Tavaron is back with news from the gaming world. This one's a warning.

During my Christmas holidays – yes, that's a while ago, but I didn't have time to get this properly written down until now – I decided to give Rift a chance. I have seen and read a few things about it during the last year and had long planned to play the trial version. And so I did. Rift is a fantasy MMORPG that was released in 2011, so it's relatively new. It has the usual monthly fees that are common for MMOs. For those who want the short summary: it's a game that combines WoW-like¹ quests and WAR-like² graphics. At least that was my impression. All those who are not satisfied with this find more detailed information below.

So, what is Rift about? I fear I'm a bit lost here. I'm one of those people who usually read quest texts and everything, but I just didn't really understand this one. The world Telara is something special (aren't they all?), there is some kind of magical energy, as far as I understood, and because of this creatures from other dimensions attack it. They open so called 'rifts' from their dimension to Telara to do this. There is also one big boss of the bad guys called Regulos, who is obviously a dragon and has some other dragons under his command. At the beginning of the story everyone dies. What happens then is dependent on the faction you chose: while the 'Guardians' are resurrected by some angel-like beings, sent from their gods, the 'Defiant' build machines to get their people back to life. There also seemed to be some time travelling involved at a later stage (after the tutorial) but that's a part that I didn't understand. The only thing I know is that everyone is sent out to fight Regulos.

As I had the chance, I of course tried a character of each faction. Both factions have different races with different special abilities like for instance 'mighty leap' and a resistance against a certain damage type. On Guardian side we find the usual humans, elves and dwarfs, the Defiants have a bit more exotic humans, a different type of elves and a race of something like jinns – as far as I can see. I really had a tough time at the character creation because I didn't like the look of any of them and the customisation options didn't satisfy me, either. I ended up with choosing the least bad-looking option because I didn't find anything I could call good within reasonable time. Of course there is also the choice of a class, which again is the usual thing: cleric, mage, rogue and warrior. What is different in Rift is that there are several sub-classes to every class. These are first chosen during the tutorial but can be swapped later, even swapped rather quickly to have the right setup for a certain situation. Every character has three of these sub-classes and has to make further specialisations within them by applying skill points to different abilities. Each main class has nine sub classes for tanking, healing, damage, a pet class and so on, and every combination of these is possible. The developers of the game celebrate this as a major breakthrough in gaming and it certainly is more interesting than completely pre-fabricated classes. I chose to play a Rogue and a Mage and one of my specialisations was a pet class in both cases. I ended up with a rather ugly pig and a skeleton that seemed to have a broken neck. I saw others with rather embarrassing fairy pets. I really hope they look better in higher levels.

In the tutorial area of both sides I was sent out to fight undead and I read that undead stay the main enemies in the game. Rift has the usual quests of 'kill three...' and 'collect five ...' that you find in any other game, and they are really quite tiring and not well made. There also seem to be dungeons and raids and all these things. Additionally there are the rifts, that I mentioned earlier. These come in the flavours water, fire, air, earth, life and death. From afar rifts look like tornadoes with tentacles and they appear at random anywhere in the world, but they look a lot smaller than I expected. Every different type has different enemies and alters the world around it. A fire rift for instance has demons and turns the ground to half molten lava. If nobody stops the 'invasion' there come more and more enemies and more and more of the area is influenced by the rift. Rifts even take over outposts. I have read stories of people logging off in an outpost and finding themselves locked in the middle of a rift when they log on the next day, which can certainly be quite annoying if you have other plans.

With the characters of both factions I made my way to the capital city of each. I wanted to see high level characters, who are bound to hang out in the main cities in every game. My impression was that everything is pretty empty. The world as such gave me a feeling of emptiness (just by its design) and there were very few people. I played on a server with medium population but there was hardly anyone there. Either people are very busy in Rift and have no time to hang out and chat in the capital, or there is really nobody there. By seeing the level 50 characters I must say I was disappointed by their appearance. The armour was not at all impressive and they had some strange mounts, like a two-headed turtle. The overall graphics quality of Rift is not great, some textures are plainly bad, even on the highest settings. The design wasn't really to my taste either, I had the impression they just didn't bother making good graphics.

Shortly after reaching the capital city the game was over for me. The trial version doesn't just have a time limit but also restricts players to the first map – which is not in the manual. I had hoped to see a bit more and possibly more interesting things, but was not allowed to. In the end I didn't even really use my game time because Rift just wasn't worth playing. It completely failed to make me identify myself with my character. The quests are plain boring in my opinion and the rifts couldn't really keep my attention, either. I had accidentally installed the German version of Rift, which added at least some fun reading the translations – maybe the original English is just the same, I could not find out. I am sure I will never forget my trip to the 'Klumpkuhle'.

All in all, Rift is a game that I certainly don't recommend. If you still want to play it, please play the free trial version before you spend any money on it. I have seen reviews in which people appreciated that Rift is basically like any other game and that there are no big surprises. If you want a game like that maybe Rift is really something for you.

Tavaron da Quirm

12.03.12 Front Page

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