Sunday, January 30, 2011

Rift: Beta 5 Impressions

A Death Rift over Newbie Land


These are my impressions of levels 1-20 of Rift. The level cap for Beta 5 was 30, so I didn't manage to see everything and some of my critiques may become irrelevant as one gets into higher levels.

Rift hadn't really managed to make it onto my radar until pretty recently. New fantasy MMO's seem about a dime a dozen and most go down in flames pretty quickly, often, seemingly, for similar reasons. Some friends made it into Beta 4 and said, "Hey, check this one out!". Two minutes on Google the day before Beta 5 was to begin scored me a beta key and I jumped in the next day.

Comparisons to WoW in fantasy MMO reviews are inevitable, particularly in the case of Rift. When your interface pops up for the first time you will be excused for noticing that it is virtually a direct lift of the WoW interface. This makes it instantly accessible for anyone who's ever played WoW but it highlights a common theme through much of what we see in Rift. If it's not an area where they're innovating then it's copying. For better or for worse, Everquest and then World of Warcraft have set the fantasy MMO standard in stone and Rift isn't a game that does too much to break free of it. We have the usual character archetypes, leveling, gear dependent performance, scores of 'kill 10 rats' quests, instanced PvP areas and floating exclamation points. Much of what you find here will be tediously familiar.

So, it sucks, right? Same old, same old? Well, no.

Because it does pick a couple of areas to innovate in and where Rift has chosen to innovate it does it really, really well.

The first thing that jumps out, the low hanging fruit, as it were, is the graphics. Rift is the best looking MMO since Vanguard. Rift takes a realism approach to its look and will cheerfully toss in as much eyecandy as your system can manage. Where it falls down a bit in this area is environmental detail. The world is stunning but is often rather bland and uninspired. There isn't a lot of point to exploration as there isn't much of interest to find. Anything of note in the zones will have quests that aim you right at it. Running down the beach to see what's around that rocky outcropping is generally pointless. There will either be nothing of interest or there will be a quest objective that is clearly marked out on your map. There are no random sea caves to find or forgotten shipwrecks, no out of the way sinister hermit shacks. One of the things that has always impressed me with WoW is the attention to detail, even in "irrelevant" areas. Run into a dwarf's house and get a quest from him, sure. Run down the stairs behind him and you'll find a fully detailed bedroom for him, complete with characteristic quirks; maybe a knife stuck in the table, boots by the fireplace, a boarhead on the wall, a book on the nightstand by the bed. It looks like somewhere where someone might actually live. Rift lacks this and as a consequence the beautiful environments also have a feel of lifeless sterility.

My Reaver/Champion/Riftblade


PvE leveling content is mostly uninspired with the occasional standout. There are two factions to Rift and each faction has its own line of zones and quests. Within the factions, however, there is almost zero difference in the questlines. Every race in a faction has the exact same start and quest progression with some very slight differences based on class. This makes progression extremely linear. You get to a quest hub, take all of the quests, all of which will aim you to one area. Run there, do the quests, run back, turn 'em in and get the next batch which send you to an area next to the first one. Rinse and repeat. Once you've polished off the quest hub you get a feeder quest where you run a little further down the main road and do it all again. Most of these quests are 'Kill X number of X' quests or 'click X number of object' quests. There are some standout quest lines, however, that seem to crop up more and more the further you go. Students at a University that have you helping with hazing rituals, for instance, or a knight by the roadside that has you undergo a series of tests to prove your worth. Since every play is doing every quest and every quest that has a gear reward offers an item for every class there is a lot of sameness among archetypes to the degree that when you see another character of the same class you can tell exactly where they are in the questlines by what they are wearing. If they're on the same stage as you then they will be wearing exactly what you are wearing. The armor pieces look great but, at least at low levels, seem to cycle through only about four or five different models.

Sound is pretty bland as well. There is little oomph to weapon sounds and combat generally sounds like people banging forks together. A lot of improvement could be made here.

So I did say that Rift has some great innovation and then proceeded to lay out a bunch of critique. So what does Rift do really well? Two things: Character classes and the Rifts that are the game's namesake.

Yes, Rift uses the usual four character archetypes: warrior, cleric, rogue and mage. Within each of those archetypes, however, there are multiple (seven at the moment, eight planned) variations. And you get to pick any three of them to combine into your own class, meaning there are 56 possible variants for each class as well as additional variants than focus on just one or two of the options. Eventually you are able to acquire all the variations for your archetype and switch between whatever trios of souls you choose. This gives an enormous amount of variety and flexibility to create a class that exactly fits your playstyle and that can be changed depending on what you're going to be facing. The Reaver variant of the Warrior, for example, excels at facing many "trash" mobs at once. Then you come to a powerful single target and switch over to your Paladin build as they are much better at handling single tough targets. This adds an element of interest to PvP as you'll know that you have a warrior in your sights, as he looks exactly the same as every other warrior, but beyond that you have no idea what he's going to be able to throw at you. Likewise, he doesn't know the specifics of what your mage is about to send his way.

I do not know why there is a big sexy hologram in the camp but I can't really complain too much.


So we've saved the biggest thing for last. The game's namesake. The Rifts. As you'd expect, Rifts are dimensional tears that allow another plane to spill through. These form in the game world, producing a vast swirling cloud in the sky and changing the environment below to match the appropriate plane as creatures begin spilling out. If you're in the area, you can run over and add yourself to a public group and work together with whomever else has shown up to defeat the critters and shut the Rift down. Generally this is a highly entertaining bedlam of barely controlled chaos. Mages who weren't careful enough with an AoE frantically running through clumps of warriors, hoping that they'll grab the three monsters chasing them, archers standing back and firing arrows into the melee, clerics frantically trying to keep up with the multiple fights raging around them. Rifts will also spawn invasions; groups of elite mobs that then venture forth to wander the zone and attack settlements. This gives Rift a dynamic life that makes it completely unique among MMOs. I'll give an example to show how this all plays out.

I was doing some PvE questing with my warrior on the last day of Beta. I saw that a Fire Rift had opened, but it was a ways away so I didn't worry about it too much. Then another opened, and another. Major invasion. All three Rifts were a ways off, however, so I chose to finish up my quests and leave the Rifts for other players to handle. I headed back to my quest hub only to discover that it was the focus of the invasion. Every player at the small cluster of tents, as well as all of my quest NPCs, was engaged in fighting off a crowd of fire demons. I joined in and we stood and defended our patch of turf as wave after wave of invaders attacked. their focus was a guardian stone that each camp contains. Should the invaders manage to destroy it then they can replace it with one of their own that will then spawn creatures right there within the camp.

We fought against them for at least half an hour. Two of the Rifts were successfully closed by other groups of players allowing the attack to wane slightly but then a Death Rift opened nearby and sent a Death invasion our way. Fire creatures and Death creatures are not friends. Suddenly it was a three way battle. The Fire Demons vs. the Undead vs. the players and NPCs. This added element allowed us the upper hand for long enough that we were able to end the attack at the camp and charge out en masse to tackle the nearest Rift. By now we had accumulated at least forty players into the battle and we were able to steamroll the last Fire Rift and then move on to tackle the Death Rift and finally end the invasion. It was possibly the best hour or two of gameplay I've had in an MMO.

And that is where Rift shines. The dynamic Rift and Invasion system. Vortexes of chaos that come ripping into your gameworld. Roving warbands that can dominate areas of the zone if left unchecked. It makes the game feel more alive and more fresh than anything else out there and does so well enough to more than make up for the staleness it may have in other areas.

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