"We're not in Azeroth anymore."
Launching in 2011, RIFT's invitation to players to draw direct comparisons with the 800lb gorilla of the MMO world was certainly memorable, even if it did perhaps imply insane overconfidence on the part of the marketing team. Of course the game didn't become the next World of Warcraft, because nothing ever could, but it did okay.
I say 'did' because it's hard not to slip into the past tense when talking about this game, despite the fact that it's still up and running. RIFT has had a shaky few years, with the demise of its original developer/publisher Trion Worlds and its acquisition by Gamigo. Several games that were formerly part of Trion have since been shut down - including a sub-only progression server for RIFT itself - and this game's name often comes up in discussions of MMOs Most Likely To Sunset. So far though it has held on in the face of all the doomsaying. There's even been (some) talk of new content recently.
As I mentioned at the start of my run of Guild Wars 2, that game was the last MMO of those in which I'd spent a significant amount of time prior to starting this blog.* RIFT is the first of the second tier - MMOs I've played before, but never for more than an hour or two.
*The last that I can actually play. Requiem: Rise of the Reaver is still inaccessible to EU players.
So this is very much new and uncharted territory, literally and figuratively. I'm already - after only 4 hours - further into this game than I've ever been before, and I have no idea of what's coming next. That's always an interesting place to be. On the other hand, now that I'm venturing away from the familiar it's likely that sooner or later I'll run up against a game that I really don't like, at which point I'll see just how determined I am to keep to the theme of the blog...
One way in which this unfamiliarity has manifested is that I took a lot longer than usual to decide on my class and faction. I knew I'd go melee, and did consider a Rogue for a while as I've had a lot of fun with that class in Dungeons & Dragons Online and Neverwinter, but in the end I opted for a Warrior, my default setting in most fantasy MMOs. I've also gone sword and shield rather than two-hander, despite the best efforts of the game to encourage the latter choice in weapons. It's about survivability, and the pace of my attacks, and the attack animations.
As for faction, I've gone Guardian. There's no denying that the Defiants have a much better introductory sequence, and an interesting time-travel premise, and they're not insufferable religious fanatics, and... wait, why did I pick this faction?
Oh well, it's done now.
The first couple of hours of the game has walked me through a typical MMO introductory sequence - fights against passive mobs followed by fights against aggressive mobs; collecting quest items; interacting with objects in the world; using special quest abilities; introductions to fast travel, fishing, gathering and crafting - all the boxes on the standard checklist are dutifully ticked.
Alongside all that the game also introduces the concept of the titular rifts themselves, as well as player housing. Where RIFT really shows its stuff though is in the character building. The Soul Trees are a multi-track skill system that offers a level of character customisation straight out of the gate that goes beyond anything I've seen in any other MMO. Even games that do offer a lot of choice in how a character is built - like Dungeons & Dragons Online - don't go all in as quickly as this one does.
It does clearly take inspiration from World of Warcraft's spec trees, but seeing as WoW (and that game's more shameless imitators like The Old Republic) have drastically streamlined those systems over the last decade or so the Soul Trees in RIFT bear little resemblance to how those games work today. There is an option to select a build and allow the game to auto-fill the skill trees as the character levels up - a good idea since this is a fairly complex system - but I'm having a lot more fun making my own choices as I go. It's great to be able to select skills that suit my playstyle rather than having to adapt to someone else's idea of how the class should play.
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