Rift Review
Rift is a pay to play MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft. Although the gameplay is very similar, I believe rift has alot morefeatures and content to play through. Rift is a world under constant attack from the 6 elemental planes, rifts open in the skyanywhere in the world, unleashing armies of monsters who attack anything in their sight, even other invaders from a different plane.
The rifts aren't the only problem players are faced with though, there are two opposing factions, the Guardians and the Defiants.
The Guardians and Defiants are constantly at war because Guardians savour the religious purity of life whereas the Defiants use
Magitech to ressurect fallen warriors, even though both factions will stop at nothing to see the end of Regulos, the Destroyer of
Worlds.
Rift Review
Character Creation
Character creation in Rift is alot more advanced than alot of other games. Once you log in you have to choose which faction you're
going to join, each faction has 3 races, Guardians have Mathosian, High Elf and Dwarfs and the Defiants have Eth, Kelari and Behmi.
Each race has its own racial ability. Once you've chosen your race, you now have to choose what class you want to play. There are
four classes in Rift, The Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Mage, although there are only four classes, the class customization in Rift
is very advanced, allowing you to make your own class and play the way you want, aslong as you choose the class style that most
suits you. Each class will tell you what they are able to become (DPS, Tank, Support and Healer). After choosing your class you can
now customise your character. Rifts Character customization is alot more advanced than alot of other games, although not as advanced
as games like Perfect World or Aion. You are able to choose your face shape, the shape and size of your nose, eyes and mouth. You are
also able to chose your height, what markings you have and you have a several colour pallets for the colour of your eyes, hair, markings
Highlights and skin colour. Overall you are able to customize your character the way you want them to look.
Classes
The class system in Rift is very different and in most ways alot more advanced than any other MMORPG. The way it works is, you choose
from one of the four primary classes which are, Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and mage, after you chose your class you will be able to choose
your souls, which are basically the same as talent trees. The difference is each class has 9 different soul trees but you can only
choose 3 out of the 9. This allows you to create your own class, mix it up as much as you want! This for me made playing Rift alot
more interesting although you had to spend a long time thinking about which souls to use and what to spend your soul points in. I also
liked the fact where, you would get a new ability when you spent a certain amount of points in one tree, so not only are you getting
the bonuses from the talents you spec in you are also gaining new spells and abilities to use in battle.
Starting out
In Rift you start off with a cut scene showing how you came to be in the world, after the cut scene you'll be in a tutorial sort of
setting. Basically the same as any other MMORPG You'll be put in front of a quest giver with your very first quest. Eventually after several
quests you'll have 3 soul trees and you'll be faced with a death rift at the end of the tutorial, this will give you a feel of what it's
like in the open world, joining public groups and so on. In my opinion I think the tutorial is dragged out and can get pretty boring
at times but it still lays down the basics on what you need to know with questing and rifts out in the open world.
Quests
Questing in Rift is very basic and can get extremely boring, but they make up for it with having other things to do to get your levels
up. Rift offers a variety of different ways to gain experience points, making the leveling process less boring than what it could be.
Rift has various different quests you are able to do, you will enter a zone and have to play through the story of the area, playing through
story line quests, these quests are usually very basic but follow the storyline of the area you are playing. I found that a large
majority of quests are killing and gathering quests with a handful of boss quests. The thing I didn't like about questing in Rift
was the amount of mobs placed in one area, as a Rogue I did have problems with pulling alot more mobs than what I needed to resulting
in dying and running back to my body, this made questing a longer process than what it needed to be, but it could be different for
other classes. If you ever get bored of questing you are able to defend your base and fight off invasions, join public groups and
defeat rifts or even queue for battlegrounds and random dungeons. Overall the questing in Rift could be improved to make it more enjoyable
to make it feel less of a constant grind but at the same time you always have the option to do other activities to level your character.
Rifts
Rift offers a very unique experience in their game called 'Rifts'. Rifts are events which can happen anywhere in the game world at any
time. there a several different elements of rifts including, Fire, Water, Life, Death, Air and Earth, also once you are at level cap, you
can also participate in PvP rifts, rifts where you have to fight in the open world against the opposing faction. The way rifts work
is they have different stages, each stage gets harder and harder, you also get a time limit, which if you beat you can unlock bonus
stages within the rift. Once you have defeated a rift you will be rewarded with several planar rewards, including currency to save
and buy greater rewards such as armour and weapons. Rifts are very fun and can be a challenge, it's always fun to be able to join a
group instantly and fight off different sort of enemies. Rifts are also know to spawn armies of mobs who invade the world and take over
certain parts of the zone where the rift is taking place.
Other group events
Other than participating in taking down rifts, there are alot of other features of group play to play through in the world of Telara.
Rift has a large range of different instanced dungeons you can group up for and gain various rewards such as new armour and weapons which
you can use to help you become stronger making questing and fighting off rifts alot more easy to complete. There is also alot more to do
once you reach level 50. At level 50 you will be able to join groups for raids, expert dungeons, a few different group chronicles, warfronts
and Instant adventures. Chronicles are almost the same as dungeons except you are only required to have 2 or 3 people to play most of them,
others can be done by yourself. Chronicles follow a story within itself and has something to do with the lore in Rift. Instant adventures
teleport you to a random location within a zone and you will have a objective to do, the instant adventure system automatically puts you in
a group with others using the feature, some objectives in the instant adventure contain killing an amount of enemies in the area, defending
a wardstone from attacking enemies, and boss fights, instant adventures are a good quick and fun way of obtaining high level sourcestones
which are used as a currency to buy advanced items such as, armour, weapons, item upgrades and other items to help improve your character.
For me the amount of different events and activities implemented in Rift you rarely run out of things to do, you will always have something
to do to help improve your character or purely for a fun gaming experience.
PvP/Warfronts
In Rift there are alot of different forms of PvP for a player or team to participate in. Since Rift has two warring factions PvP is a big
part of the game, if you play a PvP server there is alot of times when you will experience world pvp against the opposite faction, whether
they're higher levels killing lower levels doing quests or a person from the opposite faction questing in the same zone as you. World PvP isn't
the only form of PvP in rift though, other than world PvP you are able to queue for Warfronts which is a match against the other faction working
to complete a goal and beating the other faction.
The Black Garden -
5-10 people in a team.
The goal in The Black Garden is to take control of the 'Fang of Regulos', only one player can hold the fang at one time, and while it is being
held you will gain points for your team, the catch is, no one can hold onto the fang forever, the fang will curse the person holding it dealing
damage to the player over time. The longer you hold it the more the damage over time is increased until the player is dead. At the same time
you have to fight the opposite faction who is also fighting to control the Fang. This makes things challenging and alot of fun.
Library of the Runemasters -
5-15 people in a team.
The goal in Library of the Runemasters is basically the same as The Black Garden, except the amount of players is increased and the map is alot
smaller, making it easier for the enemy to find you.
The Battle for Port Scion -
10-20 people in a team.
Victory is achieved by reaching 1000 points, defeating the enemy commander, or having the highest point total when the time expires. The enemy
commander may be weakened by destroying enemy emplacements. Points are awarded for gathering sourcestone or defeating members of the Endless Court
Completing quests will grant your team reinforcements.
Whitefall Steppes -
5-15 people in a team.
Whitefall Steppes is a basic capture the flag style Warfront, victory is achieved by stealing the enemies flag from their base and returning it to
your base, you must capture 3 flags to win a match.
The Codex -
5-15 people in a team.
The Codex has 4 control points which each team have to fight to control, the more control points your team owns the more points you will earn.
Controlling the Codex will grant bonus points, you may also accrue points for your team by defeating enemy players.
Completing each Warfront will award you with Favor points whether you win or lose, you will obviously gain a higher amount of points if your team
is victorious. Players will also gain Prestige by doing PvP which will allow them to rank up, ranking up allows the player to purchase new gear
and get new abilities for their PvP Souls. Recently Rift has had a new feature implemented in Warfronts, you can queue but if the teams are
un-balanced you will be able to fight for the opposite faction as a mercenary. To me this feature is sort of silly and sort of kills the idea
of the factions fighting each other but in some sense it makes getting into Warfronts alot quicker.
PvP Rifts
Another form of PvP in Rift is called PvP Rifts, PvP Rifts help keep open world PvP more active and at the same time adds to the many different
features this game has to offer. PvP rifts can be opened by both factions, the way it works is, if the Defiants open a PvP rift, they will be able
to collect power from the rift and your team must keep it open for as long as you can, the longer it's open the higher your rewards are. If your
faction opens a PvP rift, the other factions objective is to close it and stop you from collecting the rifts power giving them the rewards.
Crafting
Crafting in Rift is Very similar to crafting in alot of other MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft. The difference is, in Rift you are able to choose
3 different professions to level. There are a total of 9 professions in Rift, 3 Gathering professions - Butchering, Foraging and Mining and 6
Crafting professions- Apothecary, Armorsmithing, Artificing, Outfitting, Runecrafting and Weaponsmithing. You are able to level your skill levels to
300 by gathering or crafting items suited to your skill level. After the release of patch 1.8 Trion worlds will be releasing 2 new professions to
Rift.
Artifacts
Another thing you can choose to do during your time on Rift is collect the different sets of Artifacts, Artifacts
are random items laying around the world you can collect to make sets, which can be handed in for unique rewards, like mounts, pets or even cosmetic items like costumes.
Endgame Content
For most games endgame content is usually the same, Do raids and get better gear and progress through the harder content until you've done everything
up to the next patch. Rift is completely different, besides doing expert dungeons, rifts, chronicles and warfronts, you are able to do alot more.
This does include doing raids and gaining new gear, but in Rift there is more ways to improve your character. Once you reach the highest level, you
are able to still gain experience points from quests, pvp, rifts and everything else that grants experience. Getting all this experience but no levels,
What's the point? Well once you hit 50 you will be able to do the Chronicle to get the Planar Attunment system, this system allows you to put points
in a tree to upgrade your skills or resistance, each tree is named after a different plane, for example- Putting points in the Attunment of fire
will allow you to upgrade not only different stats you'll also be able to increase your resistance against fire rift creatures. You are also
able to put points in the Attunment of War, the PvP tree if you would rather play PvP with your character. Another thing you'll be able to get with
the Plannar Attunment is special abilities such as teleports and other abilities usable in combat.
Getting experience and more points for your Plannar Attunment is also made easy as Rift has a whole zone Dedicated to level 50 characters, The
Ember Isle. Ember Isle is a zone full of quests specially made for level 50's to gain experience for their Plannar Attunment trees.
Overall Rift is an amazing MMORPG and is definitely worth trying out, if you'd like to just try Rift to see what it's like, you are able to play for
free up to level 20. The thing that makes Rift such an enjoyable game is the fact you can play for months and never run out of stuff to do, the
game hardly gets boring at all. Trion World also does an amazing job of keeping the game updated, and the good thing about the updates is, they're
like expansion updates, they are filled with content and new things to do, and they're out every few months or so, which is awesome. The only thing
that puts people off playing Rift is the fact that the armour and weapon models are boring, you could work hard to get new gear and it won't look
any more special than someone in level 20 greens. But in saying that, as the game updates they are spending alot more time on weapon and armour
design, making them look like you want to get them and it actually looks like you've worked hard earning your gear rather than looking like a level
20 player. Other than that, Rift deserves more credit for what they're doing, the game is great and constantly updated with fun content, couldn't
ask for anything else really.
Rift Review
The rifts aren't the only problem players are faced with though, there are two opposing factions, the Guardians and the Defiants.
The Guardians and Defiants are constantly at war because Guardians savour the religious purity of life whereas the Defiants use
Magitech to ressurect fallen warriors, even though both factions will stop at nothing to see the end of Regulos, the Destroyer of
Worlds.
Rift Review
Character Creation
Character creation in Rift is alot more advanced than alot of other games. Once you log in you have to choose which faction you're
going to join, each faction has 3 races, Guardians have Mathosian, High Elf and Dwarfs and the Defiants have Eth, Kelari and Behmi.
Each race has its own racial ability. Once you've chosen your race, you now have to choose what class you want to play. There are
four classes in Rift, The Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Mage, although there are only four classes, the class customization in Rift
is very advanced, allowing you to make your own class and play the way you want, aslong as you choose the class style that most
suits you. Each class will tell you what they are able to become (DPS, Tank, Support and Healer). After choosing your class you can
now customise your character. Rifts Character customization is alot more advanced than alot of other games, although not as advanced
as games like Perfect World or Aion. You are able to choose your face shape, the shape and size of your nose, eyes and mouth. You are
also able to chose your height, what markings you have and you have a several colour pallets for the colour of your eyes, hair, markings
Highlights and skin colour. Overall you are able to customize your character the way you want them to look.
Classes
The class system in Rift is very different and in most ways alot more advanced than any other MMORPG. The way it works is, you choose
from one of the four primary classes which are, Warrior, Cleric, Rogue and mage, after you chose your class you will be able to choose
your souls, which are basically the same as talent trees. The difference is each class has 9 different soul trees but you can only
choose 3 out of the 9. This allows you to create your own class, mix it up as much as you want! This for me made playing Rift alot
more interesting although you had to spend a long time thinking about which souls to use and what to spend your soul points in. I also
liked the fact where, you would get a new ability when you spent a certain amount of points in one tree, so not only are you getting
the bonuses from the talents you spec in you are also gaining new spells and abilities to use in battle.
Starting out
In Rift you start off with a cut scene showing how you came to be in the world, after the cut scene you'll be in a tutorial sort of
setting. Basically the same as any other MMORPG You'll be put in front of a quest giver with your very first quest. Eventually after several
quests you'll have 3 soul trees and you'll be faced with a death rift at the end of the tutorial, this will give you a feel of what it's
like in the open world, joining public groups and so on. In my opinion I think the tutorial is dragged out and can get pretty boring
at times but it still lays down the basics on what you need to know with questing and rifts out in the open world.
Quests
Questing in Rift is very basic and can get extremely boring, but they make up for it with having other things to do to get your levels
up. Rift offers a variety of different ways to gain experience points, making the leveling process less boring than what it could be.
Rift has various different quests you are able to do, you will enter a zone and have to play through the story of the area, playing through
story line quests, these quests are usually very basic but follow the storyline of the area you are playing. I found that a large
majority of quests are killing and gathering quests with a handful of boss quests. The thing I didn't like about questing in Rift
was the amount of mobs placed in one area, as a Rogue I did have problems with pulling alot more mobs than what I needed to resulting
in dying and running back to my body, this made questing a longer process than what it needed to be, but it could be different for
other classes. If you ever get bored of questing you are able to defend your base and fight off invasions, join public groups and
defeat rifts or even queue for battlegrounds and random dungeons. Overall the questing in Rift could be improved to make it more enjoyable
to make it feel less of a constant grind but at the same time you always have the option to do other activities to level your character.
Rifts
Rift offers a very unique experience in their game called 'Rifts'. Rifts are events which can happen anywhere in the game world at any
time. there a several different elements of rifts including, Fire, Water, Life, Death, Air and Earth, also once you are at level cap, you
can also participate in PvP rifts, rifts where you have to fight in the open world against the opposing faction. The way rifts work
is they have different stages, each stage gets harder and harder, you also get a time limit, which if you beat you can unlock bonus
stages within the rift. Once you have defeated a rift you will be rewarded with several planar rewards, including currency to save
and buy greater rewards such as armour and weapons. Rifts are very fun and can be a challenge, it's always fun to be able to join a
group instantly and fight off different sort of enemies. Rifts are also know to spawn armies of mobs who invade the world and take over
certain parts of the zone where the rift is taking place.
Other group events
Other than participating in taking down rifts, there are alot of other features of group play to play through in the world of Telara.
Rift has a large range of different instanced dungeons you can group up for and gain various rewards such as new armour and weapons which
you can use to help you become stronger making questing and fighting off rifts alot more easy to complete. There is also alot more to do
once you reach level 50. At level 50 you will be able to join groups for raids, expert dungeons, a few different group chronicles, warfronts
and Instant adventures. Chronicles are almost the same as dungeons except you are only required to have 2 or 3 people to play most of them,
others can be done by yourself. Chronicles follow a story within itself and has something to do with the lore in Rift. Instant adventures
teleport you to a random location within a zone and you will have a objective to do, the instant adventure system automatically puts you in
a group with others using the feature, some objectives in the instant adventure contain killing an amount of enemies in the area, defending
a wardstone from attacking enemies, and boss fights, instant adventures are a good quick and fun way of obtaining high level sourcestones
which are used as a currency to buy advanced items such as, armour, weapons, item upgrades and other items to help improve your character.
For me the amount of different events and activities implemented in Rift you rarely run out of things to do, you will always have something
to do to help improve your character or purely for a fun gaming experience.
PvP/Warfronts
In Rift there are alot of different forms of PvP for a player or team to participate in. Since Rift has two warring factions PvP is a big
part of the game, if you play a PvP server there is alot of times when you will experience world pvp against the opposite faction, whether
they're higher levels killing lower levels doing quests or a person from the opposite faction questing in the same zone as you. World PvP isn't
the only form of PvP in rift though, other than world PvP you are able to queue for Warfronts which is a match against the other faction working
to complete a goal and beating the other faction.
The Black Garden -
5-10 people in a team.
The goal in The Black Garden is to take control of the 'Fang of Regulos', only one player can hold the fang at one time, and while it is being
held you will gain points for your team, the catch is, no one can hold onto the fang forever, the fang will curse the person holding it dealing
damage to the player over time. The longer you hold it the more the damage over time is increased until the player is dead. At the same time
you have to fight the opposite faction who is also fighting to control the Fang. This makes things challenging and alot of fun.
Library of the Runemasters -
5-15 people in a team.
The goal in Library of the Runemasters is basically the same as The Black Garden, except the amount of players is increased and the map is alot
smaller, making it easier for the enemy to find you.
The Battle for Port Scion -
10-20 people in a team.
Victory is achieved by reaching 1000 points, defeating the enemy commander, or having the highest point total when the time expires. The enemy
commander may be weakened by destroying enemy emplacements. Points are awarded for gathering sourcestone or defeating members of the Endless Court
Completing quests will grant your team reinforcements.
Whitefall Steppes -
5-15 people in a team.
Whitefall Steppes is a basic capture the flag style Warfront, victory is achieved by stealing the enemies flag from their base and returning it to
your base, you must capture 3 flags to win a match.
The Codex -
5-15 people in a team.
The Codex has 4 control points which each team have to fight to control, the more control points your team owns the more points you will earn.
Controlling the Codex will grant bonus points, you may also accrue points for your team by defeating enemy players.
Completing each Warfront will award you with Favor points whether you win or lose, you will obviously gain a higher amount of points if your team
is victorious. Players will also gain Prestige by doing PvP which will allow them to rank up, ranking up allows the player to purchase new gear
and get new abilities for their PvP Souls. Recently Rift has had a new feature implemented in Warfronts, you can queue but if the teams are
un-balanced you will be able to fight for the opposite faction as a mercenary. To me this feature is sort of silly and sort of kills the idea
of the factions fighting each other but in some sense it makes getting into Warfronts alot quicker.
PvP Rifts
Another form of PvP in Rift is called PvP Rifts, PvP Rifts help keep open world PvP more active and at the same time adds to the many different
features this game has to offer. PvP rifts can be opened by both factions, the way it works is, if the Defiants open a PvP rift, they will be able
to collect power from the rift and your team must keep it open for as long as you can, the longer it's open the higher your rewards are. If your
faction opens a PvP rift, the other factions objective is to close it and stop you from collecting the rifts power giving them the rewards.
Crafting
Crafting in Rift is Very similar to crafting in alot of other MMORPG's such as World of Warcraft. The difference is, in Rift you are able to choose
3 different professions to level. There are a total of 9 professions in Rift, 3 Gathering professions - Butchering, Foraging and Mining and 6
Crafting professions- Apothecary, Armorsmithing, Artificing, Outfitting, Runecrafting and Weaponsmithing. You are able to level your skill levels to
300 by gathering or crafting items suited to your skill level. After the release of patch 1.8 Trion worlds will be releasing 2 new professions to
Rift.
Artifacts
Another thing you can choose to do during your time on Rift is collect the different sets of Artifacts, Artifacts
are random items laying around the world you can collect to make sets, which can be handed in for unique rewards, like mounts, pets or even cosmetic items like costumes.
Endgame Content
For most games endgame content is usually the same, Do raids and get better gear and progress through the harder content until you've done everything
up to the next patch. Rift is completely different, besides doing expert dungeons, rifts, chronicles and warfronts, you are able to do alot more.
This does include doing raids and gaining new gear, but in Rift there is more ways to improve your character. Once you reach the highest level, you
are able to still gain experience points from quests, pvp, rifts and everything else that grants experience. Getting all this experience but no levels,
What's the point? Well once you hit 50 you will be able to do the Chronicle to get the Planar Attunment system, this system allows you to put points
in a tree to upgrade your skills or resistance, each tree is named after a different plane, for example- Putting points in the Attunment of fire
will allow you to upgrade not only different stats you'll also be able to increase your resistance against fire rift creatures. You are also
able to put points in the Attunment of War, the PvP tree if you would rather play PvP with your character. Another thing you'll be able to get with
the Plannar Attunment is special abilities such as teleports and other abilities usable in combat.
Getting experience and more points for your Plannar Attunment is also made easy as Rift has a whole zone Dedicated to level 50 characters, The
Ember Isle. Ember Isle is a zone full of quests specially made for level 50's to gain experience for their Plannar Attunment trees.
Overall Rift is an amazing MMORPG and is definitely worth trying out, if you'd like to just try Rift to see what it's like, you are able to play for
free up to level 20. The thing that makes Rift such an enjoyable game is the fact you can play for months and never run out of stuff to do, the
game hardly gets boring at all. Trion World also does an amazing job of keeping the game updated, and the good thing about the updates is, they're
like expansion updates, they are filled with content and new things to do, and they're out every few months or so, which is awesome. The only thing
that puts people off playing Rift is the fact that the armour and weapon models are boring, you could work hard to get new gear and it won't look
any more special than someone in level 20 greens. But in saying that, as the game updates they are spending alot more time on weapon and armour
design, making them look like you want to get them and it actually looks like you've worked hard earning your gear rather than looking like a level
20 player. Other than that, Rift deserves more credit for what they're doing, the game is great and constantly updated with fun content, couldn't
ask for anything else really.
Rift Review