I haven’t talked much about Rift. At first it was because I was under NDA and couldn’t. After that was lifted though, I just didn’t have much to add that hadn’t already been blogged about in a multitude of other places. The main reason is that despite being interested in the game, I just wasn’t as excited about the game as most other bloggers seemed to be.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time in beta, but I quickly got to the point where I stopped playing because I didn’t want to get sick of the PvE content before it even launched. I don’t like repeating content very much, and I didn’t want to rerun the newbie zone too many times before I could play a character I would be able to keep.
Despite my tepidness about Rift, I did pre-order and signed up for a three month subscription. I knew a lot of friends (like Multiplaying’s Circle of Trust guild) were going to be playing and I wanted to be there for the initial excitement.
Headstart
So Thursday night, I logged into Faeblight and was greeted by a rather large queue (I didn’t take notes but it was somewhere north of 1600). Â I ended up logging into Circle of Trust’s Vent and chatting a bit and then went AFK and read a book while I waited for my chance to get onto the server. I know some people were/are/will be frustrated with the queues but this is not my first launch and I was expecting to have to wait to get in.
The surprising thing about the launch was how smooth it went once I was in the game. I was expecting to be greeted by a newbie zone crowded with hordes of players sprinting around. Instead it was pretty sedate and I had no trouble finishing quests and working my way through and then out into the full world. I imagine this was a combination of instancing and the queues gating new players.
Come Friday, the queue seemed a little more sane. I logged in around 9pm Eastern and was number 650 something. I finished my book, Black Magic Woman, and played some Minecraft.
Epiphany
It wasn’t until Saturday when I leveled into the high teens that the game started to get exciting to me. I think it was a combination of getting out of the areas I’d seen multiple times before, finally getting some robes that looked cool, and (most importantly) starting to develop and interest in the lore. This last part is key for me. It is the main reason why I’ve never really enjoyed Age of Conan and why I love Lord of the Rings and Star Trek Online.
So while I initially started playing Rift because of the social tidal wave, I’m now also playing for the story. Look me up on Faeblight if you can complete the queue daily quest.
I ended up rolling on one of the later wave of servers (Dimwood) because I didn’t want to deal with server queues. It is labeled as High pop, but I’ve never actually seen a queue. So far I’m enjoying it a lot more than I expected. Heck, I spent several minutes just riding my turtle over the mountains around the zone just to see what was up there. It feels really comfortable, but there is so much new stuff to discover.
I just got into Stonefield and the explorer bug’s hit me pretty hard.
I think the “hey, I’m really starting to like this!” feeling hit me around the teens during beta as well. I think it was the realization of the soul system that finally did it for me. I had purchased a second role, and realized there were two more slots available for me to buy. In my head, I was already planning for a cleric for launch. It was just an overwhelming sensation of joy realizing I can stick with one character but essentially play with up to four very different styles. Case in point, I gritted my teeth and just bought a third role for my cleric just last night. My first role is the melee shaman archetype. My second is a pure healer. I’m messing around with my third now as a DPS mage-like caster. I’m already wondering if I can manage to build a tanky spec with my fourth once I can afford it. It’s just incredible how many different ways I can play with just my one main.
Yeah, I’m just starting to get a feel for the options available with the soul system. Hopefully my experiences with Champion’s freeform system will help out a bit. I think part of the problem was the way you have to buy into the different souls reminded me too much of the talent systems in other games, so it didn’t quite make sense to me until I had twenty hours of play time under my belt.
“I think the “hey, I’m really starting to like this!†feeling hit me around the teens during beta as well”.
Allot of people make the same comment and it was also similar for me, though I actually enjoyed things from the get go just going thru the motion of things and getting into the lore a bit from the start. The starter zone is not all that impressive yet they are neither long either to get thru which you can get thru rather quickly.
But once you get pass the very initial starter zone and lvl 9-10 the game fun drastically ramps up because thats around the point you really start encountering Rifts allot and dealing with the consequence of Invasions and loose roaming Invasion forces. That really changes the normal questing experience with all that happening and makes the game more fun.
Quest for a while when zone is quiet, Invasion starts up one can easily and quickly just drop questing for a while and just go Rifting for a while to mix things up. That clearly makes the game fun. Get to higher levels and beyond 20 and you can dabble in a bit of mischievous like me and roam around and pop open Planar Tears when found one and start a Rift event all on its own and try to seal it. The options open allot as you level up more. Rift just offers options to leveling whether its Questing, Dungeons or just Rifting or just mix it all up for the fun.
I’ve seen you on a few times in the guild though probably not as much times when i was logged on.
You’re in CoT too? Cool!
Yeah the Rifts and Invasions add some interesting content, which I didn’t look into much while in the beta, so they’ve been very interesting to participate in. Makes for a nice change from queueing for Warfronts, running dungeons, or questing.