It wouldn’t be sensationalist to state that RIFT is the most polished and accomplished MMOG BETA I have ever taken part in. And while not fault free, the single problem I did encounter (being unable to login due to queueing issues), was when servers first opened; a problem undoubtedly linked to the sheer quantity of people flooding on-line. The rest of my evening however, was flawless.
It’s a staggering achievement by Trion Worlds and one that is reaping rewards within the RIFT community. Chat channels filled with “Oh god its so polished!” or “I’ve already left World of Warcraft for this” littered my screen for the entire evening. In a time where MMOG developers are pushed to launch a product, irrespective of bugs and missing features, it is evident that Trion Worlds have and will avoid this fate and is a feat that should be praised much more than currently is.
The game itself has (in almost every element) been influenced by those around it. If you’ve experience within MMOG’s, you could without fault point out specific elements of the game and state the original source of the idea. From the user interface and its customisation, to the quest system and map marking or the guild perks: it is all recognisable. But Trion Worlds shouldn’t be criticised for doing what every other MMOG developer has done over the last ten years, which is to build upon existing frameworks that are well established, and more importantly loved by those who play the genre. Not once did anyone raise an eyebrow when Blizzard shamelessly copied Warhammer Onlines Tome of Knowledge and more specifically Guild Perks, so why should we do the same to Trion?
It is in the execution of such ideas where Trion has really excelled, improving even further on core concepts and ideas from others with such refinement, I’m unsure if they could be streamlined any further. The User Interface Customisation, so extensively realised in Warhammer Online, is a masterstroke within RIFT. So much so I would probably suggest it is the best in-game customisation of an interface I have ever experienced within an MMOG. It’s so intuitive and accessible that it provides the user with everything they could possibly need to make their interface exactly as they want it without the necessity to visit external websites for tweaks and add-ons’.
Where Trion Worlds will struggle however is to personally define their game, to stamp their identity onto it and to allow people to understand where the ideas of other developers end and their innovations actually begin. So much of RIFT may seem familiar, yet under the surface the game is bursting with new ideas.
The first of Trion Worlds master strokes is the class and Soul system. There are four classes to choose from within the game: Warrior, Mage, Cleric and Rogue. After choosing a class you can select three Souls, with a total of nine to choose from. For example, if you were to select a Rogue, you would be able to choose from the following Souls:
- Nightblade
- Ranger
- Blade Dancer
- Assasin
- Riftstalker
- Marksman
- Saboteur
- Bard
- Infiltrator
Each of the Souls has its own Talent Tree which you can spend points into as you level up, allowing you access to that Souls specific skills and giving you the opportunity to tweak and plot a truly individual class (within the restriction of the Archtype you’ve chosen).
In my circumstance, I chose Marksman as my first Soul as I wanted the distance combat Rifles and Bows offer, alongside the speed inducing movement skills. For my second Soul I chose Ranger as I wanted to be able to utilise Pets and Tracking abilities and for my third Soul I chose Saboteur, for the array of Traps and explosives.
To add an extra layer of spice to the system, Trion Worlds have made it so your primary skills are not purchased from a Trainer dependant on your class and level (see World of Warcraft) but are in fact obtained by spending points directly into each Soul. The first skills are “branches”, which are the specific abilities/bonuses that the player allocates the points to, and “roots”, which are the soul’s base abilities that are automatically unlocked as the players have allocated a certain number of points into the branches.
It’s a system that is so utterly brilliant (despite sounding complicated) that not only does it remove the desire to make dozens of alternative characters to experience different play styles, but offers such a freedom that I’ve found myself tinkering with the Soul Talent Calculator for hours, trying to allocate my points and secure the perfect balance of skills across my Souls. Trion Worlds for this alone deserve your money (you can test it here).
What may put players off however is the lack of racial starting zones and the linearity of the leveling structure. World of Warcraft in its later expansion packs and Warhammer Online both suffer this problem. As a player you are railroaded from one zone to the next in a gentle curve of experience and exposure to new elements of the game. While it makes for an effective play through, it could be argued that it is only interesting once. The lack of racial starting zones (every race begins in the same location) coupled with this linearity leaves no room for alternative leveling. Personally I’m not particularly interested in replaying the exact same quests through the same zones if I were to level an alternative character, although the Soul structure significantly alleviates the desire for alt-itis.
A huge draw of RIFT are the Rifts themselves. Very similar to Warhammer Onlines Public Quests but more akin to Guild Wars 2’s Dynamic Events, they have a direct impact on the game world. Rifts are entirely and random in their locations and severity and if left by players, the invading monsters spawned from the Rift will eventually capture large portions of the map and wipe-out entire quest hubs and areas. They sound an exciting prospect and having experienced minor tears, I’m looking forward to experiencing the larger more formidable versions.
One of the many stunning Rifts
What I do fear with Rifts though, in their random nature, is that unlike Warhammer Onlines Public Quest system, there feels too little structure. Where there was a clear beginning, middle and end in pre-scripted scenarios, this all feels very unorganised. A series of monsters that spawn to be quickly despatched by the crowd of waiting players isn’t particularly rewarding or satisfying and often feels like a scrum, but that in part isn’t helped by the quantity of BETA players in zones. On the flip side, when you do encounter a town ablaze with an open Rift surrounded by monsters, it really is moment of magic.
At times my PC has actually struggled to keep fluid framerates when encountering Rifts (coupled with masses of players on screen), despite being leagues ahead of the recommended system requirements. RIFT really is a stunning game and with the introduction of anti-aliasing in the latest BETA phase, it’s evident Trion Worlds are still working on the graphics and engine. I’m hoping that further tweaks to performance are on the way. With the level of polish Trion Worlds have demonstrated so far, I don’t think we’ll have too long to wait.
For now, I’m genuinely reluctant to play any more and am grateful this BETA phase has come to an end. For the first time in many years I don’t actually want to spoil the game, its impression on me has been that great. Trion Worlds have really created something special, and I’ve yet to even mention Warfronts, questing or crafting, but only time will tell as to how well RIFT can cope against Guild Wars 2 and its free-to-play model.
I’m excited about RIFT and you should be too.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
Quit pushing your heroin on me, man!
Wow, this actually sounds interesting (must resist urge.) That little video was pretty sweet too (must.. resist..) Been a while since I played an MMO. Not sure I want to start again (arghh!!! resisting!)
I don’t suppose this has any tie-in with the pen-and-paper Rifts games? I’m guessing no, but it comes to mind every time I hear it.
Nice write up. I poked the beta and it’s very slick indeed. This is good: there are two places where MMOs faceplant. Launch and end game.
RIFT is looking on track to the get the first correct–if they are still actively balancing skills–which is nothing short of amazing. The second, more important to keep the money rolling in long term and justify having invested the resources to create the game in the first place, is impossible to predict.
Filed under main heading cautiously optimistic, subheading try six months after launch.
Sounds like an unparalleled level of polish for this point in the development. Nice writeup, Lewis – and I’m glad something helped you with your Cataclysm problem. ; )
The idea of Rifts opening sounds rather cool, though your concerns about players humping each one could definitely be a factor.
I liked the video, but that dude with the tusks… seems inconvenient if you want to eat a big burger or maybe a piece of cake.
Great review. The level of polish comes from how they are running the Betas not as
marketting tools, but as actual Betas to have mass numbers flooding specifics
areas and finding bugs and fixing them in between Betas.
Why.. Why do people want the same? Why? D: Oh god why..
Why did Neocron crawl along with a few hundred active players per server, and these games thrive? Where are the real people? *twitch*
Its funny you should say that Jakkar. Neocron remains my favourite MMOG of all time. I played on Terra and ran one of the largest Clans on the server.
The game is desperate for a remake, and one that has the polish and finish a AAA title deserves. Rift however deserves its credit, it really is a stunning game.
My only concern is Guild Wars 2 – its a behemoth and Free-to-play. Who can compete with that?
Okay, now you need to write a post about Neocron. I’ve never even hear of it, and you guys talk about it with such reverence. I’m totally intrigued now!
I was invited to the first beta (months ago) but downloading the client caused three BSODS + insta-reboots. In the most stable OS to date, Win7! Looked around for help but beta forums only open during beta, not before or after. I didn’t continue for fear of what might happen to my pc. In hindsight, do you think the servers were overloaded? I considered that, but figured that should have caused disconnects, not reboots.
Glad you enjoyed the game, not only looks great but sounds fun. Wish I could have been there too. 🙁
It’s good to know I’m not the only person who remembers it =)
Armand, I’m terribly tempted by the idea – although my frequent writings on the topic of Neocron tend to take the form of deranged, disjointed monologues inflicted upon stunned victims on MSN messenger..
I’ll try to sum it up quickly just for your curiosity; An MMORPG FPS, borrowing heavily in its interface design from Deus Ex (and through Deus Ex, System Shock 2). The setting was extreme-future post-apocalyptic, set in an unrecognisable location over a thousand years after a global war reduced civilisation to nothing. Sub-Fallout, it was nothing but tribes of diseased, irradiated yokels for centuries, before they finally dragged their acts together and moved toward the foundation of a city – Neocron, ‘new time’.
Gameplay; realtime, unrestricted combat in just a few servers holding 200-600 people at any given time of day, in a single real town, three smaller settlements belonging to some of the more xenophobic factions, and a large number of player-controlled bases in the wasteland. The consequence of this was not the obscene, vicious free-for-all deathmatch we saw in the failed ‘Darkfall’ MMO more recently – but rather it resulted in a consistently tense, fearful yet respectful atmosphere.
Players did not assault one-another continuously or needlessly. In fact, the minimal HUD depiction of a player’s ‘level’ (simply summarising them with a number of stars or chevrons as a vague indication of skill level) coupled with the simple fact you never know when their friend is hiding just around the corner meant that combat itself was a remarkably real thing, for reasons purely intellectual/psychological.
Day to day, players would explore the sewers, the catacombs beneath the city, the older abandoned sectors and the vast outdoors, killing monsters for the natural resources upon them, or the loot from the more powerful entities – which became valuable trade-goods for the crafter-players to manipulate into varied weapons and armour. No-one wanted to use a dropped or bought weapon or armour – player-made was the only way to go if you wanted to survive.
I could ramble on. There were clan wars over ownership of factories, research labs and military bases that conferred skill bonuses to the inhabitants, enabling advanced construction abilities and the like. There were fantastic vehicles, including tanks and APCs, anti-gravity hoverbikes and later, aircraft including bombers.
I’ll try to nail just a little of what made it magical, then shut myself up.
1: It was actually scary. In the sewers, it could be as black as pitch at times – and the things down there were -worth- fear. First person on these older engines meant coming suddenly and unexpectedly face to face with low-poly, low texture detail masses of writhing flesh, groaning and swinging knives or tentacles. You know the story if you ever played System Shock 2 or Unreal in particular. However, the horror was not the product of an ugly engine but good, minimalist design. The darkness was real, the glow of green or red ambient lighting was rich and colourful while understated, making enemies in the distance a blur of sinister motion. The sound and visuals were -all they needed to be-, and the gameplay was raw-FPS, influenced by skills as well as mouse-aim but at its core, without any indication of the enemy but your own eyesight. Rare, in an MMO. You can imagine the tension this lent to PVP combat, as well – which was never common, but at ANY TIME a possibility. This is a game where I took part in and was the victim of assassination missions in a purely player-organised, unsupported and terrifying/satisfying fashion.
2: Emergence. When the game was in its final, open beta testing stage, the ‘big news’ of the time was that Dexterity was the most useful stat for a fighter, and the tip rapidly spread that the best way to gain Dex was to use a Recycling Device to process low grade materials in bulk – grinding, in truth. However, the acquisition of these materials became a thriving, overnight industry that transformed the economy into something wholly emergent. The cheapest available raw material taking into account travel times was Chitin, a purple ball icon representing the thorax of the giant spiders easily found in the city sewers, where they spawned en masse from gigantic, pulsating egg-sacs. The city became a giant industrial trade and processing hub, akin to a gold-rush town – underground in the labyrinthine sewer tunnels, accessed via manholes, hundreds to thousands of players would be harvesting the swarms of dangerous, poisonous insects. Larger groups and more daring players would travel into the deeper sewer-levels to exploit unfarmed spawns of the creatures, sometimes coming up against worse threats such as mutant animals and larger spiders – in fairly fast-paced FPS combat, on par with the two RPGFPS games I keep comparing to.
On the surface, influential players – traders and businessmen, middlemen and clan leaders would be advising the waves of newbies on how to make money, and reaping great rewards – not everyone could afford a recycling tool, not everyone just wanted dexterity – many exploited the armies of newbies by trading cash for chitin at brutal rates of exchange. Within a week, money had very little value – people actually began buying weapons from one another for amounts of CHITIN, not credits! The entire monetary system swapped currency from virtual to actual materials. From this period I gained so much cash and skill in a short period I was able to begin harvesting the darker, more deadly sewers under the red light district, where dangerous mutants lived, who sometimes came out to attack citizens whenever a GM grew a little bored. I was not a skilled fighter, or an experienced player – but I excelled in theft, stealing from the corpses before combat was over – I made an excellent living grabbing automatic weapons from dead mutants and selling them on to new players.
Blast. I’ve written -reams- here, once again.. And I’ve still one other story to tell. Or a hundred. I’ll withhold them – perhaps I’ll write them up as an article oneday, somewhere =)
Lewis – as Armand said, I’d love to see an article written on ‘cron. I’d love to contribute to one in fact o.O
Oh, blast. I can’t help but evangelise it just a little more. One last story.
In Neocron, around six months after release the developers added a new weapon to the game, for no major reason other than ‘why not’. It was named the CopBot Rifle. CopBots were the AI guardians of the city, who either symbolically protected players by standing guard muttering robotic threats in the few ‘safe’ sectors, or in the ‘dangerous’ city sectors where player combat was free but illegal by actually hunting and killing players who drew weapons in public or opened fire.
Their guns were a variety of customised plasma rifle, and with their release to the common player, they became a fashion sensation in an instant – no different than the rush to acquire new weapons during TF2 update weeks.
However, a few of us could see just how deadly these new, sleek black rifles were, and.. Well, we got a feeling. Moufausa, and myself, two of the more influential crafters on the server (was it Pluto? I think so. This was back in around 2003..).. Created many blueprints of the rifles and unique ammunition packs, digital data storage that would allow us to recreate the weapons using raw parts later on.
True to our feeling, and in an unprecedented action, the development team decided to remove the weapons from the game for being imbalanced – but here, this is where the tale differs from the norm – they didn’t do this by rolling back, or by simply deleting them all. They offered an amnesty via public announcement. They -asked- the player community to hand in their Copbot rifles and ammunition in exchange for cash. Once a week had passed, the developers quietly deleted the remaining copboy rifles from the game after the vast majority had been handed in.
.. but they didn’t delete any datacubes containing research data on those weapons.
It was several months later I caught word that someone had released the gone-but-not-forgotten copbot rifles back into the world. A few rare, special items, from one-shot research datacubes, almost unique. Imagine the value these incredibly rare, limited, illegal weapons had, the appeal. I made hundreds of thousands of credits by quickly jumping on the bandwagon, producing several hundred ammunition magazines for the rifles from my old datacubes and advertising them in Plaza-2, outside the Medicare building where all the traders and buyers gathered.
It was a golden moment of emergent market-activity, realistic, convoluted happenings in a virtual space. Illegalised weapons, an amnesty, and the sneaky re-release by players of a weapon formally banned and removed by the developers. On par with the ‘plague’ infection of World of Warcraft, or the great betrayals of EVE.. It was this casual, friendly and open-minded attitude of the developers that allowed Neocron to thrive for the relatively few people who ever knew it existed.
I’ve more stories, and will save your poor burnt retinas the pain of reading them. Wish you’d been there in the glory days, friends..
– Jack
Oh Jack, so many memories. Do you remember Kamikaze chips and Ghost shell rifles?
I am actually going to write an article on Neocron now- I really loved it.
@ Yapette, that’s weird. I run Windows 7 ultimate and never once had a browser issue. Want to join my clan for this weekends beta phase?
This sooo doesn’t sound like the Neocron I remember. Maybe I played a different game?
There were roaches to kill. Everyone got a useless apartment. That’s what I remember.
Lewis B, thanks for asking. Until I get the Feb. 5 invite, I can log into the client but Rift won’t let me update/patch. Original download was 7 GB? No idea how much of the client I have or what it *thinks* I have. Thought I’d uninstalled but to my surprise, Rift found itself on my drive. If I get an invite, if I manage to update before Friday, I’ll let you know…but I can’t use PMs on Tap cuz mine are broken. 🙂
Yapette: Try these VIP keys
Q3WQ-7TW7-DEZD-HNFL-L7TN
E9PK-JF6Z-XGN2-GQXF-R26L
M9HK-KQZN-9EKT-YQQ7-YDLQ
DP2H-72DY-9XZT-RDER-QRLM
E9PK-JF6Z-XGN2-GQXF-R26L
Login to your account at http://www.riftgame.com/en/ and when in your profile select add game key. If these don’t work ill sort you a new one I hope. (I know for certain the top one hasn’t been used, as Panache PR kindly sent me that)
Another VIP key below. It can be used 20 times if anyone is interested. Rifts next beta phase goes live tomorrow. Message me in game on Mizaki and I’ll add you to my Guild 🙂
JCM9-6GEE-FFLQ-JC9E-RQPY
*sob*
I’M SORRY, ALL RIGHT?? Everyone who knows anything about technology has abandoned me!
I’m like the captain of a ship that nobody wants to be on. A ship without an engine.
Steerpike, I in no way meant for you to read that! It’s purpose was to explain (excuse) my writing (what should be) PM replies on a public front page. Honestly, doesn’t bother me that PMs don’t work. I’m the person with the cheapest landline possible including no long distance service and no cell phone beyond a prepaid yearly 300 min. Not. To. Worry.
Lewis, my account has a VIP key & says so, added in (maybe) December. Still must receive invites every beta (says that too). Could be I’m flagged as a miscreant? 😉 Beta #1 was 3x BSOD, Beta #2 required a fresh downloaded client at lake computer on weekend starting Fri. evening @ 240kb/sec capped d/l. Weekend would have been over before I could log in so I didn’t try (not counting disconnects when I attempt overnight d/l). Beta #3 mid week I wanted to play but…I have no excuse other than thinking what’s the use, the game goes live soon anyway. Behavior = Miscreant. 🙂
Haha try to join me tomorrow then! 🙂 if your client is on it’s arse uninstall it, and download fresh. I was getting 800kbs last update!
You horrible curvaceous temptresses D: I HATE THAT KIND OF GAME, stop posting ways to play it and talking about it all over my screen. *hyperventilates*
It’s filthy, tempting a decent man to play.. something like that.
Finkbug: I think an MMO is half the tools/freedoms the developers give you, and half what you do with it. As a cynic, today, rather burnt out on the whole genre maybe I’d have a similar experience to that – but as eager as I was to explore this world, I found infinite opportunities for imaginative emergent gameplay and player-led social and violent experiences 😉
In the same mood or mindset, you could say that Minecraft is just an ugly toy where you eliminate/place colourful blocks and hit cubist skeletons in-between punching trees. Indeed, that’s all Minecraft is – thus my lack of respect for Notch, the ‘developer’, and my profuse respect for the artists who’ve used the game to make great works of art and engineering.
Neocron offered a kind of freedom and a wealth of choices you just don’t see in the ‘themepark dungeon’ genre of MMOs, the modern wave. It required a little more effort and thought, as a result.
Steerpike: I love your ship. I’ll pump your bilges any day.
Ahhh, got my invite this afternoon. That is, got it once I could check my emails. That is, got it once I could check my emails after power was restored in my neighborhood.
Yesterday we had 4 rolling blackouts. Today’s was a broken transformer…I heard it pop outside on the pole. In rolling blackouts, the protocol is use as little electricity as possible (to prevent further blackouts). Since neither dishwasher nor dryer are going it’s fair (equitable) usage that laptop, netbook & DS-XL are charging in order to retain my sanity if power goes out tonight, right?