Rift Beta Weekend Impressions

Rift has not been on my radar.  I haven’t been looking for a new MMO.  I was fine dabbling in EVE Online, EQ2 Extended Crafting and poking around Cataclysm.  However, the uptick in blogger posts got me curious so I decided to check out this weekend’s event. Having only played for a weekend I’ll keep my impressions brief.

There was nothing that I didn’t like about Rift.  I could stand to do less running back and forth when you’re rift chasing.  However, I will say that the experience felt more like an army on the move because you had to traverse the landscape to reach conflict points versus hopping on a fast travel mechanic.  At times it felt old school fun to see small groups of players running in packs on their way to handle business.  I usually jumped right in behind them, without a thought of my level.  It reminded me very much of my fonder days in WAR.  Lowbie or not, healing is healing, if you’re about to bite the dust.  My healing wasn’t very powerful but I know I saved lives.  *smile*

I’m 100% sold on the Cleric calling.  And before more people start screaming for nerfs, Clerics are not priests.  They are a variant of every healing class you’ve encountered before – druid, warden, paladin, monk, priests, etc.  And most of those mentioned can take a punch and still heal.  If the class was called Battle Priest or Druid or Paladin, I think people would stop some of the teeth gnashing.

The detailed Steampunk feel of the Defiant zones had me at hello.  I tried Guardian too because I like happy, sunshine, shire-like zones but it felt too sterile.  I doubt I would have passed up Steampunk regardless.  The graphics are good.  There was something about the starter zone that I didn’t like.  It bugged me for a while that I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Maybe those graphics haven’t been optimized yet but the minute I was whisked away from there, it was great.

There are plenty of quests, free roaming mobs and at least two instances before you hit mid 20s.  I don’t touch instanced content before a release.  That’s like unwrapping gifts a couple of days early and having nothing on the “day of”.  The questing is what you’d expect from new MMO.  They’re using all the common devices to have you complete a task.  For me personally, I found the questing not as compelling as my early days of WOW.  However, it was considerably more fun than EQ2, LOTRO, AOC or Aion.

As for it being extremely linear, I never felt that way.  You’re all over the dang map participating in rift events.  As a result, I never felt stuck in one area too long or guided.  If all you do is straight to the chase leveling to max, then perhaps it might feel that way.  I picked up quests in zones I hadn’t been lead to because I was there on a rift.  I played 4 characters and with the exception of the common defiant starter quests, I didn’t do the same exact quests or the same order of quests.  On my last character I kept running into areas wondering, “Wait - where was this encampment last time?  Did I really miss this whole graveyard of mobs before?  Oh man, there’s a whole area with quests over that rise.”  *shrug*

I feel like you’ll only be lead by the nose in Rift if that’s how YOU quest – only doing things by the book and in the explicit order some NPC guides you into.  And even then you’d have to completely ignore Rifts to quest in that way.  If you follow a rift north and stumble on quests, I’d do some of those there first then go back to where I was before, if and when I get ready.  Some quests I abandoned because by the time I felt like heading back that way I’d out leveled them and had on superior gear from rift rewards so the walk wasn’t worth it to me.

Things I enjoyed most:

1. Defiant side is Steampunk themed as a core part of their storyline
2. Soul plus role mechanic make class customization extremely diverse
3. Rifts are come as you are excitement – no spec, class, gear check or level requirement.  If you can make it there go!
4. Quest diversity and appropriateness – what I was doing made sense for our role in this particular world.  No sending a hero to go fetch pies.
5. Very nice graphics and I liked the more realistic models and gear.  They’re not going to be the sugar rush with sparkly effects but also not utterly dull, mismatch and uninspired.  It's a nice change from WOW gear, even though I liked WOW gear. 
6. The world feels alive and not just from the rifts.  Between the NPC invasions, rifts and players running across the landscape to battle, there was always something going on.  The walking definitely discouraged some of my questing when it was far but it NEVER stopped me from joining a rift raid. I ran some long-ass distances to join groups and had fun.  That part felt very Asheron’s Call 2 even though AC2 had portals, the landmass itself was HUGE.
7. Enough quest diversity to fill in the gaps between rifting, instancing, PVP, crafting, etc.
8. I’m not you’re grandma’s healer!  I’m heroic, supposedly some savior so it makes sense that I can take a punch and heal.  It wasn’t just healers.  I saw several non-tank classes kiting elites until help arrived.
9. It’s polished. I didn’t personally experience any bugs and the performance is far superior in massive events to what we had on release with WAR, which was a slide show.  There is some lag when there are 60+ players hammering a dozen elites and one Megatron size elite is also stomping around.  But it wasn’t anything I wasn’t able to heal through effectively.
10. It’s not WOW.  If you’re on a break or over it, this could be a good fit.  There’s nothing earth shattering here but I don’t think there needs to be anyway.  A good movie is a good movie, even when it’s the same boy meets girl story, typical mystery or thriller.  I’ve enjoyed every Jason Bourne movie with Matt Damon and he’s still Bourne, lethal-human-on-the-run-good-guy-turned-bad-wanna-good-and-the-government-is-da-debil.

Hmm, it's quite possible that I don't really know the meaning of the word brief.

Comments

[Bhagpuss]

That's one of the best write-ups on Rift I've seen, although maybe I say that because it accords so closely with my own experience.

I was quite down on the questing in the earlier betas, but only because I'm fairly down on all MMO questign right now. I always strongly disagreed that it was any more linear than any other MMO questing. They are all linear if you follow them slavishly, but Rift is no worse than WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, LotRO in that respect. If you take control and make your own decisions instead of letting NPCs boss you about, the supposed linearity vanishes.

I spent much of the weekend questing in Gloamwood, the Guardian 20 - 25 zone. I found the quests there to be better written and more interesting. The zone itself is a joy. The storyline there is highly unoriginal but I completely agree about the originality thing. It's a genre MMO. It doesn't need to be original, it just needs to be well done and it is.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats also commented on the distances you have to run and how fed up of it you get. Again I agree, and I felt it striongly in Betas 1 and 2. In Beta 3, however, I got my mount and that slow run thing suddenly made sense. At just about the time you are really going to begin to notice the running is getting to you, that's exactly when the prospect of getting a mount hoves over the horizon.

Getting a mount should be a significant event, especially in a brand-new MMO. Rift pitches it perfectly. When I hit 20 I had enough money, just, to buy my two-tailed bearcat and boy was I ready to spend it. And when I got him the difference was wonderful.

I've played a cloth caster and a plate tank so far, the former to 25th , the latter to 15th. I'm saving the cleric for Live and I rarely play scouts. I just hope they don't tone the healer archetype down before I get to have a go with it.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Thanks. I like to use betas for trying all the classes I might want to play so that when live comes, I know for sure. The cleric class will not disappoint. When I played the highest DPS ranged version I was considerably more vulnerable. I died several times on the way to 10 even thought it was my 3rd run at that point. When did the less DPS more survival oriented guess what? I could kite elites. This is as it should be. People are whining without even knowing what version of a cleric they're looking at.

I saw others say that the guardian storyline content was better. All I can say is that what they lacked there they put into the steampunk rendering and it is so good. If i do the next beta I'll do crafting and rifts only. I don't want to see anymore content.

[Joe]

What istances were available before 20 ? Wasnt the 1st one IF which started at 20 ?

I also found a lot of similarities to Ac2..though I do not think we agree on the living world aspect. The rifts were great but all the quests flet like they were on rails and the quest givers static.

Here is my review of Rifts if you are interested.

http://asteriskcrusade.blogspot.com/2011/01/rift-review-beta-4.html

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

To my knowledge there is Iron Tombs and another on the guardian side I thought, that for now you could portal to but people aren't sure how Defiant folks would get to that one in the live game.

I'm not sure where the on rails comes from. With the exception of EQ2 whose quests I felt a bit circuitous, what current MMO doesn't lead you from hub to hub?? It's only in recent years, after expansions that WOW has options for most level ranges. It's not fair to compare it to that when most games on release have 1 zone per level range after racial starting areas and they lead you to those zones via quests.

I'll take a look at your impressions. Thanks for stopping by.

[Ziyi]

Hihi!
I'm liking it, on the technical side of things.
But I do have to agree with the above poster about the world being static. It's still not a next-gen game in that regard; while the starter area seemed very alive, once I got out there I immediately noticed questmobs standing around in a meadow, picking flowers, waiting for the passing heroes to smack them into the ground.
Same with the capital cities, they don't feel like cities at all, just a convenient collection of vendor npc's and trainers.
The 'crafting' is another letdown, same cookiecutter 'assembly' setup as WoW, EQ, etc.
And the lack of housing and appearance gear is worrying me, but, on the plusside, there's dyes :o)
All in all, I have a budding interest, the technical side of things looks to be coming together nicely, I'm just curious to see whether the game will have an actual soul.
xox
Ziyi&Twinkle

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

No not next gen and not billed as such. Yep mobs are wandering or standing around waiting to be whacked like most other games and NPCs are standing there waiting for player interaction. I've yet to play any fantasy MMO where this isn't the case. EQ2 and WOW have a few NPCs that wonder but it's the same path over and over. This is a general failing in all of them I've played to date. But the rifts at least bring something changeable whereas the others don't at all.

GW2 is the game claiming to be poised to alleviate this but we shall see. I'm hoping that game sets the bar on it. I thin the real issue is that the games against which Rift is being consider are DENSER in content not more dynamic, they are as static in terms of quest mobs and quest NPCs.

[Ziyi]

I'm tempted to go pre-order :o)
It's got bladedancers, which is a class I've been waiting for to be properly done for aaaaaages.
And in the current gaming-climate where 60euros gets you an xbox game with 5 hours of gameplay from start to finish, it would have to be suddenly -extremely- bad to not be worth the money.
And did I mention bladedancers?
*giggles*

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

I keep hearing people rave about that class but NO CLUE is. Care to provide cliff notes description? Based on your main in EQ2 I'm guessing it's melee?

[Pan]

Does the game have anything like EQ2 mentoring or COH sidekicking or plans for something similar? I like to play with a group of friends, but it's sometimes difficult to group together when our level ranges spread too far between characters.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Not that I'm aware of. Rift hunting together would be less restrictive than questing. I was in raids with people up to 10 levels higher, healed them well enough and got nice XP along with emblems for rewards.