorer

Well before I was able, mainly because (exploring) is my preferred play style (i.e., traveling everywhere I can and just experiencing the content), I attempted to cross into two adjoining zones (no loading between zones in Rift). One was full of gigantic mountain-like wind swept mesas but was inaccessible to my dismay. So I went back to the other end of the zone and was able to cross into a formidable and ominous dark valley with level 20+ creatures (me being 14 at the time). These included literal hulking giants that happened to catch me once and two-shotted me to death. Seriously, two shots? C’mon giants, that the best you can do? A quick soul-walk later (which is a 1 hour cooldown special death ability that lets you walk away for a brief time and automatically respawn nearby) and I was out of one danger and in the midst of others.

I managed to successfully weave my way through more giants, flying creatures, and rhino-like beasts until I came to a small town at the edge of a pool with 3 gigantic waterfalls spilling into it. Fortunately it had a portal (kind of like a flight path in WoW but instant) which was able to take me back to safety. The beta was ending in the morning and I still hadn’t yet tried the other main faction.

Polished Interface

Though I’m sure it has its quirks and yet-to-be-finished areas, having spent several immersive hours over four days has led me to believe this is one highly polished and in general, functional game. It’s got fantastic things like smart inventory management, easy interface layout options, a brand new (to me) area-of-effect looting system where if other lootable corpses are in the area and you loot one, you loot them all, consistent iconography, intuitive map and quest journal integration, and super smooth and slick in-game notifications. We’re talking normally mundane things that say (Quest Accepted / Completed) or (Level Up) are prettied up and a pleasure to see each time. It’s all presented in a very polished way.

If you’ve played WoW or any other MMO, you’ll likely feel right at home with the controls and options. This is not a bad thing at all as it can only shift down the learning curve.

Anyone who was in the beta would I’m sure agree: Rift has a new way of choosing your play style that is at once more customizable than most other MMOGs, and just incredibly fun to experiment with. I’ll try to make this easy to understand for anyone not yet familiar. You basically start with a class archetype using the standard four: warrior, cleric, mage, rogue. That’s completely standard fare so far. What’s cool about this initial choice from a design standpoint is that it addresses the casual player while quickly then catering to everyone including the hardcore min/maxer.

Your first quest reward is to choose a (soul), which is basically any one of the (currently available) eight sub-classes of your archetype, for example if choosing the Rogue archetype you might now choose for your first soul an Assassin, Ranger, Marksman, Nightblade, or one of four others. Each one of these subclasses has its own skill tree and set of abilities you can upgrade as you level up.

But it doesn’t stop there. After a couple more quests getting used to your first subclass, you then get to choose another from the same archetype. Since you already took one you have seven choices left and when the choice is made you begin a second skill tree, immediately being granted that subclass’s abilities, which appear on your main hotkey bar.

Again, not long after this you’ll be given a final third subclass to choose, from the same Rogue archetype in this example, this time from the remaining six. I made two characters: a ‘˜lock, necro and archon. Then just to try the Guardians a marksman, ranger, and then the beta ended before I was able to get my third.

I did some math on this and for every archetype there are 56 possible combinations to play. With four archetypes, this essentially means that there are currently 224 class variations to play in Rift, which is amazingly impressive. I’m also reading / hearing on the podcast that you can swap them out at any time, which makes for one unbelievably customizable experience – just your subclasses mind you, not your main archetype. One previewer made the astute observation that the skill (trees) are actually like trees, going upward! Hmm, makes sense.

Rifts – Dynamic Content that Really Works

Rifts are elemental vortexes that open up in the sky seemingly at random all over the land, distort the surrounding area for a brief time, and provide both public grouping and rewards for participating in quelling the invading demonic forces.

I usually don’t buy into dynamic content hype until I see it, mainly because something like this hasn’t been executed to this degree yet but you know, it’s actually really, really fun! For example you’ll be off on a quest and suddenly a minor rift appears somewhere in the distance and beckons (you can see them clearly). You might see some people running toward it and can’t help but feel a little curious. Soon you’ll join a public group of many fighting waves of invading creatures until a final boss is defeated at which point the rewards come. The whole process is usually only several minutes.

At other times a major inter-zone rift event begins that you’ll automatically become a part of with rifts opening up all over (you can also see them on your map), monsters running from them to wreak havoc on the open road and in towns, and an end (boss) that needs to be defeated. How much you participate in these events determines your reward(s) to some extent, which makes participation even for events well above your level fun even if you get the minimum rewards.

I’ve always been of the opinion that MMO’s (at least in the traditional sense – which takes us up to today’s and into the foreseeable future) need at least these three ingredients to make it big. I’ll preface this with saying that these ingredients are more like milk, sugar, eggs, and flour rather than (if you have *only* these, your game will be a success) – like in cooking, you usually need key ingredients but there’s no guarantee it will be edible.

Number one: well-done characters. If there aren’t some that look good (Night Elves and Humans originally in WoW, Elves and Eth in Rift) then players just aren’t as attached (for example an alien MMO with only strange looking characters). Namely I’ll spell it out. It needs at least decent looking female characters so males can fantasize. Ouch that was rather blunt! But true. I believe you’ll agree once you see the screenshots that Rift has this covered. The only catch was that there’s a current bug where my character didn’t actually look exactly like I created him (a global bug which I’m sure they’ll have fixed by release) and that the customization options for overall styles could have been a little more varied, even though the final results were highly impressive.

Number two: easy to be social, make friends, enjoy company. Most MMO’s these days follow a similar design and most are typically easy enough to get into, so this is a given – but it needs to be done as intuitively as possible. It’s also where I think many current MMO’s could use an overhaul. Rift does this about as well as any major MMO, and I didn’t see anything that stood out in this respect. Typical slash commands and emotes. I did not see a (looking for group) interface yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that is released post-launch (if not already and I may have just missed it).

Number three: enough content. Rift nails this right out of the gate with a dynamic Rift and invasion event system that not only encourages social gameplay, but is built right into the lore of the core story. If that’s not enough it has two strong factions, collectible books to read and other trinkets for those that like their lore (in addition to quest lines), PvP battlegrounds and post-level 50 reward system, and from what I’ve seen, a large world with thematically varied areas. I cannot wait to see what the others look like.

Number three point five. Intuitive interface. While I don’t think, for example, that EQ’s original interface was the most intuitive at the time (a lot has been learned since then), it was functional. I think players are willing to forgive interfaces if they fall somewhat short of perfection in lieu of other excellent attributes which is why it’s arguably not a definite key for successful games, though it certainly can help.

Rift clearly has all three core ingredients plus a good interface, and if it also includes well-executed end game play and content that is as rewarding as that in the Beta, I have no doubt it’s going to be a success. In fact, it was really nice to see the game being so positively received so often just in the common chat channel in-game. Not a lot of complaints and a whole lot of (wow, this is really cool) and many comparisons with the current champ. I have a feeling a lot of positive buzz is because of the dynamics of the Rifts themselves. Who knows if that will get old as time goes by (I’m sure to *some* extent) but they can probably use the tech to create new types of dynamic content down the line which no doubt they have in store. For me the entire experience in Beta was wholly positive and I can’t wait to play again.

Just to touch on a few final points. Crafting was in and I tried it to the extent I could. I chose to be an Outfitter (think Tailor in WoW), Runecrafter (Enchanter in WoW), and Butcherer (Skinner in WoW). It’s easy to grasp and felt particularly polished and easy to do, if not somewhat standard. I liked that you can some money back with crafted recipes (not as much a money sink as say in WoW from my initial impression), and with skins from Butchering, I was able to make magic soft goods, which could then be broken down into magical ingredients I could transform into Runecrafted items that gave stat enchantments to other items. My only problem was backpack space!

An additional note on crafting. I should say though that the items I made for my level were only just usable for a short while. Had I not spent so much attention to this aspect I would have outleveled them before they were usable. This is a main problem in many MMO’s and especially prevalent in WoW, which somewhat defeats the purpose of crafting armor and weapons. While this is not so much a problem with enchanting-like professions that make additions to current items, there could be completely different stats or bonuses for crafted gear that make them viable alternatives, or else highly customizable in other ways such as additional ways change look and feel. Alternative stats could be things such as (find rare item +2), (spot collectibles easier), proc bonuses to node gathering, or certain other proc effects or even synergies with one another that just aren’t available on other stuff. Simple main equivalent stat changes IMO aren’t enough for the effort involved. If they do stay the same way, then the stats should be increased for the effort spent to keep it worthwhile for several levels – that plus some other customization possibilities (maybe for an appearance tab?) would be a cool way to keep players invested.

As for the tutorial sections and two initial faction choices, let’s say that I was more impressed with the (bad) faction, the Defiants. The guardian intro FMV was perhaps a bit more cheesy and I would have liked to see more visual differences between the two main choices in terms of races, maybe even a few more races as well. I’m also not sure yet how the interaction between the two will play out. And then there’s the random name generator. Let’s just say while they were names that could theoretically be pieced together in an alternate world, a name with seven syllables and 15 letters doesn’t exactly fly off the tongue. See the screen.

I also did not try the dungeon experience though I saw a lot of groups forming for one called (Iron Tomb), so have no comments on it. After writing this I did check out some Youtube videos and that dungeon at least looked to be standard 5-man raid fare. The end game is also still somewhat uncertain though I do now know they will be giving PvP levels once you get to 50.

What *is* certain is that the beta has convinced me to pre-order two digital collector’s editions and even in the hypothetically implausible event the game lacks sufficient end game content, it will be a month well worth the money. If you’re interested in a great new world to explore, then I’d recommend checking out Rift: Planes of Telara whenever you can. It has that certain something.