Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rift’s big expansion, Storm Legion, is now available to play. You can tell because there’s a launch trailer posted beneath my words. Storm Legion, it seems, contains a catalogue of giant demons and evil magical robot things, as well as fancy boats, fancy cloaks, fancy mounts, and fancy fancies. I quite fancy it, to be honest, but I’ve been wearing my anti-timesink harness for the past year, and so far it has deflected the nightmare gravitational pull of MMOs.

But what about you lot? Anyone still playing Rift? Anyone going back to fight these giant beasties?
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Someone is going to crack the open-world shooter, and when they do I’ll be there with the huggiest hug of all hugs. With Firefall and Planetside 2 already out (ish), and Defiance coming, it feels like there’s a movement. The problems that have kept these kinds of games from proliferating will now have three development teams trying to fix them. But what game to choose? This PvP specific Defiance developer diary makes a good case for giving it some attention. Quad bikes and meaty shooty-bangs are all well represented, even if the word ‘console’ is liberally tossed about.
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I’d be lying if I suggest that I am posting this for any other reason than the demon. He’s a large demon (not pictured, but damn, look at that dude!), and he’s not happy. Apparently he’s miffed because he overslept. I know how that feels. And so that’s the premise of the Storm Legion pre-order trailer, which you can see below. You might also be able to infer that the Rift expansion is now available for the pre-purchasing masses, who will no doubt be aroused to learn that they will not only secure themselves a fight with Ol’ Sleepy, but they also get early access to “Exodus of the Storm Queen”, which is one of the new dungeons in which exotic and unlikely beasts are waiting to be clubbed for their loot. You also get an “exclusive cape.” Presumably a digital one. If it were a real cape, all silky and flowing, then they might have been on to something. I’d wear it whenever RPS had an exclusive. Like today! Yes.

Anyway. Storm Legion is out on November 13th.
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If there’s a surefire way to improve your fantasy MMO, it must surely be to add one continent of techno-magical robots, and one continent of bony mega-fiends, consequently tripling the size of your playable world. That, by pure chance, is exactly what Rift is doing with Storm Legion, which seems imminent, but does not yet have a release date. There’s been some game footage released, along with the developers blathering about their creation, which you can see below. As well as raising the level cap, and expanding the character creation stuff, they’ve made some incredible-looking locations and populated them with intricate dimension-skipping hyperbosses. And I have to admit it looks pretty dreamy. I can see why so many people have stuck with Rift, especially when stuff like this is in the pipeline. Go take a look.
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I must confess that, for the longest time, Defiance was just “that game with its own Syfy TV show” to me – probably because that seems to be exactly what Trion and Syfy wanted me to think. Well, they probably also wanted me to think “Syfy, a magical one-stop destination for all my science fiction and Sharktopus needs that I don’t totally begrudge for unceremoniously pulling the plug on Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome,” but I digress. Now the media power couple that is, itself, basically a plot out of a sci-fi novel has finally seen fit to give Defiance’s inner workings a proper spotlight. And, if I’m being honest, it’s not looking half-bad.

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Handsome MMORTS End Of Nations seems to have taken its sweet time to materialise in the realm of playable, but that time is nearing with beta sign ups in progress for a closed beta which will begin in just over two weeks. You may also choose to witness the most recent trailer, in which they describe the 15-army maps as “insane” and claim that the game is like nothing anyone has ever see before. Them’s fightin’ words, Trion!

And he says Dune 2, not Doom 2.
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Rift may have its shortcomings, but goodness, it can do the big beasties well, can’t it? Unsurprisingly, then, the first gameplay trailer of the upcoming Storm Legion expansion follows a typical day in the life of a colossus stomping around on somebody else’s stomping grounds. And that’s pretty much all it shows. It’s kind of eerie, actually. There’s no music or fancy film editing razzmatazz – just a colossus shrugging off spark-sized fireballs, doing his best Godzilla impression, and awkwardly bellyflop-leaping onto a bridge. He’s pretty clearly destroying the city, though, so this ought to make for quite the world event.

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Have you ever expanded anything? For instance, how about your house? Maybe you caved a few walls and – with a liberal application of elbow grease – crafted the most impressive garage in the entire cul-de-sac. Well, Trion Worlds, by comparison, has the most impressive garage on the entire planet. And also, it’s not a garage. Rift’s Storm Legion expansion – which will apparently triple the already beastly beast-slayer’s real estate – will up the level cap to 60, introduce two new continents, add a smattering of new dungeons, and test out a form of player housing known as “dimensions.”

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Alert! Alert! Words like “Transmedia” imminent! You have been warned! Ahem. Trion Worlds and SyFy have released a long video showing off their forthcoming game/tv hybrid thing Defiance, where the battles you fight might later appear on TV. It’s a bit like being a soldier, only there are aliens involved and Fox News will never try to make out that it’s in any way patriotic.

Here comes the video, and a few Things To Notice…

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Goodness. Rift‘s PvP may not have managed to set the world on fire straight out of the box, but now it seems to be upgrading from a wet match to a full-sized flamethrower. In short, Conquest pits three new cross-dimensional factions against each other in open world battles where “everyone can contribute.” Even crafters “play a vital role,” apparently. So basically, pick a side, venture over to Stillmoor, and join the impressively multifaceted three-way fray. Somewhere along the way, points get captured and everyone dies. Yeah, it sounds kind of Guild-Wars-y, but it’s still quite a sizable shift in philosophy for a free update to an MMO that’s been around for more than a year.

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Trion have introduced a taste of a future to their Rift client (at least if you are on a 5mbps+ connection) which streams the client as you play. You can still download patches and apply as normal, but if your connection is fast enough and you don’t want to have to wait, the option is now there. They explain: “Streaming Client allows you the option to launch the game from the patcher without having to wait for the full data download to complete. You’ll be able to start playing within a few minutes even after a large update, and the game will download the necessary data in the background while you play.” There’s even an in-game patchometer which states the progress, and tells you whether you aren’t seeing characters and objects because they’re slow to load.

Fancy, that.