Rift: Planes of Telara Previews

The NDA for Trion Worlds’ Rift: Planes of Telara has apparently been lifted, as the fantasy MMORPG is the subject of three recent beta-based previews.

Massively:

Rift invasions affect every single choice you make in game. Do you bypass the road full of invaders for the equally dangerous overlands? Do you head to Argent Glade to craft, despite the 12 arrows of invaders en route to attack? Do you attack the foothold in the middle of your quest area or put those quests off until later? At any moment, what was once mundane can suddenly become deadly. At one point, I died while questing and chose to soul resurrect by Rudi’s wagon. Unfortunately, my timing was poor, and as I turned towards the soul mender, he ran by me, screaming for help with about eight Defiant invaders chasing him down. It wasn’t until the invaders were driven back that the soul mender returned and I could heal myself.

Sometimes, however, invaders are your allies. There are six different types of planar invasions, along with the two warring factions on Telara, and they all hate each other. A group of fire invaders might actually be a welcome arrival to help drive back a Life rift. But as soon as they help finish off the enemy, they’ll turn their attention to you. I only saw three types of rifts in the two beta events — Death in beta one, and Fire and Life in beta two. The addition of two competing rifts made things much more interesting, and I’m looking forward to seeing what it will be like to have all six in game.

Ten Ton Hammer:

PvE questing and combat are pretty standard for a modern MMOG, with easy to understand UI, quest journal and mapping system working together to guide you through your objectives. One notable difference in Rift is in the relative difficulty of combat. While most players will have little to no problems handling a single mob at their level or even a couple levels above them additional foes will quickly shift the balance of power. Players who aren’t used to a global cooldown mechanic may have some trouble getting used to it here, but overall combat pacing is good and the GCD eventually becomes second nature.Leveling is a very quick affair and one that, according to an earlier interview we did with Scott Hartsman, isn’t likely to change much from beta to live.

Rift combat can happen at any time, with the map lighting up and highlighting active attacks. The feel of the rift events is much like the public quests of Warhammer Online, where players don’t have to be grouped to participate and there is definite strength in numbers. Each rift event area will progress through various stages with the objectives broadcast through your UI and loot from the event distributed to all that participate with a convenient loot button displayed as part of the interface. In addition to the mobs that spawn from the rift itself, any hostiles that are normally apart of the affected area will be granted some sort of boon while the rift is open, making them even more dangerous than usual.

And MMORPG.com:

The system that seems to be the real winner in Rift has nothing to do with the game’s title itself. What’s really going to get MMORPG fans salivating is the soul system. Essentially it goes like this: you pick your class archetype (rogue, warrior, cleric, mage) when you create your character. Then by the end of the tutorial you pick your first soul (think of it as a specialization in one of the archetypes). As stated before, I chose the rogue archetype and the first soul I went with was the Nightblade. Then later on you’re given your second soul choice, which can be combined with as much or as little of your first soul. Then again, once you finish the zone of Freemarch (for Defiants) you’ll be awarded a third soul. At any time you can combine up to three souls and spend skill points in each of their trees to make your ideal class combination. It’s really an amazingly deep and yet simple idea and one that I can’t believe hasn’t been thought of before.

What takes it one step beyond is that you can purchase (roles), which allow you to switch between different specs at any time between combat. I spent a lot of my time playing a Nightblade/Saboteur, but with the click of a mouse I could switch over to a Ranger/Nightblade or a Ranger/Saboteur. It’s an ingenious system that allows for an unparalleled amount of versatility for each main archetype. It has to be an absolute balance-nightmare from a design perspective, but the payoff of giving players so many choices on how to play the game is likely more than worth the brain-wracking.