Rift -- A Full Weekend In

 So I am now 22nd level and I've done an epic quest and a dungeon and also a bunch of PVP battlegrounds. I've switched from my cleric to a warrior. And I've managed to be sucked into staying up into the AM two nights of my four day weekend in order to play Rift, something which really hasn't happened in as long as I can remember.

A few observations. Apparently every "class"" is able to do two roles. One primary and one secondary. I suspect that in the end, you will end up with your classic roles in the high end game, but for regular dungeon instances, you can function in your secondary function. In fact, right now mages are the best healers in the game, though they're about to be nerfed. So you have warrior tank/dps, cleric healer/tank, mage dps/heal (right now it's heal/dps), and rogue dps/tank. Given that you can have multiple roles and respec for free, that gives you an enormous amount of flexibility. Oh and If I didn't mention it, each class also has a pet option.

What surprises me about the game is that it is complex. The past few games that have come out have very much been one trick ponies. Yes, the pvp instances in Warhammer were fun. But there was nothing else that worked. There was no complexity. Rift keeps throwing new systems at me and that keeps it interesting. For example, if you do the "rifts" (public quests), there's an entire system of currency and rewards. And I'm really loving the rifts.It's so nice to be quest grinding and suddenly have this public quest open up and bring you together with the other players in the area. It gives you a chance to get together and form little groups or not. But it solves that "freshman mixer" thing. It has a set of collection quests where you find little artifacts along the roads and so on. These are then traded in to a collector for another type of point, which is then used to buy pets and mounts. And yes, it has non-combat pets! Wee!

 

What don't I like? I don't like the interface and it can be rearranged, but not changed. It's just a couple of irritating things. And maybe I just haven't figured out how to fix them. There are also way too many types of consumables. Ok, I actually would always prefer more to less, but I'm getting buried under them! They've apparently already fixed it once, but it isn't fixed enough: there's too much aggro when you travel, particularly from trivial mobs.

 

Other notes. When I ran the dungeon it works like old school. You can get teleported in, but when you exit, you exit the dungeon, you don't go back to what you're doing. I think that's a plus. Everyone concentrates on how the multiple server thing degraded the instance community in WoW, but I think the instant teleport did just as much. Because if you dropped out, you lost nothing. You were right back to adventuring. No trip back to somewhere.

 

Well that's it for an update for now. But I'm loving the game.

Rift -- A Full Weekend In

 So I am now 22nd level and I've done an epic quest and a dungeon and also a bunch of PVP battlegrounds. I've switched from my cleric to a warrior. And I've managed to be sucked into staying up into the AM two nights of my four day weekend in order to play Rift, something which really hasn't happened in as long as I can remember.

A few observations. Apparently every "class"" is able to do two roles. One primary and one secondary. I suspect that in the end, you will end up with your classic roles in the high end game, but for regular dungeon instances, you can function in your secondary function. In fact, right now mages are the best healers in the game, though they're about to be nerfed. So you have warrior tank/dps, cleric healer/tank, mage dps/heal (right now it's heal/dps), and rogue dps/tank. Given that you can have multiple roles and respec for free, that gives you an enormous amount of flexibility. Oh and If I didn't mention it, each class also has a pet option.

What surprises me about the game is that it is complex. The past few games that have come out have very much been one trick ponies. Yes, the pvp instances in Warhammer were fun. But there was nothing else that worked. There was no complexity. Rift keeps throwing new systems at me and that keeps it interesting. For example, if you do the "rifts" (public quests), there's an entire system of currency and rewards. And I'm really loving the rifts.It's so nice to be quest grinding and suddenly have this public quest open up and bring you together with the other players in the area. It gives you a chance to get together and form little groups or not. But it solves that "freshman mixer" thing. It has a set of collection quests where you find little artifacts along the roads and so on. These are then traded in to a collector for another type of point, which is then used to buy pets and mounts. And yes, it has non-combat pets! Wee!

 

What don't I like? I don't like the interface and it can be rearranged, but not changed. It's just a couple of irritating things. And maybe I just haven't figured out how to fix them. There are also way too many types of consumables. Ok, I actually would always prefer more to less, but I'm getting buried under them! They've apparently already fixed it once, but it isn't fixed enough: there's too much aggro when you travel, particularly from trivial mobs.

 

Other notes. When I ran the dungeon it works like old school. You can get teleported in, but when you exit, you exit the dungeon, you don't go back to what you're doing. I think that's a plus. Everyone concentrates on how the multiple server thing degraded the instance community in WoW, but I think the instant teleport did just as much. Because if you dropped out, you lost nothing. You were right back to adventuring. No trip back to somewhere.

 

Well that's it for an update for now. But I'm loving the game.