RIFT goes free to play

This is a good thing.

RIFT is a good game, it has many qualities and much to enjoy. It just doesn't do enough different to justify paying a monthly sub fee, at least not in the current world of MMOs with so many decent free alternatives. But when it goes F2P it could possibly be the highest quality option on the free market.

And yeah shock horror, I posted.

Trion release a 2011 review + looking to 2012 video

And it's worth a look.



I was planning on checking out RIFT again at some point this year, it's just such a well made game and I do like the way Trion do things. No doubt will be a temporary dabble when I do though.

RIFT return

I'm not entirely sure why I reactivated my RIFT account. All the things that disappointed me about the game are still there (Rifts not being as dynamic as I hoped at 50 and being very much a standard themepark MMO) and I'm still not interested in raiding. For the record I used to be a big raider, but raiding for me is just no longer lifestyle friendly. Not meaning to sneer, but it's for kids and those without regular interruptions in real life and my going AFK every 30mins would just annoy everyone and make for a shite experience all round.

The PvP is ok, standard scenario/warfront/battleground fare and typically lame gank wank out in the zones. I must say the PvP was horrible until I had a full set of the Prestige rank 2 armour, after which it got a lot less painful. It's still far too gear orientated, but it's not as bad as something like WoW in that respect. Or how WAR was directly after 1.4 with it's RR90+ auto-win feature (admittedly that is way better now).

The single/duo player chronicle raid dungeons are pretty cool. I'm only in basic tier 1-2 gear so soloing them takes a bit of effort, but was quite an entertaining challenge. Which I've now done, so not hugely fussed about repeating it, though I'm not yet totally turned off the idea. It's a good feature as it lets me see content I wouldn't normally get to look at without raiding 4 nights a week. Sure, the rewards are decidedly meh, but then that seems only fair all things considered.

It's all quite average really and normally I would regret reactivating, however in this case I don't. I'm enjoying messing around with different soul combinations and visually RIFT remains as sweet as ever, so for this month at least it's providing a little extra entertainment. After that, who knows?

I'd still happily recommend RIFT to people. Of course it's very much a PvE game with PvP bolted on, but it's very very good at what it does. And to be fair, there's not much on the horizon that offers anything different.

Sorta tempted by Rift again..

...sorta.

Just to have a look at the 2 player raid content stuff really. I'm curious as I don't think any other game has done that, at least not well (or has it?). Problem is I just don't know if it's worth me spunking £10 on something with so little spare time for it. Is it really good enough to distract me from other games, or is it just one of those things that sounds good, but gets dull fast....?

Knowing when to step back

Initially after the appearance of doubt about us being able to run Kill Frenzy in both RIFT and WAR, things went a bit ropey. With KF-WAR down to about 3 people, I made the decision to close the guild in WAR and we focussed on RIFT. Since then as you know I have returned to WAR and KF-WAR is very much back, growing in strength and entertainment value. However the KF-RIFT guild is still extremely active. I’m only playing RIFT a little bit myself, but the guild is solid, continues to grow and the guys have started on the 10man raid scene, but are also focussed on getting everyone the Tier 2 expert gear they need to progress. As an aside, the key to success in PvE is in the preparation. Get people geared and while you should never order people to spec certain ways (unless you’re one of those prick ego guilds with no life or grip on reality) make sure that the specs/classes/roles in the raid have some synergy. Uhm, yeah… stopping this tangent before I go off on one.

The key to us keeping both guilds going was in me acknowledging that I was no longer in a position where it made sense for me to lead our KF-RIFT chapter. To progress in a PvE game you need a leader who is online a lot, is organising events and actively driving the guild forward. It takes more time and effort than I’ve got spare for RIFT. So I stepped back to my arch-overlord of the KF community role, focussed myself more on WAR and promoted an utter retard and morally suspect git called Filthiusia to guild leader of KF-RIFT, whilst giving him the support of the very keen and progress driven Lowtwo in an officer role. Of course alongside the existing KF-RIFT officers. With a bunch of old school KFers putting the time in at the helm, things are working out ok.

Giving up control can be a tough choice to make for a guild leader; you’re always worried about things drifting away from your core ideals or just the whole thing collapsing. Yet, in exactly the same way as management out in the real working world, if successful an organisation will grow to a point where it’s owner/MD/CEO/whatever’s time becomes sparse and for them to try and to run everything is to invite disaster. You have to know when and what to delegate. The when and what is often quite easy to recognise, the hardest bit is really in the act of handing things over.

Of course there is one other huge thing… who you choose to delegate to. As anyone that follows football (soccer, for those of you in hats), the result of that choice is the hardest bit to reliably predict. There are no foregone conclusions there, no matter what anyone says. That’s where as a guild leader you have to make a leap of faith.

Like a rabbit with chilli up its arse

At the moment when it comes to MMO gaming, I’m leaping around like a rabbit with a chilli up its arse. Despite the fact that I actually have far less over all MMO gaming time than in previous years, I currently have 4 online games that I am actively playing, albeit in relatively small chunks each. An hour here, 20 minutes there, maybe even an evening there, boing, bloody boing I go.


Warhammer Online
This is clearly my main game again, as it’s the one I’m spending the most time in and also enjoying the most. I’ve been playing my Disciple of Khaine a lot, which has been quite entertaining really. He was L36/RR24 last week and I know the sensible thing would have been to stay in Tier 3 and get his renown rank up to 70, but to be frank Tier 3 sucks badger balls. Too much dull arse RvE as people try to blast their renown rank up with minimum effort. So thanks to about an hour in Land of the Dead and 2 war tracts, I hit level 40 and got stuck into Tier 4 RvR. It’s been fun and its amusing to see how insanely good the DoK career is, allowing me to contribute reasonably well and even heal successfully in scenario premades straight away.

Other than that I’m switching between my horde of other alts and of course my Chosen. I am loving the Chosen again... It’s been great fun I must say and whilst the game still has a great many issues, it is in a fairly comfortable place right now. For me at least... Anyway, as ever I’ve got lots to say about WAR and will be doing just that in the very near future.

RIFT
The number 2 (and I don’t mean turd) in my gaming time, I am still liking RIFT a lot. I don’t however do any PvP in it anymore, there’s not much to be found even on a PvP server and well, it just can’t compare to WAR in that regard. The PvE is exceptional though and I’ve been doing a weekly dungeon run session with the guys from our Kill Frenzy RIFT guild and thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve also been dabbling a little with a Defiant Cleric on another server and have really enjoyed doing the rifts and events in Freemarch. Doing my PvP in WAR and my PvE in RIFT has left me feeling rather contented with both games, playing them both for what they are good at.

World of Tanks
Not really an MMO, it’s a lobby with instanced scenarios and to be honest has more in common with Counter Strike than it does an MMORPG. It is a really enjoyable game though and I can’t recommend it enough as a free to play game. It does have a fairly harsh learning curve at first I would say to anyone just starting it, stick with it, upgrade your tank and learn its role. Once you get the hang of it you’ll have a great time, as long as you like tanks of course…

APB Reloaded
I was one of the poor suckers that bought the original game and was then shafted when Real Time Worlds went BOOOOOOOOOM! I hadn’t been that impressed with how it played and then I got burnt by the game closing, so I was in two minds about whether to try out the new F2P version. I have to say I am really glad I did. It has been MUCH improved from the original simply by the new developers making it so that where you aim your gun actually has relevance to if you hit your target and the car handling is way better than before. APB is an extremely entertaining game; it’s not the full PvP carnage you may expect, but when on missions against other players and in teams it can be hilarious. Example of a classic moment I had the other day…

I was on a mission and for whatever reason I was driving like crazy through the streets with a car full of criminal players chasing me. They were hanging out of their car shooting mine up with machine guns, my car was getting battered and I was in serious trouble. As my car started to smoke I leapt out, the car rolled on, the criminal’s car came alongside it, unfortunately for them exactly at the moment I opened up with a shotgun into the back of my own car… The petrol tank must have got hit, because it exploded in a BIG way and with the criminals right next to it, the explosion took their car out and killed them all! I cackled with glee in real life. :D

So yes, APB Reloaded is another F2P game that I would say is well worth a download. I’ve no idea on its longevity and I personally will only dip in and out casually, but as a free game? No reason not to try it out.

Viable desirable MMOiable

 
 
Over the years of MMO gaming I've often found myself having to reconsider how I spend my gaming time and what game to stick with. Having a fairly normal adult life outside of gaming will always impact on what is both viable and desirable from your MMO, and with life's ups and downs those things can be subject to repeated change.
 
When I first started playing RIFT, my real life situation gave (or forced upon, depending on view) me a lot of time with not a lot else to do. So I hammered RIFT pretty hard and found it easy to achieve the type of gaming I enjoy. Whilst I lead a fairly casual guild in overall attitude and my personal gaming times can be erratic, when online I always play in a relatively hardcore style and expect to do well and have constant progression. In RIFT, like any PvE raid focussed game, this does require a lot of uninterrupted time spent doing instances. For a while that was working fine for me.
 
But things change and I now have a lot less spare gaming time, certainly I have a lot less "uninterrupted" gaming sessions. The reasons for this are all good and in no way is this meant to be sounding like a complaint or MMO geek withdrawal, it just means that what is viable and desirable has changed.
 
Whilst RIFT's PvP is not ticking my boxes, I am a player that likes a bit of a mix of PvE and PvP. I do really enjoy the dungeons in RIFT, but the problem is that this type of gaming is just not viable for me right now. Most times that I’m logged on I can’t be sure if I’ll be on for 10 minutes or 2 hours and whatever the time is there’s a good chance that I’ll have plenty of AFKs. Clearly that rules out doing instances or raids, other than the 1 night a week I’m on for solid amount of time. I had hoped that the dynamic rift and invasion roaming PvE would continue at level 50, providing drop in and out casual content, but unfortunately it doesn't because the invasions are not impact-full enough on the world and the rewards do not compare with dungeon and plaque (token) loot.
 
Actually that’s the biggest disappointment for me with RIFT, that the rifts and invasions that were so dramatic and dynamic whilst levelling become so utterly redundant in the endgame. If I was in charge of RIFT that’s the primary thing I would be sorting out, giving the games bloody name meaning for the endgame. Yet, I don’t want this to sound like I’m totally down on RIFT, because I’m really not. It is an exceptionally well made, very polished and enjoyable MMO, it just loses what for me is one of its brightest sparks at the climax and crucially, the time sink focus doesn’t fit my current lifestyle.
 
So my RIFT account remains active, but this obviously also means I have had to start considering what to play as my uber casual drop in and out game. Of course I could play single player games, but I like the social element of MMOs, as well as the long paths they give us to progress along. For me the things I desire most from an MMO right now are:
 
-Fun.
-Openworld PvP that isn’t just ganking crap.
-A sense of progression.
-Varied and intesting classes.
- Flexible, drop in and out gameplay.
 
 
One of the reasons I played WAR for so long was that it is an incredibly friendly game to anyone who's gaming time is broken up into random chunks. And of course WAR is the obvious choice today, with friends still playing it and its easily meeting most of the above desirables. As such I have resubbed for now and will take this opportunity to try out the recent gear balancing patch. I’ve only been on a couple of times so far and things certainly look promising gear gap wise; I was very pleased to discover my mid range renown rank Choppa is playable again. Potential there for sure, on a personal level anyway.
 
Many other things that people (probably justifiably) consider WAR’s big problems remain unaddressed. With what for all intents and purposes looks like a future of practically zero investment; the games long term prospects are dubious at best. The “good stuff” that was reported to be coming didn’t materialise at all (fixes don’t count, sorry) and it’s hard to remove that stagnant stench that surrounds WAR. I’ll be writing up thoughts about WAR’s future, dev discussions and things like the scenario tweaking in the coming weeks, but initially the big question for me is a simple one:
 
Will I have fun playing WAR again? Because after all is said and done, that is really all that matters.

RIFT-WAR open world PvP action.

We had some great fun last night in RIFT with open world PvP. We got word that there was a large force of Goon Squad roaming through Silverwood (a lowbie zone) and as the good honest Guardians we are, of course Kill Frenzy was obliged to respond and defend our realm. OK, that’s not quite true, we couldn’t give two turds about the Guardian cause, but it was a good excuse to hunt down some enemies and give them what for. :P This all lead to a few raid size battles across Silverwood and then a load of scraps in Moonshade Highlands. We had 13 Kill Frenzy in our raid and we counted about 20 Goons, but I think we had a slight average level advantage, only slight mind you. Anyways, we did rather well, repeatedly ;)

It was the best fun many of us have had in RIFT so far, it really was great and at first I was thinking this was what I miss about WAR. But that’s not quite accurate, because it’s been such a long time since WAR had any regular small-medium scale fights and actually that action in RIFT last night was better in many ways. There was no zerg around the corner. WAR as everyone knows is often very zergy, but 1.4 really did make it much worse. So I don’t miss the recent times in WAR, but I definitely miss the highlights of small-medium scale combat it used to regularly provide in the past. If Mythic ever sort things out and get that back properly and if possible improve on it, then it will be sorely tempting again.

We’re just about to start RIFT’s endgame properly, with more and more people approaching 50, so the next month or two will be crunch time for the majority of us. Will RIFT’s endgame provide enough PvP for a guild like us to not get bored? Last night was great, but we will be wanting that kind of action regularly once everyone’s attention has moved on from just getting to level to 50. We will of course want to take part in all the other facets of the end game, but we certainly won’t be raiding PvE 24/7. MMO wise Kill Frenzy is at heart a PvP community. Thing is, if RIFT doesn’t deliver on that front, then will WAR be in any state to draw people back? I just don’t know, because there are so many things that need to be fixed and no firm sign (at present…) of that happening. That could change of course, but blind faith is, well… blind.

Interesting times ahead.

RIFT - Zones, a mixed bag of goodies, mainly.

When deciding if I will stick with an MMO beyond its first few levels, one of the key elements is the atmosphere and theme of the game’s zones. RIFT has predominantly delivered the goods in this regard, certainly enough for me to be quite content and fast approaching level 40. While working my way through the land of Telara there’s been a whole load of OMG moments and some seriously spectacular views to take in. Great art design combined with some excellent environmental sound effects, proper changing weather and a day/night cycle, has been a refreshing change compared with many of the other MMOs I’ve dabbled with recently. However, whilst in the main it’s been great, it’s not all been perfect and some areas I’ve found a bit more meh than I would have liked.

I’m so bored of generic desert zones that every sodding fantasy MMO deems essential. They’re almost always decidedly dull and uninspiring. Actually I have to say for all its flaws, from an atmosphere and “being interesting to look at” viewpoint, WAR’s Land of the Dead pisses all over pretty much every desert zone in anything else. So far I’ve found RIFT’s desert zones to be sitting very much in the meh department, they’re not bad or anything and I’ve got friends that really like them, but personally I’m bored of deserts. So for me the Scarlet Gorge, Droughtlands and Shimmersand zones were rather uninspiring. Sand is so last year.

Again from a purely atmospheric viewpoint; Gloamwood, Scarwood, Stonefield and in particular Iron Pine Peak have all been much more enjoyable places to explore. Gloamwood is the creepy forest style zone, which has of course been done before, but it’s very nicely done indeed and has absolutely nailed the theme. It also flows very well into the next area Scarwood Reach (next if you ignore the canyon zone between them..). Gloamwood is dominated by these truly giant trees and Scarwood also has them, but for reasons you can discover, the landscape is being destroyed as the giant trees are being cut down and having their monumentally huge roots exposed and unearthed. It’s a very interesting concept for a zone in that respect, exploring the roots of trees.

Stonefield, a defiant zone, is one of my favourites. It’s rather like the Scottish highlands, but with the bones of colossal giants and beasties all over the place. It’s a wonderful zone in the rain too, with thunder and all that… love it. And then there’s Iron Pine Peak. A HUGE zone with a winter theme and winter is something that Trion have got in the bag; their snow and cold weather effects are very nice indeed.

Of course visuals and sounds are only one way of considering whether a zone is any good or not. My comments above about those zones are purely based on that and as such should not be taken as a rating on the overall experience. Scarwood for example, is not a particularly enjoyable zone to quest in; something I can’t quite put my finger on is a bit off. I think it’s to do with the layout and flow of the quests. Yet Doughtlands, which I thought looked immensely zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, as a levelling experience worked extremely well.

This has all added up to a generally pleasant and enjoyable levelling experience in RIFT, in fact in many places it’s been extremely good indeed and one of the best in a very long time. Whilst there have been a few zones I’ve not rated the atmosphere so highly in, they’ve worked very well and not been a hardship to play in. With two exceptions anyway… Scarlet Gorge is a pain in the arse and I was happy to get out of it. Too much up and down travel with a bazillion mobs everywhere and a huge area with a DoT gas cloud that is just pointless and annoying. Moonshade Highlands is the other zone that got up my nose, it starts well, but then ends up with a giant clusterfuck of quests and mobs all lumped in one relatively small part of the map. Since both factions are doing the same quests there, it concentrates the players too much into one area and it’s just a bit of a mess. It’s also visually half great and half… like whateveeeeeeeeeer. They ran out of ideas for it I think.

But you know what, that’s actually pretty damn good going. Out of the 9 zones I’ve spent a decent amount of time in, it’s only 2 that I really don’t like. All the others (for varying reasons) have been good. Just a shame about all the poxy sand.

The soul system concept is the future of MMOs, or it should be.

RIFT’s soul system is something I strongly believe all MMO developers should be looking at and considering the implications of. While balance may prove an issue (when does it not), this appears to me to be counter-balanced by the incredible flexibility it provides, both in making a character play how you want and in being able to take what on traditional MMO paper would be unworkable groups.

A quick (LOL) explanation for those unfamiliar with the system…

There are 4 classes, the instantly recognisable quartet of Warrior, Rogue, Mage and Cleric. Each of these classes has 8 souls they can choose from, not including the pvp soul and more to come in the future. A soul is kind of like a talent or mastery tree from other games, but with the addition of the more points you spend in it, the more base line abilities of that soul become active, that’s in addition to the abilities you choose to spec from the talent tree. It’s a bit like a tree with roots that get bigger as you grow the branches above.

A character gains access to all of those souls, but can only have 3 active at any one point in time and as per normal you have a limited number of points to spend. How you combine the souls is completely up to you and whilst the game gives some example recommendations of souls that combine well, we’ve discovered in testing that there are far more perfectly viable combinations. In fact with a bit of thought you can essentially design the character to play however you want.

For example let’s briefly look at Cleric souls.

Cabalist - A ranged DPS with lots of channelled abilities and powerful AoE, death magic style.
Druid – A pet class. The Druid himself is primarily melee based but has some heals and some ranged abilities. Pets can heal and DPS.
Inquisitor - Another ranged death magic DPS but more focussed on single target damage, crowd control and has some decent life drain type abilities.
Justicar - Melee Healer and with certain specs and buffs active it’s also a tank.
Purifier - Healer, magic based and built around lots of absorb shields and cleansing flames.
Sentinel - The classic single target and group magic heal class. Holy light, all that jazz.
Shaman - Pure melee DPS, self heals and lots of lightning. It’s all about the crits…
Warden – A heal over time style healer, themed around water. Lots of instant spells, rather like a resto druid in WoW.

Note that all of the healer souls do also have nukes, it’s just not focussed around them. Also all the melee souls bring with them a passive buff that makes your magical ranged abilities also count towards your melee… which means you can mix these all up however you like and make all sorts of interesting combinations.

Want a melee DPS backed up by a pet and some basic healing?
Shaman/Druid/Sentinel

How about a melee based healer that has the option to backline heal when needed?
Justicar/Sentinel/Warden

A ranged DPS that in emergencies can pull out a big hammer to smack things in the face?
Cabalist/Inquisitor/Shaman

A tank that can heal.
Justicar/Shaman/Druid

Ok you tosser, a melee class, with instant nukes, that can cleanse, heal and shield itself? Oh, and rez.
Shaman/Warden/Purifier

I spent a lot of time this weekend playing as a healer using a Warden/Sentinel/Druid combination. It worked really well, the heals were excellent and I had little problem keeping my group up and when I felt like it I could either nuke things or hit them in the face with my monstrous hammer. And I had a fairie pet called Gok fluttering around looking camp. So I was using three souls that technically don’t go together and still worked wonderfully. Did some duelling with it too, didn’t lose once :P

Now combine all of this with what RIFT calls “roles”. Roles are preset soul combinations that you can switch between when your character is out of combat. Eventually (they cost gold to buy) you can have up to four different roles and you can of course respect those too. So for example as a Cleric you could have roles set up for tank, main healer, MDPS and RDPS. You can then switch to what’s required.

By making the most of this flexibility we were doing dungeons with a group that consisted of 1 warrior, 1 mage and 3 Rogues. We just switched our souls around to be focussed this:

Warrior - Paladin (tank)
Mage - Chloromancer (healer)
Rogue - Bard (healer)
Rogue - Assassin (DPS)
Rogue - Assassin (DPS)

Both the healers were sort of off healers or hybrid DPS, but combined it worked perfectly and we had no problems with the instances we did (well apart from the one we went in 3 or 4 levels early…). Also at one point we needed an off tank, so I just switched the Rogue I was using to my Riftstalker role and I was a tank.

The absolute key point that all of this adds up to I think is an important one for developers to take on board. It meant that we, as a group of friends that want to play together, have a viable group set up regardless of what class we pick on launch day. The holy trinity of tank/healer/DPS (or dirty quartet with support added) is still there, but it is now less of a ball ache when your guild tanks aren’t online.

We can do a sodding dungeon with 5 rogues! Uhm like woah? It might even be possible with 5 Mages with lots of Chloromancers and a Necromancer’s pet tank… I think the only one that isn’t possible is 5 warriors, but hey, can’t have everything. :P

More games should do this.

Goodbye WAR, I'm out

I didn’t play WAR in any great length this weekend, got a few hours in here and there, but all it did was wind me up. For some reason (more so than ever before) the problems we all know about were just really in my face, repeatedly and with little respite. The highlight (or lowlight) of the misery was seeing my Scourge hit a RR90+ BW for 53, critting him for 136 and not going any higher than those numbers (he didn’t have any fancy morales on or anything…), which was amusingly terrible since I had been hitting the lowbie one next to him for 600-1k. Shortly after this I was then practically instant killed by a Slayer who hit me with 13 damaging effects, in two seconds. LOL

Mythic are going to be doing something about this, but who knows if it will be enough? It needs hitting with some seriously big changes, which I do think will happen, but not quickly enough. I honestly do not understand why the abortion that 1.4 has developed into wasn’t addressed urgently already and certainly it’s beyond me why it wasn’t done BEFORE the launch of Rift. Waiting to fix things until after loads of us have become incredibly annoyed, packed full of emo-rage and subsequently changed games seems to be a wee bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted.

All told, rather frustrating and not much fun. So that’s that, I’m done with playing WAR now until Mythic fix it, assuming of course that Rift hasn’t pulled me in beyond redemption. I was planning on playing WAR and RIFT, but with the game getting worse and worse every day as another person with lots of spare time dings, there seems little point. Real life dictates that I can’t play 24/7 to farm a character up to 90+ to catch up, plus I don’t want to and I resent the game forcing me in that direction. I’ve always played different alts and with a bit of careful gear tinkering I've always done fine and been able to compete even at very low RRs. The fact that the game doesn’t allow that anymore and also utterly gimped my higher RR toons, has taken a lot of WAR’s charm away for me.

Basically this has all confirmed the considerations of my WAR future that I had posted about recently. I’ll log in for some guild admin stuff, but I don’t think I’ll be playing WAR again for a good while. Rift beta next week, followed by the actual launch... In the meantime I’ll be playing Arma 2 and Bloodbowl LE with my friends and guildies.

RIFT beta weekend, WAR and me... again

I’m sure people won’t be shocked to hear that I spent the weekend playing the RIFT beta. It seems like pretty much every other gamer I know did too. And it was, once again, abso-bloody-lutely great. The PvE was entertaining throughout, the PvP dramatic and enjoyable and the world itself was a pleasure to be in. This is one great looking game and my initial concerns about the art direction have been completely washed away.

For a game that is essentially not doing much new I’ve been surprised at quite how RIFT feels like a breath of fresh air, particularly once you get above level 15 or so and things really start to kick off. I think that fresh sensation is down to 3 main things.

Rifts and Invasions
With Rifts appearing anywhere at any point and then spawning invasions that rampage across the zones, they add a random element to MMORPG gaming that has been missing for a good while. You can be doing your questing, PvP roaming or whatever, everything is normal MMO fare and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and you’ve suddenly got an entirely new situation to deal with. Rifts and Invasions add a level of uncertainty and break up the standard predictable gameplay that we’ve got used to in MMOs. People are actually grouping up with strangers to deal with stuff.

A major zone wide by the forces of Death in Freemarch

I think since Warcraft that MMO PvE gaming has been incredibly dumbed down, when talking about the open world experience that is. It’s always predictable and straightforward. No matter what you’re doing you know what will happen. If you ever repeat a quest on an alt it will be identical to the time before. Not necessarily so with RIFT. If playing on a PvP server (obviously you should be :P ) not only do you as normal have enemy players to be on guard for, but you (and they) must also be ready for attack from Rifts and Invasions. And the different Rift factions will also fight each other and the mobs in the zone. So what may start as a standard PvE moment can be transformed into a 3, 4 or even 5 way fight. It really can be wonderfully chaotic.

This in turn also applies just as much to openworld PvP, you’re fighting enemy players, but who knows what nastiness might happen. It is a very aggressive game in that regard. I’ve said it before but people should always remember that DAoC is a PvP/PvE hybrid. Whenever you’re doing PvP, there is PvE around you and for a lot of the game there is the same in reverse. DAoC is NOT a PvP or PvE game, it is not a RvR game, it is ALL of those combined. Which is something Mythic need to think about with the new purely RvR focus in WAR. Go take a long hard look at DAoC and understand the myriad of reasons why we hold that game is such high esteem.

Trion have gone and done a Blizzard special
Just like Blizzard did with World of Warcraft they’ve looked at the features in other MMOs, stolen the good ones or those with potential and then improved them or at least ensured they work. Other than the soul system, RIFT does not do much that is completely new. It’s comfortably familiar and not particularly innovative, I suppose you could say like almost every MMO released since 1999 it’s just Everquest again.

Yet it still feels fresh because everything just seems to work and work well too. From the crafting that is actually worth doing, to the WAR style Warfronts, to the wide variety of ways you can gear up and so on. For example; Rifts and Invasions are a hybrid of the public quests from WAR and Tabula Rasa’s dynamic battlefields. They’ve evolved the concepts and actually made something decent. It’s not a new idea; it’s just this time it works.

It's like applying the concepts in Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do to an MMO :P


I’m pissed off and a bit jaded
There’s no escaping the purely personal impact of WAR’s recent changes. It’s seriously pissed me off because it is just not the same game anymore. It can be redeemed, but until Mythic get rid of the ridiculous level 41-43 boost, the increased stat caps and insane stats on the RR90-100 armour I can only consider WAR’s PvP as totally broken. It has all gone too far. People claim you can level 40-80 in a week and still maintain a real life, but they are either liars or have absolutely no perception of how much they actually play. Of course the people running round instant killing people don’t see any issues, everyone else is just a whiner :P And regardless of getting to 80, it’s still gone to crap when you look at the difference between 80 and 90+.

Plus the super zergy campaign we see with double 4+ star keeps is just not much fun. I did ask in the Mythic live Q&A prior to 1.4 if keeps would degrade if the supply lines from BOs was not maintained, Mythic seemed surprised at the question and said no.

I did a tomb the other day, Tomb of the Moon I believe is the name; a one room, one boss and just 2 adds PvE instance. The adds bugged three times with the auras not appearing (yes we all has gfx set corectly) and then on the fourth time as we entered the instance, our DoK was for some reason put into a different instance to the rest of us. We gave up. A one room, one boss PvE instance should not be bugged like that. I've done 3 dungeons in RIFT so far and they have all been flawless, in a beta test, flawless.

Unfortunately pretty much everyone I know is feeling the same way about WAR.

So while I really like RIFT, I am also aware that I am incredibly disappointed with where WAR is right now and that can make anything different feel refreshing. Particularly if that other game is incredibly polished, runs well and has interesting new things to look at…  Yet maybe RIFT isn't as good as it seems? I'm obviously biased by how annoyed at WAR I am. Objectivity doesn't mix well with irritation.

Now it may well turn out that long term RIFT isn’t for me, perhaps invasions will get old, or the end game and PvP won’t live up to expectations. Who can tell? But I am starting to think that I will be taking more of a break from WAR than originally planned while I give RIFT a good shot. I’ll still be keeping my WAR account active, writing about the game and will mooch about on it a bit, but once RIFT comes out I doubt I will be playing WAR on anywhere near such a regular basis. At least for a month or two anyway, after that, who knows? It really depends on Mythic and what they do, or don’t do. Perhaps RIFT will just be a nice distraction while my frustrations with WAR simmer down and Mythic do a phoenix from the flames. Or perhaps not, we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to get properly started in RIFT. BTW I decided on class. I'm going Rogue and will be mainly messing around with a Riftstalker... I'll post why I've been captivated by that particular soul another time.

RIFT - starting faction

The next beta event for RIFT kicks off tomorrow and I’m in looking forward to it, but at the same time I’m hesitant about playing too much. Just a case of not wanting to overplay it during beta really, when obviously I’ll be repeating the content once the game launches. Well, probably anyway. My choice of starting faction is not so set in stone right now, as we’re very wary of ending up on the overpopulated faction.

From the betas and forum polls it looks like that will be Defiant, which is a shame because that was the faction I liked the visuals for, but I think you need to be pragmatic about these things and choose what will provide the best long term gameplay experience. If like us you’ve got a heavy interest in PvP, then obviously it makes sense to pick the side that is the underdog so you get the quickest warfront (scenario) pops and have more opportunities for sneaky git open world PvP entertainment. It must be nice for the pure PvE types who don't have to worry about any of this, because it really is quite an important choice, unless re-rolling is something you have the time and inclination to do. We have considered doing that if required, but it's a pain in the arse so a bit of a last resort really.

So as much as I like the look of the Defiant stuff, I’ll glady going with Guardians if that continues to look the better option. Though I must say the Guardian starter areas do look great, their city of Sanctum is rather posh and they have very cool looking mounts at level 20 (not as good as the Defiant level 40 mounts mind you…). Hmmm, not really a hardship, yet for some (strange I know) reason I struggle with how the dwarves have stupidly large hands. It's distracting and kinda disturbing in a screwed up way.

Anyway, whatever we go with, I just want to get started now.

Soul searching

I bet that title has already been used by someone else talking about RIFT, but meh whatever! On with the post I go... So then the problem and cause of my soul searching is the fact that I am having a huge dilemma deciding which class to play when RIFT goes live. I just can’t bloody decide and oh me oh my, it’s so wonderfully frustrating.

Personally I always think it’s a good sign for a game when I’ve got plenty of options I like the look of and I just can’t choose what to play. Re-playability for yourself with alts and diversity amongst the playerbase all stem from having different class options that appeal to players. WAR is much the same in that regard and it’s why I have so many level 40s, there are just so many cool careers in WAR. RIFT of course mixes this up considerably with the soul and role system where you can pick one class, but actually be able to dramatically change the role you fill with the click of a button. It’s a bit like dual speccing in WoW, but taken to a whole new extreme. It’s a wonderfully flexible system and something that MMO developers should be taking note of.

And as I said at the start, it has got me really torn on what to go with at launch. I was thinking of going with a Cleric as this provides the most flexibility of all classes; by swapping souls it can switch between Tank, Healer, Melee Healer, MDPS and RDPS. It also with the Shaman soul gets to wield big hammers with lightning effects and I am a sucker for melee and lightning effects. However then I played a Marksman based rogue and that was a lot of fun, plus I’ve had some very interesting ideas for my old favourite stealth archer and with the Rogue the option of playing as a Riftstalker Rogue tank is extremely interesting. But the Rogue doesn’t have much of a healer soul to use, I suppose there is the bard but that is more support based. Plus the music annoys me.

I’ve ruled out playing as a Warrior as over my long MMO playing past my main characters have almost always been Warrior plate armour types, with only a couple of stealth based ranged characters breaking things up. So I want to do something different from the Warrior archetype. I’ve never played a healer or a mage as my main and whilst I am extremely tempted by the Stormcallers lightning effects, I don’t think mage is the one for me, I think I would regret not having a melee option. So cleric or rogue it is, but which?! The incredible flexibility (and lightning!) of the cleric is battling with my concern about the class being overplayed, where as the rogue gives me less flexibility and I’m not so sure about the looks of them, but would provide my 3 long term favourite play styles; stealth archer, melee DPS and tank.

Oh decisions, decisions…

RIFT WAR combo

So you can hardly have missed all the RIFT talk lately. RIFT is the latest MMO of the moment and is getting some serious hype from the MMO community right now. And to be quite honest, I would say justifiably so. From what I’ve seen on the beta myself it looks to be an exceptional well made game, incredibly good fun (once you get out of the starter zones) and has massive potential. The random rifts and invasions are brilliant and the most dynamic and interesting PvE since, well I don't know when. Is it a WoW killer? I doubt it very much, the only game that will kill WoW is the one that Blizzard make to do so, but RIFT is looking to be an extremely viable alternative. At least for people with half decent PCs, that’s something that WoW always has over new release MMOs; you can run WoW on a broken calculator.

RIFT has also been hyped by some people as a WAR killer. Certainly my WAR server of Karak Norn has already seen some major guilds declare they are quitting WAR and moving to RIFT, but it's not killing the game in reality. Karak Norn has been crazy busy recently, new guilds are stepping up and the circle continues. There were big name guilds that vanished before, others take over, tis the way of things. Of course RIFT isn't out yet, but the end is not nigh. It's just people think they're so important that them leaving means everyone else will. Plus of course some people are self justifying their own opinion and many others are just trolling for shit and giggles. Personally I don't put too much faith in forum banter and anyway, I see the games in very different lights.

In WAR every time I log in I can get into a PvP fight in seconds, I can then continue fighting other players pretty much non-stop until I decide to log off. In RIFT this is quite simply not an option. There is PvP, but it is much more like WoW’s. It has Warfronts (battlegrounds/scenarios) and it has openworld PvP, but it doesn’t direct you into PvP like WAR does. The game isn’t about PvP, it’s about PvE. And like WoW it does have PvP options, but they are very much secondary to the PvE focus. WAR is completely the other way around and for me I need to have that instant PvP option. It’s something I’ve always really liked about WAR, having a reliable fight whenever I want it.

However…

I also need a PvE fix now and again, a change of pace and relaxing distraction. WAR used to provide this, albeit in buggy fashion, but has now lost that option and I’m missing it far more than I expected I would. I’m not going to go into the detail now, but Tomb of the Vulture Lord is broken again and actually irrelevant to anyone of RR80+ anyway, so the only thing we have is the new renown grind. Plus for those of us with a more "normal" amount of spare gaming time, the carrots we’re chasing are items that we won’t be able to equip for months. Kinda dull. Basically WAR has a lot of issues right now, the gear gulf is so terrible its beyond belief, it’s very zergy and the carrot/stick/grind balance is knackered. I’ve got quite a lot to write about what people are saying, what I think is wrong and what needs to be done, but that’s another series of posts. In short; Mythic have got a LOT of work to do to get the game back on track. BUT they CAN DO IT! Can't you. Yes you can ;)

Having said all that… That instant PvP thing in WAR is something I just can’t do without and simply can not get elsewhere. It’s just so damn “real life friendly”.Yes, the RR80 grind has put me off my Chosen and alas all my DPS alts are shelved now that they’ve all been made utterly useless by 1.4 and the gear issues. And yes, my “Having impact below level 80” post feels a little bit hollow now :/ BUT there is a redeemer! I’m enjoying playing my Shaman, since as a healer the fact that his gear is utter shite compared with the RR90+guys hitting for STUPID damage and mitigating almost everything doesn’t matter so much. I’ve not got to kill anything and I still get renown from healing.

So moving forward I will be playing RIFT and WAR. Different horses for different courses. I'm not alone in this, quite a few of my lot are going to try it out and there's a lot of old Kill Frenzy players that quit WAR who are also going to RIFT. Which in turn means I will be starting up a version of KF in RIFT, but not at the cost of WAR. The plan is to have active guilds in both games. Gonna be some interesting times ahead.