So on Thursday morning, the 3rd day of beta 3, I dejectedly ran the Rift Patcher that I’d spent the previous two days pulling my hair out over. And /facepalm it worked. I hadn’t changed anything since the previous day, but miracles do happen I guess. Of course then I had to “patch” 7 GB since I’d uninstalled the game (though honestly that didn’t take long at all).

Anyway since I got such a late start I decided to just keep playing Grima and get him to level 20, which I did about an hour before the beta ended. Betas 1 & 2 ended while I was at work, so this was the first time I got to see an end and it was pretty crazy. Huge invasions were spawned and kept on spawning. Tons of fun but the next time I play I’m going to be really puzzled by all the stuff in my inventory. At one point I had almost 30 of those Rift gift-pack thingies!

Hey, I don’t usually play a mage so maybe this is common, but one thing I found really helpful was how my debuffs, dots and stuff were show at the top of the mob’s list of bad things happening to him. Since I have some skills that pair nicely (thunderbolts to electrify the mob followed up by a water attack that does bonus when the enemy is electrified, and things like that) being able to easily see the countdown timers on my debuffs and effects was really handy.

One last thing then I’ll fling some pics at you. I had to respend all my skill points and I put Humpty Grima Dumpty back together differently this time around, and he played a lot differently. That’s probably obvious but it was nice having the 1st hand experience that says using the same 2 souls and allocating points different leads to a very different feel to the character.

I don’t take great videos, but here’re a couple I grabbed.

The first just showcases the animation of a particular mob. I love the animations in Rift. Heck my Recall spell is amazing to watch. Anyway this is an ent moseying along until he sees me.

And here’s the passing of an invasion force from The Great Hunt.

This one just gives you an idea of how massive the battles were getting during the major invasions.

And last, part of a fight against an epic mob (better pictures of him below). Oh yes, and my dying. I die a LOT in Rift…it’s kind of refreshing to be challenged in an MMO. Maybe that’s just because I’m not used to being a cloth-wearing mage, though.

Next up, a few still shots. Two of that big boss critter from the video (well actually, two different ones). I left the interface and everything intact so you can see how many various dots, debuffs and other effects he has on him!

One of my strange looking mount (though “George” is the name of my earth elemental tank buddy…the mount has no name, poor creature):

Here’s a shot of the map during the big invasion. All those little markers are another battle in the making:

And lastly, another “Holy smokes that’s a lot of players!” shots (and this is why Rift will be a Day 1 purchase for me…I want to be in those early crowds of players…I had boatloads of fun roaming around in random mobs. I got a ton of experience (a level and a half this afternoon), more loot than I could manage (more inventory space please) and an Orb of Heroes which is used to buy really nice gear once you collect a few of them. And all this without ever joining a Group.

Now then… what does Beta 4 start!? LOL

Seriously, I’m so delighted that that damned patcher finally started working. Apparently there was a big reboot on Trion’s end the night before so maybe that cleared something up. I’m convinced they were blocking my IP for some reason. And from what I’ve heard, everyone else with the error #2005 had theirs clear up at the same time.

So now I can go back to being a breathless Rift fanboy again. 🙂