For our next “Things We Love About…” article we’re heading to the world of Telara to check out Rift from Trion, a constant contender for one of the best free to play MMORPGs on the market, at just over four years old the game has managed to retain an active and loyal customer base and constantly bring in new players. On the surface the game doesn’t appear to be anything different from the myriad of other fantasy based MMORPGs on the market, but when you start breaking down some of their features it’s easy to see why the game is as fun and successful as it is; so what features do we think contribute the most to the games pulling power?

• Soul System - Near endless amounts of character customization. Classes in rift are broken down into four primary “Callings”, namely the Warrior, Mage, Cleric and Rouge, within each Calling there are NINE completely different sub-classes, ten including a unique PVP sub-class, that are known as Souls; essentially that’s 40 sub-classes that play pretty differently. Each Soul has its own skill tree where players can earn skill points and advance and customize three Souls of their choice from their Calling; unlocking a new Soul at different milestone levels. The Souls themselves focus on various roles such as being DPS, healing, support, tanking, etc. and so no individual Calling/Class is focused on being a specific playstyle; players can go all out DPS with a Mage, or throw in elements of healing and support to make them more well-rounded for different situations. With three Souls out of ten that can be combined, with different skills and detailed customization that can be made, the game offers an almost unprecedented level of character customization that is extremely simple for new players to grasp but opens up a whole world of theory crafting for veteran players trying to make the most optimal builds.


• Player Dimensions - Instanced based player owned land. Player housing is always one of those features that pretty much everyone wants in an MMORPG and yet so many don’t deliver it, or put it so low on the priority list that it’s only when the game is losing a bit of its charm that player housing is brought out to give a new feature that is always going to be a hit. Rift goes one better; players don’t just get some instanced based building for themselves or their guild, they get a plot of land, a scenic piece of rock that acts as a blank canvas for creative minds. What players build here.. well it’s up to them. You can set up a huge monumental shrine to your chosen deity, build a cave complex from the various rock items, construct taverns, castles and more; player creativity, ingenuity and effort are the only toold you need… and a truck load of items. Collecting everything from statues, chairs, beer kegs, wall parts, rocks, books and more players can place these items, move them, rotate them, resize them and manipulate them to create whatever they like and then invite their friends and guildies over. It’s an impressive feature, very similar to the forge system seen in Neverwinter and Star Trek Online only without the NPCs and questing options; but very fun nonetheless.


• Chronicles - The option to solo endgame raid content. We’ve never really explored much of the raid content in MMORPGs, never really sticking with a game long enough to create or join a dedicated raid guild, so a lot of the time we’ve only been able to watch from the side as other players enter these epic dungeons. Guilds aren’t for everyone, particularly large intimidating raid guilds where individual player performance is often put under scrutiny by the rest of the team, or players simply prefer to play more casually and can’t dedicate the type of time and effort a raid requires. Whatever the reason for not doing raid content Rift has tried to solve the problem by allowing players to take on raid locations as one or two man Chronicles where they can complete the final end boss story-arcs, explore these amazing locations and get some rewards at the end of it. If players wish to take on the raid at a later time with a group then they’ll find the difficulty scaled up to provide a new challenge for them that they didn’t get the first time round.


• Rifts - Dynamic world changing events. Lots of MMORPGs have open world dynamic events, very few do it on the scale that Rift has managed with their rift system; here rifts periodically open up across the world and from them planar armies spill out. In most MMORPGs players would turn up and kill these enemies whenever they got the time for something to do, or if they wanted the drops they might give, that is typically the main incentive. In Rift a players timely action, or their complete inaction, changes the world completely and the rifts themselves have a staged event where first armies will come out, then they build fortresses, they summon colossal bosses and if left unchecked will acquire a very strong foothold where they completely take over an area.


• Instant Adventure Feature - Instant fun and action at the push of a button. Sometimes when you jump into game you don’t want to spend time going picking up a quest from an NPC, or traveling for some time to where the action is, or waiting around trying to put together a group. Rift’s Instant Adventure feature allows players to push a button the moment they enter the game that will instantly teleport them to a location where an epic battle is already underway, teaming them up with random players and throwing them into the action. The difficulty of these battles scales as players join or leave, so even with an overwhelming amount of numbers the enemies and bosses only grow tougher so that the battle always feels truly epic.

So that’s what we love with Rift, but more importantly what are some of your favourite things? What do you think could/should be added to our list that makes the game great? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2015 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.