Rift: Planes of Telara

[PalmTrees]

Played a Kelari mage up to 11, that's as far as I'm gonna get probably.

Why do the Defiant have two blue races? Seemed very redundant to me. Branch out a little Trion, there are other colors.

I just didn't like the graphic design of the characters. My Kelari girl is so broad shouldered and thick. Felt like I was playing a guy. Really hated the stoop-shouldered run and the way her head slid side-to-side across her shoulders. And of course since I picked mage all I get is a formless sack of a robe. And there's no appearance tab or anything so you're stuck with whatever the look of the most recent set of gear is, no matter how ugly. I just don't see myself paying a sub to continue the adventures of my blue transvestite with bad fashion sense. I browsed through the other races in char-gen and they all had the same body type, except the dwarf which looked like some just squashed a human, way ugly.

The quest grind was good though. Enough to keep me busy, but never so many that I felt I had an overloaded to-do list.

Rifts were meh. Being part of the zerg is just no fun. Randomly assigned to a group, no communication, no strategy, just tab target and spam abilities.  The Kelari Refuge town got overrun as I was talking to one of the craft npcs who ran off mid conversation. We drove them off, but meh-zerg.  Got 93 shard coppers (or whatever the lowest denomination of shard money is called), wasn't enough to buy anything worth buying and a bunch of click to get random thing that fills up your already crowded and limited inventory space.  Every once in a while some big rift thingy put itself in my quest list. No idea what those were about or where they were, just let them fail as I did my thing.

When it goes free to play it might be something I'll check out if nothing else is going on. But I said that after the Runes of Magic beta, another fantasy multi-classer diku quest grind, never had enough of a dead time to go back there.

[Sky]

No combat from mounts. And 1-20 feels like forever after you've played with a mount. Trudge trudge.

Not playing this beta, either. I think I'm done with rift, this'll be the second beta I've skipped.

Overall I'm kinda disappointed. On the one hand, the soul system is awesome. On the space between the hands, it could be much more awesomer (if a cleric tank could actually tank, if a paladin could MH, etc). On the other hand, the game is just the same old mmo crap you've done a bajillion times without much atmosphere. Which is saying a lot given the great visuals and audio. If I were an mmo fan, maybe I'd enjoy it more, but then maybe I'd be playing WoW instead. Tough to say.

[Lantyssa]

I browsed through the other races in char-gen and they all had the same body type, except the dwarf which looked like some just squashed a human, way ugly.

Humans and Kelari move differently.  Human women are fairly realistically proportioned while Kelari are very lanky.  It was more noticeable once in-game.

An appearance tab would be nice.  In any game.  I really like one of the early warrior quest set looks, and it was a shame to start replacing it.

[Ghambit]

No combat from mounts. And 1-20 feels like forever after you've played with a mount. Trudge trudge.

Not playing this beta, either. I think I'm done with rift, this'll be the second beta I've skipped.

Overall I'm kinda disappointed. On the one hand, the soul system is awesome. On the space between the hands, it could be much more awesomer (if a cleric tank could actually tank, if a paladin could MH, etc). On the other hand, the game is just the same old mmo crap you've done a bajillion times without much atmosphere. Which is saying a lot given the great visuals and audio. If I were an mmo fan, maybe I'd enjoy it more, but then maybe I'd be playing WoW instead. Tough to say.

So wait, after all that you're not gonna sub?

[Ratama]

So wait, after all that you're not gonna sub?

/snark aside, why should anyone?  Maybe in a couple years, once Rift has flying mounts, fixes stupid shit like 50% MS effects and many, many useless talents, no appearance tab (or any other female-friendly features, like housing; gg sausage-fest)...

Right now, only someone who absolutely can't bear to log into WoW anymore (but still *needs* a DIKU fix) should be looking forward to Rift. 

Rift still needs a ~year's worth of work (just a guess); third faction (and more PvP structure in general), redone talent trees (so players will actually have the level of customization being promised), housing, flying mounts... implement the same basic shit offered by that 'other' MMO, then fix the new shit they're banking on to be the difference-makers (World events and char customization).

If this game launches in 2 months, it's launching with a fork in it.

[Modern Angel]

That 'other" MMO doesn't have three quarters of the features you're citing.

[Simond]

Actually, if the 'other' mmo is EQ2.... 

Anyway, I expect Rift to do fairly well short-term, if only because Ghostcrawlers "Heroics r fine, l2p nubs" blog has spelt out to people who want to pug heroics (i.e. the vast, overwhelming majority of the playerbase) that doing so is going to remain a total coin flip for the foreseeable future. So sub to Rift for a few months, cancel WoW, wait for Mr Street to be 'promoted' to the other project and someone else to come in and fix Cataclysm. Win win.

[Modern Angel]

Most of the f13 folks' idea of "fixing" Cataclysm is a surefire way to keep my subbed to Rift.

I think, incidentally, that at least a portion of the being let down by Rift (maybe not a very big one, admittedly) is that folks who claim stuff like you can make ANY class with limitless possibilities do the game a grave disservice. I love Rift; I'm also far more realistic about what it is and what it isn't. The game is good enough on its own merits *for what it is* to rise or fall on them. There's no need to make Rift's never been done completely emergent badass things or any class you can think of daydreams what they aren't.

[Kageru]

In two months gearing + clueing up (the MMO player-base learns by osmosis) the WoW heroics will be being consumed almost as normal. Already the more hard-core people in my guild consider the challenge of heroics beaten, and they're not even in raid gear yet. And long term making heroics more challenging so there's a non-raid end-game is probably a good move.

Anyway, can't get any enthusiasm for rifts. a "class buffet" just sounds like a recipe for low class identity, rifts are pointless side-shows and I really don't want another fantasy diku, especially if it's wow-like. Hopefully secret world or something covert-ops (agency, lol) or sci-fi will come out.

[Ratama]

That 'other" MMO doesn't have three quarters of the features you're citing.

Sounds like good places to start if they want to beat them.

I know a lot of the folks on that dev team have worked on games with those features, and seen how they would give them an edge; to not have implemented them indicates money people fucking about, or incompetence.

Either way, they're fucked.

[Modern Angel]

Or it wasn't a priority given the task of implementing rifts. Look, there's shit to criticize in this game or even just use to throw your hands up and walk away from it without making shit up. There's zero evidence that the money men got involved. Zero. In fact, I know for a fact that's not the case. Incompetence? This isn't WAR or AoC or APB. THAT is incompetence, not this

The game may not be your cup of tea. But this is not a busted assed game and is around the level of LOTRO quality of competency, probably better than EQ2. Those games are rolling along just fine thank you very much and are not fucked. You are wrong. And it's doubly annoying because, in a little over 100 posts, I haven't seen you not talking out of your ass or wholesale making shit up even once.

[Hawkbit]

Hey, somebody's got to doomcast, right?

[Threash]

In two months gearing + clueing up (the MMO player-base learns by osmosis) the WoW heroics will be being consumed almost as normal. Already the more hard-core people in my guild consider the challenge of heroics beaten, and they're not even in raid gear yet.

Are those people actually pugging? no tank or healer in my guild ever goes near the random queue, they log in and ask "who wants to run a heroic" and 20 dps hands shoot up.  The people who have "conquered" the heroics aren't in there with the rest of the scrubs.

[Malakili]

In two months gearing + clueing up (the MMO player-base learns by osmosis) the WoW heroics will be being consumed almost as normal. Already the more hard-core people in my guild consider the challenge of heroics beaten, and they're not even in raid gear yet.

Are those people actually pugging? no tank or healer in my guild ever goes near the random queue, they log in and ask "who wants to run a heroic" and 20 dps hands shoot up.  The people who have "conquered" the heroics aren't in there with the rest of the scrubs.

The point is, eventually that ease will spread to pugs, even though it hasn't yet, I think thats a fair assumption.  Granted, I have no idea what I am talking about it.

[Tarami]

Or it wasn't a priority given the task of implementing rifts. Look, there's shit to criticize in this game or even just use to throw your hands up and walk away from it without making shit up. There's zero evidence that the money men got involved. Zero. In fact, I know for a fact that's not the case. Incompetence? This isn't WAR or AoC or APB. THAT is incompetence, not this

The game may not be your cup of tea. But this is not a busted assed game and is around the level of LOTRO quality of competency, probably better than EQ2. Those games are rolling along just fine thank you very much and are not fucked. You are wrong. And it's doubly annoying because, in a little over 100 posts, I haven't seen you not talking out of your ass or wholesale making shit up even once.

Indeedio. Rift is technically well made, it will go far enough on that alone. However, I think it would have made a bigger splash by being a better polished LotRO than by being a starved WoW - one faction, strong questing, fluff and odds and ends, then with the dynamic stuff on top. No PvP. The factions are so similar anyway that it's close to impossible to make an intuitive choice because as much as we bitch about clichés and roles, they're terribly useful for giving people a sense of theme without having to invest hundreds of hours to experience subtle nuances. These games aren't really subtle in any other sense. I frequently even forget which faction which character is in. I certainly have no clue what separates an Eth from a Mathosian.

Bottom line, my main complaint with Rift is how cold it feels. If Rift is one end of the scale, LotRO is the other and WoW goes somewhere in the middle. It consistently feels like I'm manipulating a soulless (how ironic,) mechanical abstraction rather than even vaguely playing a character on some kind of epic journey.

a "class buffet" just sounds like a recipe for low class identity

Indeed. I'm no fan myself: I can see why it would appeal to the spreadsheeters out there, but I'm not first and foremost a spreadsheeter. I want theme and character first, spreadsheeting later.

[veredus]

a "class buffet" just sounds like a recipe for low class identity

Indeed. I'm no fan myself: I can see why it would appeal to the spreadsheeters out there, but I'm not first and foremost a spreadsheeter. I want theme and character first, spreadsheeting later.

I don't get this sentiment, I don't mean to be a dick but I really don't see how you could possibly need a spreadsheet for any part of this game. But then I also don't get the WoW clone shit people are saying. It actually reminds me of a much better Vanguard . I have tried to like WoW several times but never could find a class I enjoyed. Where with Rift there are a ton of classes (Souls) to pick from and I have already found several I really like. I'm definitely playing this one.

[Draegan]

http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/01/26/rift-cgi-trailer

New CGI trailer.

[Sheepherder]

I have tried to like WoW several times but never could find a class I enjoyed. Where with Rift there are a ton of classes (Souls) to pick from and I have already found several I really like. I'm definitely playing this one.

This is actually a good selling point if it doesn't turn into a balancing nightmare.

[Hawkbit]

http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/01/26/rift-cgi-trailer

New CGI trailer.

Very nice.  It lacked punch at the very end, but I like that they're not taking direct cheese stabs at WoW.  Animation is excellent.

[Ratama]

Or it wasn't a priority given the task of implementing rifts. Look, there's shit to criticize in this game or even just use to throw your hands up and walk away from it without making shit up.

I was speculating as to the nature/cause of their fuckups.  That's not 'making shit up'; I never said I had inside info, just observations of known shitty shit they apparently willingly put into their game.

The game may not be your cup of tea. But this is not a busted assed game and is around the level of LOTRO quality of competency, probably better than EQ2. Those games are rolling along just fine thank you very much and are not fucked.

Those games are the definition of fucked.  Levels of failed expectations that cost multiple people jobs, one had to go F2P to get funding for further development. How is that not fucked?  Because they haven't shut down yet?

And it's doubly annoying because, in a little over 100 posts, I haven't seen you not talking out of your ass or wholesale making shit up even once.

[Spiff]

Bottom line, my main complaint with Rift is how cold it feels. If Rift is one end of the scale, LotRO is the other and WoW goes somewhere in the middle. It consistently feels like I'm manipulating a soulless (how ironic,) mechanical abstraction rather than even vaguely playing a character on some kind of epic journey.

I'm starting to feel like a lot of it is just, well I don't want to say 'unfinished', but too vague perhaps. Like it wants to be too many things, but isn't any one thing very clearly.

There's fun to be had in the PvP, but it's all too much of an addon, although I can see how the soul-system could lend itself very well to it.

Some fun and well done dynamic content, but not as engaging or connected to the world as I'd hoped, rifts sometimes seem like little mini-games, plus: they don't scale well.

And the story is quite decent imo (for a generic fantasy diku) if you really look at it, but the game just doesn't guide you there.
For a book I'll make an effort, but an MMO better spoonfeed me the story, with some sugar on top.
It's made me appreciate once again how great LoTRO did their story.

I hope they succeed if for nothing else than it's a very impressive tech-demo of what Trion can do, I also hope they'll one day do this in an MMO I can feel a bit more excited about (Hint: Buy out 'the Secret World' Trion, I want Cthulhu spawning rifts in Paris  ).

[ezrast]

Guess I'll throw in a good word here; I've only played to around 10 or so with a few characters but my initial impressions are pretty positive. I actually really like how they characterized the PC's - players are cast as superhuman beings created for the express purpose of wandering around, helping people out and beating the crap out of bad things. Makes a lot more sense than pretending that I'm just some random adventurer who gets off on fighting dragons in between bouts of collecting nethergroundhog spleens for people I don't know. Move speed didn't strike me as slow at all; I actually got the impression that I was getting from place to place faster than I would in WoW, mount or no.

Rifts are pretty neat. Yeah, they're a button-mashy zerg, but anything that breaks up the quest grind is a plus in my book. I do expect them to get a little bit better once 90% of the population isn't packed into the lowbie areas, and once people start to figure out the meta-game a little better so that groups can get a more organized.

I will say that one drawback to the freeform class structure is that it's very possible to gimp yourself or make combos that just aren't fun. I do wish there was a little more synergy in certain trees - for example, it seems to me like the Saboteur soul has to be your primary soul if you take it at all (or a zero-point wonder for the glue bomb), especially since you can't really use other class's combo builders with Saboteur finishers, or vice versa.

On the other hand I'm having a ton of fun with my Void Knight/Riftblade/Reaver, whose mechanics are just too wonky to really be a class in any other game - I about went nuts trying to figure out my ability priorities on the fly, and I'm only level 12-ish. Three viable point builders, four finishers, one other situational thing, and three resources to manage. It's fun though! Makes me think while I'm fighting and keeps me from feeling like I'm just pressing 123. I could definitely see myself dropping my WoW sub in favor of this.

[Falconeer]

My biggest concern at the moment is the virtual absence of PvP. You can call them Battlefields (WoW), Scenarios (Warhammer) or Minigames (AOC), I call them bullshit. No PvP goals except for gear means no PvP to me, and that sucks. I really hope something else is coming but the PvP official video didn't give me any hope in that sense. The aforementioned shit should be TRAINING for the worldly PvP which at the moment seems absent. I know for a fact this is why I will almost certainly love Rift for two months and then I'll quit bored as hell at the repetitive mechanics shared with all the other PvE focused DIKUs.

I like Rift a lot, but dikus are dikus, you repeat the same stuff over and over and while I'm happy for those who can stick with a game for years pressing the same buttons with the same timing in the same places against the same enemies, that really isn't my idea of long term fun.

That said, of course WoW will keep its 8 millions users vs the 300k of Rift. But some of the explanations I am reading here for such an unmodifiable difference are just laughable and border fanboism.

[Modern Angel]

Those games are the definition of fucked.  Levels of failed expectations that cost multiple people jobs, one had to go F2P to get funding for further development. How is that not fucked?  Because they haven't shut down yet?

Yes. They turn a profit. The industry is not "Blizzard" and "EVERYONE ELSE IS FUCKED OH GOD!" Going F2P is not automatically a sign of weakness; in EQ2's case, maybe, but it carried SOE for the better part of five years before age took over. Not having 12mil subs does not mean you're broke. That isn't how it works.

This game will be a medium success, garner 300kish subs and plug along for half a decade as enough to fund development for Trion with enough left over to keep employees comfortably middle class. THAT is the definition of success in an MMO industry where people invariably have to tell their kids that Santa's not coming this year, not Blizzard's money hats and Ferraris. If you think it's the latter you have a facile and childish view of what these companies are like and what these people do.

[Lantyssa]

And despite being able to say I probably won't play this game, I can think of only one other dev team that has had it's shit together on the level this one has.  They'll do fine.

[Mrbloodworth]

And despite being able to say I probably won't play this game, I can think of only one other dev team that has had it's shit together on the level this one has.  They'll do fine.

Yep.

[kildorn]

The dev team is doing pretty well here, I'll admit. Since the last phase and this one they implemented a ton of quality of life changes (currency tab++, public group system at rifts/invasions) even if I still think a daoc horse trail system would be a godsend.

[Draegan]

Public Groups fit this game sooo well.  Very good improvement.

Currency tab is fantastic.

I just can't wait until they work out all the rift consumables you get.

[Modern Angel]

There definitely needs to be a more fast travel of some sort. It's bizarre to me that there's not a single "flight path" in the Defiant noob area while there is one in the Guardian one.

[kildorn]

There is also a "problem" (more an inefficiency/confusion than an actual issue) with the items you get from drops:

The majority of them are named different things, with identical stats (like, completely identical) and identical graphics. They're just.. a waste of dev time/drop chance imo. I did an invasion yesterday and would up with 30ish level 15 sourcewhatevers. Opened them all and aside from all the trash consumables (click me to deal 300 damage once! Click me to absorb a whole 75 damage!) I got 5 pairs of the same level 16 chain gloves, three of which had different names entirely. I'd totally forgive that if the textures were different and I had some kind of neat aesthetic choice to make. Or put in a diabloesque pseudo random stat generation on the items instead of hand crafting them.

Game is fun though, could also use breadcrumb quests due to rifts and pvp causing you to randomly outlevel your current quest hub by a lot, and suddenly not knowing where to go (I gained 5 levels in the invasion, and a few hours later stumbled upon a quest hub that wasn't green/grey just by chasing down new rifts)

[AcidCat]

The player character races are just too generic, none of them have any ... well, character. I think that's one of my main complaints really.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, they needed two more choices per side and a few more outlandish ones. The models themselves I think are great. The races are just a little bland. A bit odd given how much of the team came from EQ2 and how may different races there were there. I do like the giant purple guys though.

[Rasix]

I rarely ever play a standard human, short human, or elf. Guess, I'll be making an exception here if I pick this up.  The dwarves, though, not sure I can play a class with arms that look like that.  Yeesh. 

Overall, my interest in piqued from what I've played so far.  The beginning areas, however, outside of a few quests, are pretty dull.  But I'm having a good time with the class system and melee warriors and ranged rogues feel pretty good to me.  I like the class choices available.  Haven't tried a priest and mages just felt flimsy as hell (necro pets are awful).

It is well done, even if it does feel like there might not be enough different in this title compared to current offerings other than setting/class design.  I may just end up being curious enough to give this a shot and see how it fares for a solo player at higher levels.  WoW right now is kind of boring me (seriously, fuck outlands, let me skip this shit), but if the boredom is just MMO boredom in general, then this won't last long for me.

[kaid]

In the grand scheme of things new races are in theory one of the easier things to add in the future. No real balancing issues involved just artwork and animations.

I think rifts will wind up doing fine if for no other reason it is one of the most stable well running betas I have ever seen. I am on an older gaming rig and I can turn it to high graphics and still get about 30fps and the game plays smooth and looks sexy while doing it. Most of the other MMO like AOC that came out started strong then died did so due to technical reasons. So far it appears rift is avoiding some of the most obvious pitfalls which should allow it to gain a good niche and give it time and fanbase to improve.

Right now I think if there is a wow killer out there it may be wow itself. Both of my guilds healers are in indefinate hiatus. Its not that they cannot heal in cata its just that the changes offend them and annoy them to the point they no longer enjoyed it and pretty much quit. Sure if you can get enough gear to over gear things healing wise its better but right now shaman/priests and druids all play very similarly for healing. Spam your crappy feeling efficient heal while spritzing other heals as possible and oh if DPS start fucking up you get the lovely choice of healing them the inefficient heals and go OOM and maybe wipe or let them die and maybe wipe.  

It just offloaded most of the danger and annoyance of heroics right onto the healers shoulders. Most classes feel more powerful in cataclysm but for healers you feel less powerful. Your heals feel crappy your mana pool feels lacking and overall the new system encourages less diversity in spells used than ever before which is the exact opposite of what was intended.

I can see a lot of people jumping to rift who want to diku but who are just a bit fed up with wow at the moment between the whole L2P noob blog and the healing crap much of my guild is just kinda hanging out at the moment.

[Draegan]

Haven't tried a priest and mages just felt flimsy as hell (necro pets are awful).

Mages are very durable actually if you use the Necro.  In any case, each calling gets a pet soul, and so far they're all meh.