Mystic Worlds

Wonderful Weekend in Rift

Shorter Queues

The queues have dissipated on some servers.  Logging into popular servers during off hours can be instantaneous to 30 minutes.  On Faeblight, which is RP PVE, we’re still experiencing 1 to 2 hour wait-times during prime time.  We think that might even out as players without guilds change to other servers or some choose not to subscribe after the first 30 days.  I’m in for the full 6 months at least, having purchased at the “Founders” pricing model.  The game was patched several times over the weekend; one in particular now boots players who’ve gone AFK at the character selection screen to reduce queues.

Back in the Herd

I had a wonderful weekend playing Rift and being back amongst the members of Casualties of War. Right now we’re all off doing our own thing – questing, some organized PVP, a few were running Iron tombs, crafting, helping each other when asked, etc. but we will be having Monday night progression groups that level and PVP together after the official launch.

Happy Pappy?

Yes, I'm much happier today - for now at least.  I was able to get on Faeblight at 6-ish this morning to create my character.  At lunch I was also able to put in an hour without waiting in a queue and made it out of the "tutorial" zone.  Yea!!

I'm hoping that I can log-in right after work and make may way through a reasonable queue.  My goal is to get past Freemarch tootsweet, which is where I forced myself to stay throughout the Beta and Alpha Testing.  COW is going to be doing Monday night static groups and I want to participate when I'm in town. It's been FOREVER since I've done organized grouping and am really looking forward to Rift's instanced content.

The Rescue Ark area looks like it was invade by tortuses.  OMG the number of players that opt'd for the CE version of the game looks staggering.  Three cheers for Trion. I wish them and the game all the best.  I bailed on having Kelari as my race.  I'm a bit sad about it but that horrible fox form stealth racial is just stupid.  Even if it worked it was stupid.  I went Eth for the convenience of a speed boost which is nice racing from place to place when it's not far enough to bother getting on your mount.  I will miss RP'ing in my head that I lived in the Kelari Refuge on the shore which is my favorite non-combat NPC settlement so far.  It reminds me of Booty Bay.  

Now if I can just get people in COW vent to hear me, I'd be set.  No clue what the problem is but either I'm on global ignore or something is wrong with my mic.  Hmm.

Holy Rift Queues!

Quick post while working. I figured I'd log-in shortly after the Headstart openend to secure my names on the servers where the Casualties of War guild will be playing. OMG - I'm 1576 person the in f-ing queue 30 mins after the HS servers went live.  *Flashbacks of Aions initial release*

 

Back to work and intermittenly checking my position in the queue.

On the road

I'm hitting the road on business for a couple of weeks.  It's great timing and will help my resolve to stay out of Rift until the head-start.  I don't foresee any drastic class changes at this point which is the only thing I'd want to test.  Racial overhalls mean nothing to me.  I didn't even look at them before selecting my race since callings aren't limited by them.

I won't be doing a black out on Rift information.  I will be gobbling up any and all news and blog posts on the game.  There are a lot of great resources for news and lore, here are the places I visit in addition to my blogroll:

Rift Herald

Sanctum Podcast (Live show is on Sunday, 3 PM Pacific and is absolutely great fun!!)

Rift Podcast 

Telarapedia

Rift Junkies (Combat Parser available from this team)

Rift Watchers

ZAM Soul Calculator

Rift: Kudos to removing artificial barriers

Good news from Beta 6 patch notes that will improve the overall ease of use and gaming experience. Plus lots of other great game tweaks and new content mechanics.  But I'm all about the fluff and user experience now since I already know the content is fun and have faith that anything broken will be fixed in short order.

If you can afford it, you can ride it!

Woot!  They’ve removed level restrictions for the 60% speed increase mount.  This was originally slated as your first mount and couldn’t be attained until level 20. The rule no longer applies and as soon as you have the 2-something plat to buy it, you can ride it.

It’s not clear to me if this means purchasers of the CE version of the game, who are being given the special Turtle mount, will be able to ride that from level 1 or if it’s not unlocked until you purchase your first mount.  If the latter is the case then the purchase is more like a riding skill than buying a mount. Any CE players playing the beta this weekend please chime in and let us know. 

Done Chasing Rifts – For Now

I've seen all I need or want to see before release.  I’m sure I’ll pop on the test server when class changes appear in the patch notes to assess the impact.  Otherwise, it’s play time over until March.

My problem is that chasing rifts I can see from a distance in the sky, inadvertently causes me to stumble into quest areas I haven’t seen before.  I really call shenanigans on complaints that the quests are too linear.  I’ve leveled past several areas on multiple characters without ever knowing they existed. And I certainly never struggled for content to help me gain levels.  For players who complain in game that they've run out of quests at level 15 I'd suggest that you, wake the hell up and explore!

My biggest disappointment was running into an area and finding a whole village of action that seemed like the GW2 dynamic events – this wasn't dynamic of course, but it was bustling with NPCs and players running around completing quests.  I won’t spoil it by going into detail and I’m not sure the area is open in beta yet but I was really bummed that I’d inadvertently run inside.  Once I was there, I looked around a little bit. How could I resist?  I logged after that, haven’t logged back in and have no plans to participate in this week’s beta event.