RIFT previews

That's a statement made for many MMOs, and it's yet another one that's been made in regards to Rift. But has it indeed got potential? It does. Will Trion live up to the expectations? They have thus far.

The beta events have been interesting, note the terminology there: These are events. Your more common betas would have you running around for a few months doing whatever, adding new features to test every few weeks or so. Trion's opted in for something a little different; The beta has 3-day events which are designed to test new features (from classes to the warfronts).

The customisability of the game is huge. Without going into too much detail, there are four “Callings” (classes in your standard MMORPG) and each has 8 “Souls” (these are skill trees that have soul-defining abilities attached to them). You can have as many as 3 of these Souls at any one time and there's no limitation to what Souls you can choose and how you spend points into them.

Overall, the beta has been very smooth and each beta is smoother than the last. The game itself is already what some might consider other games to be: “Polished”. It's a very clean, good-looking game that takes points from other popular games (EverQuest, World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, just to name a few).

Playing some beta and this game looks amazing. Very polished for beta and a lot of depth for creating your characters with the various tree's and points you can assign skills too. Very interested to see how class balance goes and most classes can be a jack of all trades pretty much depending on build. Rift events are great fun too, makes it very enjoyable being involved in them. Looking forward to more of beta and a great game on release.

Played in one of the beta's (they do special beta events) and everything looks great! Still a little buggy but shaping up quite nicely.

If you want to sign up to be in the draw to get in the beta's yourself then mosey on over to http://www.riftgame.com/en/

As far as MMO's go, this one has been very solid in recent beta (as of a month out from release). The bugs leftover are for the most part minor inconveniences, in so much as content that has been available for testing.

The classes are a lot of fun. You initially pick one of four main classes, the classic four; warrior, rogue mage, cleric. These then split into 8 sub-classes or ‘souls’, with three active in any role. Each of these souls is like a different class, and you gain abilities by putting points into them as you level. Some souls complement each other too; for instance, taking several defensive oriented souls as a warrior and you'll have access to a better spread of tanking abilities than if you have only picked one defensive soul. Even with this said, there's nothing stopping you from putting every point you get into just one soul, or splitting the points between two or three. It's a diverse system that lends itself to a myriad of class and ability combinations, and would be fun to explore for anyone that likes feeling that their class is unique. Also… Bonus points here for having a rogue class that can tank, in my book!

In the game world, Rift and Invasion events are fairly common – easy to spot too, since invasion pathing is clear on the world map, and the rift events spawn a giant tentacle vortex over them that you can see from miles away. The only concern is that the higher your level, the harder they are, and they drop randomly on quest zones so can be a pain if a few people aren't around and looking to clear them out. This shouldn't be an issue for months after release though.

Crafting is relatively fun too. You get to pick three crafts, including gathering crafts, to learn. There are items you can find that when added to something you're making boost a certain stat. These can make crafted gear pretty competitive next to quest rewards and the like. The actual crafting professions seem to all rely on two gathering skills too; for instance, armoursmithing requires mining and the leather from butchering. Outfitting seems to only need looted cloth and the butchered leather, though this could all change at higher levels/when the game goes live.

As far as customizable and unique characters go, there are armour dyes available and character creation is far more detailed than most MMO's, reminding me a bit of Age of Conan's creation system. It doesn't have the width and depth of some games, so far away you might look the same as the next guy (if taller/shorter), but up close the different detail should be visible.

Graphically the game is amazing. The highest settings will put a little strain on even higher end systems, but the game still looks beautiful with the settings lower. The options available mean people who just pass the minimum requirements should still get a decent looking game that plays smoothly, at least, with everything being able to be turned down very far. But higher end systems will showcase something pretty spectacular as far as MMO's go.

All in all, at least in the beta this game has been a refreshing blast and has me considering it, but I have reservations about its staying power. I suspect while novel and fun for now, the bloat of abilities and frequent rifts/invasions might get old after a few months.

This game is ready, Trion have done an amazing job here – money well spent. It has features found in all the big titles, Lotro, Eq2, War, WoW plus it adds new features to the genre, such as text searchable inventory and bank.

The game has a fully fledged guild contribution system including guild wide bonuses, and guild wide quests! – another new feature to the genre.

Plenty of solvable content – and most importantly you can get reasonably well geared as a solo player and not feel gimped because your not in some end game super guild.

The PvE to PvP is seemless with options for zone wide pvp, in world battlezones (aka warhammer style), warfronts (aka battlegrounds)

The crafting system is a joy to use and intuitive like LOTRO.

This is really no surprise, Trion is owned partly by Warner Brothers (part of time warner) who also owns Turbine, Warner Bros is a huge media company – so yes this game has huge backing. The other partner is NBC universal (owners of syfy channel). Time Warner + NBC universal is a recipe for win!

PC gamers finally have a reason to own a good graphics card again and RIFT shows up all the short comings that consoles cannot offer.

I recommend a 260oc GTX / radeon 4850 or above for this game.