What to love about Rift

The Rift beta started when I was in Germany and it was quite painful to continually receive invites without being able to play. I was interested in the product because it was headed by a man I know and trust. Scott Hartsman is good at what he does and always has been. From my perspective as a customer I felt that EQ2 was great under his control. He has always been big on the community and he treated my guild and I well. For that alone I owed it to him to at least try his game. I managed to catch the final two betas and now I’ve played some in release and I thought I’d talk about what I really love about Rift.

I’m going to start with what I think most people would consider a negative comment. That might seem strange in an article where I talk about what I love in Rift but I see this as a positive even though it doesn’t sound like it. The short of it is that Rift is a standard fantasy MMORPG. If we leave off the Rifts and classes for just a moment there is nothing new here. The game is generic and follows the tried and true path of doing chores for annoying NPCs. It does business the old way. How can I use that as positive? It is simple. Rift does that generic fantasy MMORPG as well or better than titles that are far more mature. The experience that Trion has created is both familiar and polished. They didn’t innovate here. They didn’t try to change our world view. Scott and his team took what worked and put that in place as the foundation for the MMORPG.

Rift will be extremely familiar with anyone who has had the World of Warcraft experience. Lets face it, the elves look like WoW elves. You swim, eat, drink and do a few other things exactly as you do in WoW (with some insanely similar animations). That is acceptable, however, as nobody really cares how you swim. These are all examples of what I call the generic fantasy MMORPG. Without talking about class or Rifts I think the game could almost stand on the foundation alone due to how great a job the team has done. Rift is a suitable WoW replacement because it does most things that game does equally well.

Where the Trion team really spent their time was on the dynamic content system. I’m not sure where but I either heard or read something from Scott about how the whole dynamic content system was built first and then an MMORPG laid on top of it. This is where the innovation is and it shows. This team took the public quest system and made it work well. Instead of a dull, monolithic system that sits in an assigned place you have a dynamic set of events that are a whole lot of fun. Players can open Rifts that match their level and have a seemingly large variety of encounters. Rifts that go unclosed start to exert their will in the world and sometimes this leads to large, insanely fun events. Players easily and actively band together to fight this common enemy. I’ve been on several “raids” already. I just took a spot in a public group and started healing. This is seamless, fun, and it works well. More importantly you can level easily by doing this. If you don’t want to do chores for NPCs you can level by closing Rifts. I’m honestly not sure I’d ever play another MMORPG again that didn’t have a system like this. To me, Rift marks the death of the chore-reward-centric MMORPG. This is innovation to me.

Scott also pleasantly surprised me with how classes were handled. When I saw the sheer amount of them I was extremely worried. EverQuest 2 suffers from what I call “too many classes syndrome.” Balance is nightmarish and you don’t really need that many to do a finite number of jobs. Rift also has a huge number of classes all in the effort to give us choices. I have to say that the appearance of choice is slightly a farce. There are some combinations that make effective classes and others that don’t. There will always be a flavor of the month and that is a major problem for most MMORPGs. For Rift it isn’t so much of a problem because we as players have been set free! Trion has removed the yolk of class hatred and balance. You get FOUR roles and can pick from EVERY soul in your major class. You can always be the most effective at soloing, grouping, and raiding in your class with just a minor change. Someone at Trion said, “Is it really necessary to lock our players into a single class?” Someone said no and I say bless them.

When players aren’t locked into a single class they are less likely to be upset if something is changed. If a build is over powered it can be toned down. If players feel it is no longer viable they can switch to any of the other builds. If you’re jealous over one soul’s abilities you can go to it. We are no longer trapped, locked or forced to play an alt just to enjoy a game. This is another thing that I’m completely sold on. I am often frustrated with Ferrel being a templar in EQ2. In Rift I could just change my role and move on.

Rift really casts aside a lot of what you’d call traditional MMORPG assumptions. The class system flies in the face of conventional wisdom. It gives players the freedom of choice. It also does a whole lot to end the chore-reward system. Players have true additional options to their level progression. I’m on board with those two features alone and also appreciate the well polished and familiar game beneath them. I think anyone looking for something familiar but with a twist would love this game.