Publisher: Trion Worlds
Developer: Trion Worlds
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7; 2.0 GHz Dual Core or better CPU; 2 GB RAM; 15 GB hard-drive space; Nvidia GeForce FX 5900, ATI/AMD Radeon X300, Intel GMA X4500 or better graphics card; DirectX 8.1-compatible sound card; DirectX 9.0c with June 2010 update; broadband Internet connection
Genre: MMORPG
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

I have a long-time love of the MMO genre as a whole. When I get the opportunity to review an MMO, I often find myself wondering if the game I’m looking at is going to be the one that ends up sapping all my willpower to engage in a social life. Often times I get pretty lucky and I get a nice time sink for a week or two; other times I find myself immersed in the world set before me. I can count on one hand how many times the latter has ever happened to me, and now I’m proud to say I can no longer use that reference in my gaming career. While following Rift during its development, I found myself intrigued by the art and the idea behind it all. After 10 days of playing, I found myself wondering if maybe this game was just a shiny new change from my usual haunts, but with every login I find some new quirk I enjoy that keeps me interested. For 19 days I’ve been wrapped up in Rift, the new MMORPG from developer Trion Worlds, exploring the world before me as a spoony Bard, finding something exciting every day.

In the earliest times, the world of Telara was plagued by a faction of dragon gods known as the Blood Storm. They brought horror to the lands, letting loose the power of the surrounding planes. Their goal: to plunder the riches of Telara by causing her destruction. Their greed caused sedition amongst their ranks, leading ultimately to their defeat and imprisonment. The influence they left behind continued down the generations, leading to the freedom of Regulos, their leader. Regulos now seeks revenge on the world, and having freed his comrades (each representing an element), he looks to continue the cycle of war and death throughout the lands. Telara is once again on the slow road to decline, as the gods, once renowned by the people, leave their followers to the decay before them. Telara’s inhabitants are split into two factions: The Guardians and The Defiant. Each of these groups is known as Ascended, and each has different goals taken from the pages of history. Now the Ascended are reborn to help free the world from its past mistakes.

After choosing your faction, you pick a race, each with its own perk and lore. Rift features the four main base classes: Warrior, Rogue, Mage and Cleric. Like other PVP MMO games, you’ll find yourself used to the WASD control system and the user interface. Depending on your faction, you’re brought into a low-level instance, teaching you the gameplay mechanics if you’re unfamiliar and giving a much-needed feel to the new world of lore to explore. As you progress in quests and level up, you choose subclasses, called “souls”; think of it as the skill-tree system from other games, but more customizable and not set in stone. The upwards and onwards of gameplay leads you to things you’d expect: more questing, some grinding and instanced dungeons. What’s fresh about Rift is the planes opening from the sky, releasing elemental monsters upon the lands. At times, solo players are forced to play with others to stop the planar beings. Rifts can happen just as a single tear or with multiples, possibly leading to wide-scale elemental invasions.

Since I just brought up elemental invasions, I’d like to say that this has been my favorite aspect of Rift. They have the potential to become a raid that comes to you, making players combine forces and throw out their solo ways, which brings MMOs back to their original group environment. Through these events you gain points. You can see your standing on the leaderboard after each level of the rift is complete, during which players gain items or currency (think favor) to purchase items at Planar Goods Vendors. Outside of partying for a dungeon, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t solo in a game since 2003, and this aspect completely appealed to me. The class system, with its different souls, is just brilliant as well. If you don’t feel like being your main soul and want to change it up, you can purchase “roles” from your class trainer to give you a chance to try something new. Each main class can gain nine different souls, each offering a new combination to give you an edge in PVP or PVE. For instance, a rogue can have a Bard as their main soul, with an Assassin and Saboteur (think Grenadier) to gain additional perks such as stealth, or being able to throw a sticky bomb, decreasing a creature’s movement speed. I’ve mixed and matched my souls to avoid a cookie-cutter build. This system Trion has implemented can appeal to everyone who plays an MMO. The last thing I’d like to touch on is exploration; I could do it all day. Aside from getting an exploration achievement, you have an opportunity to find artifacts in the strangest of places, which are all part of a set that can be turned in at a vendor when completed for favor points.

Know what I don’t like about rifts tearing open? When they open on top of me and I die. The planar invasions, while being awesome, set back your questing a bit until they’re finished. PVP is what you expect. The arena-like areas are enjoyable, though pretty repetitive after a while; I imagine they would be more enjoyable if I were competing with friends. As far as instances go, the ones you find in the world of Telara all push the story along and look fantastic. They are also, however, a little on the easy side; you don’t need much instruction to complete them. A part of me was hoping they would be harder than those I had experienced in other games, so I was a little let down. Quests are a flip of a coin; either they’re story-related or they’re just plain filler. The latter are pretty dull as you could guess, but once in a while they give you a worthwhile item to take home. Item crafting is a staple in most popular games, but in Telara, it just isn’t very exciting. I’ve always loved to craft for the rare items, but Rift just doesn’t do it for me; I’m crafting, but I’m not enjoying it as much, as there’s nothing I haven’t really seen before. My one hope is as the game moves forward, something interesting will be done there. But one can only hope.

It’s pretty hard to impress me with a game that’s just been recently released; this is the smoothest release I’ve ever seen, with the usual quick fixes still going on every so often. Rift as it progresses has the potential to keep up with the big boys out there. The big testament to this is the number of players from other games trying it out every day. So far, Trion is going about this the right way: their game is familiar, but different in the right places. I’ve watched chat channels while playing, and the first week all one could read was “WoW-Clone.” But now, some of those same players are as in love with Telara as I am. This is most certainly my pint of ale. With many different servers from which to choose, ranging from PVP to PVP-RP and PVE, there’s a little something for everyone. Next week I’m going to try a full Saboteur role, just to see how much fun tossing grenades could be. How about you?

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