Rift: Planes of Telara

[TyHillPanthers]

Didnt see this game posted. Ive been in the closed beta periods that they have had and ive been enjoying it. Anyone else heard about the game? Its got your standard MMO mechanics as any other MMO but has this cool concept of Rifts (from Wiki)

"These worlds have now invaded Telara, causing rifts to open. These rifts begin to spawn monsters which proceed to march towards important points on the map. It is then up to players to defeat these monsters and to close the rift. If rifts are left unchecked, the invading monsters will eventually conquer large portions of the map, killing and significantly impairing the players in that area. Players do not have to be in a group to be able to join a rift and are rewarded for many things including healing, attacking and buffing. The severity and locations of the rifts are entirely dynamic (and thus random). Rifts of 6 different types (earth, fire, air, water, life, and death) are possible, and rifts of different types will oppose each other."

So while doing standard quests throughout the game these Rifts can pose problems ..but Rifts provide some nice exp and tokens to get loot during the battle. Something different from your standard grind or questing. Makes it fun while leveling up..

The other thing with Rift is the class system which I think is great..there are 32 different classes. 8 classes per category (Warrior, Rogue , Mage, Priest) you can get skills from up to 3 classes within your category. A Video of how it works is here..

[bredy087]

Clearly no gingers allowed...everybody knows they don't have souls.

[TyHillPanthers]

Ive been looking at it over the last few days and some questions for you. I'm seriously considering bailing from wow when Rift drops but if its the same old same old then I'm not going to.

Is it just another grind fest? Not really..it has your questing and collect quests like WoW and the NPCs are a tad bit more challenging (more so for rift NPCs) But the Rifts that open and you try and kill waves of creatures to close it makes it so you arent feeling like you have to grind all the time. If some rifts get too advanced they start attacking cities..and by defending this you get exp and faction toward your side (which is the only faction ive seen to this point)

Grind for mats for professions...I went into a bit of trade skilling but only did gathering but yes its similar to the WoWs crafting system.

Grind for reputation for this faction or that...I havent seen or heard on this

Grind for gear for raids/pvp..Considering each beta has allowed only 5 levels per beta period and the max level so far is 35..the end game no one has really experience but Rifts Game Manager came out and announced how end game will be..here .

Grind for drops in instances/raids? Havent experienced much of the instances either ive been trying out multiple classes through my last 4 beta periods seeing what I like best.

Ive looked at the class/race structure and it looks pretty wide open but are all end game tanks/dps/healer of a given class/calling speced and geared identically? I dont think so

How does the instancing work? Is it limited in the vein of WoW or more pervasive like D&DO? Never played D&DO, you got an example?

PvP? World PvP or instanced arenas/battle grounds? they have arenas , battlegrounds and open world

I'm interested in any info you can give on any of that.

Hopefully that helps some . My suggestion would be to try out the open beta next week and see how you feel about it.

[Zaximus]

I had beta this last weekend but didn't play. It hasn't grabbed me like WoW. I don't dig the graphics, they aren't bad, just, hard to explain. It's a lot like WoW, they used a lot of WoW-like elements (not always bad). Like all MMO's I'll probably give it a month or two and see where it stands before I invest.

[TyHillPanthers]

I stopped WoW after burning crusade but Rift basically copies the combat system from WoW. Combo points, etc. All rogues have combo points..even bards..bards are used to either do damage, heal or intensify their songs for a brief period of time (30 sec to a min).

However when i played WoW they didnt have "Attack Points" Which they might have now. Based off certain strikes you use as a warrior class you get attack points , up to 3 max. And then you can use attack point abilities to life steal, do dmg, etc. Its really similar to combo points except you sustain the attack points until they are used, not per target.

The fact that there are numerous possibilities as far as how you want to build your class there are several options to kill NPCs or PCs. As i played a bard main with ranger(ranged dps) and nightblade (both ranged(magic base) and meele) I never had a go to option like you do in WoW. I was using several different abilities depending on the situation.

For instance..I used a ranger ability which applies a DoT but pulls a lot of aggro which applies 2 combo points. My pet was unable to obtain the aggro so it was meele. I started to use my nightblades meele skills and gained more combo points to essentially use the 5 combo points to heal myself (from a bard song). The more in depth in a class tree you get the more synergy you can have with other classes.

My bard haste songs setup my ranged dps and pet dmg. My nightblade magic range has an intensifier applied for 10 seconds ( up to 3 times) which setups up my headshot ability from my ranger(massive dmg).

The fact that the soul system has a variety of skill points it sets you up for multiple ways to kill enemies or assist group members, depending on your flavor. Ive heard some classes are more boring than others..but I had nothing but fun playing a bard/ranger/nightblade combo. I guess you have to just try out several combos to see what fits you.

In 2 beta periods ive played a Champion(2h dps)/ Reaver (Shadow Knight -eq or Death Knight-WoW) and a Beastmaster (pet intensive dmg, buffs gained off pets abilities) Combo and of course the other combo i explained above.

Im not a fan of healing as I was a tank for 7 years in everquest and a paladin/warrior in WoW, but im gonna try a caster build out for this open beta next week.

[mmmbeans]

man that's a lot of bald guys with goatees.

[mmmbeans]

*backs away slowly.*

[stankowalski]

Just bought this. I don't usually play MMORPG's but this one sounded pretty interesting. As i don't play MMORPG's I have no idea how good or bad this is in relation to other games in the genre, but I'm having fun.

[Zaximus]

A good deal of people have already left it by now. I heard it's ok, but gets really repetitive, even more than WoW. Heard the leveling is really slow and boring also. I think out of the 10-15 people that got it in my guild in WoW to play it, only like 1-2 still play it, the rest are back to WoW full-time or kicking it in Minecraft or w/e.

[robtrox0]

Didn't really like this game.. I am just waiting for TOR or something better than WoW.

[stankowalski]

A good deal of people have already left it by now. I heard it's ok, but gets really repetitive, even more than WoW. Heard the leveling is really slow and boring also. I think out of the 10-15 people that got it in my guild in WoW to play it, only like 1-2 still play it, the rest are back to WoW full-time or kicking it in Minecraft or w/e.

I would think that all MMORPG's are repetitive. Never played WOW believe it or not. What makes that so much better than Rift?