Reviews

The end of this beta cycle.

The RIFT beta opens and closes in several cycles, i guess to go through and fix reported bugs and errors. This was cycle 6 which ended today.

First impression:
My first impression was pretty mixed, first of all. The intro cinematic was awesome, really nicely made. Characted creation had it’s pros and cons, mostly lack of hairstyles and body features. Otherwise good. When first entered the game i was struck by the massive lag that hit me, both hardware and net lag. Granted that the server had the “High” population status on it. But the hardware lag was kiling my machine, and i belive i got a pretty decent hardware. I had to set the graphics on low just a get a flowy feeling. I really hope they fix that before release.

Gameplay:
It didn’t take me that long to get in to the gameplay due to the fact that I’ve played World of Warcraft for 6 years, and it had it’s similiarities. I like the fact that you get to choose talents very early in the game and that you can learn all kinds of different sub “Souls”.
The rifts that appear here and there are so beautiful and well made that you want to stand there taking screenshots all day long. When you enter a rift zone you get the option to join a public group/raid to help fight the rift and eventually close it. In the first two zones, only places I’ve been, the rifts appear very often.

Questing:
The quests are pretty easy and i did not have any particular problems with any of em, except one that i could not manage, so i skipped it. Quest rewards were OK and I only found one group quest in the entire time, nothing I’m complaining about tho, I like to kick it solo.

Transportation:
The lack of transportation points was a bit of a hassle in my opinion, long runs and no thought of using my Soul Recall to the first city due to the fact that the run back would take atleast ten minutes. Yes I’m lazy! In cities and some villages there are a big red glowy gateway that can be used to teleport between places. I think there is only one in each zone as of now, I would like to see atleast two or three more in each zone tho. I got my mount at level 13 i think, but thats only for beta, in retail mount will have a minimum level requirement of 20.

Overall:
I liked RIFT, I liked it that much that I’m seriously thinking of playing it when it goes retail. I do hope that they fix the hardware thing, it may be because i read somewhere that some graphic cards weren’t supported yet etc. More transportation choices. I hope all of you buy it, or atleast gets a chance to try it.