My last thoughts on Rift were back after Beta 4. I continued to play in beta 5, 6, and 7 and now have been playing the headstart and release versions. I must say that Rift has been to smoothest release ever for a game as far as few bugs, no lag, no servers failing or dropping. One thing that ruined the perfect score was the lack of enough starter servers. They did add more as needed, but it was too late for all the guilds that set the server they were going to be playing on the day before. This caused massive queues making people wait hours just to get in. There still are queues during prime time, but not nearly as bad.
So far it has been fun. Everyone bands together to take down the invading forces and rifts making this game feel a lot more of an MMO than other games. The Join Public Group button makes it easy to join in the fun and makes it easier for you to heal or be healed. Better than yelling in general chat asking for invites.
Achievement system gives a nice set of side goals as you level. I have been artifact hunting like crazy. Artifacts are like shineys in EQ2 which you try to make collections. The instances have been fun and not overly difficult. Quests are still normal quests….nothing special there. I have only come across a few quests that require help from another player, so the game so far is solo friendly. The nice thing about the public quest thing is that if you see someone waiting to kill a quest objective, you can click on them and join their group to get credit for the kill, unless they have themselves set to private grouping.
There are bugs hanging around. They have been very quick to fix them as they come up. None of them game stopping. The chat about Rift being a WoW clone and Warhammer clone is slowly dying…FINALLY. But then you have people complaining something isn’t the same as the last game they played. You just can’t win with pleasing people!
My main character this game is Cynders. She is a Cleric. Cabalist/Inquisitor for questing and rifting. Purifier/Sentinal for healing instances and rifting. I have played many versions of Cleric so far…if you are interested, it is a very versatile class.
Cabalist – High damage with AOE – Not much survivability unless you add a healing soul
Iquisitor – High single target damage with some trickle healing as you damage
Purifier – Great single target healing and shielding
Sentinal – More multiple target healing
Warden – Heal over time healer
Justicar – Melee with tank ability and heal as you damage
Druid and Shaman are both Melee based damage but I havent gotten deep into them.
Definitely a game you should check out if you are bored with your current game. It is a nice breath of fresh air. We started our old WoW guild there, Silent Lucidity, on the Shatterbone server – Defiant side.
Trion is doing a great job on this game. If they can keep on listening to the players and adding things they want without making it too similar to the other popular games out there, they will have a hit on their hands. They have over 1 million players now, not too shabby!
Update: I have stopped playing Rift – didn’t even pay for the next month – I was burnt out of playing WoW and looking for something new – Rift filled that need but it was too similar to WoW so I was basically burnt out of playing THAT type of MMO. Still a good game though!
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