I enjoy the stories RPG's tell and how it allows you to create a new persona with it's own look, legacy and attitude. It's quite a big part of the game for me. I had quit World of Warcraft some months ago for various reasons and found myself missing that online factor of gaming, that thing that allows you to interact as your character making it so much more fun.
Initially I didn't quite think much of RIFT: Planes of Telara, I saw it the first time when my fiance decided to try it out. It was on his old PC and at that time I wasn't aware that the hardware wasn't good enough to do the game justice. Frames were bad and as a result of that gameplay was sluggish, graphics couldn't be set to it's full potential which made the game look rather dull. Having seen that I wrote the game off and not worth it. However, after quitting World of Warcraft I decided to give it a go as remember being really impressed with the character creation part of the game. (Which by the way is fantastic!). When creating your character, you will be astonished at how well the animations are done and at the really really big variety of options you get.
I upgraded my graphics card to a Geforce GTX 560 Ti and all of a sudden the game looked and felt like a complete new game, it's rather resource intensive when you play on full graphics, never the less, It dawned on me that this game, is not made for entry level PC's, if you don't have a decent rig, you shouldn't even try playing the game. This to me is actually quite awesome, MMORPG's absolutely needed a graphics boost.
RIFT is visually a fantastic looking game, it really captures everything right down to the texture of the gear you wear. The combat is flowing and the soul trees (talent specs) are really elaborate and have so many different combinations, you could possibly have 3 different classes in one character, like the rogue for instance, where in World of Warcarft terms, you can be a hunter, tank and assassination rogue with some really creative abilities and buffs. This makes it quite convenient for me, instead of creating a new character for my desired class, I ultimately need only 4 characters instead of 1000000000.
I currently have those 4, 3 lvl 30+ characters and one that I'm currently leveling from 20 - 30 (24 at the moment) and I have to say that I enjoy all of them and have 3 specs on each character.
I haven't done too many instances, but the ones that I did do, was interesting and a fresh new look to what I'm used to, it can be either in a fortress of some sort, an out door area or cave, they all look fantastic but feel a little bit easy to me, I won't complain about that though haha! You basically have the standard features in it, creeps, bosses, dungeon quests, a tank, healer, dps and what I like a lot, support, which can either help heal or tank.
Dungeon quest rewards are really fantastic and is almost always sure to give you better stats than what you already have. There aren't people complaining or raging or typing too much in RIFT instances or telling one another how their damage sucks or tanking is bad or healing isn't sufficient, the lack of third party add-ons greatly contributes to that in my opinion. So all and all, I actually enjoy the instances and don't find it to daunting.
This is by far my favourite part of the game, I don't really enjoy too much of PVE as much as I used to, so I keep it limited to the things I like, like farming world event currency for nice gear and maybe a mount or pet. The Warfronts (battlegrounds) in RIFT are also really great places, a fresh new type of environment but has those classic elements to it, like capture the flag style and such. PVP is a bit unbalanced at certain level intervals between the two sides (Guardians and Defiants), but hey, it's mostly like that in these kinds of games. You gain a lot of PVP currency so you will always have the best PVP gear for your level and lots of currency to spare.
You don't really have that big a variety of Warfronts to choose from at low levels, but you can do them from lvl 10, which is nice. You level at about the same rate when doing PVE, all depending on how much you play continuously I guess.
Public Raids - RIFTS
This is an element of the game which I found rather awesome, Rifts spawn on various parts of all maps and can be done from as low as lvl 8 and give great rewards and XP, any one can join this public raid to defeat the Rift, any level and any time, I have experienced no difficulty with this and only seen positive effects of these public groups, these groups are not limited in size and people go from Rift to Rift playing together and having a whole lot of fun, so let me show you what these public groups look like:
You get different kinds of Rifts that present different kinds of creatures: Earth, Fire, Water etc. all of which are really beautiful, like this one, which is a water Rift:
World Events
World Events are great editions to the game, they present interesting stories and easy and fun daily quests that earn you lots of XP and world event currency, with this, you can buy gear, which costs very little currency, meaning every one gets it and it evens out the level or gear a little that people have and gives every one a chance to easily obtain epic gear. You can also farm currency to level up an object that eventually becomes a mount and buy costume gear and a companion unique to the world event.
Conclusions:
RIFT is really a fun game to play, less stressful, less grinding and certainly beautiful and rewarding and unique. I'd recommend it to any one that loves MMORPG's but will say that if you have never played an MMORPG before it might be a little complicated to understand at first. The game has great professions that you can master, and many attributions to gear and a very impressive cosmetic element, it has all of those basic features of an MMORPG but presented in a creative and immersive way.I trust that the game holds something for every one and is sure to be worth any time or money spent. There's so much to tell about the game, but it's so much better to just experience it for yourself.
Cool read :)
ReplyDeleteTnx Gen ^_^
ReplyDeleteMakes me wanna play this, the artwork looks amazing, and seems the grinding aint as much as in WoW?
ReplyDeleteExtremely well written Yolanda, if you dont get Batman, do 1 here for me plox
I was also attracted by the beauty of RIFT. My PC is close to 4 years old and can run the game on the Ultra preset, pushing the graphics slider bars to the max will pull me FPS down. In the Guardian main city "Sanctum" where there is usually many ppl together, and in world raid events with rifts, I might have to scale down to the minimum setting. But even so the game still looks remarkably beautiful.
ReplyDeleteGraphics aside, the gameplay is engrossing, rewarding too, and for any MMO, best played alongside a friend or someone you've met online.
Dungeons are fun, and can be difficult if your party can't work together, or when 1 or two don't know the dungeon and fails to ask questions.
The more difficult dungeons are those you unlock at some stage after reaching max level (which now is 50) in the category of "Tier 1". Tier 2 will obviously be more difficult, but the rewards are worth it when looking at what you can get in exchange for the currency or favor you'd earn.
One thing that makes RIFT so unique and fun, is the open world events the rifts throw into the environment. For those who don't understand, rifts spawn randomly in the game world, spawning invasion squads to capture outposts that will in most cases prevent you from handing in quests and so on. The rifts have their own defenders guarding it, and you can group up with others in the area, killing the rift defenders in the given time, spawns the next stage, till you reach the Boss (sort of like in dungeons, but open world). Defeat the rift and you are rewarded with special rift goodies you can collect, to exchange at certain vendors for cool items etc.
Not to explain the whole game though, but that would give you and idea of how alive and persistent the game world is, putting back that middle "M" in MMO.
Yeah it's really a much more elaborate game, there's really so much to learn and experience, I run RIFT on full graphics and get really good frames, what I like is that I can play it when I want to, no pressure, it doesn't feel like work.
ReplyDeleteoh and BTW lvl cap is 50 and ALL pictures used in my blog are screenshots taken in game :)
ReplyDeleteI miss it so much :<
ReplyDelete