Rift sets a new standard for MMOG launch quality
It's a finished product. How many times have you said that about a just-released massively multiplayer online game? In a genre dominated by disastrous bugs and missing features at launch, Rift stands out for the amazing feat of being complete right out of the box. As you play Rift, rarely do you say "If it only let me do this," or "It really needs that." Sure, there is room to grow; there always is in an online role-playing game. But even now, there is little to stand between you and your questing, save those pesky rifts that open up within the colorful fantasy world of Telara and pour invading forces onto the ground. Rift sets a new standard for MMOG launch quality, if not for originality. In fact, developer Trion Worlds plucked familiar facets from other similar games and did so blatantly enough that you can't chalk up the similarities as existing simply because the games share the same genre.
But by combining these facets into a unified experience and adding fresh mechanics to them, Rift proves that not all games must reinvent the wheel to be truly great. Rifts, or tears between various dimensions and Telara, are dynamic events that can open up quite suddenly. These events feature open grouping with players being able to join one another to defeat the creatures spewing forth from the rifts. One of Rift's most compelling features is the Ascended Class System. Players begin by choosing one of four callings: Warrior, Mage, Rogue or Cleric. During the course of the game, players increase in strength and can "attune" their callings and mix and match "souls," or sub-classes, to become more specialized and flexible.
Rift is a visually beautiful game, though you’ll need to be playing on a serious beast of a machine to get its true potential at ultra settings. Even with an over-clocked quad-core processors and our pretty decent video cards, I was still stuck playing only on the high setting in visuals for good frame rates, but I still found myself needing to kick those down some when open world events came to play. Sure, Rift isn’t the most visually appealing game in the genre, but it packs some serious punch compared to many other F2P offerings in the genre, and even comes close to rivaling with Guild Wars 2, a game released well over a year after Rift was launched. But optimization is terrible in Rift.
Without these rifts, Telara would be nearly indistinguishable from any other generic fantasy world. At one point in its lore, it was a typical fantasy realm, filled with elves, dwarves, and everything else stumbling out of a Lord of the Rings convention. These days, the veil between planar dimensions is as weak as a damp Kleenex, allowing invaders from the planes of Air, Death, Earth, Fire, Life, and Water to open rifts and appear anywhere. The world is constantly under attack, and new rifts open as quickly as they can be closed. An ideological conflict on how to deal with the crisis created the two factions, with Guardians praying to their absentee gods and Defiants attempting to repair the veil with powerful machines.
This creative story in a familiar setting works in Rift's favor: I actually felt as though I'd seen it before the rifts tore the world asunder. Maybe it's an interesting location. Well this game takes place in a floating void, where the blocky layout rises up as you approach. It's interesting, sure, but this weird world offers little more than a random hodge-podge mosaic of boring blocks. Or perhaps it's the characters. But here the only other people you meet are dull floating spheres who give you side quests, sell you stuff, or drop hints. And don't even ask about the story. I couldn't tell you the plot if I tried.
Of course, since Rift is an MMO, you need to expect having wardrobe options, mounts, pets, boosts, padlock boxes and other stuff similar to that. Many of these are unlocked as you play, so you do get an incentive to explore, which in my opinion is a great thing. I like that Rift is focused on customization, because let’s face it, we all want to be different and have our own look. Thankfully, the fact that there are a variety of pets does manage to add quite a lot to the experience.
If you're wondering whether or not Rift includes some aspect of MMORPGs, be it crafting, titles, achievements, auction houses, or what have you, the answer is more than likely 'yes'. As a title at the forefront of the genre's slow evolution, Rift includes just about everything that's come before it, and put it in a slick and easy to use package. I was hoping for something a little more revolutionary out of Rift, but aside from that I can't say that I was disappointed in the game. I'll reiterate what I stated at the opening of this review – it's an MMORPG for MMORPG gamers, and if you're not it won't change your mind.
