Category: Rift

I’ve been enjoying RIFT a lot, and at the same time I’m wondering how long I will stick around. Coming back after so long, there is so much in RIFT. It could easily become my only MMO, and I would have content to chase for a long time. (I had to tell myself to walk away from fishing, for instance.) On the other hand, much like Ethic, things aren’t wholly clicking with me. I keep thinking “well, this is fun… but”. But. Continue reading A RIFT in my Brain

I think it was comments in this post about my dream MMO, again, that had me going back to RIFT. That, and it’s free-to-play now. Trion has their hands full with ArcheAge stuff, of which I mostly get the news from Syncaine’s love and hate of the game. Bhagpuss also helpfully puts his spin on that newness. I’d rather pick up a pre-GW2 game.

I had a level 46 character. I decided to completely restart instead since I had zero connection to that character or anything about her. The tutorial area was significantly cleaned up. I appreciate that although not it feels like the class system is largely behind something. I guess ultimately it’s a good thing, but I kept thinking through the tutorial area that this was not how the class system works. Basically when you level up you just press a button that auto-spends class points according to some build. It doesn’t help that useful skills were kind of hidden (like summoning a pet), and I am glad I am through that.  Continue reading I Have Returned, RIFT

This is the ESRB warning box that accompanies recent ads for Rift (now F2P! Oh, you’ve heard). There is talk of alcohol, other harsh language, mild naughty themes, imaginary consumption of alcohol, and — oh yes — the game is all about murdering sentient beings to death so you can loot their corpses and feed your soul(s) with power harvested from your victims.

Pink body parts will not be more than mildly suggested because we would not want to offend anyone.

: Zubon

Trion’s James “Elrar” Nichols has been reaching out to a good amount of MMO bloggers to check out the upcoming expansion for Rift called Storm Legion. The feedback so far has been pretty darn positive. He did not pass up our humble blog; just a failure to communicate coupled with my idiocy prevented it until last night. Finally I was able to get in with James to get a nice run through of what is coming in about a month.

First, let me talk about James. I’ve spoken with a lot of community reps for various MMOs, and very few seem to as excited about their products as James was. I took in to account that this might be his hundredth tour for the dirty blogger folk too. He handled all my questions with great cheer, and despite it being the end of his work day, I was seriously impressed with his energy. The RIFT community has a great community manager.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. Continue reading [RIFT] Storm Legion Preview

Check it out at The Ancient Gaming Noob. Bonus content:

Trion added in another skill with the patch called Survival. Survival seems primarily focused on giving you something to do with the fish you catch. It is basically cooking… seafood… along with the ability to make some camping gear. When the female survival trainer said, “Do you need help pitching a tent?” I thought perhaps I mis-heard… or that it was some sort of reference to the Diablo III demon hunter… everybody seems to be mentioning that.

: Zubon

…I often play female characters in MMOs: not because I want to look at a cute bottom, but because I enjoy the juxtaposition of taking such an incarnation of loveliness, wrapping her in a hulking suit of armour, and having her kick the ten living arse bells out of a muscleheap of ogres.
— Melmoth

This sounds like a really good idea, and it sounds like it is being implemented well. Kudos.

I wondering about crossing this (or the Guild Wars skill templates) with a standard mod sharing interface. You would open up a menu of builds in use, possibly player-built but why not just automatically pull the data on what is in use? Is there some sane way to show the central tendency of other players? You would not want specially named builds, and perhaps souls provide too much granularity for an effective display. Perhaps something like X is the most popular skill/soul/whatever, 30% of players choose combination ABC as three of their GW2 warrior skills, etc. I would also want some index beyond popularity, say xp earned or kills using that build, to keep people from intentionally messing with stats by, say, making Uber Warrior Build as a main then filling every slot on every other server with a level 1 using a crap build. I don’t know if enough people would do that to seriously throw off stats, but I can see the effort being made to break any game system.

: Zubon