Well, now that the rest of you lot (well, not ALL of you) are finally discovering what I’ve been shouting about since Beta 1 — that Rift is damned fun — I can tone down the fanboyism a bit.

This last Beta brought some disappointments to my attention. Some little things and some that were bigger. Let’s start with the smallest first.

The tiniest unit of Planar Goods currency is the Mote of Sourcestone. Then comes the Emblem of Champions (I think…it’s a blue currency item that you get sometimes from fighting rifts). I get lots of Motes but very few Emblems, presumably because I solo all the time (though I do get plenty of gear). I’m not honestly sure if the drops are random or based on something you’re doing or some score or what.

Anyway in previous betas you could trade in a big chunk of Motes (50, iirc) for an Emblem of Champions. That meant that solo players could grind out the means to get the good Planar Goods gear (which generally will cost a couple of Emblems and a handful of Motes) (and oddly getting an Orb of Heroes, the biggest currency, isn’t a problem for soloers… everyone in the zone who takes part in beating back an Invasion gets one). Now that won’t be possible and frankly the amount of stuff you can get with Motes is pretty limited. I see Motes quickly becoming vendor trash (if they have value) unless the trade-up to Emblems is replaced. Yeah, I feedbacked it.

Next up, builds and groups and instances. I’ve been playing builds that are fun to me. I want my character to do interesting things, and being a self-made hybrid works ok in the open world. This weekend I finally went to the Garden of the Fae (I’m horrible with names…the first Guardian instance) and quickly found that I was useless. I couldn’t heal well enough to be a healer, I didn’t damage fast enough to be a DPS and I certainly wasn’t up to the task of tanking (though that may have been more level-based than anything… I was 14 and the group went as high as 26).

Once in an instance Rift reverts to a Typical Diku MMO (Talyn will be so proud of me!) that only embraces the Trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS (and maybe some CC). This is the 4th beta and people were being scolded for not having the right build, and players were bailing on the group when we died too many times. Because beta is no time to be learning the game, dammit!!

The good news, of course, is that you can dedicate one of your Roles to being a cookie-cutter clone of whatever the “approved” build for your archetype is, and still use your other roles to play the game the way you enjoy. But still, I was delighted to return to my life as a solo player.

Next up, the Warfronts. Now I don’t really like the Warfronts because I never like PvP set up as a sport. I enjoy open world PvP though, but I’m not all that clear on what Trion’s plan is for open world PvP. My concern with Warfronts is that they’ll be too popular. People seemed to enjoy them this past weekend. I watched all the fun get sucked out of Warhammer as everyone (it seemed) except me stopped roaming the world and questing and just stood in one place queuing for Scenario after Scenario. Rift offers some nice shiny rewards for partaking in Battlefronts but I can’t but hope they’ll be a bust. I want the population of my server out fighting off invasions, not chain-queuing for Battlefronts (which, btw, were popping almost instantly in the evenings…I did do a few just to check ’em out).

None of these issues have dampened my enthusiasm for playing Rift; I’m still eager for the next Beta Test and more so for Headstart on Feb. 24th. But after all my gushing it seemed… balanced… to do a post on the things I *didn’t* like for a change.

With beta 4, I’m changing servers on the Guardian side in order to join some old friends. That meant a new character for the first time since beta 2, and the first time since the skill point/soul distribution revamp.

I tried to look at the game with fresh eyes, to try to understand some of the common complaints. Obviously this is really hard to do and I didn’t have a lot of luck.

By level 6 I had 3 souls already (used to be you had to be 18) and I almost wonder if this is asking too much of new players. Level 6 is maybe an hour of relaxed play, unless you’re a total MMO noob who doesn’t understand how to move, attack, loot and interact with NPCs (Rift uses standard MMO systems for all these things).

I’ve heard some players wishing they could test new souls before committing to them. Some other games (which one escapes me) offers this and it sounds like a great idea. Rift doesn’t let you do this, but it does (now) at least allow you to examine a soul’s skill tree before choosing it. This is a new feature and it’s a bit hidden.

You get new souls as quest rewards. Before picking which soul you want, you can control-click on their icons to get shunted over to a copy of the skill tree for that soul. It feels a little weird to be using a quest reward window to do research. I mean I guess it’s the same as examining a piece of gear but it feels odd to me. Before they revamped the system you had only 4 souls to pick as your first one, and there were 4 NPCs you had to talk to as part of the quest; these NPCs told you a bit about that soul. I guess visiting 8 NPCs would be a bit dull. Anyway I think Trion needs to polish this system as well as publishing a nice big chart of the souls and what they’re best at.

Do keep in mind that while there are 4 archetypes (Warrior/Cleric/Scout/Mage) by mixing and matching souls you can really take on any role you want within your archetype. Tank cleric? Sure. DPS warrior? Yup. The archetypes are almost used as a character theme more than anything else.

Another common complaint is that you feel rushed through the tutorial. I’m not seeing this at all. Yeah there’s a lot of activity going on around you; battles and all that. But none of the mobs are aggro before level 5 or so. Yes, there’s a rushed ‘vibe’ but nothing is really rushing you. You can take as much time as you like to mess around with your UI, set up your friends list, or whatever.

Next, the “On Rails” complaint. Guilty as charged for the first 8-9 levels (1.5-2 hours). But if you’re lauding the new WoW newbie experience and criticizing this one, you’re being a total hypocrite. Both games shunt you from hub to hub pretty quickly in the first few levels.

I’ve heard complaints that the world is too small. This kind of dovetails in with the last point. Your journey from 1-9 is essentially along a corridor of quest hubs. But please, hit M, look at how much of the world, or even the starter zone, that you’ve explored, then zoom out. I don’t think the world is small at all. I’ve spent 3 beta events in 1 zone without getting bored.

Last, Rift is just another quest grind. Well by level 9 I was in Argent Glade fighting off rift invasions with a bunch of other players. In fact I dinged 9 in the midst of an invasion. Yup, you can play Rift as a quest grinder if you choose to, but there’s rifting and now PvP (though that doesn’t open up until level 10, at least not the Warfronts, so I can’t address that aspect yet, but I’m told you do get exp from PvP). If you choose to play it as a quest grinder then you’re missing out on some of the best features of the game.

In a comment to one of my earlier posts Green Armadillo of Player vs Developer criticized Trion for not exposing players to everything the game has to offer in the first hour. While in theory I agree that a game should hook you as quickly as possible, I don’t think it’s a practical option for Rift. Rift invasions are disruptive to the player experience. That’s kind of the point of the design of the game (see the recent Dev Diary for more details). But disrupting things during the tutorial phase of the game would (rightfully) draw the ire of many players. Can you imagine being in the midst of reading the tutorial pop-up windows and being steam-rolled by an invasion force? You do get to experience a rift in the first hour, but it’s carefully tucked away and always in the same place. Nor does it spawn invasion forces. It’s a pale reflection of the full experience.

So, surprising almost no one, I don’t see a lot of the complaints people are having. I didn’t get to play a lot last night. I wish I’d made note of my /played time. I’m guessing 2 hours over a few sessions. And I hit level 9 and Argent Glade (Guardian side) which feels to me like the end of the tutorial experience. I’m seeing “real” rifts now, the world is no longer a long narrow corridor, I’ve already got 3 hotbars (due in part to having 3 souls, and in fact that might be too many this early) set up; 1 for combat skills, 1 for utility skills (call pet, track plants, teleport back home, etc) and 1 for the myriad of consumables I’m getting from combating rifts.

My biggest gripe once again is inventory space! I’m spending all my cash on bags. More space, Trion. Please!

Also to anyone who has gotten this far. When you’re picking your souls, even if you’re a melee character, try to get at least one ranged attack (or a rush attack). One other complaint I have about fighting rifts: while you don’t have to tap a mob to get rewards at the end of the rift fight, there are daily quests to “Kill 10 Rift Creatures” which are basically free exp (since you’ll be killing them anyway) but to get credit for those kills you need to tap the critter. If you have to run up to a rift creature to tap it, you’re never going to get there before someone with an insta-cast ranged ability gets to it.

That’s my 2nd biggest gripe. It’d be nice if you got credit just for being in on the attack or even healing someone who’s taking damage from a rift critter.

That’s all for now. Beta beckons!

Oh, right now I’m playing a Druid/Warden/Justicar. I meant to be mostly Druid with some Warden and just the ‘freebie’ Justicar skill, but now I’m getting intrigued by the Justicar tree. My have to set up some new Roles for this guy…

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. 🙂

This will be a redundant post for my Twitter friends. Sorry for the rehash.

But to other regular readers, you know how excited I’ve been for Rift and might be wondering why I’m not posting about Beta 3.

Unfortunately I’ve been unable to participate in Beta 3 due to an error I keep getting when I try to patch. Last week, before Christmas, I ran the patcher in anticipation of Beta 3 and all was well. Then Monday night, the night before the new beta phase started, I ran it again and got an error #2005 – Couldn’t connect to the Authentication Servers. I figured the servers were just offline but when I heard other folk had been patching I grew concerned.

As well I should have. The problem persists. Trion’s Tech Support was unable to help me (though bless them, they tried). It seems to have something to do with my network connection. I tried Rift on 3 different computers in the house, using two different Rift accounts. When that didn’t help I focused on the modem/router that FiOS supplies. I hadn’t changed any settings so it was odd that it’d suddenly become a problem but you never know. I called FiOS support (they were spectacularly unhelpful) and finally reset the modem back to its factory settings. No joy.

I literally spent all of Tuesday working on the problem and have now accepted that, for now at least, Rift doesn’t work in my house. Even though it worked flawlessly during Beta 1, Beta 2 and the patcher worked fine last week.

I’ve found a few kindred spirits who’re encountering the same problem, but it’s hard to get attention since there are other problems with the patcher being slow and an authorization error (#2002 I think) and people get confused and think we’re having the same problem.

I can ping the patcher, traceroute to it, but of course the problem isn’t the patch servers, it’s contacting the authentication servers, and I don’t know what those IP addresses are.

The saddest part is that since it seems to be a low frequency error, and one that Trion Tech Support couldn’t fix, I’m not convinced it’ll ever be fixed. At this point I’m assuming that I won’t be able to play Rift again. Which makes me sad… it really rekindled my love for MMOs, to the point where I’d kind of planned my holiday break around playing the third beta like mad.

Anyway, so that’s why no Rift posts from me. Technological issues have me shut out.

OK so I’m home now and can share some odds and ends I captured during Beta 2.

First a short video of me watching a Fae Invasion. Too many to take on alone and there’s only one other person nearby, so we’re waiting for more firepower. Mostly I was messing around with video capture at this point.

And here’s a second video of jumping into a rift battle that is, honestly, a bit over my head. I’m level 10 and the mobs are level 15, but there’re plenty of higher level folks to hold aggro so I cast a few spells into the mix. You can probably see I’m not trying very hard…if I get aggro from these guys I’ll die.

Here’s my character from Beta 2, an Elementalist/Storm Called name Grima

Here’re a couple of shots of Jarmok, an elite (though thankfully non-aggro) and very large Goblin that you might come across early in your time as a Guardian. I attacked him…and died.

This dude is an NPC’s pet. I wonder if I can get a pet like this if I’m a druid?

And here’s me running down an invasion of the Fae. Notice someone is already engaged and no doubt needs help. I was never ‘scolded’ for helping people in the beta. Notice also the weird ground textures…as rift creatures move across the land they corrupt the very earth they walk on.

Finally, regular readers know I’m a sucker for skies (click for a full 1680×1050 version):

That roar you heard today was the news spreading that the Rift NDA has dropped.

THANK GOODNESS!

I’ve been dying to talk about this game… I was lucky enough to snag a VIP Beta Pass from Massively, so was able to get into both the recent beta events. In both cases, Rift became a disruptive event in my life. I’m not sure if that’s good or not, but it sure was fun.

I can’t remember the last time a game has pulled me in and gripped me so tightly. I’d have entire conversations with Angela that I later had no recollection of, I was so focused on the game.

That’s the good news. Rift is a certain purchase to me (well, unless they suddenly take off in a radically different direction).

The bad news? I have trouble articulating exactly what it was that sucked me in.

I mean, there’s a great character creation system. You’re this “Ascended” being that gets to ‘equip’ the souls of fallen heros and so take on their skills. You start by picking in archetype (warrior, rogue, mage, cleric) and then your first soul (class, essentially). You get a skill tree for that soul. At level 5 or so you get to pick a 2nd soul and equip it, and it gives you a 2nd skill tree. At 20 you get a 3rd soul and in the full game there will be more to ‘collect’ though only 3 can be ‘equipped’ at any one time.

Every time you level you get a skill point. It’s up to you if you want to focus on 1 skill tree or travel up several. You also have multiple roles, which are basically sets of souls and skills. So you can focus on DPS in one role and healing in another.

Anyway, this is covered everywhere Rift is mentioned. But I love alts and there’s just incredible potential for lots of character “classes” created by combining souls.

The PvE leveling is fairly typical in terms of quests. You go from hub to hub but there is always plenty to do and generally several areas for you to ‘work’ in at any given time. Y’know how I griped about the new WoW newbie experience and how you always have 1-3 quests at a time… it was nice to get into Rift and have 15 quests to choose from.

The lore is rich and deep and I found myself wanting to learn more about it. I can see myself reading Rift novels in the not-too-distant future.

There are also daily quests from very early on, usually built around killing Rift creatures. There are “Story” quests that I was right in the middle of when Beta 2 ended. 🙁 I’m not sure if they finish differently or if they’re just tagged Story because of strong lore.

So that’s all fun: a very polished, solid PvE questing system with really interesting character development.

But then there are the rifts. Rifts are going to be the acid test for the game. Some people will HATE them, others will love them. To start, think of Rifts like Warhammer public quests, but they’re public quests that can happen anywhere.

A rift forms…like a tear in space. It’s a huge, awesome looking effect. And then creatures start spilling from this tear and it’s up to the players to fight them back. Rifts have several stages of increasing difficulty. There’s a nice balance mechanic in that if there aren’t a lot of players around the rift will have some kind of helper technique…generally an NPC that you can spawn to help you fight back.

Eventually you can seal a rift and when you do, everyone gets goodies. Lots of consumable items, then some items that you can trade to a broker for stuff you can use. Once in a while a piece of gear.

Now what if there’s a rift and no one closes it? Then parties of rift npcs spawn and head out to attack outposts across the lands. I saw more than one person go AFK in the middle of a road in a ‘safe’ spot and then get stomped by one of these roaming parties. If no one stops these rift creatures they’ll eventually start fighting NPCs, including quest givers. By the end of beta 2 (when the Rift spawn frequency got bumped up quite a bit) there was some bitching from people who couldn’t turn in quests because their NPC was fighting rift creatures.

If you feel sympathy for those people then maybe Rift isn’t for you. For me it was a freakin’ breath of fresh air to be playing in a world that wasn’t so compartmentalized into safe zones and fighting zones. There is chaos, wonderful, glorious chaos, in the world of Rift. Yes, you WILL get ganked by roving bands of NPCs that come upon you while you’re fighting a conveniently difficult mob. It’s just part of the game.

I also dabbled a bit in crafting in beta 2. It’s a solid crafting system, very WoW-ish. I took butchering (essentially skinning but you get more than just leather from fallen beasts) and gathering (picking herbs and harvesting wood) and apothecary. I sold the leather and wood on the auction house and used the herbs and organs to make healing and mana potions. Nothing really fancy here but skill level 1 I was making stuff I could use.

In Beta 1 I played a Reaver/Void Knight to level 17. It was a challenging combo because I played him pretty much full melee but had no self heals. There was a certain amount of downtime that went with it. In Beta 2 I played an Elementalist/Storm Caller. I don’t usually play mages but this guy was pretty awesome. The Elementalist side gave me pets and the Storm Caller side gave me lightning attacks. I put most of my points into Elementalist. He still didn’t have any heals but with the pet and ranged combat he didn’t need them very often.

I should probably attribute this to beta but the community was (mostly) awesome. Fighting rifts was all about random people banding together and fighting. No one was mentioning kill stealing or worrying about who is grouped with what… the rift mechanic seems to reward you whether you’re in a Group or just fighting alongside others. When the rift frequency cranked up, gangs of rift-sealers formed and charged from location to location, beating back the enemy from the other side.

If you think Rift might be for you I urge you to play at launch. This is going to be one of those games that really shines with a lot of people playing together. In case Rift doesn’t do well (and I have some concerns about that because so many people expect MMORPGs to be very orderly and safe) you’ll miss the fun if you don’t play until the population diminishes.

Beta 3 is next week. I’ll be reporting from there. I also have some screenshots that are on my PC at him; I’ll post some of those later today.

Apologies if this post is a jumble. I’m at work and was too excited about the NDA dropping to take the time to properly compose my thoughts. 🙂 Rift is my Next Big MMO, without a doubt.

Update:
Comments from Tipa: “You have to do story quests to get the quests for the dungeon and to get your third soul (at 18, not 20)” Thanks, Tipa!!