Rift: Planes of Telara

[Meko]

From what I gather, you can only be defiant currently if I'm not mistaken.

[Purrrfect]

Is it just me or is Defiant the only option right now? It won't let me make a guardian :0(

Really? lol


"Rise of the Defiant"

[Woozer]

Yea, I figured it was probably just a one faction thing. :0(

[Weltall]

Alpha is pretty much the entire game except for the endgame raids, which they just added a 700MB update last night worth of endgame stuff. Game seems legit

[Grey Jorildyn]

game is running smooth as a baby's bottom once you get in. UI is really nice and customizable. graphics are not really up to snuff but the animations are stuff are pretty cool nonetheless. having lotsa fun doing *gasp* QUESTS! you readin' this SE? this game has quests!

[Woozer]

I'm honestly surprised at how well it's running, I have to admit I was rolling my eyes at the whole "fully polished MMO at launch" PR bull they were spouting. But so far it seems very likely. Call me impressed.

[Grey Jorildyn]

got about 10 in my group now. others are welcome to join for beta if they like

[Insanecyclone]

Had to afk for a while have to sit in queue boo

[Meko]

My take on the game is this. If Warhammer and Everquest/Everquest II had a baby, this game would be it. It feels very Warhammer-esque with the layout and the UI. The character models remind me of EQ/EQII (one of the guys from EQ is a head guy for this game so it makes sense). The jumping and running looks awkward much like Warhammer. The talent tree seems kind of neat as certain talents unlock other abilities. Overall, the game runs pretty well for a beta. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, I'd say it's about a 6.5. Very WoW/War like though with quests and such.

[Alderaan]

My take on the game is this. If Warhammer and Everquest/Everquest II had a baby, this game would be it.

Exactly my thoughts also.

There's just so much going on around you it feels overwhelming at first. Hint to SE, this is how you make a lively world. I'm having to dodge artillery fireballs while questing.

Right now there's too many damn people, which is my only beef. This game is a lot of fun so far.

I'm also only getting around 15-20 fps on my crappy PC on lowest settings but it's still running smooth.

[Insanecyclone]

Small patch or something to fix some things from feedbacks. 20~30mins

Loving this a lot. Defiantly will be playing it next year.

[Saxon]

Am I correct in thinking that if I roll inquisitor now, I can respec later on to a proper healing class? Nice to have a dps spec for soloing since I don't want to solo up as a healer.

[Insanecyclone]

The videos from that one site mentions you can swap from dungeon, raid, or whatever spec you want later in the game. Pure dps, tanking, healing etc after setting them.

[Purrrfect]

Lol rocks from the volcano landing on my head need to gtfo.

Also, its pretty neat how the icon for the game in the taskbar flashes and shit if you start being hit while alt-tabbed. Still looking for a way to redo specs, but haven't left the starter part yet. /slowga

[Jintu]

They definitely fixed fps issues quite a bit after the server patch, went from never going about 20 on high to a steady 45 outside now.

[Alderaan]

I'm sure my low fps is mainly die to being constantly surrounded by hundreds of people.

The first rift to pop was nuts, i couldn't even get more than one hit in on mobs before they were dead.

Also my quest to get out of the starter area was bugged so i sent in a ticket. Withing 5 min i had a GM helping me, i was completely shocked. During this, the server went down for a few but as soon as i logged on again i received a tell right away from the GM, who solved my issue.

[Purrrfect]

Rifts are pretty damn awesome. Unfortunately they suffer from the "mass of solo ppl" rather than "large cooperative group". I'm pretty sure my pt/raid heals don't hit anyone near, but I'll have to check.

[Lucavi]

Rifts sound like something that can be easily tweaked, though, like making mobs hit harder on solo targets or just making the rifts grow faster. More people need to comment on this game; I'm not in beta and am starving for more info!

[Grey Jorildyn]

i'll post what I put on my forums yesterday. we have a whole thread going for our beta testers called "Day 1 Impressions" and plan to follow it up each evening with new thread for that day's experiences. Here's my post in it:

So the first day of the Rift beta has ended and tomorrow begins a new days. I want to get some feedback on the game from you guys. I feel like doing this everyday will help us recall things a bit better so I'd ask that each member that played today say a little something about their experience with the game thus far.
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I hit Lv12 before logging out tonight and I've spent the last hour or so gathering my thoughts about the game. I decided to break up my impressions into bits so here I go.

Client/UI
Well for me it was a familiar experience. It reminded me a little of playing Aion, although not as pretty as that game was. The UI was nice and customizable. I like being able to have 4-5 action bars for use with the G13+Naga setup, so that's win in my book. It also seems really functional too because I noticed as I began progressing from my first soul (Paladin) into my second soul (Warlord), I was unlocking quite a few abilities. The client automatically assigns these to open spots on the action bar, but I just moved 'em around where I wanted 'em to be. I think there's just gonna be a ridiculous amount of abilities from looking at the trees so all these bars are going to come in handy at some point.

I like that I can move widgets around, but in an editing form so i don't drag and drop shit away by accident. The action bars come with the standard bar-lock and abilities are easy to discern by color. The (also) standard customizable chat boxes and font colors are all there. The defaults work fairly well. One thing I don't like about the boxes is the design of em. I think they could use less squared corners and move to a rounder look. The boxes are also very large (like the crafting one), so I'd like to see that stuff shrunk quite a bit; there's a lot of empty "white" space that in unnecessary. When there's a lot of stuff on the screen, it feels really cluttered (and I run 1650x1080), such as when opening all your inventory bags. That's a big complaint for me too. I'd like one inventory screen with slots just tacked onto it as additional boxes.

Atmosphere
From the moment you log in you are immersed in a world in turmoil. There is a lot going on, it's hectic, and you're just getting your bearings too. Players not familiar with the UI and layout from WoW and onward might get a little perplexed and find themselves a little overwhelmed, but really, who hasn't tried at least one WoW clone yet anyway? Anyway, there is a lot of shiny lights and battling to be done, and you've got to press onwards. The first area (Terminus) is a bit strange, as it takes place in the future, and it is semi-instanced (at least that's what May said and there was that feel to it).

As for meta-game stuff...
The chat channels are the usual drab bullshit about WoW this and WoW that, but that's to be expected. Of course you can filter stuff out etc. I found it easy to get an answer to basic questions there or on the beta forums. Rifts open pretty randomly as far as I could tell and it's a real treat when it happens. It does get a bit laggy because everyone tends to swarm to them, but the fights are probably pretty challenging in smaller number. No solid claim system makes things silly as usual, and this time around it's not who does more damage gets loot (dps war), it's who lands first hit. That seems just weird to me, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Gameplay
Aside from obvious claim stuff, the gameplay is really smooth. The beta is very polished and seems ready for launch. I'd really like to see what the Guardians do their first 20 levels. Targetting is a bit wonky with the mouse. I think I am gonna make a tab key on my G13 to solve that problem though so I'll say more about this tomorrow I guess. Grinding in grinding as usual, but the quests of course will net you most of your exp, making grinding the a standard alternate progression.

As for questing, I've done almost all solo, but I partied up with some guy to do a timed spawn quest too and everything was smooth there. I do dislike the amount of inventory space we get, but there are vendors everywhere and money (multi-coin) is easy to come by via selling junk items, which mobs drop a lot of. Quests consist of the "big three"-- fetch quests, kill quests, click quests; nothing really shocking here. There are also world drop items that provide quests, again no surprises.

When death inevitably comes, you'll find another familiar component--you can soul walk (run awau from your body to a safe spot and respawn in 10s) or soul return at the nearest waypoint you passed (no need to interact either, which I liked) and then walk back to your corpses and resurrect. You lose some vitality but it can be soul healed (restored) for a fee depending on how deep into 'weakness' you are.

Overall
I like it. i don't love it and I don't hate it. It's fairly straight forward and standard. It brings nothing really brand new to the table as far as MMOGs are concerned so I don't really know what all the hype was about. It does have a lot content ready for launch (I'd say about 1800x more than FFXIV had), including those quests, instances, grinding/group areas, etc. Before this weekend's out I want to hit up an instance with some members here so grind your tails off! We only got a few more days to play! I think being able to see what their instanced content is all about will make or break this game for me. I have high hopes for it and really don't expect to be disappointed but I'd rather see it with my own eyes anyway.

Goals for Day 2: Lv16+

[Meko]

That's a really good review. The game is nothing "new" or "special". It's very WoW/War/EQ2. A lot of the class abilities are built like WoW with different names. The sub class type thing seems to be pretty neat but it's hard to gauge with a level 20 cap. All in all, it's a solid game but I'm not ready to write home about it just yet.