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Thursday, February 17, 2011

RIFT - First Impressions

RIFT is the latest in a long line of supposed contenders over the stranglehold that World of Warcraft currently holds over the MMORPG market. This is a pay-to-play game, meaning you have to buy the box and pay a monthly fee.

RIFT does many things similar to World of Warcraft, but has also improved on quite a few facets. The first thing you'll notice is the absolutely STUNNING graphics. The engine is newer and you can play either with the extreme graphics, or the mediocre graphics if your rig is crap. Either way, the game simply looks prettier than World of Warcraft.
RIFT has also made it possible to fully customize your UI without having to go through the hassle of downloading a thousand addons. You can move everything and change it to your liking and it's built into the game.
When it comes to skills and talent trees, in RIFT you have what are called souls. You get to choose among 8 souls for each class and create your own distinct class with three talent trees to choose from. It's a lot of fun to be able to create your own custom class with whatever skills you would like or feel are needed. Some levels, you gain 2 points to put in these trees and because they're limited by your level, you need to put these extra points into your secondary tree.
At first, I wasn't very impressed by the gameplay. The linear questing with the same old objectives over and over again were apparent from the start. Once I got through the starter area and entered the world at large, I was introduced to a very fun aspect of the game which was surprisingly fun.
In RIFT, there are intermittently appearing portals to other realms that tear open, from which otherworldly denizens pour out and attempt to destroy the towns in your world. It is the job of the players to defeat these demons and to seal these rifts. The rifts operate similarly to public quests in Warhammer Online. You all work together towards a large and difficult goal and are ranked on performance. You receive rewards according to how well you did in these quests. These rifts help to alleviate from the monotony of incessant questing and grinding. They are fun and the rewards you reap are extremely worthy of your time.

I haven't had enough time to level up to the point where I can do instances with others or PvP, so I will write up another review when I have progressed further. So far excellent game and seeing as it is in Open Beta until monday, I would suggest for anyone who is interested to go out and try it!

46 comments:

  1. I loooove mmorpgs but I am part jewish so I refuse to pay. Whats the best free mmorpg?

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  2. Well, this answered some of the questions I had about the game, Thanks! I hope you plan to do another post once you have delved deeper into the game.

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  3. I was getting kind of curious about it. I just quit WoW so maybe I'll have to give it a try

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  4. looks pretty good! i'm always reluctant to just go out and buy games so i might give the beta a try. i downloaded Runes of Magic yesterday (a free to play mmorpg) and i'm enjoying it, you should review that next! :P

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  5. I am the same as Dwarftallica got bored of WoW! Nice post dude I hadn't heard of this game before.

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  6. hmm looks pretty good, i'll have to try it out some time

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  7. Looks a lot like WoW, worth trying I guess.

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  8. I have heard a lot of good things about Rift, but to be honest, I'm quite sick of the WoW formula of gameplay. The MMO market is in need of some originality. I am very much looking forward Guild Wars 2. Also to The Innocuous Bison, Allods Online is probably the best F2P WoW style MMO I've seen. You can even fill out surveys for their store currency. Check out MMOhut.com they specialize in free MMO games.

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  9. it needs to be free like GW2 :((

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  10. I need to try this before Monday then!

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  11. Can you jump? If not I wont bother.

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  12. It looks a bit like WoW but the graphics are really good

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  13. Looks pretty fun. I played WoW for a while but got so tired of it.
    Original WoW - Grind, collect wolf pelts, get ganked by a warlock.

    Burning Crusade - Collect basilisk scales, get ganked by warlocks/rogues, grind.

    WotLK - Get ganked by rogues, shamans, and warlocks, collect some stupid walrus tusks or some crap, grind, WEEP OVER COUNTLESS LOST HOURS OF LIFE. Quit.

    Hopefully you can play this game a little more casually and still succeed, unlike WoW which requires 21.5 hours per day, lest you get behind.

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  14. i wish it was free, i am already saving my pennies for skyrim.

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  15. You can't really say mmorpg these days without following it up with something to do with WOW, which is annoying, and why I'm probably going to give this thing and other similar games a miss. Perhaps its time to hop back into my EVE spaceship and wonder the universe in peace, alone :)

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  16. This sounds interesting, I hate WoW but I do like FF XI. I may check this one out for future reference.

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  17. You have to compare games to WoW because it has set the standard, it is the bar that games must try to surpass. Games don't even try to fit a niche that WoW has missed, which could bring them success. They all try to beat WoW by just remaking it with a few tweaks here and there. Nobody wants to take a risk, nobody wants to innovate and therefore nobody will ever beat Blizzard because they will always be one step ahead, with everyone else trying to catch up.

    I said this years ago; the game that kills WoW will be created by Blizzard.

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  18. The talent trees and UI really look WoWish, which will make transitions easy...

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  19. Do you have any plans to review Entropia?

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  20. i do kinda love the graphics..but i dont have money to do monthly fee games :(

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  21. I won't pay them for grindan, no, not again. Hope you can review free games or games with a single payment.

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  22. grinding is so hard unless there are other things to occupy you with!

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  23. Great I'll give the game a go!

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  24. How do you find all of these games? i didnt know any of these existed.

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  25. Rift is interesting (been in Alpha for bout 3 or so months now), it does nothing new but what it does, it does right. If you are starting MMOs this is the game to go to, no doubt but if you're already committed to one there is no reason to come over.

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  26. Looks way better than WOW, but it will take a lot to loosen their hold over MMORPG

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  27. Im highly debating giving this a try. I do nothing but raid when it comes to WoW, so I need something to fill my downtime besides minecraft.

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  28. nice review but sad it is paid mmo ;/

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  29. Looks a little bit complicated for me

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  30. This sounds great,but why pay-to-play :/

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  31. Don't have any plans this weekend so I guess I'll try it. Thanks.

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  32. Looks WoW.
    But i will check it out ;)

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  33. rift isn't bad, the F2p market had a chance to make an impact but rift and WOW still dominate.

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  34. I never really could get into MMO games but perhaps I will try

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  35. I like that Rift is similar to WoW, I'm familiar and feel comfortable. When I first started playing WoW everything was new and magical and there was the adventure aspect that I found enchanting. Now I've played through every class 10x it's lost that magic and that's why Rift is appealing to me. Hah, nice review as always!

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  36. Nice review. Convinced me to take a closer look.

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  37. The portal mechanic seems awesome. Sounds like it'd make the grind to max level a lot less boring.

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  38. this game looks pretty sweet. I might give it a try.

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  39. This looks like a good game, I just don't like the fact that most good games are P2P

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