Mal's Review of RIFT: Beta

[MalZ]

This is Rift. And the first thing that I asked myself when I opened it up for the first time was “this is fantasy?”

There is a preconceived notion that in order to be Fantasy, the world needs to be large and untamed. Mountains bigger than Everest dot the landscape, colorful mushrooms reach towards the heavens. Essentially, a universe as cheesy as these guys. Yet this was not what I saw when I walked out of my character's little stasis tube and into the world.

No, I saw Armageddon. Fire warping the landscape, the earth cracked open with energies unknown to the land, smoke choking out the sunlight. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't in Oblivion with the very angry spirit of Mehrunes Dagon hot on my ass (It's not my fault I has to kill him, he looked at me funny). Then I wanted to go back inside and get into the fetal position as the gate guards seemed to have everything handled well, and I didn't want to fight the two headed giant eagerly waiting for me: its next meal.

But I liked this dark, grimy feel. It was a pleasant change from most MMOs which blind you with neon colors. And it wasn't just a one time occurrence. No it persisted all the way through the beginning missions. And even bled out into the first real town my character landed in, which was being shelled to hell and back by the Guardians (one of two sides that you are able to play as, and oddly enough they seem like they want to be fantasy Space Marines). But then it regressed back to Mushrooms the size of cars and unnaturally bright colors, at least in the parts where I was and only when stuff was fine (which was rare). And as I stared at the ass of my character in a non homosexual way, one thing was bothering me.

Where are the shoulder pads as large as a house? What about the bow that shoots witches instead of arrows? Where is the freaking lunacy in the design? Well, there is crazy items to use but their appearance seems to be toned down compared to your average MMO. Stuff seems cobbled together, using the least amount possible to get maximum results like if the civilization was low on supplies and was at war. Which they are, against multiple sides no less. Granted there are still higher level items that have a more decorative feel than a practical one, but they still seem a lot more practical than wielding a weapon that makes Cloud's Buster Sword look like a toothpick.

Then there are the quests, which suffer from the same thing that most MMO quests suffer from: blandness and repetitiveness. Go here, kill X monsters, collect Y items, activate Z objects, run back. It isn't as bland as Celery, but you get the picture. If you are expecting Rift to break every boundary on what MMOs can be, then you're wrong. Let's go over some other things that are standard on MMOs that Rift has kept with little change.

Tab Targeting, Raids, Dungeons, clunky spammy but fast PvP, Healer Class, Stealth Class, Tank Class, Mage Class, Mounts, pets, contested land, uncontested land. There are things to say about them, but honestly once you've tried one then you've tried them all sadly. But that doesn't mean Rift is a simple rehash of the MMO concept like WAR, LotrO, and the countless others that were created after WoW because of its overwhelming popularity. There are things that set Rift apart from the others. Far, far apart.

One is the class system, which I think is ingenious. It feels as if it takes its roots in the ancient game called Dungeons and Dragons, in where you were able to multiclass your character in order to compensate for blatant weaknesses it may have. And oh do you. There may be only 4 classes but there will be 7+ subclasses for each one. And you can combine three of them. So you can turn your Mage into a DPS healer, or a Rogue into a Dex Tank. And you can have 4 separate preset load-outs so you can fill a roll if someone is not doing it well, or if you have the sudden urge to nuke the final boss with 500+ points of Fire damage every half second. This really gives depth to how the game is played, especially in PvP where people know what they are doing.

The second biggest thing is the world itself. And first glance you would think the world is like every other world. Not exactly. You see, the entire planet is being invaded by other Planes. So you'll have large dimensional tears open up and start pouring out Elite monsters. You'll occasionally see a Rift when you're walking to your next questing area, but there are certain events that open up, oh, I would say 40+ rifts all over the area you're in, each one churning out a mob of 10 Elite enemies every minute or so. And those mobs are heading straight for the towns and settlements that you need to turn quests into. That's Rift for you, turning the safest place for you to be and making it more dangerous than a dungeon. I like that, really reinforces that whole “we're at war” theme. Also, cities and towns are not that large. They don't take 50 minutes to see everything. They're simple, nothing unnecessary is there, and saves me a LOT of time trying to find stuff that I need to progress. Which is nice as the sheer size of the world is a little overwhelming. It seems barren in a lot of places, with littles allies between towns. Unlike other MMOs where you can almost always avoid every fight, you're going to need to really try hard to get past that field full of wolves without stopping to kill one.

Lastly I want to talk about the company who makes Rift. In the week that I spent playing Trion's game, I was fairly impressed by their level of competence and professionalism when dealing with their testers. Updates were announced in-game well before the servers were shut down. Patches were added at least once a day, and the most amazing part which I have yet to get over, is that each Patch fixed what they said it would and never created any new and potentially devastating problems. New servers were constantly added to keep up with the enormous demand the first day of testing, and of course announced in-game when online. While I have yet to peruse through their forums and see if they take note of what the community wants, I am already happy with Trion. This may be because I just spent under a year with HiRez and their shenanigans and my expectations for companies are at a all time low (just like my hope for the human race ). But Trion may be one of those companies who create solid games for the sake of the people who play them and not just for the sake of those green bills that can potentially come flying in.

ON MAL'S SCALE FROM 1-10: RIFT GETS A...

7.5– I do like this game, but it is far from perfect. As a comparison in ratings, I would rate WoW at an 8.0, HOWEVER THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT IS SUPERIOR TO RIFT. WoW has been around longer and has more time to balance its shit, add new content, ext. That's why it gets the better mark. Rift right now is at an excellent place. The world is vast, progression interesting, abilities and classes fun to play with. The combat system seems clunky and spammy, but that's Tab Targeting for you. Will Rift be the fabled “WoW Killer” of prophecy, saving all 11 million souls from damnation and bringing them to MMO Nirvana? Absolutely not. At least not on release. Rift does have the ingredients to BECOME a force to rival WoW in the MMO market, however that will take time. Games like this are like Brandy. Great if you drink it right away, but given time and treated properly, it becomes an experience that is almost unparalleled. If you do like WoW and are willing to look past the similarities the pseudo playerbase seems to shove down everyone's throats, I would say get a VIP pass and get into the next Beta. This way you don't have to shell out 50 bucks or ask each of your fiends if you could borrow their account on release, and you don't have to wait as long.

[Halfgrin]

First off, thank you for the enjoyable read, great review with some good points and a nice write-up of how the game is. Though would like to point out WAR did a lot of new things that games like WoW quickly picked up and added to their game for the sole reason it worked and worked well. Things like being able to sign-up for PvP instances no matter where you are in the world and public dynamic quests that automaticly puts you into a party as you start helping completing the public event.

Sorry, I just think game developers should get credit where credit is due and mythic did do a lot of good stuff that changed other mmo's for the better. Though looking past that, great review, would say it would be fair to give the RIFT developers a chance to finish the game before making an official review as the game still is in beta. Non the less, great read with some humour sprinkled across the review.