Rift: Planes of Telara

[Jamiko]

RIFT™ BETA EVENT #2 TO START DECEMBER 17TH

Featuring the first 20 levels of play, Rift’s second closed beta event “Guardians of the Vigil” is scheduled to start at 10am PST Friday, December 17th and run through Monday, December 20th at 10am PST.

About “Guardians of the Vigil”:

Players will be reborn as Ascended souls of the Vigil, prophesized to put an end to the tyrant Aedraxis and his plan to sacrifice the world to Regulos. Save the forest of Silverwood from the war between fiery minions of chaos and the corrupted followers of the elven prince Hylas. Venture into the Realm of the Fae to break the hold that Greenscale’s lieutenant Lord Twyl has over the ancient home of the elves.

“Guardians of the Vigil” will be localized for English, French and German speaking territories.

[NiX]

I don't need a beta to go full retard around here, I can manage just based on some hype and my personal obsession with the golden mmorpg of my dreams that will actually never happen. In fact, I think I just realized that in this case NOT having a beta key just made me go full retard. My kink are imaginary MMOs.

...What just happened here?

[Modern Angel]

edit: As for the whole forum here, it's very difficult to pull off.  We need a) every admin/mod to have signed an NDA b) a way to verify that posters given access have signed the NDA c) the CM for Rift signs on for this. 

Also, given the nature of the testing, some people may be in some testing periods and not others.  Logistical nightmare.

Yeah, I'm sympathetic to all that. It's fiddly.

[UnSub]

Trion's drip feeding of these short betas periods really is very clever.

[Trippy]

If you are in the beta read this:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13793.0

If you are in the beta and unclear about what you are allowed to post here don't post about the game until you talk to me or schild.

Have we ever had beta boards for anything under NDA? Seems like people ask this a lot.

Well yeah, i thought the whole point of having beta boards was so people in the beta could talk without breaking nda but i guess not.

We have had beta boards for games under NDA but we had permission from the developers to do so.

[Hawkbit]

Someone has likely figured this out by now, but it looks as if there's a total of seven planned beta tests from Dec 2010 to Feb 2011.  From the Terms and Conditions of the beta contest (of which is public knowledge) http://www.riftgame.com/en/beta/rules.php

They list the prize as one card per beta, valued at $189.99 each.  Total prize value of $1329.93.  Decently staggered, and maybe leans towards a March launch then? 

[Falconeer]

I don't need a beta to go full retard around here, I can manage just based on some hype and my personal obsession with the golden mmorpg of my dreams that will actually never happen. In fact, I think I just realized that in this case NOT having a beta key just made me go full retard. My kink are imaginary MMOs.

...What just happened here?

I didn't get in the beta!

[Rasix]

Someone has likely figured this out by now, but it looks as if there's a total of seven planned beta tests from Dec 2010 to Feb 2011.  From the Terms and Conditions of the beta contest (of which is public knowledge) http://www.riftgame.com/en/beta/rules.php

They list the prize as one card per beta, valued at $189.99 each.  Total prize value of $1329.93.  Decently staggered, and maybe leans towards a March launch then? 

I hope they include some end to end testing.  The lack of this has really bit some recent releases in the ass.  Testing in level "tiers" or staggered content releases is a recipe for gripes about an uneven playing experience.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, I think that really really hurt the big picture testing of WAR.

[Malakili]

Trion's drip feeding of these short betas periods really is very clever.

Yeah, it worked out great for Cryptic in CO and STO....

I mean, I haven't played this so I can't truthfully say anything about it, and my feeling based on what people may or may not be telling me is that is that its actually going to be pretty decent.  BUT, they do need to make sure they do get some full on beta testing going at some point.  Cryptics leveling and power curve was really horribly tested as a whole in both STO and CO because of their piecemeal beta plan, and while those games can basically be tossed in the bin and done away with, it would be a same for this game to suffer a similar fate in that respect even though they rest of it sounds a lot more solid than those games.


Probably unnecessary doom saying, but just my off the cuff reaction to that comment you made.

[Ghambit]

So next weekend will be another Geektastic one for sure.  Opening night for Imax Tron then 12 hrs. later Rift beta again. 
I'd be willing to bet Trion doles out keys more liberally post-Cataclysm, 'cause odds are their beta playerbase will take a pretty huge hit after midnight tonite.

[Hawkbit]

Testing during the holidays dampers things, too.  Those in beta for the next run might be running into family gatherings and parties.  That's going to drop population numbers a hair, I'll wager.

[Draegan]

I did not participate in last weekend's beta event so I don't have an NDA to break!   

But from what I've read, it appears that these Beta Weekends are all about stress testing servers and population loading on different zones to find bottle necks in quest design and mob spawns and that sort of thing.

[Draegan]

Scott Hartsman on the conclusion of the first beta event.

[Ghambit]

I can neither confirm nor deny anything from that link.   

[Hawkbit]

I really, really like them being vocal about what they liked and didn't.  I know it's hard to do that when you have player expectations, but communication with the players goes a very long way with me.

[Segoris]

For people with an account created before Sept 1st, 2010 they are giving VIP keys away. Post with your rift forums name and what you're looking forward to the most about rifts

http://www.facebook.com/notes/rift/are-you-a-rift-old-timer/169943599712775

[Threash]

We will verify account information, and send keys to the first 25 eligible accounts early next week.

Unless you get extremely lucky and those first hundred or so posts are invalid this is pretty much over already.

[Segoris]

Completely didn't read that part, sorry about that. Still, it's a nice thing of them to do despite all the complaints from people who don't win.

[NiX]

Completely didn't read that part, sorry about that. Still, it's a nice thing of them to do despite all the complaints from people who don't win.

Or they could do a real beta test and stop letting people in based on how much they want to play the game.

[Segoris]

While I don't disagree completely, I don't mind them using a testing schedule where alpha is longer and more closed if the end result is worth it while also having smaller beta events a couple of times leading to release.

[Ingmar]

Yes, the  lesson that most companies still don't seem to have learned is you should use your beta for Actual Testing, not as a marketing-first event.

[Chimpy]

Yes, the  lesson that most companies still don't seem to have learned is you should use your beta for Actual Testing, not as a marketing-first event.

Pretty sure they did use the Beta for actual testing. The stress-test kind. The one next week should be the same way.

Creating as close to a launch day scenario in your noob zones as possible during testing is at least as useful testing as having 5000 people go through your content from beginning to end.

[Ingmar]

Sure, stress testing is useful, but 5000 people going beginning to end in order will tell you a lot too, and what you get from that is more useful probably in the long term. Something WAR didn't do, for example, to its great detriment.

[Lantyssa]

Hopefully they're smart enough to consider that.

[Murgos]

They seem to be going pretty methodically about their testing.  Test 1 jam everyone through side A starting area.  Test 2 jam everyone through side B starting area.  Put in incentives to get the cat assers to really cat ass to see the real leveling rate, etc...  Well, see how it goes as it moves forward but it seems pretty reasonable so far.

[Ashamanchill]

Could someone recap their class system for me? I talking talking up this game recently to a friend, and he asked what was cool about it. I said something about the class system, but I forgot the specifics.

[Lantyssa]

The ability to mix-and-match Souls, each of which represents a sub-class within an Archtype.  You can have up to three equipped at any one time.  You can switch them up to take on different roles.

[Rendakor]

Basically there are the 4 base classes (Warrior, Priest, Mage, Rogue), each of which has a number (7 maybe? 9? n?) of "souls". These souls are like WoW's talent trees; you spend points in them for passives and abilities, etc. and you can have up to three souls active at a time. I believe they plan to allow dual speccing as well, and a spec can consist of not just points spent but souls selected.

[Segoris]

8 souls (talent trees) per calling (aka archetype) that can be mixed and matched. The ability to dual spec was shown in a video where you can switch, so that was in. Telarapedia has what is probably the best write up of the root and branch abilities and how that works.

[Goreschach]

While everyone else is fawning over their class system, I can't help but think they're setting themselves up for failure. The fact that Blizzard, the biggest and most well respected(possibly only respected) development house has proven themselves incapable of balancing a game with something like ten classes with three trees each doesn't bode well for these guys. They've got, what, 40ish trees? And every player can have three active at one time? Just going to be another case of the scrappy trying to outclimb King Kong.

[Hawkbit]

I get the impression that there's going to be imbalances and they're okay with certain amounts of it.  No game is ever balanced, but as long as things are relatively competitive it will be okay.  Besides, with the ability to change souls at virtually any time, you can go FOTM to your heart's desire. 

It helps that this is not a PvP focused game.

[Lantyssa]

The fact that Blizzard, the biggest and most well respected(possibly only respected) development house has proven themselves incapable of balancing a game with something like ten classes with three trees each doesn't bode well for these guys.

Mechanics have never been WoW's strong point.  Please don't mistake most popular with best.

[Nightblade]

The fact that Blizzard, the biggest and most well respected(possibly only respected) development house has proven themselves incapable of balancing a game with something like ten classes with three trees each doesn't bode well for these guys.

Mechanics have never been WoW's strong point.  Please don't mistake most popular with best.

In contrast to the rest of the crap, maybe.

Most other MMOs view player key input as a suggestion IE: I'll use that skill in 5 seconds (LOTRO) or I'll look like I just used that skill, but nothing happened! (WAR) or I'll use that skill, and it'll activate after my needlessly long and gorey animation plays out (AoC).

[Murgos]

Mechanics have never been WoW's strong point.  Please don't mistake most popular with best.

In contrast to the rest of the crap, maybe.

Most other MMOs view player key input as a suggestion IE: I'll use that skill in 5 seconds (LOTRO) or I'll look like I just used that skill, but nothing happened! (WAR) or I'll use that skill, and it'll activate after my needlessly long and gorey animation plays out (AoC).

Hi, you seem to be confusing mechanics with animation.  It seems a rather silly mistake but, yeah, stop that.