Just curious if anyone had played it. I was interested in a trial but apparently that doesn't exist yet.

4/5/2011 11:52:55 PM

I've been playing it with some friends that I was raiding with in wow. We quit raiding in wow about 2 weeks after it came out. It is very much a wow-clone but differs enough that while being familiar is still interesting.

The class system is pretty interesting. There are so many different soul combinations that you can come up with and you have 4 specs to work with. The roots and branches part of the soul trees makes theory crafting extremely complicated since your base ability change depending on how many points you have in each tree. The only problem with the system is when you are leveling up and you get to about 30 and decide to try a different soul combination and you have 40+ talent points to work with and end up with 20+ abilities that you may have never seen. It can be a little overwhelming the first time you spec into each tree once you have more than a handful of points.

Rifts and invasions add a dynamic element that wow's never had. One minute you are just questing along and the next your quest hub has been taken over by 20 elites and you have to group up with other people in the area to overthrow them and take it back. The invasions scale depending on how many people are in the area. When I was leveling to 50 I was often the only person in the zone I was in and an invasion would be 2 invasion forces and that was it. When you have lots of people in a zone you can get to up 50 invasion forces and 30+ rifts ending with a boss that has several million health and can take several raids worth of people to kill.

The currency you get for closing rifts and fighting invasions buys gear that is extremely good for your level so you never feel like a rift is in your way or an invasion is slowing you down. The XP from them is also very good (they already had to nerf it once and it's still good).

There is also an epic saga quest line that start in the starting area and flows all the way into the first raid instance, the rewards from that are amazing and aside from one rep grind is actually a pretty fun quest line that takes about a week to do (depending on how much you play).

The way they tiered end game is also pretty interesting. Their equivalent of heroics are expert dungeons and have two tiers. T1 requires a little bit of gear that you can get from crafting, level 50 quests and the two level 50 dungeons (Abyssal Precipice and Charmer's Caldera). The T2's take a bit more gear than T1's but are significantly harder and then raid rifts take even more gear than T2's and the raid instances take more gear than the raid rifts.

The raid rifts are pretty easily pug-able since they only require 10 people but you can have 20 people in raid that get credit and loot. They are also just out in the world which means you can have more than 20 people if you wanted. This means that the other faction can grief you but we haven't really had much problem with that.

So far I've only fought the first 3 (out of 5) raid (instance) bosses and only killed the first 2. They are pretty fun so far and require a lot of coordination and very tight execution. There's already been a major content patch that contained a world event and a new raid instance. The new raid instance isn't open yet but will be at the end of April at the end of the world event. Sorta like the AQ world event in pre-BC.

There are still bugs and balance tweaks that they are working on but the game is quite polished for a new MMO.

There was a friend trial weekend this past weekend, I could have gotten you a code if I'd known you were interested. Hit me up on aim if you want any other info.

If anyone is starting a new character we are Defiant side on Ashstone. Our guild has ~25 level 50's and lots of people still leveling. You can message Zaxey, Phenom or Tastykakes for an invite.

tl;dr version: game is fun, a lot like wow but different enough to be interesting

4/6/2011 12:31:27 AM

sounds like it could be fun. let me know if they do another friend trial weekend thing and you have a code to spare.

4/6/2011 1:05:57 AM

Ditto on the trial.

4/6/2011 8:20:47 AM

they offered a 3 day free trial to friends of the game this last weekend. had you been posting this 5 days sooner you'd have one

4/6/2011 8:29:42 AM

Had you read the post Azaka made you would know that he already informed TWW of this.

4/6/2011 8:34:39 AM

I'm playing on Nyx, very casually. I might reroll if there's a group of TWW people playing somewhere.

4/6/2011 8:36:37 AM

no clue how long these will be active, but....

EHN6-XF9P-PH2C-D2KR-KCJN
YNTF-PGZF-W7LC-NPDZ-GQZJ
JNYW-KZTK-EPPZ-CFXY-7LLD
Y39K-3TNC-NRCN-JMNZ-LPCW
YNTF-PGZF-W7LC-NPDZ-GQZJ

https://www.riftgame.com/en/products/allies.php

only good for the listed event:

Event schedule
10am PDT April 8, 2011 through 10am PDT April 11, 2011.

[Edited on April 6, 2011 at 2:38 PM. Reason : more info]

[Edited on April 6, 2011 at 2:39 PM. Reason : like http://www.facebook.com/RIFTgame for more updates]

[Edited on April 6, 2011 at 3:05 PM. Reason : greybriar - defiant]

4/6/2011 2:37:41 PM

Im playing, but not seriously, on Lotham - Guardian side.

4/6/2011 3:02:06 PM

I just sent this message to grimx but figured I might as well post it here for anyone else who was interested.

Quote :

" I am a warrior tank. I have 3 tank builds and 1 dps spec for dailies and pvp. http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cEhg.xE00o.E0Rh00V.gc0qIzV0z That is my single target, maximum mitigation spec. In raids with full stacks of Ravenous Strength/Defense I have about 14,500 armor, 68% block chance for 52% reduction, 29% reduction from spells and a lot of health (~11.4k raid buffed). You also get a defensive decurse and an offensive purge. http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cAhg.xdqz0z.E0Rh00V.gc0qIzVz This is my aoe, max mitigation spec. Slightly less mitigation than the above spec but actually has aoe threat, mostly from reaver. http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0cEhA.b.ExMh00VczMz.Vuqt00kVbk And this is my max aoe threat build. Use it mainly in experts and on large trash packs in raids. Not the best mitigation but a decent bit of self healing (even though they just nerfed it) and a shitton of aoe dps. I pull about 800-1000 dps on larger pulls with this build. Bascially just pull with Plaguebringer spreading dots, pick the target with the most hp and put Light's Decree on it, Cyclone Strike, Sweeping Strike, Vicious Cleave to 3 attack points and Cyclone Strike again. Use Weakening Essence and Creeping Death on every pull you have it up. Respread dots when Light's Decree wears off and then reapply it and start over. The 2 points in Warlord are for Spotter's Order when you use this build on a boss fight with adds, just put SO on the boss when adds aren't up; adds a fair bit of dps to the group. There are lots of viable tank builds. There's a paladin/paragon build that lets you have 100% avoidance 1/3 of the time. I've been thinking about trying out another 44pt warlord build for the amazing cooldown but haven't gotten around to it. Warlord is kinda useless in a raid since bards bring all the same group buffs. "

4/6/2011 8:19:01 PM

are dwarves the shortest race in terms of height?

4/6/2011 9:59:38 PM

I don't know anything about the Guardian races. All of the Defiant races are pretty tall, Eth is the shortest.

4/6/2011 10:05:51 PM

the lack of pink pigtailed gnome tank option is concerning

4/6/2011 10:29:47 PM

how is endgame pvp? pvp is pretty much the only thing im concerned with

4/7/2011 11:09:47 AM

Endgame pvp is a lot more balanced since the 1.11 patch but there are still some problems with it.

Whenever you kill a player you get a certain amount of favor and prestige. Favor is like honor in wow which you can spend on gear. Prestige goes toward your prestige rank which opens up higher tiers of pvp gear and allows you to spend more points in your pvp soul.

You start off only being able to spend 5 points in your pvp soul and each time you rank up you can spend 5 more for a total of 35 points in a pvp soul. The root abilities are like 0-6-11-16-21-26-31 so each time you rank up you are able to get another root ability from your pvp soul.

The problem with this is the pvp souls are EXTREMELY powerful in pvp. So now you have rank 6 people with huge advantages over people just starting because the gear they have offers something like 40% reduction to damage in pvp as well as being able to spend the max points in their pvp soul. This means that to be even close to competitive you have to grind the shit out of warfronts until your rank is high enough.

There aren't any arenas or rated warfronts. The are battlegroups so multiple servers queue for the same warfronts but the amount of people pvp'ing is quite small. You pretty much play against the same exact groups time and time again and that means if they are much higher rank than you, you lose everytime (or if they are much lower then they lose everytime).

So pvp in Rift right now is more of a grind than pve is and there really isn't much of an endgame pvp to speak of. I think they are planning on arenas and rated warfronts but I don't have any idea when they are planning on implementing them.

4/7/2011 2:50:44 PM

To be honest, the reason I am enjoying Rift so much is because I don't understand shit about it.

I dont know how intelligence or anything effects my dps, and that is kinda exciting to me.

I had WoW down to knowing exactly what factor each skill point had on my dps, and it was just a game of figuring out how to squeeze that last .5 dps out of your character, and then getting it all ruined by some asshole who cant figure out how to move out of fire.

Rift isn't like that right now for me as I level. Im finding the Rifts to be fun, the quests are pretty neat, and not knowing where exactly to put my soul points is really fun. I get to pick the spells that sound cool to me, as opposed to the ones that max my dps.

Im sure Rift can be made into the "max your dps/threat/heals" game, but for now, Im enjoying it just for playing.

4/8/2011 9:18:24 AM

Might give it a try this weekend. Found a key here FWIW.

http://www.zam.com/giveaways/rift-trial.html

4/8/2011 10:09:27 AM

So is anyone else joining Azaka's guild? I might make a rogue today. Tired of being in shitty guilds on Nyx.

4/8/2011 10:36:44 AM

i agree about min/maxing being a bit difficult right now. even if you look for guides they arent that established. i like playing around a bit. that said, i really want to like some builds, but they just dont feel as good right now or are a pain to play.

that said i wish we could server transfer easily over to where you guys are just so we had more ppl to run with. i dont play it seriously, but when i do play i play for a bit. grimx, me, and a few other friends are on greybriar - defiant.


PROS
-something new that isn't wow.
-lots of potential diversity in class. you get 4 roles so you dont feel boxed in to just having 1 dps or 1 heal role.
-rift events are fun every now and again. it is a bit of tank and spank, but at least it mixes it up a bit.
-questing with other people doesn't feel like a tremendous waste. i feel like soloing and grouping feels about the same with 2-3 ppl (i'm sure it is slower, but when you get "kill 20 of these guys" quests it is nice to have other ppl).

CONS
-no dungeon finder sux after having it in wow.
-instances feel a bit small to me. i havent done the end game ones that were discussed.
-too many damn skills on every character. i like that you have to decide "which basic attack is best" but when you have 5 skills tht are all similar but just have different cooldowns, it is annoying to manage.
-sometimes invasions get in the way and are more annoying than they are fun, particularly if you get on and only have an hour or two to play and want to lvl.
-pvp feels a bit meh.

4/8/2011 10:57:44 AM

As cyrion and I are playing together I'll turn one of the Cons around:

-sometimes invasions get in the way and are more annoying than they are fun, particularly if you get on and only have an hour or two to play and want to lvl.

After hitting 50 on my warrior I've been waiting to do dungeons with friends, so I've invested time in going around closing rifts and participating in the invasions going on. They don't require you to find a group just people in the area at the time.

I've noticed that level 50 chat tends to alert others when there is an invasion going on if you're interested in closing rifts to get some gear that way.

4/8/2011 11:12:47 AM

thanks for the link grandmaster

4/8/2011 11:26:49 AM

I've got 3 keys for the invite a friend weekend that starts today and runs through Monday. If anyone needs one for a friend shoot me a PM on here.

4/8/2011 2:25:36 PM

Quote :

"-instances feel a bit small to me. i havent done the end game ones that were discussed."

The experts all have 3-5 more bosses than the normal versions have and take >90 minutes to complete. Some of the fastest normals are the longest experts because entire sections of the instance aren't even there on normal.

DSM is one of the fastest normals with only 3 bosses (I think). A decent group can clear that in about 30-40 minutes. The expert (which is a tier 2) has 7 bosses and takes about 2.5 hours to clear. It's also one of the hardest tier 2's. After the last boss of normal there is another wing of the instance with a completely different feel to it.

Not all instances have new sections but some have new bosses in unused rooms and areas. You won't complete about them being short or small once you do an expert.

4/8/2011 5:59:30 PM

good to hear. im at 48 now so ill be interested in hitting those up when the rest of my group gets there.

4/8/2011 6:24:16 PM

I'm playing my 50 rogue on Kaleida
I'm sittin in almost full T2.

As soon as I can, I'm gonna xfer off (don't think they've implemented it yet).
What server is everyone on?

Might reroll a cleric on Azaka's server if he says it's cool I join.

[Edited on April 8, 2011 at 6:39 PM. Reason : .]

4/8/2011 6:35:52 PM

Anyone is welcome to come hang out. If you are thinking about endgame plz to be dps. We haven't been able to raid the past two nights because we haven't had the dps. Infiltrator Johlen takes 1 tank, 3 healers and 16 dps with a very strict dps check that occurs 4 times during the fight (every 25% there is a bomb that has to die in 25 seconds or you wipe and the last 25% is a burn phase). We have 5 people that want to tank and like 6 or 7 that want to heal and there just isn't room in a raid for that.

This game is the opposite of wow in that everyone wants to tank or heal and no one wants to dps. It's very irritating.

4/8/2011 6:52:53 PM

i continue to have no interest in healing or tanking lol.

4/8/2011 7:52:26 PM

5 keys good till 11th

PM me if you'd like one

RIFT is holding a special Allies of the Ascended event. As my chosen ally, you can use this code to join me during the dates below, free of charge! Heed my call, and together we shall battle the Blood Storm!

Event Dates
10am PDT April 8, 2011 through 10am PDT April 11, 2011
Ally Code

4/9/2011 10:44:19 AM

Quote :

"This game is the opposite of wow in that everyone wants to tank or heal and no one wants to dps. It's very irritating."

i haven't seen this problem, but that may be due to mostly pugging

4/11/2011 8:48:02 AM

This game is failing to keep my attention more and more. The quests are too repetitive, and PvP is not really viable for leveling.

4/11/2011 9:57:06 AM

i'm waiting to hear back from azaka on the boss fights in expert. the game is enjoyable, but hopefully will be seeing something more than "dont stand in the circles"

4/11/2011 11:44:02 AM

Grimx - the bosses in expert are a bit similar to normal. Most have 1 new "move" in addition to their normal moves. The obviously hit a lot harder. Also, there are added bosses in experts. In T1, there aren't really any that give us trouble (maybe the Queen bitch in FC because it usually needs 2 tanks or 2 healers)

Azaka - I'm leveling a warrior on my server now that is a bit fun. I'm sure you guys dont want anymore damn rogues so I wont level another of them. Maybe I'll do a mage. Who knows.

Garrett - Long time, no see. What server are you on?

4/11/2011 4:16:09 PM

2 tanks for the Queen in FC? Did they change that fight? I haven't been in there on expert in weeks but the last time I killed her it was a tank and spank.

With only 4 classes and a raid size of 20 you are going to have a lot of every class. More ranged is always better though, so many ways for melee to kill themselves.

4/12/2011 12:46:18 AM

Im debating starting to play this. I quit WoW about a year ago and have been pretty happy with not having the feel of a second job anymore. How time intensive have you guys found this to be as compared to WoW?

4/12/2011 9:08:59 AM

It's like any MMO, you can spend a shitload of time in it or not that much. Just depends on what you want to do and how much you want to play.

There is plenty of shit to do to get sucked in for a lot of time even after you hit 50 (which takes about a week at a hardcore pace): 2 daily dungeons (T1 and T2), crafting dailies, faction dailies, River of Souls world event dailies, rift factions to grind, epic saga quest line to finish, ally factions to grind, pvp favor and prestige rank to grind, pvp factions to grind, plaque of achievement gear to farm up...

Most of that is optional though, I pretty much only log in for raids or to do a daily T2 now, but I was logging a pretty high amount of hours for the first month.

4/12/2011 9:35:28 AM

I REALLY enjoyed leveling (maybe why I'm plying my 30 warrior more than my 50 rogue) so I played a LOT at first when leveling. Now that I'm full T1 and part T2 geared, I really dont have the drive to play as much. It's very likely that it's because I'm on a VERY low pop server, 3/4 of my friends I started with quit and my guild (Huge in Japan) is more concerned with killing HM Sinestra than playing this at the moment.

4/12/2011 11:34:36 AM

For anyone just picking up the game I'd recommend checking out this link:

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?97217-The-quot-Things-I-wish-I-had-known-sooner-quot-thread...

This is a pretty good thread on some random things that are good to know while playing.

As far as how time intensive this game is -- it really varies depending on your play style. I currently play a level 50 rogue running three different roles on a pvp server (assassin for melee, ranger for ranged, bard for support). To go from level 1-50 took about 3 weeks of semi casual play (Would have only take 1.5-2 weeks if I hadn't focused so much time on doing the current world event dailies) -- there were a few marathon sessions involved as well as some days where I wouldn't log in at all. You will likely find that 1-30 is extremely fast to level through --- 30-50 gets progressively slower. The great thing about this game though is that you can really log in for 30 minutes and feel like you have been productive (this changes slightly at 50). My general RIFT session while leveling looked something like this:

Log in -- check which quests I am still working on. Add up to 10 quests to my quest tracker and start heading towards the closest objective. I'd also immediately queue up for PVP. On our server PVP queues were generally 5-10 minutes to pop. I'd continue questing until a war front would open up and then I'd join up. 5-20 minutes later, the war front would be over (really depends on how lopsided the teams are). Something would come up in real life (dog needs out, fiancee is home, etc) and I'd go AFK or log out for a while. When I'd get the chance to log back in I'd just rinse and repeat.

There isn't a lot of down time in this game, it is made in such a way that you can come/go as you want and still not feel like you are wasting time. In other games I have played in the past there always seemed to be that delay where I would log in and have to spend 15-20 minutes just to get ready to do anything.

Once you hit 50, things are a bit different if you want to run any tier 1/tier 2 content or raids. With a good group, a tier 1 will usually take you upwards of 90 minutes and a tier 2 can easily reach 120-150 minutes. In my personal opinion there are way too many trash mobs in most of these -- I'd advise all DPS specs to have an AOE spec ready. If you are a mage, its essential to have a chloro spec even if you only use it to res after a wipe. If you are a rogue, its essential to have a bard spec. On top of the actual time spent in instance, sometimes trying to fill a group can take equally as long. I am not sure how the other servers are, but on Spitescar it appears to be really random on what class is missing at any given time. Definitely a weird feeling having a Tank/Healer/2x dps and then having to spend 30 minutes-1 hour just to find 1 more DPS. Really sucks when you see 3-4 groups all looking for that 1 DPS as well.

I'd recommend everyone run their level appropriate dungeons as they are leveling for three reasons:

1) You definitely want to know these instances before you reach level 50. Going into experts for the first time can be pretty painful. It is even worse if you haven't even done the instances prior to 50. If you are a tank, learning the trash pulls early will definitely help!

2) The experience and gear in dungeons is very good when run at the appropriate levels.

3) ADD PEOPLE TO YOUR FRIENDS LIST. I can't stress this enough. While you are leveling and grouping with competent people, toss them on your friends list. Even if you don't consider the person a friend and never talk to them again until 50, having a list of good tanks/healers/dps that you know, know the instances in invaluable.

One thing to keep in mind when you start running experts... there is a large portion of the population in RIFT that is just reaching level 50. As a result of this, there is almost always one or two people in a PUG that do not know the fights/pulls/etc. Be prepared to wipe and be frustrated as people learn.

And... I definitely didn't intent on typing this long winded post so I will stop here.

[Edited on April 13, 2011 at 8:44 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on April 13, 2011 at 8:44 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on April 13, 2011 at 9:02 AM. Reason : .]

4/13/2011 8:43:30 AM

Anyone have any codes to spare? Wanna try this before I shell out $50

4/13/2011 7:39:33 PM

Quote :

"Anyone have any codes to spare? Wanna try this before I shell out $50"

I'm not aware of any invite a friend events happening right now, although I'd imagine there will be more in the near future. In the past, the codes they have given out have worked for a specific Friday->Monday window and then they are deactivated.

If I happen to get more in the future I'll send one over your way.

4/14/2011 7:57:39 AM

http://rift.incgamers.com/get-your-rift-allies-of-the-ascended-keys-for-this-weekend/

for anyone looking for codes

4/14/2011 10:44:05 AM

$39.99 at GameStop . If you buy the retail, you can always upgrade for $10.00 digitally and get the mount and 24 slot bag while you are installing. Basically you get the C. E. for $49.99 this way.

4/16/2011 12:59:30 PM

I started playing this to tide me over till Elder Scrolls or Diablo 3. Feels like a copy of WoW except that its all brand new content. The whole Rift thing seems pretty fun so far rather than sitting around doing nothing I can always find some random invasion force running around. Seems to me the epic sourceshards or whatever are impossible to get at least so far, anyone have any idea where to actually get these from?

4/26/2011 10:03:44 AM

you get them from a major invasion, one that typically has more steps than the usual ones. the usual ones have like a defend wardstone, close 10 rifts and defeat 30+ invasions, and then the boss. the major ones will have like a defend wardstone, defeat 30+ invasions, then defend wardstone and defeat 5 major invasion bosses, then finally the boss.

4/26/2011 10:09:06 AM

Quote :

"I started playing this to tide me over till Elder Scrolls or Diablo 3. Feels like a copy of WoW except that its all brand new content. The whole Rift thing seems pretty fun so far rather than sitting around doing nothing I can always find some random invasion force running around. Seems to me the epic sourceshards or whatever are impossible to get at least so far, anyone have any idea where to actually get these from?"

From my understanding, the epic sourceshards are going to be rewarded significantly more often after the 1.2 patch coming on May 4th. The current/past rate for these has been pathetic -- for reference, I closed over 300 death rifts during the 2 weeks of Phase 1 of the event that ended last week... almost all of them level 50 -- many of them major rifts. I partook in at least a dozen invasions in stillmoor from beginning to end, and I received 1 epic sourceshard the entire time.

At the current rate of getting them, you will out level (or out gear) any of the rewards you could purchase with these. (Over 100,000 planarite earned to date... 2 purple sourceshards...).

4/26/2011 10:10:07 AM

i've gotten almost 50k planarite and gotten about 12 epic sourceshards, its all a matter of being in the right zones with the right invasions

4/26/2011 10:54:41 AM

Yeah I have all 4 classes to 20+ now and definitely never saw any in silvermoon or whatever that first zone is called.

4/26/2011 11:56:42 AM

its called freemarch you guardian scum!

but yeah i think you're right. and i saw at least 2 of the major invasions in the starter zone.

but then they end up worthless to spend later. so it works out and doesnt matter that much.

i got a 50 warrior, 50 mage, 42/43 cleric and 34 rogue, and think only the warrior got the epic gems from the first area

4/27/2011 10:33:48 AM

I've all but given up on this game because finding a 5 man is nearly impossible with these two factors playing against me:
1) Very low pop server - Kaleida
2) I'm a rogue and not well-known.

I've got 2 or 3 tanks that will do T2 with me, but other than that, the few other tanks on the server run with guildies.

4/27/2011 12:28:57 PM

LFG tool coming in 1.2

4/27/2011 12:34:33 PM

Nash -- as a rogue, you could always build a tanking role... Its easy enough to get the 100 toughness for T2s. Short of that, hopefully the LFG tool coming out next week will help.

4/28/2011 8:47:25 AM