Rift Review: Hole in One

Rift is like a new set of golf clubs that fits your hands perfectly.

In the video gaming industry, there's a pretty hotly-debated discussion of iteration versus innovation. While companies like Activision are happy to deliver a slightly modified upgrade to the Call of Duty franchise every year, a lot of gamers are pretty vocal that they're looking for developers to create something new, rather than iterating on the same formula. This is especially true in the micro-community of MMO's, where a multitude of titles continue to follow the tried-and-true formulas established by games like Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Sometimes, iteration can be pretty awesome, especially when mixed appropriately with innovation. It's easy to get on the message boards and either decry formulaic MMORPG's or naysay every new addition to your favorite game, but seriously, TLDR. Rift builds upon the traditional MMO formula in such a polished, complete package, while adding enough new, crunchy stuff that it sets a new standard in MMO development, delivery and gameplay.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

The story of Rift revolves around the planet Telara, which is under assault by a pantheon of dragon gods, led by the evil dragon Regulos. Two factions, the gods-blessed Guardians and the tech-savvy Defiant, have taken up arms to fight Regulos and the other incursions, as well as each other. The lore behind the world is quite engaging and sets the stage for some great narratives and game mechanics, such as the opposition of the two factions in PvP, story quests and dungeons, and the eponymous rifts. Keep reading for more on each of these.

We've been following Trion Worlds' new game since its beta, which itself was a very polished experience, and the same holds true of the launch version of the game. Character creation is pretty much what you'd expect for an MMO, and you get to choose your faction and race from the Guardians' Mathosians (humans), High Elves, and Dwarves, or the Defiant's Eth (humans), Kelari (dark elves), and Bahmi (sort of giants, and very cool). You then pick your character's class from the Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and Mage archetypes. You get quite a few customization options to make your character look just like your favorite celebrity (tiger blood not included). It's very streamlined but still very customizable.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

After a quick cutscene that sets the scene for your faction's involvement in the story, you're dumped into a common starting area for your side's races. The starter area introduces you to the story and most of the game's different mechanics, with the exception of PvP and dungeons. If you've played an MMO before, it'll be extremely familiar and seem very well-polished, while introducing you to new things like the game's class system and public groups. The starter area is a great way to get familiarized with the game quickly (hit a few golf balls with those clubs and see if you like them, so to speak) and has enough story hooks to get you interested in the main game.

Questing is streamlined in all of the glorious ways it should be, without detracting from the immersiveness of the tasks that you're assigned. You've got a handy quest tracker (which you can turn off, if you like running around in circles looking for x number of goblins to kill) that shows your objectives on a neatly comprehensible minimap, and quest-givers in a given hub generally send you to the same location to kill/gather/spam the chat channel/etc., with minimal back-tracking. You're never in the same area for very long and feel like you're making progress as you move from hub to hub.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

One of the first things you'll notice when you get into the main game is how beautiful the game is (both starter areas are kind of dreary, with the world ending and all, spoilers). Rift shares some similarities with Warhammer Online and Aion in its art style, but is unique enough in its assets that it stands out with personality and flavor. It's a mix between photo-realism and cartoony graphics, and it works. You don't have to have an uber-system to run it, and it'll look pretty on most settings, but with the higher quality options turned on it looks fabulous. Character models are nice, but the vistas and lighting effects can be downright stunning in some areas.

If you're looking (or listening) for it, the sound can be quite detailed and charming as well. The game's music is very well-composed, and ambient sounds really add to the immersiveness of the game. Things like the sounds of your feet crunching differently on leaves and on snow, or the rattle of your mount's harness as you ride cross-country really stand out. Battle sounds are appropriately fighty as well.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

So far, we haven't discussed anything too ground-breaking, other than the extreme polish that Rift has demonstrated since even before launch (no small feat, as the million or so players trying to get online during the pre-launch only faced server queues instead of server crashes). But Rift stands out in two very distinct ways: its diverse, customizable class system and its dynamic rift content.

Rift's class system is built on the concept of souls, which tie in to your story as part of the world's mythology. You're basically a resurrected warrior from an apocalyptic battle with Regulos, and as such are able to attune yourself to the souls of other fallen warriors. Based on your class archetype chosen at character creation (Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage), you'll have eight souls (and one PvP soul) available that can be unlocked over time. Each of these offers a talent tree of sub-specialization that you can mix and match with two other souls at a time.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

This means that you can customize your character as deeply into any given soul as you'd like, while adding touches here and there from your other two souls to augment your main soul, or create a more rounded-out combination from all three. It's super crunchy, and having played a variety of the souls thus far, we're happy to say that each soul is different enough from the others to provide for some real variety and coolness. Mixing your soul trees will open up different class abilities, too, which adds diversity to the standard but fast-paced and fun hotbar-based combat system.

Another incredibly fun addition that Rift brings to the table is its dynamic rift content. As we understand it, Trion Worlds has build its server architecture from the ground up to support the implementation of dynamic content throughout Telara's different zones, and provide server stability while thousands of people are interacting with it. This means that the game can spawn any number of local and zone-wide events that scale to the makeup of players in that region. These events can be things like random traveling merchants who carry rare items for sale, or rifts themselves, where denizens of the outer planes stage assaults against Telara. Players can then join public groups and fulfill quest-like objectives to defeat the monsters and close the rifts, getting currency for sweet rewards in the process.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

If rifts are like small uprisings on your minimap that appear randomly, zone-wide invasions are the apocalypse. Picture this: you're happily minding your own business battling goblins or buying and selling at a local vendor, and the sky darkens. Big-name leaders of the region's towns and encampments start exhorting you to come help them defend their locations, while named monsters explain the doom they're about to visit upon your zone. Then, all hell breaks loose, and monsters and rifts start spawning everywhere, intent on destroying major wardstones (basically big crystals that provide bonuses in encampments) and NPC's in the zone. Everyone in the area will get quest objectives to seal rifts or defeat a number of creatures, and when that's completed, a huge raid boss will spawn in the world for everyone to wale on.

Rifts and invasions are TOTALLY EPIC. They're also made vastly fun and easy to do by Rift's public grouping system, which allows you to join a group in your area that's fighting a rift or invasion by clicking a button. The group will automatically convert to a raid when it's big enough, and each player will receive rewards relative to their contribution. It's very easy to join and beat up monsters without feeling pressured to do well in your class role or having to compete with others for loot, and stimulates a great sense of community and camaraderie throughout the zone. Even if you're more into soloing through Telara's main content - which is totally doable - it's hard not to get swept up in the fun of no-pressure rifting with other people. There are also some great gear and item rewards that you can get with planarite, the currency you get from fighting rifts and invasions!

STRGamer.blogspot.com

Another form of group content in Rift is in the game's dungeons and raids. If you're into doing instanced dungeons and raiding, you'll probably be quite at home here. There are a number of dungeons and raids available at launch (including open-world rift raids and expert difficulty versions of the dungeons) and Trion Worlds has indicated they have a pretty comprehensive post-launch content schedule. The dungeons themselves seem to be very well-laid out and story driven; the one we've played so far has your party tromping around the realm of the fae, which is kind of a hedge maze that progresses through the seasons of nature as you run through it. Neat!

If you're the crafting type, there are nine professions to chose from: Butchery, Foraging, Mining, Apothecary, Armorsmithing, Artificing, Outfitting, Runecrafting, and Weaponsmithing. The first three are gathering professions, while the rest are production, and you can have a combination of three on one character. The crafting system is pretty analogous to those in other MMO's, but being able to chose three is fun, as many of the production professions require materials from two types of gathering professions.

STRGamer.blogspot.com

For those that are of the mind that less QQ and more pew-pew are required in an MMORPG, Rift's PvP has got you covered. Offering four instanced warfronts (basically battlegrounds) at launch, there's plenty of room for you to stab the other faction in the face. The warfronts are unlocked over time as you level, and you can jump in them any time by using the cross-server queue tool. They also scale by every ten levels or so, and provide moderate level buffs, meaning that if you're playing in a level 10-19 warfront, a level 19 player will have an advantage over a level 12 player, but not hugely so. We've dipped in to one of the warfronts extensively so far, and it's very fast-paced and pretty tactical, and since the warfronts are cross-server, we haven't had to wait more than a couple of minutes or so to get in. In addition, Rift offers a bunch of open world PvP that we haven't seen yet, and the PvP rewards are nothing to shake a Kelari longsword at.

There are literally dozens of other things that Rift gets right that may not be new to MMO's, but are certainly improved and polished iterations of their predecessors. The UI is delightfully clean and has some great ease-of-use functions, like an inventory search. There are achievements and a guild leveling system already in place, and and a set of collections in your character sheet for the artifacts and books you'll find in Telara (totally addicting for you OCD types). There's a good, if basic, auction house and burgeoning player economy. Certainly, we'd love to see improvements that don't already exist in the game, such as a cross-server dungeon finder (go ahead and flame, but they just make life easier for everyone). The true test of time will also be if Rift's developers continue to support the game and deliver content on a regular schedule to keep high-level players happy, and it seems like Trion Worlds is on the ball as usual.

Rift is truly a love letter to fans of the genre who love the standard MMORPG formula but are looking for a new, evolved world to play in. Trion World's game is incredibly polished and adds enough innovation, background and personality to give it a character of its own, and will feel instantly comfortable to anyone that's played an MMO in the past ten years. It's also a very friendly introduction for newcomers to the genre, and provides a bunch of new mechanics and dynamic content to excite even the most decorated MMO veteran. Whether you're a pro or are teeing off for the first time, Rift is definitely worth your money - and ours!