Journeys into Rift

Aren't I a sexy devil?

So, awhile ago, Trion released their much anticipated game, Rift. But before they did, they released a public beta. Being public, I was like "Hey! Chance to try out the game and see what I think!" So I did. And, well, I didn't like it. Yeah, it wasn't a terrible game but it failed to capture my interest and I never went any further. In part because, well, I hadn't enjoyed the beta, so I wasn't going to shell out the $80 or so for a game I wouldn't play. Well, that was nearly a year ago now and since then, they've (finally) released a trial account. So! I downloaded the client, started it up, made myself a character and decided to have fun!






Mathosia

I appear to be half in the ground on this fountain.

I made a Guardian, because they seemed the most trusty (Like my good ol' Draenei), made a human because the elves and dwarves looked even more boring (Which kinda says a lot), and a Warrior because Waniou is always a warrior, made a handsome young Waniou and got to playing!

First thing I did was, naturally, fiddle with the UI to make it match my WoW one, then fiddled with keybindings. Now, as the name of this blog implies, I'm left handed. That includes my mouse usage. Which means I can't use WSAD without making myself uncomfortable. So, I start a lot of sentences in a grammatically poor way, then use P;L' instead. It's easier for me. In the beta, Rift didn't let me because ' was defined as something else and I couldn't change it. I can now, so +1 to Rift for that!
They've also made choosing your spec a lot simpler, which is good. I got horribly confused trying to figure out which ones were best, now they give you a pre-set three souls and I'm much less confused.

My action bar at level 4.

Oh look, a rare person!

Unfortunately, I still seem to have a lot of needless abilities. As a Defender Warrior, at level 4, I've got 9 buttons, plus 2 more which I added myself but I probably don't need, on my first action bar, although two are buffs so I'll move those shortly. I also have an ability that increases my block for 15 seconds, with a 15 second cooldown. So, pre-WotLK Shield Block? That annoys me. I don't like abilities that grant buffs that you have to keep up constantly, but have a cooldown as long as their duration. It seems like poor design to me.

Besides that, the game looks pretty, adventures in a fountain's ground aside, as always and it's less confusing than I recall it being.

I'm sorry, but what?

The starting quests are identical to what I remember in Rift. Which is a shame, one of my problems was how little replay value there is in alts. Some of the quests seem easier, I recall dying a few times on beta but not here. Maybe I'm just more awesome. I did kill some dragony thing. Then I found out my graphics were on minimum, so whoops.

I got to one particular quest where I had to meet up with a Messenger of the Vigil. I recall this being where you get your Second (Or Third?) Soul but with what I mentioned above, about pre-selected Souls, that doesn't seem to have happened, so it seemed a wee bit odd, like I was running off to meet someone to gain some new powers, but the only new powers that seemed to happen was the Messenger teleporting me back to the quest hub. I did, however, get a new move called "Face Slam" so bonus points for that. Aaaaaand after a bit more fluffing around with quests, I get to do the first Rift thing. Which started with me nuking a bunch of guys while on a horse, so that was cool.

The first rift, as part of the starting quests. Very pretty.

Silverwood

After doing that bit, having a nice cutscene, I met up with some other randoms, one of which gave me a quest to rescue unconscious, drowning people. How do you rescue drowning people?

Lifesavers could learn from this interaction.

Them: "Unhhh...."
Me: "The Guardians need you!"
Them: "I... I'm alive? I must have fallen a hundred feet when the Defiants destroyed the bridge with us on it. I think I can make it back to shore..."
Me: "It's quite a swim, better get started."

That's right, lifesavers. None of that "mouth to mouth" rubbish. Just tell them to get out of the water and be quick about it!

Then I got a quest to steal something off a dead ally's corpse, throw it at someone, then watch as they die. I'm not sure what to think.

I appear to be half in the ground on this Porticulum.

After my nice wee adventure in being a terrible lifesaver, then stealing crap from dead people, I finally found a mailbox, where I'd received an epic trinket which I couldn't use because apparently trial accounts can't use epics. Even though it was mailed to me for free. Interesting way to encourage me to pay for my account there, Trion...

Then, once I'd learnt how to Hearthst... I mean Astral Rec... I mean Soul Recall, I decided that was enough for the night. I had Valenti... I mean Love is in the Air dailies to do on WoW!

Oooh, rifty!

Rifts

Once I logged back in, the surrounding area was apparently under attack by Rifts. Well! Rifts are what the game is all about! And so, I ran off to the nearest one and killed things! I'm not sure how much help I was being, especially since I died twice, but it was kinda fun. I got some stuff, don't know what to do with it yet, but I ran around with a bunch of other people and we killed the bad guys. Got two levels out of it too, one of which taught me Lay on Hands!
The main problem I found with them, was people who were level 20-25 coming in and killing everything. As far as I can tell, I get more if I do more, but it's hard to do more if people are killing everything and I don't get a chance.

Do I look that rich to you? :(

After I finished playing around with Rifts, I found where to buy the crap I was getting from them, so bought a Sigil of Rebirth which does something but I don't know what. It said Guardians can use it, so hey! Gotta be good! I also found a mount vendor and found I couldn't afford any. Damn. I'm tired of walking now. :(


Professions

ROCKS

A wee bit of questing later, I found out that the mount vendor was actually in a decently main city. I don't think it was a capital, but it seemed big enough so I hung around, looked at things and got myself some more professions. I'd picked up Mining from some other guy, so I got Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing from another guy. The professions system seemed intuitive enough, though I'm not sure if it's worth using at all yet. I've been told it's "more worthless than WoW's", so that's not encouraging. Quests for professions are pretty cool though, it's a good way to get people introduced into what they are and how to use them.

The crafting screen seems pretty nice and intuitive.

Unfortunately, after completing both quests, I had a bunch of stuff that, if I used it while crafting, I'd get more strength on whatever I was making. "Sweet! Nice wee customisation thing and I could use a new weapon so let's give this a shot!" I though.
"Requires Weaponsmithing 50". Really? You give me a reward that I can't use for another 44 levels? Oh well, back to crafting the same things over and over.

Logged in the next day to continue my quest to my trial level cap and found it was night time. Huh. It's 3:35pm here, which translates to 6:35pm on an Oceanic shard. That seems odd, I'd have thought the shard times would match up to Australian times, which is at least 2 hours behind me. Ah well, it's not a major issue.

Still confused here.

Not sure what to do next, because the two quests I had looked boring, I had a look at my quest log and found I'd missed one back earlier! Gasp! I went back, did it and it unlocked more quests, some of which seemed like they might answer what these Ascended Abilities actually did. I had one so far, Guardian's Flare, which would "summon a Guardian force to attack target planar idol." I had no idea what that meant or where it would be useful, but the quests had given me two more, one which would lure out planar forces, which I'm also not sure what that means but it sounds like summoning more stuff for me to kill, and another that makes me bigger and stronger against Rifts. Sweet! Unfortunately, none of these quests had yet to tell me what exactly the Hallowed Wardstones I kept seeing actually did. Perhaps the other quest chain I'd missed would tell me.

Nope, still no idea. Back to the quest chains then! Or, until I get bored of them. Which happened at about level 13. Unfortunately, all the quests are still variations of the standard "Kill 7 boars" or "Collect 7 boar livers". Yeah, I know, there's only so many different kinds of quests you can make, but I decided to change things up a bit with a Defiant!

The Defiants

Still a sexy devil.

So, wanting to play a different side and class, I made myself a Night El- I mean Kelari rogue. I started off with Sinister Str- I mean Savage Strike, Evisc- I mean Final Blow, and Evasi- I mean Side Steps. Sorry, I hate to make blatant comparisons but it just seemed so WoW-esque. Although, I also had Blin- I mean Shadow Shift, which isn't very WoW-roguey.
I did notice another thing though. All the races are basically the same, cosmetic differences aside. There's no different storyline for the different races, which is part of why Rift doesn't have that much replay value. You have to go through the same start quests, no matter what. Well, you can roll the other faction, but even then, it feels like the same start quests but in a different location and in a slightly different order.

I can, however, see the ideological difference between Guardians and Defiants. Guardians are all like "technology is evil! The Vigil will save us! The Defiants are using their cursed technology and it brought Regulos down on the world!" while the Defiants are like "The Vigil have forsaken us! We need our technology or we don't stand a chance against Regulos." There are obvious, real world comparisons to make but I think they're too obvious to make here.

I went through all of the Defiant start quests and then got to the point that, I admit, made me face-desk in the beta.

Time travel.

Oh hey, it's the big bad guy.

Really? Just... what? Why is there time travel randomly? Okay, yeah, we get to see the bleak apocalyptic future and all that but there is one huge, huge issues that probably have been addressed somewhere, I just haven't noticed yet.
You travel back in time to prevent Regulos from destroying the world and creating the bleak apocalyptic future you start off in. Which means one of two things.
1: If you succeed, there is no bleak apocalyptic future, so there's no reason to send you back in time to save him. It's a paradox and there has to be some way to resolve that. Unless...
2: You cannot stop Regulos and the apocalyptic future must happen. Which kinda sucks, really.

Unfortunately, I must admit, I got bored of my rogue pretty quickly. I probably picked the wrong calling again but... well, the quests all felt exactly the same as the Guardian quests I'd just done and the rogue played basically the same as a rogue on WoW. By level 7, which, I realise is still a low level, I had one move that wasn't a clone of a move on WoW.

He looks pretty menacing.

ZOMG MASS INVASION

Bad things!

After getting bored of my rogue (I'll get back to him, don't worry, I just couldn't be bothered at that point in time), I hopped back on Waniou and found the area I was in was under a massive invasion by fire stuff. Sweet! This had happened the night before but I was too nooby to really participate. But this one! I was set for this. I donned my shield and took off into the night after fire goblins and other monsters! And it was a lot of fun! We had a group of about 15 people and we ran around, following the quest objectives and took down the invasion, finally uncovering the final boss.

Which was killed by level 50s before any of us could get there.

Real nice, guys. Way to ruin our fun.

Does Rift actually have inns like in WoW?

Seriously, I touched on this earlier, but it really sucks, though I can see why you can't really do anything about it. Griefers will be griefers and you just have to live with it.

But, I got plenty of Planarite from my Rifting, so I bought myself a new weapon and a new chestpiece that didn't make me look like a jigalo, then noticed I was level 15. Well! Dungeon time! I queued up for a random dungeon and...

Nothing. Crafted some stuff, some of which was upgrades, most got salvaged to make more stuff. Still no queue pop. After about 20 minutes, I gave up and went to bed. I'll dungeon tomorrow!

Dungeon time!

The entrance to the dungeon. Ooooh.

After a week of work, dailies and raiding on WoW, I finally found time nearly a week later to do a dungeon. So I did! Woo! Got into the Realm of the Fae dungeon, got my best tanking face on and went in.

The dungeon itself looked pretty nice. Nothing too special, but oh well. I ran in, picked up the first quest, noticed the group quest thing, which was pretty handy to let me know where I wanted to be going, and took off.
Then noticed something a little odd.
I had two level 50s in my group.

Oh dear.

Now, don't get me wrong. Being carried through places isn't bad. But there's a time and a place for it. If I wanted to be carried through somewhere, I'd have gotten some friends to do that. I didn't want to. I wanted to go in with a level appropriate group and experience dungeoning, as it was intended. It seems like poor game design to allow level 50s into a random dungeon group, but oh well, that's what Trion apparently wanted.

The third boss, if I remember correctly.

The bosses seemed mostly tank and spank, but it was the first dungeon, and I recall having the same complaint about WoW when I first started playing (Though, they've fixed that a lot with the revamped Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep, and the increased boss health across the board, except BC and WotLK dungeons, which, by the way Blizzard, need more health). Still, I kept on, going through each boss with no difficulty, thanks to the level 50s.

Then I got to the Sanctum of Winter.

Seriously, view the whole image. It's worth it.

The final boss

And I just have to say. Hoooooly craaaaaaaaap. That place looked amazing. Until then, the graphics had been pretty good but nothing to write home about. It looked like WoW but with slightly improved graphics. This place though, it was just amazing. It suited the environment, it added extra challenges since I had to keep swinging my camera around and nearly fell off a ledge a few times, and it was just visually amazing and I've never seen anything like it on WoW. I hear there are other zones (Probably outside the trial area) that are as amazing looking as that, and it's somewhat tempting to pick up the game just for that.
 
Aaaaaand seeing as I haven't logged in Rift since then (It's been about a month now), I suppose that's a good time to end this blog and upload it, seeing as I haven't put up a blog since December. Whoops. Been a busy couple of months, what with moving and all that. Plus, I have a free week of SW:TOR which is downloading now, so expect a blog, hopefully sooner about that.

Final Thoughts

So, what did I think? The game has improve a lot since the public beta. It's much easier to pick up and get going and you don't feel like you need to be tabbing out to fansites to find the best builds constantly. Seriously, that's a huge plus in its favour.

An unopened rift. Took me ages to realise that.

Unfortunately, the biggest downside for me personally, is how little replay value the game has. Both starting zones are basically identical but with different looking enemies to fight and you have to do them, so it's like "Roll an alt? Ehhh can't be bothered doing the exact same things over and over." I might pick up the game at some point, or at least, get to level 20 already, if I get sufficiently bored of WoW, but for now, I'm sticking with WoW. Even though Pandaland is still ages away.