Rift Preview

(Note: this is based on the beta events of the game, not an actual release copy, there may be any amount of differences between the beta and the final release version of the game.)

So far, the Rift beta has been an awesome MMO experience so far. From my experience and from what I’ve heard of others, I would be willing to bet that any WoW veteran could get into Rift almost instantly and any new MMOers just as quickly.

I mentioned WoW, so I should probably point out that yes, this is a WoW clone. They didn’t make a similar UI, use similar gameplay aspects, no – they essentially remade WoW. Is that a bad thing, though? I certainly don’t think so.

The graphical style of Rift is quite beautiful. There are nice textures, a good amount of particles, just about everything you’d expect from a new, graphical game, just in a MMO.  The negative side effect of this, however, is that people with lower-end PCs won’t be able to run the game with a decent framerate at higher resolutions. While this isn’t normally a problem for more hardcore gamers, MMOs typically have lesser graphics so everyone can buy and play them.

At least at the lower levels, questing is backed by some pretty good voice acting, which to me is an important deciding factor of whether or not I’ll enjoy the content a game has to offer. Bad voice acting can completely kill a game, and no voice acting just makes it less immersive. While questing in Rift, I don’t have to do the voices in my head, which is good since I don’t do them very well.

 The major thing about Rift with me is the group events, cleverly called Rifts. Essentially what happens is in different zones a Rift in the timeline opens up, allowing enemies from the future to enter the current time and cause chaos. In order to stop their invasion, you and a group must defeat all of the invading mobs and seal the Rift. You don’t do this solo. Not at all, actually. If you don’t have a group of your own to raid these Rifts with, there’s very large public groups. Once the groups have been formed, they fight together against the mobs to seal the Rifts. This may sound extremely similar to WoW raids and the like, as it is, but take the group size and multiply it by 3 or 4. Rift groups are huge, and it leads to some pretty epic instances that can be chaotic and fun at the same time. The sheer size of the groups is just something I like about Rift that I’ve never seen in any game before.

These groups can work together for questing as well distributing the items, experience, and quest tallies among the group members, adding more socializing and enjoyment to what is normally solo questing. In WoW, group questing wasn’t really optimized at all until the recent launch of Cataclysm, and even then the groups aren’t anywhere near able to match the scale of those in Rift. It’s remarkable, in my opinion.

I am excited to see how well Rift does, and would like to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the game thus far.

~BlackArrow