I made a mage but quickly forgot about it when I tried a bard. Love the bard. Don’t know if it can be seen in the SS but there are notes coming out of my instrument. Playing a bard is like a cross between playing Scot Pilgrim and Jack Black from Brutal Legend. Rock in your FACE!
For those of you rogues who secretly wish you could tank, well, you can! Here is video of me tanking the Iron Tombs, the entry level dungeon. I’m a little higher than the dungeon, I has just specced tanking and was learning it, not a lot of great gear, so I was starting easy. So no more excuses Anaie! BTW, this was filmed with the in-game system that lets you upload directly to your youtube account when you’re done if you want. Pretty cool except… the sound is 30 seconds behind the picture. Not sure if that’s a me problem or a game problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAyzE0Gp ... ideo_title
I really like the rogue in this game. You can do all kinds of things – teleporting ala Nighcrawler, tanking, straight DPS. I like that stealth only lasts 30 seconds – no time for screwing around. Although you can stealth right away again – unless you get perma-stealth than you need to wait for a cool down before stealthing again.
The combinations you can put together in this game are pretty amazing. Mages that heal (and technical tank), warriors with pets.
RIFT vs WoW
What sets RIGT apart from WoW is the class system. It’s much more fun and flexible to me. The RIFT invasions are also very cool. They can appear one at a time or covering a whole map. Couple with opposing faction NPCs setting up camps. They appear anytime and anywhere and you get items to trade for goods when you participate in sealing them. I’ve had rifts spawn right on top of me while questing and start dropping elites on my ass. I’ve showed up at quest hubs to find the quest givers dead and the rift denizens building a base where they were. They drop out of the rift and fight EVERYTHING - even each other if it's a different plane. It’s very cool. So you can't just let them run wild. You can also cause rifts to open when you learn it - do it in guardian territory though pleas!
Um… other than that…. Nothing. It’s almost identical to WoW in every way as far as the little details are concerned. There are some things I like better, there are some things I don’t like as much. In the end I think I like RIFT better than WoW, but so much more so to abandon guild, friends, characters I put a lot of hard work into? Probably not. While I love their class system… in the end you are still playing mages, rogues, warriors and priests.
But I do disagree with Abric’s when he says Trion shouldn’t go directly up against WoW because they’ll lose. Of course they’ll lose. But what else are you going to do? You need to get attention, need to get your name out there. If you just sit on your ass and do nothing then that’s the best way to make sure you lose. Take on the big guy I say!
Trades
Same trade skills as you see in any fantasy. In WoW I always thought trades were for suckers and that’s even more so in this game. Simple low level skills require multiple items to gather and vender bought stuff like flasks and threads seem kinda pricey, though it’s not THAT hard to earn money I suppose.
“NOTERIETY”
Same thing as rep – grind rep in PVP and PVE to get stuff from those factions. Nothing new here.
LEVELING
There are 50 levels. I got to level 22 before I left the starter zone. Halfway to the top and I hadn’t even left the starter zone. Which is fine. I could have, I was just taking my time exploring and what not. I’m level 28 and still in the second zone. I can move on already but haven’t. Quests are standard modern MMO fair. They do have epic story quests that continue on from the early level starter zones and into other zones, that’s pretty cool.
GETTING AROUND
Mounts. You can buy them when you can buy them. No level restrictions except on speed. You can faster ones as you level and at 50 get 110% speed one. No flying mounts though. No flight paths. Love that. There are portals all over. It costs 4g cumulatively to bind yourself to the portal master. But once you do you can use that portal to go to any other location you previously bound yourself to. I like that.
STORY AND RP
The background is interesting. There are two factions – Guardian the religious sect and Defiant the technology sect. No good guys, no bad guys. I like that. But this is where it gets odd for me. Every race has an interesting and unique background with a very nice RP flavor. There is one starting zone for each side. When you start the game you are dead. If you are a Guardian you are raised by an angel. If you are a Defiant you are raised by machines just before the end of the world and sent back. Regulos (I think that’s his name) has wiped everyone out, you must go back ala Kyle Reese and prevent that from happening.
This completely ruins the RP potential for me. Such a catastrophic event renders useless any of our races unique backgrounds. It also makes the Defiant vs Guardian theme retarded. So this guy, wiped out both our factions while we fought him and each other and now we’re STILL fighting each other even though we had to be raised from the dead to do so? Who’s that fucking dumb?
The server I chose is much like Twisting Nether is now. A few pockets of RP, some RP guilds and a lot of people just playing.
PVP
So far I’ve been in two type of battle grounds. One is just like Arathi Basin. The other is… weird. You run to the middle and grab and item, whoever holds it the longest wins… but if you get there first you pretty much turtle in a corner and you win. PVP currency is pretty easy to get. You use it to buy nice gear – nothing special about the gear, it’s just good gear. No resilience or crap like that. So far Guardians have been owning the Black Garden (the hold the item one) and Defiant seems to win mostly in… the Arathi basin one. Both factions seem to speak the same language!
LITTLE STUFF
- Community: The main thing I like about the game is I feel like it’s a real community, like WoW was before it got so big and they started all the cross server crap. People are actually nice and helpful. Still loot whores, but eh. No noob calling, gear mocking, they give advice, are friendly and helpful. All the things that went away in WoW and made me play it less.
- The Toons: When you target someone your head turns with them as them move. Very cool. Highly detailed.
I could probably right a couple pages on the little things I like and don’t like, feel free to ask if you’re curious. Below are some random screens from the game.
