By Jim Rossignol on January 4th, 2011 at 11:25 pm.
Trion Worlds’ new, hopeful MMO, Rift, has a launch date. Two, in fact. For North America the launch is 1st March, and for the Magical Land Behind Time Of Eurostate it’s March 4th. There’s a bunch of blather here about all the options and preorder things, and these basically amount of a headstart from Feb 24th, if you like to be the kind of person who zooms ahead, laughing, alone.
There’s also a glitzy new trailer with players talking about their experiences, and I’ve posted it below.
04/01/2011 at 23:28 diziet sma says:
The beta 3 event that just finished was very enjoyable and highly polished I thought.
04/01/2011 at 23:41 Kryopsis says:
Gamebryo never dies, does it?
05/01/2011 at 00:15 michaelar says:
Steam pre-orders come with a pet Cockatrice Chick!
Oh wait, it’s a bird. =(
Well, a bird, not a “bird”. It’s– oh, never mind.
05/01/2011 at 00:17 DrazharLn says:
*hearty chuckles*
05/01/2011 at 00:15 DrazharLn says:
Oh. That was possibly the most ridiculous trailer I’ve watched all year, all decade, even!
Contentless waffle from some players (or actors?), a guy from “The Syndicate Guild” who apparently is “not gonna do the math” to multiply 4 and 3 (It’s 13, of course).
It’s “very solid” is it? “Everything just works”? Ok, but we don’t get a single example of what “little annoyances of every other MMO” are.
The best of the talking heads is Ben Arrowhead who I shall quote in full: “It was just wonderful, and and it just really feels like that thing that um that I’ve been looking at, everything I’ve been hearing; It’s not just someone saying something, it’s real. It’s here”. Which is simply profound.
Malcolm Swoboda starts speaking at 1:03 and stops after 13s having said nothing that makes any sense.
Oh, the whole thing is absurd. Though it did tell us some decent detail about the game mechanics, for which it should be praised, I guess.
Yeah, made me laugh.
05/01/2011 at 04:10 outoffeelinsobad says:
Yes and I think maybe Gary Marrow(3:05) should maybe keep his rug on the floor and maybe off of his face maybe.
05/01/2011 at 00:30 Kits says:
Had been shrugging this off, from what I saw of it until now…but that trailer…all but made me drool.
05/01/2011 at 00:51 Torgen says:
I signed up for beta, but don’t think I’ve even installed the client. Too busy playing “Rescue your respiratory system from winter flu”
05/01/2011 at 00:57 Navagon says:
To just call the game Rift is over-confident to the point of self destructive mental retardation.
05/01/2011 at 00:59 Torgen says:
Like Tidalis, which has always sounded like some casual game about ocean currents to me.
05/01/2011 at 01:07 Arathain says:
Hmm. I want good things for Rift, I do. There are some neat ideas in there. Sadly, as seems to happen a lot, it’s another cargo cult(as referred to in “Other uses of the term” near the bottom).
It slavishly reproduces most of World of Warcraft’s conventions and mechanics, whether good or bad (example: the Rogue class has skills that build combo points, and finishing skills that are more powerful depending on how many combo points you have). In some ways they’re behind where WoW is now; quests are kill X of these and Y of those, or click on Z glowing whatevers.
Even some of the key selling points are mere variations. The soul character building mechanic boils down to allowing you to choose your own talent trees from a larger list than just three (the trees themselves are of the one point per level, every five points accesses the next tier).
Now, I never levelled all that high. I think if you’re happy to play something familiar there might be a lot to like. In particular, though I disparage the character building somewhat I can see that it might have a great deal of flexibility and scope to come up with something powerful and unusual (barring the inevitable Flavour of the Month builds). I didn’t get to see the higher level rift events (low level ones played out just like Warhammer’s Public Quests), but if they work out like the trailers suggest they could really provide colour and unpredictability. It’s also a very pretty game, although a little hard on my (admittedly somewhat out of date) system.
05/01/2011 at 02:06 Skategodindy says:
Well I played the Beta 3 of the game, and it is by far the most polished beta of an MMO I’ve ever played. Not even the now-Juggernaut WoW was this polished in beta. That being said, a lot of the quests are your standard fare, and it does borrow heavily from combat mechanics of previous MMOs. The Rift system in the beta reminded me a lot of the Warrhammer Online public quest system, but apparently, it’s going to be more dynamic than that in the official release.
Overall, the game is mighty fine and the graphics are gorgeous. One of the biggest problems graphically I have with a lot of MMOs that try a more realistic art style is that the edges of where objects and terrain meet is really bad, and makes the entire visual aesthetics less appealing. Thankfully, Rift overcomes this issue.
I’m not sure if it’s quite worth it at the $50 price point + $15 a month though. I’m also quite worried that due to that rigid price point, that server population could be a problem, like it has been for many MMOs released as of late with that pricing model.
05/01/2011 at 06:57 frags says:
BEGONE SPAMMERS! On Rift, I think the dynamic events are really cool. How you could accidentally stumble into an invasion. But the quests are boring.
And I think it’s not generating enough hype. The interest level on this game is, very, very low. I have a bad feeling that it won’t do too well.
05/01/2011 at 11:52 El_MUERkO says:
played beta for 4/5 hours, too close to WoW for me to care
05/01/2011 at 12:53 Chalky says:
My thoughts exactly. It’s a game for people who love WoW, but for some reason don’t want to play WoW. I enjoyed WoW a while ago, but I got tired of it so I am instantly tired of this too. If I decide I want to play WoW again, I’ll play WoW.
05/01/2011 at 13:24 Choca says:
Exactly my feelings. The game isn’t bad, it’s pretty polished, but if I wanted to play what they’re offering I would be subscribed to World of Warcraft, Aion or Warhammer Online. And I’m not.
It should attract the “I hate WoW so much that I can’t stop playing it” crowd, though.
05/01/2011 at 17:10 Arathain says:
I wonder who they think their target market is. Those who like WoW are very likely to be playing that, particularly after Cataclysm. Those who don’t will find this much the same, and won’t like it either. You’re left with those who liked WoW but quit because of social drama or some mechanic change they didn’t like. These folks are self-selected as fickle and difficult to retain (and how many of them are there really?). Furthermore, new players who for some reason won’t try WoW but will try this are unlikely to mix well with the sorts of mechanic-obsessed/power-gamer types that’ll populate the Wow-quitters.