Making a Rift

Whilst reading a favourite blog of mine over at We Fly Spitfires I (along with a thousand or so others was invited to play Rift over the weekend. With things a little quiet in Warhammer I thought why the heck not so jotted down the key and set the client download off. Once completed I quickly set up a Trion account and logged in and here's what I thought.

The first thing I noticed was the impressive intro movie, which I know a lot of the recent MMO's have nowadays, but the Rift one just looked better to me.

I continued on and decided to roll a 'Guardian' (I assumed these were the goodies) and stumped for an Elf Rogue type and after giving myself a most excellent Toni & Guy haircut, hit play!

The starter zone seemed pretty standard with the usual "collect 5 of these" and "kill 4 of those" quests, but it wasn't very busy at all, which was a surprise to me considering how new the game is. After gaining my first level I then found out about this Soul System, which seems to set Rift apart from the rest as as you progress through the levels not only can you specialise in 2 separate paths, but you can completely respec and go down a different branch thus turning your avatar into a totally different beast.

However, although the Soul System is a good idea I just couldn't get into the game as I was able to with Warhammer, LotRO and DAoC in days gone by. I can't put my finger on the exact reason but there are a few deal breakers for me. The first one is the look of the game, which reminds me too much of the Korean grind-fests like RF Online and I hated that game. The second thing is that Combat seems to have no flow and was very boring, very much like RF for me infact and seemed to be completely detached from the player.

I won't be playing Rift in the near future, but I do think they have some good ideas, notably the Rift system and the Soul System that will no doubt keep people playing and provide them with lots of choice.

Ish