Rift BETA 5 impressions

Disclaimer: Rift is still in BETA therefore any issues it may have can still be fixed before launch. Also note that the BETA limits players to a max level of 30 therefore there can be no end game feedback.

So far I have put in about 16 hours of play over the last couple of days, in fact I could not sleep and ended up playing until almost 5am last night (a good sign for Rift I guess).

Here are my first RIft impressions from my notes

Rift download installation: the game download is about 7GB in size, it downloaded really fast, and I had no issues signing up and installing. After initial install, only a couple of small additional patches of about 30mb in size (unlike DC universe).

Game Intro, very unimpressed, amateur voice acting, looks thrown together, perhaps just a place holder for the BETA, hopefully they will replace with a better intro, honestly intros don’t matter so much but can point to the general production quality of the game, so it made me feel worried.

high elf 300x227 Rift BETA 5 impressions

Character creation, ok all my fears are put to rest, the character creation is very good, lots of options to change hair color, eye color, height, the usual stuff, but whats nice is the character models look very detailed.

For each faction (there are 2), you have 3 races to chose from, the usual archetype, elf type, human, and larger race. Most importantly after modifying the traits they all look sufficiently different from each other in game.

After you create your toon it puts you straight into the game, you chose your class through a series of quests in the startup zone (which has a brilliant twist at the end of it which I will not reveal, but its very clever). In fact both factions starting zones are like war zones, with the world being bombarded and basically being torn apart.

Graphics impressions Absolutely beautiful, lovely deep colourful clear graphics, not as cartoonie as WoW or WAR, crisp clear detailed graphics with a deep bright color palate. I love the graphic style of Rift, very impressed. Also worth noting is it ran very smoothly on my older GFX card which is a Nvidia 9800, its a 2 year old mid range card.

Animations and effects, the casting animations are a mixed bag, I would say functional, perhaps because of a strong PVP element to the game and the Rift team did not want to make the casting animations too complex (like EQ2), the character animations are fine also, some of the pet animations need a bit of work, but its still BETA, and theyre fine.

Game bugs / stability, WOW Rift is polished, it does not feel like a BETA, I did not have a single crash (except when the servers went down for a patch), its one of the most polished complete BETAs I have participated in, almost as bug free as the WoW BETA, and nowhere near as broken as say for example UO BETA if anyone remembers that fiasco.

Classes, well firstly there ARE classes in Rift, a lot of classes, there are 4 main class types, Fighter, Cleric, Mage,and Rogue, each main class type has at least 8 sub classes, for example cleric, has druid, warden, inquisitor etc.., Mage has Warlock, pyromancer, Necro etc, Rogue, has ranger, fighter, has beastlord sub class…, (well over 2 dozen in total, and more being added).

The important thing to note is that characters can have 3 souls, each soul is a class, but you can only chose a soul from your primary class, ie if I chose a priest, then I can add Warden, druid priest classes, but not from mage or fighter. This means that all players are essentially multi classes, and makes each player unique. This is my understanding so far, it may change as you level up.

Im not going to go into too much more detail on the classes, thats for another post, but I do think that game which will have a lot of PVP, the class balancing could be a big issue.

Class balancing, needs work, mages seem weak, the 2 second nukes seem under powered, when against for example a warden who has lots of insta cast spells, and knock backs.

Rangers seem very strong, compared to mages, dont get me started on fighters. I played most of the priest classes and the combos, the mage and rogues, are fun to play, I did not play so much of the fighters yet.

I also think there could be PVP faction balancing issues, i.e there might be alot more Defiant (evil side) then Guardians.

Favourite class combos, so far its Warden, druid, Inquisitor, nice selection of instas, and heals, plus druid pet, or Pyro, necro, warlock, I also like the Ranger with saboteur, and anything else, very fun.

Quests, meh the quests are just ok, kill ten rats, go here click this then kill some spawned stuff, there are some collection quests which mixes it up a bit, a big plus is there are also PVP quests which I like very much. Then there are the rifts which are like dynamic public quest encounters, these are VERY fun, remains to be seen how long they will remain fun, they need some more variety, perhaps at higher levels.

Story, for me the Defiant story is definitely more interesting than the Guardians, but its too early to tell..

Final impression so far…..

Very impressed, I like the variety of classes, which make the combinations very interesting, its a beautiful game, the music is brilliant, and sets the tone nicely.

Class balancing could be a big issue in PVP, some of the class trees seem to duplicate the other (soul) specializations, which makes them redundant.

I was concerned that releasing a pay to play with so many high quality free to play games in the market place might be a bad idea, but Rift looks like it justifies its price tag and monthly subscription (so far).

I will upload some more videos over the next couple of days…

Rift Gameplay video