A Review of "RIFT: Planes of Telara" MMO

Since the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (WoW) set the gaming world on fire, one gaming company after another has tried to apply what they have learned from their observations of Blizzard Entertainment's efforts with World of Warcraft to create the next MMO role-playing game that could be deserving of more than two million active player subscriptions. First came Warhammer, then Age of Conan, and finally Aion.

All of them made a big splash in the number of players they were able to attract during their launches, but ultimately all of them failed to keep the magical one million plus active player number after the first year.

While it is too early to be certain, it appears that Trion's RIFT may have finally developed a compelling alternative to World of Warcraft, and it appears they largely did it not by entirely re-inventing the wheel but by keeping the familiar user interface and conventions that WoW introduced, and that players have come to expect. Instead they focused on fixing the little things that have served to annoy the WoW player base. They did a marvelous job of identifying the wishlist of game innovations that players loved from all of the previously mentioned MMO games, like Dark Age of Camelot and EverQuest, while keeping their feet solidly in 2011.

The basic premise of the game is that you are a hero in the world of Telara. You are an ascended; a Telaran that has been resurrected to fight for Telara as a member of the Guardians, or the Defiant.

This world constantly besieged by invasions of minions from other planes of existence, at the behest of the big bad guy behind it all, Regulos. These minions of Regulos, who come from eight different planes of existence (death, water, life, earth, air, etc...) make their entry into the world of Telara through rifts of time and space. These rifts spawn randomly in player zones and create a dynamic world raid element that is more or less constantly in flux. And just like Warhammer, RIFT make it easy to combat the rifts with the public grouping system. No more do you find yourself in a world raid, only to discover that your group wasn't the one that tagged the mob, and therefore does reap the opportunity of receiving the rewards. Public grouping allows players, to quickly, and spontaneously organize to meet the threat. These efforts, are of course rewarded; primarily with a currency called Planarite, that is earned for defeating the creatures and ultimately closing the rift. The Planarite can be redeemed at vendors for various improvements to gear, as well as the occasional non-combat in-game items.

The Guardian faction is a group of fairly religious, technological luddites, who seem to believe that the reason that Telara is besieged at all is because of the unwise advances in, and use of, technology in the world. Something for which they blame on the Defiant faction.

The Defiants, on the other hand fervently believe that in order to defend Telara from, and defeat the forces of Regulos, it must use every tool at its disposal, no matter where that tool comes from. The Defiant do not hold out hope that a god of any sort will make itself known to Telara and save it from destruction.

Usually when you hear anything about RIFT, this main element is used to sell players on trying the game, but I think the real genius of the game is the smaller additions that the design team has made to the game. These polished improvements just make life more enjoyable for players in the world. Some of the improvements seem so obvious, that you might ask yourself why they haven't add long ago to others, such as having an lock/unlock button for your action bars right out front, instead of buried within many menus. This simple placements save so much grief when you are trying to juggle new abilities, pets, and mount. No longer do you have to make fellow party or raid members wait, while you navigating multiple screens to lock and unlock actionbars. Another innovation is the inclusion of a "sell all items without value" button that can be used at vendors throughout the game. WoW has had a third party add-on that provides the same functionality, but its use is so prevalent I've been disappointed that even going on seven years later, they have yet to implement it officially within the user interface of the game. Another welcome addition is the ability of a single player to loot multiple mobs whose corpses have formed a pile. No longer do I have to waste my time and effort to try to highlight and loot every single corpse in the pile. With one click, I get a look at everything that that group of mobs might have dropped, make my decision, and move on.

Players in RIFT are also allowed more customization of their character than in World of Warcraft, which is a welcome relief. I used to play Star Wars Galaxies, and while they got a ton of things wrong in the game over the couple of years that I played, the one thing they got right was the character creation process, and I've missed it ever since. RIFT developers heard the suggestions of players loud and clear, WE WANT TO EXPRESS OURSELVES! Additionally, once you are in game, you can even purchase dyes to customize the color of your armor and clothing further. No more must you suffer playing a character that looks like it came straight from an episode of Rainbow Brite!

Another huge innovation in the RIFT MMO, is how classes are implemented. At the character creation screen, you choose from the four most common fantasy character class archetypes of Mage, Warrior, Cleric, or Rogue, as your calling, but once you start leveling, you pick up up souls with which to flesh out your abilities, thus making you a bit more unique from everyone else playing the same archetype that you have chosen.

Souls are the way to customize classes in RIFT: Planes of Telara. Each come with a full set of abilities and a class tree. Players choose one soul at character creation, and can eventually take on up to three souls within a particular calling. This results in a ton of possible class combinations, allowing players to customize the character to their particular play style and preferences.

Players are also allowed to purchase up to three additional specs, two more than WoW offers, which allows players to be flexible enough to create builds of their character for raiding, soloing, player vs. player, etc... The effect is that a player is not stuck with one build. You can even switch between your builds, in game, without a cost to mana when you are out of combat. This allows players in raid, to try different combinations of builds for defeating a boss, and because most of the archetypes have at least one healing soul of abilities, you can consider having a couple of your characters to switch to one their more healing advantageous builds. Need more DPS? Then re-adjust once more. No problem. This should reduce some of the grief guilds have experienced in the past when they feel pressured to take on a player because they offer to fill a class hole in your raid team, but are assholes. Now you can play with who you want, and just readjust your builds as necessary.

As I experimented with the game, I played both factions up to level 10. My Guardian side character was a warrior, and my Defiant side character was a mage. Ultimately I enjoyed playing for the Defiant faction more and decided to go with my mage for further leveling. Both starting zones were interesting, but I just felt myself more sympatico with the cyberpunk, steampunk-esque feel of the Defiant starting zone. As I started leveling I subsequently picked up the souls of Pyromancer, Elementalist, and Stormcaller. The mage calling ultimately has nine total souls to choose from. Eight of them are player vs. environment, and the ninth is a player vs. player soul. Warrior, Cleric, and Rogue also have nine souls to choose from. The result is that my character feels like the WoW equivalent hybrid of a Fire mage, a Warlock, and a Shaman, and that is not three different specs as they would be in WoW, but one spec with three different branches.

Admittedly, this kind of class setup could end up being a balancing nightmare for the designers of the game, but so far that has not seemed to be an issue. One thing I like about this kind of class flexibility, is that combined with the customization options you have over the color of your armor and clothing, it will be a bit more difficult for another player to immediately ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of your character with a merely a glance the color and shape of your character's gear. PvP purists may find that infuriatingly frustrating, but it should keep things lively, at least for the next few months anyhow.

The game at launch came prepared with their Achievement system, so for those you who enjoy earning achievements for some of the most odd things you can imagine in the game, fear not! Plus, they did a nice job of creating a crafting system that feels pretty well balanced. I love the ability to salvage materials from older pieces of armor, as well as being able to include an augment during the crafting process that will give an ability buff to the item that will increase a stat such as strength, intelligence, wisdom, or endurance. RIFT also implemented a system of random artifact spawns that you can organize into Collections in the game ala EverQuest.

Leveling in RIFT has been a pleasure. You can go the traditional route of doing a wide variety of solo quests, and dungeons, or you can level via PvP, or even crafting! You can even level via closing the rifts! Just about everything you do in RIFT renders you experience points. This should come as a relief to the power levelers, and to the folks who prefer to level using their favorite play-style.

While the art does not quite compete with the stunning visual display of Aion, it certainly exceeds that of The Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, and Warhammer.

After playing a character in so many of the other MMO games over the years, I can quite honestly say that the RIFT launch has been the most painless I've ever experienced. Trion did a great job of accumulating a wide range of experienced people who have worked on just about every large MMO out there including EverQuest II, Dark Ages of Camelot, and Dungeons and Dragons, among others. So, they are quite familiar with all of the issues that a larg and modern MMO will face,, and have done a great job of adding elegant solutions like coin-locking (to prevent account theft and vandalism) earlier in the lifetime of the game, than their competitors.

All in all, RIFT is a polished massively multiplayer online roleplaying game that I would feel comfortable recommending to all levels of players. I truly think it has a bit of something for everyone, and most importantly the parts have been polished to a bright sheen.

So, I can imagine you asking what the negatives, and quite honestly there are not many thus far. One negative I suppose is that like most MMOs, RIFT relies on a ton of endgame. Trion claims they have a bunch of endgame dungeons and raids awaiting players when they reach the level cap. If you are someone who enjoys the leveling process and is not into raiding or PvP, you might find yourself at the level 50 cap fairly quickly, and I'm not sure what you might do since once you arrive, as there are no secondary professions like fishing, first-aid, or cooking to keep you occupied with while you await new solo content. There also does not appear to be a celebration of in-game holidays, which was also a pleasant way for a casual player to enjoy the game and lore in the World of Warcraft.

I've been taking my time playing, and after having done a /play in-game, I see that I've been in the RIFT world for a little over two days, and I am already in the middle of level 29. Casual players may be suffer from the lack of those secondary professions and in-game holidays, although achievements are always a great way to fill out your time. It will be interesting to see how quickly Trion adds new content for the more casual players who don't want to raid or PvP. Doing so, in addition to the new raid and pvp content over the next few months, will mean that they are serious about keeping the one million plus active subscribers that they've gathered at launch.

See you later, I think I see an army of undead forces pouring through a gaping rift in Stonefield.

Sources:

http://www.riftgame.com