My Return to RIFT
Introduction
RIFT is a dynamic fantasy MMO that was released early 2011. I subscribed for a few months during that time and got to level 47 on a rogue, but without any ties to the game, and university progressing I didn’t take it any further.
I recently returned for 3 months due to the low price, an interest in reaching the end-game and the promise of an interesting pvp patch.
When I First Started Playing
- When I first started playing RIFT last year, the graphics were undeniably pretty.
- The dynamic content was fun, rifts opening up and zone wide invasions felt different from the quest hubs. Eventually this even gets old.
- It felt extremely like World of Warcraft.
- The quest accept, quest finished and levelled up are all noticeable and important prominent events.
- The coin-lock feature was a great addition, to prevent people from hacking into accounts and stealing their gold.
Coinlock requires entering of a code that is sent by email when logging in from a different IP address.
Since My Return
Patcher and Download Speed
It doesn’t take much for the RIFT client to be playable, they have a streaming patcher and so can head into the game in a few minutes.
This convienient way, coupled with the always open account system (RIFT Lite) keeps players accessible.
Mobile Application
Having the ability to see and chat with the guild from a mobile application is awesome.
You can also earn rewards for your character and be notified of zone events.
Server Transfers
Having unrestricted server transfers is great for communities that play together, when I first started playing RIFT I played on my own.
Since then through other games I have been associating with another community, I had no problem transferring my character over to their server within the game client.
User Interface
RIFT has in my opinion one of the best user interfaces on the market. Below are a few of my favourite parts.
New Ability Shortcut
When you gain a new ability, a shortcut is displayed on the screen so it can be dragged onto the players bar.
This is a great idea and cuts down the time it takes and the hassle of finding it in a long list of abilities.
Abilities List
The abilities list sorts spells by what they do, and makes it very easy to find the things that you want.
Menu
Instead of a cluttered menu they are grouped, this is my activities menu, showing what I can do.
Attunement
Attunement is one of the tasks to do once you hit 50, it allows you to continue levelling, placing your points to gain extra bonuses.
I’m glad there are things to do at 50, but the attunement is confusing.
Chronicles
Chronicles are awesome, they are 1-2 player mini instances that can be done to gain rewards. They allow a way for single players and small groups to learn raid mechanics and gain gear that will help them in their progression.
I would really like to see this expanded for players of all levels, I do most of my play solo or duo.
Guild Finder
Becoming fairly common in games at the moment, I like the way this is presented in RIFT.
Guild Wall
This is a neat little feature where messages can be left for the guild to see.
Instant Adventure
This feature allows players to teleport to, and join a group of 1-20 players in a predefined zone that undetake dynamic tasks across the zone.
I cannot state how awesome I think this feature is, being able to join the game and avoid a quest hub grind is a lot of fun.
Leaderboards
I don’t know too much about this feature, apart from that I am number 1 in my division. Who wouldn’t want that?
Pre-built Souls
There is a lot of soul customisation in RIFT and it can get really daunting looking at the choice. You can now pick from pre-built souls, and it even provides a guide of how to play it.
Recruitment
Recruitment is important for any MMO, and RIFT allows it to be done from within the game UI itself, showing the rewards and allowing the status to be tracked.
What I Don’t Like
Spawn Camped
My guild chose to be on a PvP server, this allows players to kill others anywhere.
Peoples stats and levels are such that this means they can do this without danger in respawn areas, and whilst questing to level up I found myself on a number of occasions being spawn camped by the enemy.
This for me, is the single worst part of the game for me at the moment, and must state that it’s my choice to be on a PvP server. However, having adequate protection from powerful guards at the respawn area is very important for a game that you don’t want people to rage quit from.
End-game
The end-game in RIFT is the standard World of Warcraft template, Warfronts for your PvP instances to grind gear, Dungeons and Raids to grind PvE gear.
Which for me is pointless, with new expansions, such as the recently announced one the level cap will be increased and there will be an entirely new set of gear.
The reason I returned to the game is the promise of PvP changes, and there are big ones coming including three faction fighting in a large zone.
I haven’t played RIFT full time since a couple months after launch. For the pre-built souls, can you respec and switch to using the pre-built souls if you don’t want to take the time to fully customize your class?
Also, with the three faction PVP they are speaking of, is this going to be something similar to what DAoC has with the frontiers vs. the WoW style battlegrounds?
Yes you can switch between custom and pre-built souls, you can even alter just minor points in the pre-built.
The 3 faction PvP, I don’t know the full details but it sounds like a frontier system. Although they’ve said specifically that there will be no keeps.
Looks like it’ll be a zone system.
It appears that they’ll just be taking the existing zones and adding faction bosses. It’s not much but at least its something
I don’t really understand why anyone that is in it primarily for PvP would play Rift:
- the two faction system is always bad in terms of open world balance on PvP servers
- they largely ignore PvP when it comes to new content, in over a year all that was added was one warfront & PvP rifts (simply normal rifts repackaged, and not particularly fun)
- even the instanced stuff is way out of balance, a signifcant number of warfronts are simply facerolls (or pretty one sided) just down to one team outranking/outgearing the other, makes for crappy PvP (win or lose)
- Some of the BiS gear for PvP is pve, raid weapons are much better than teh top ranked PvP stuff, as is an hk crystal/three bits of gear for classes like marksmen
-classes are always out of balance, some of this will never be solved because things like teleporting rogues are the signature for the RS soul, but then they basically make CC futile.
- The PvP playerbase is basically disintegrating (not that the game as whole is doing very well numbers wise), they are basically down to one server in NA (seastone), same goes for EU (bloodiron)
- It also lacks when it comes to organised PvP, I personally don’t enjoy arena type things, but many do nothing for tehm in Rift, pre-mades are restricted to 5v5, often take ages to queue for, then can still be a whitewash and pug players can still come in to thsoe matches, there is not even a group duelling system like you get in games like Tera.
- I guess the new conquest zone is somthing, but I played it on the PTS when they tested it, it is alright, nothing special, cetainly not up to the WvWvW in GW2, it also had teh same problems as every other bit of PvP in Rift, lack of balance.
Trion don’t really get PvP.
I agree that RIFT is not primarily a PvP game, but I’ve also felt like I haven’t given it a chance at high level because I finished before cap.
I am enjoying the quests at the moment, and can agree that I get completely destroyed in PvP. We’ll see what happens.