Rift Reviews

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Written by Brother None on April 1st, 2011

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Finally it might be a bit premature to be questioning if Rift has enough end game content to keep the players coming over from WoW happy, but it has to be asked. End level content is always a concern in any MMO and as I am inching closer to hitting the current level cap of 50 on my main toon, I find myself wondering what will happen once I hit that ceiling. While I enjoy PvP, that is not my primary reason for playing MMOs. If Trion Worlds hopes to keep those defecting WoW players as paying customers there is going to have be, at least, a similar level of instanced dungeons and other challenges for the 50 level raiders happy. It may not be fair since WoW has had 8 years to grow and expand their sandbox with several add-ons, but is something people are going to be looking for.

In a good sign that Trion Worlds is at least aware of this, they have has already announced a new, massive world invasion from the Plane of Death on March 30th called the River of Souls. During this time players who help fight off the invaders can get special gear, magic items and even a skeletal horse as a mount if they are lucky enough. If the story is followed through to its end, the player will combat the big boss, Alsbeth the Discordant in a 20 play raid zone. This is yet another indication that Trion Worlds appears to be on their game with the way they manage Rift. They also have been very good about planned down time. When they say the server will be down on a specific date and time for an update, they always provide an estimate for the down time, and incredibly, the actually meet or beat those estimates. That is refreshing. Also they have introduced a feature to prevent account hijacking called Coin Lock which prevents your characters from selling or mailing any inventory including cash if the account is logged in from a location you don't usually play from. If your account is coin locked, you get an email from Trion Worlds with a short code to unlock it. While it may not be a perfect solution, it shows a willingness on the developer's part to try to find a solution to problem almost as old as the MMO market itself.

So, while Rift might be called a pretender to the WoW Throne, I cannot argue that Trion Worlds has launched a technically solid and entertaining MMO that offers some interesting new features while emulating a number of the mechanics millions of players are familiar with and enjoy. I am cautiously optimistic for the future of Rift. If the team at Trion Worlds is able to maintain the level of quality and support they have demonstrated since Rift launched at the beginning of March, we could have a viable alternative to WoW. I for one am planning on continuing my subscription after the first 30 days are over. I think the last time I did that with any new MMO was when WoW launched way back when. That should say everything you need to know right there.

The first time this came to light I responded to a group looking for one more DPS for an instance, so I volunteered my mage. Upon entering the instance, I realized that was the only member of the party who wasn't a cleric. The instance run was a success, and I sat back and marveled at the fact that what I've always seen in MMOs had just been knocked on its ear.

PvP is similar, although this early in the game's lifespan it's somewhat unbalanced. Warfronts function much like the battlegrounds in WoW, allowing you to compete in capture the flag and take and hold matches, as well as the Rift equivalent of a '˜Kill the VIP' mode. Trion hopes to address the PvP imbalances without affecting PvE by making changes that only affect PvP. Whether they will be successful in this only time will tell. PvP as a whole really isn't the focus of Rift. There are PvP servers, and there are zones that both factions must quest in, but this is a PvE-focused game.

In a nutshell, this is gameplay in Rift. It's very easy to jump into, and will feel very familiar if you've played any MMOs before. While it doesn't really invent a ton of new stuff, what is does do is take ideas from other games and make them awesome. There's a minimum of downtime, the crafting is actually useful (although tedious at times) and the rifts keep things interesting.

Everything about Rift is big, the game world is big, the number of available quests is big, and the levelling and soul combining process is big. Thankfully, the game doesn't seem to suffer from this, despite the total bigness of the game, each quest flows nicely along with the main story, growing in pace and difficulty up to the first major boss battle. The world is occupied with enough re-spawning sword fodder so you're not left wandering around without anything to hack up. There are plenty of opportunities to mine, craft and upgrade all your available equipment. All this and no lag, even when the servers are packed full of other players, it's quite an achievement considering other MMO's out there seem to struggle when only half a dozen players jump on-board.

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