The Shrine

I preordered and got in the beta. Basically if they can convince at least a quarter of a million people that this is a good game then it has a good chance to dethrone WoW, because the game clearly needs very large number of people for certain things to work out (i.e. zonewide invasions). The quests appears to be purposely not enough to get you to level so you have to do rifts at some point, though it's really hard to not run into a rift even just while traveling. The problem is that it's not trivial to take back a quest hub that's been taken over especially if there's a Major invasion force sitting there so it really sucks for the soloer. Does this mean people will actually start working to each other or get mad that you can't solo your way to retake a quest hub remains to be seen. Again here is where the game needs a lot of people because if you've a large number of people then chances are much better someone else is also nearby and help out.

Gameplay-wise it's pretty similar to WoW. The Major rifts are probably comparable to a dungeon in difficulty but you get to luxury of very large numbers of players and places to run away to. It's actually pretty hard to take out 10 elite mobs in a Major rift without someone dying in the process. I think the soul tree might be turnoff for some people who are too stupid to understand how it works. Since there are something like 32 classes there are obviously a lot of redundant abilities because in theory there are 4*(8 choose 3) classes which means there has to be a lot of overlap in basic abilities, and I'm seeing a lot of people who want to hotkey 25 abilites that do basically the same thing and then complain the game is too spammy. So far I think I have at least 20 abilities but I only use about 5 of them, and looking at the tech tree you'll have a toolbox of at least 60 or so abilities by the time you hit level 50. But it's supposed to be a toolbox for you to choose and there's a reason why you'll see 10 things that do 'taunt-like' effect because they don't want you end up with a Warrior with no taunt capabilities for some weird reason. It doesn't mean you're supposed to hit 10 different buttons that does taunt when you can use just the most effective one.

This appears to be a very difficult game to get anywhere by yourself, at least if you're not a healer. There's just no way you can even try to work on a Major rift or a Major invasion without heals. You only need 2 people to beat a Major invasion, and most Major rifts can probably be beaten by 2 people that knows what they're doing but that's easier said than done. I don't think it's possible to get to the bonus stages in a Major rift with anything less than 10 people, but it seems like getting to the bonus stage is just a bonus, as opposed to mandatory.

This game has the best lore for shutting down a MMORPG. In the intro Asha Coterie gets killed just as you run through the time machine to the past and she's the High General of the defiants. From the story I got the feeling Defiants ended up sending a bunch of level 1 guys back to the past not because it was a great plan but it was more like 'whoa the world is getting destroyed let's get out of here!', though it makes you wonder why they chose to send level 1 guys back in time as opposed to say, Asha Coterie. Asha Coterie only has 450K HP whereas a level 20 Iron Fortress War Golem in the zonewide event has 180K HP and there are many of them. Pretty much every quest hub besides the major one will get wiped out by an invasion instantly. One of the most common things your quest giver says is "May the world still be here tomorrow" and you can be pretty sure those guys won't still be here tomorrow 99% of the time. So if the game somehow flops and they need to shut it down, they can just say "Well it turned out sending a bunch of level 1s back in time did nothing to turn the tide of the battle!"

Pretty much all MMORPG talks about how you're a hero saving the world from certain destruction or whatever. It's not clear how you're supposed to save the world from certain destruction in RIFT, but the fact that the world is going to certain destruction is pretty clear.

I spent a while on the forums to gauge what the community thought of the game and for once most of the posts were positive so I pre-ordered it, too. Too bad it's ten or so days until the next beta event and if it's just for the weekend again I'm likely going to have to work for half of it. Damn it.

The next beta event is Jan 25-28 so don't know if that's better or worse for you.

I find that one of the coolest thing about this game is you do your five or so quest, go back to your hub, and found that 25 elite mobs are stomping on the corpses of your quest givers, so now you must retake the quest hub to turn in your quests. It sounds like it'd be stupid but it really makes you feel like you're making a difference, and it's not actually very hard if you don't got idiots screwing things up (though this happens surprisingly often). Usually what happens is you peck away at the invasion force by yourself, but as other people return from their quests and found the same thing you obviously team up and before you know it you got like a 20 man versus 20 elite all out brawl to retake your quest hub. It takes a while to get used to the fact that quests are not the best way to XP in this game compared to rifts/invasions, and both of these generally require a group, but the grouping tends to just happen because either you got enough people who can't turn in their quests group up, or you got people who got tired of having their quest hubs killed 24/7 and decide to put an end to the rifts. There should be better reward for successfully defending a hub as opposed to retaking it, since defending a hub is way harder than retaking it (bounded invasions that attack the hubs are way harder than their unbounded version after they conquered it). In theory the reward is that you get the +20% DPS aura and -20% damage taken aura and all the defender NPCs while defending the hub which allows you to kill stuff faster and possibly stuff you otherwise can't touch, but in reality people are really good at losing a hub without defeating a single mob in the process (since they're tougher when bounded) and waste your time.

Don wrote:I find that one of the coolest thing about this game is you do your five or so quest, go back to your hub, and found that 25 elite mobs are stomping on the corpses of your quest givers, so now you must retake the quest hub to turn in your quests. It sounds like it'd be stupid but it really makes you feel like you're making a difference, and it's not actually very hard if you don't got idiots screwing things up (though this happens surprisingly often). Usually what happens is you peck away at the invasion force by yourself, but as other people return from their quests and found the same thing you obviously team up and before you know it you got like a 20 man versus 20 elite all out brawl to retake your quest hub. It takes a while to get used to the fact that quests are not the best way to XP in this game compared to rifts/invasions, and both of these generally require a group, but the grouping tends to just happen because either you got enough people who can't turn in their quests group up, or you got people who got tired of having their quest hubs killed 24/7 and decide to put an end to the rifts. There should be better reward for successfully defending a hub as opposed to retaking it, since defending a hub is way harder than retaking it (bounded invasions that attack the hubs are way harder than their unbounded version after they conquered it). In theory the reward is that you get the +20% DPS aura and -20% damage taken aura and all the defender NPCs while defending the hub which allows you to kill stuff faster and possibly stuff you otherwise can't touch, but in reality people are really good at losing a hub without defeating a single mob in the process (since they're tougher when bounded) and waste your time.

That sounds cool. I'm sure there's room for improving that aspect, and this is an MMO, so they may work on details like that a few months after launch.