Rift: Beta 6 and a dwarf named Hamerd!

Neiken

So there I was, Dead! Just mindin me own business thinking about me ale when BOOM, im back alive!  I dont mind, i had me some unfinished business. I hadnt had my fill of ale! What dwarf has?!

So i wake up, looking around to see all kinds of happenings! Someone told me to hurry up, which i thought was rude, but i went along and rushed over to see what all the fuss was about. When I got there they wanted me to fight off an invasion! I tell them I NEED ME ALE!, but they just stared at me and motioned to the invasion taking place. With a sigh i was off, to fight whatever creature i may find! But all i hoped was to find me some ale!

And find i did, monsters twice the size of us dwarfs! Ugly monsters to boot! Almost as ugly as good ol mum after a long night at the pub! With her red beady eyes, breath that could knock the stoutest dwarf outta his boots, and a voice that could clear a room with just a whisper! Good ol mum! The vigil would have done good to have taken her in my stead. Maybe they knew if they had, and hadnt given her ale, the invasion would be the least of their problems!

After afew hours me and afew others finished off the invasion. We were told we had to move on then they transported the group of us to some landing! And what a landing it was! Got me a mouth full o dirt when I was dropped right on me head! No matter, I had heard whispers from other dwarfs that there will be ale here! I get up and rush over to a crowd of people. But as i listen to whats being said, it looks like they'll have us heading right out. What manners! Not even a drop of ale before they send us on our way! Ale give us dwarfs our courage! Our valor! Our strength! What is this madness! I push to the front of the crowd and demand me ale! But again, i get blank looks! It starts to worry me!

So they send us off to clear the road up ahead, and no sooner then we start pushing up a hill than i see it. Its huge! A rift in the sky! Everyone decides we need to go and stop whatevers trying to come through it! As were walking I start asking about me ale again! Its a great time for ale! But no one says a thing! I see another dwarf look at me with a great sadness.

Then it hits me! Thats why no one says anything when I ask about ale! Thats why the other dwarf looked so sad when i mentioned ale! There is no ale. NO ALE IN ALL OF TELARA! What kind of twisted place is this! The thought griped me! I stood there shocked, stunned even! Then it really hits! A big fiery creature that smelt of smoke and death landed a blow across my back! In my rage I turn and send 3 shots at it, pushing it back and striking it down to its knees. I ran and lept in the air, coming down on the creature with my daggers striking a fatal blow. Serves him right to mess with me while im morning the loss of me ale!

I look ahead to see more of these creatures crawling through the Rift, with a mighty dwarf shout I charge in. The rest of the group was already engaged! The fight lasted what felt like half the day. I wasnt sure what side was going to come out victorious. All i was sure about was the saddness of losing me only true friend.....me ale! With no ale in the world, what is there for a dwarf to live for?!

The final blow was struck and the Rift sealed up. Everyone cheered except me and my fellow dwarf. What was there to cheer for? There was no ale! I sat down, then laid back. The wound i recieved from that firey monster made my whole body ache! This is the perfect time for me ale! I closed me eyes and dreamed of it. The tall dark glass, the sweet foam that formed around the top! I reached out my hand to take hold of the glass. I could almost feel it! Taste it!

But suddenly I was shooken awake! Who would dare do such a thing! I opened my eyes to see a Mathosian standing above me. As i rised he handed me a glass. I looked down and the world stopped! I barley breathed. It wasnt me good ol ale, but by the smell i could tell that it was a HONEY MEAD! And that was just as fine! I took the glass from him as he said something, but i didnt hear. I took a sip of the mead, then chugged it down faster than an average dwarf can blink!

My body losened, my courage was on high! I jumped up and yelled, " Now im ready for a dozen rifts! Lets get moving!". But when i landed on me feet I saw people running away. Another rift? But no...  I could see someone comming in the distance, A little figure in hieght, but as stout as could be. I wondered who it could be, then it hit me! Good ol Mum! That explains why people were running! And the look on her face as she stared at me! This couldnt be good!

She walked up to me and asked, " did you drink the rest of the mead?" But before i could answer, she struck me with the strength of a thousand dwarfs! My heads never been the same since!

Neiken

My first impressions of Rift in beta 6. I played a Dwarf rogue to level 20. Im not commenting on visuals, Sound, or UI. Instead id like to talk about Rifts and Questing, souls, grouping, pvp and balance, and crafting.



 



First let me start off and say what everyone else is saying. The polish on this game is refreshing. Most companys would of launched already. Id also like to commend Trion for the way they handle the feed back in beta. They brought the servers down twice to patch during the beta weekend based on the feed back. Ive been in alot of betas, and its rare that developers are quick to make changes even in beta.In my experience Devs usually make a laundry list of things that need to be changed and implement them before going retail at this point. Anyways, enough of that!



Rifts and Questing



There are afew ways to gain experience in Rift. As I played and leveled up Id actually be caught by surprise sometimes when I dinged. Closing rifts gives good experience from 1-20. I imagine it'll continue to. You get planarite and some times tokens from closing rifts that allow you to buy goods from the Talara Plane Vendors. At level 15 i was in a blue chest and purple legs, and I hadnt stepped into a dungeon yet! The rifts themselfs have 5 waves to complete. Theres objectives to each wave that has to be meet to move onto the next one. An unchecked rift will spawn invasions. There are also invasion events where a massive amount of rifts will spawn and invasions taking place. You have to close the rifts, fight off the invaders, and sometimes kill an event boss.



The quests give good rewards, and when they offer equipment they offer a piece for each of the four main classes. The quests themselfs arent anything new. If your looking for something different in that department you wont find it here. What you will find is lore. Alot of it. And a built in quest helper. Making sure your pointed in the right direction. I found that with the combination of rift closing, invasions, and questing, I never really felt like I was caught in a grind when trying to level my toon.



The souls



I personally think, is where the greatness of this game is displayed. You start with one role, but can unlock up to 4, and by the time your level 10 you'll already have your 3 souls. After your initial pick of your first 3 souls, you have to unlock the rest of the starter souls via quests you find in the world. The starter souls are easy to unlock. It only took me 2 hours to get them all. Each of your souls is a talent tree. You get skills as you add points to the trees depending on the number of points spent. There are also a few skills in the tree you unlock by spending a point in the talent. You can reset the points in your trees easily, and so far there hasnt been penalty except for alittle gold spent experiementing.



The roles are basicly different builds with different souls. On my rogue I have a DPS role and a Tank/Support role. You can switch your roles on the fly, while out of combat, in just afew seconds. Its very nice when your in a dungeon and the tank switches roles to rez you after a hard fight. It makes finding a group to do a dungeon with easier since your not spending to much time looking for that tank or healer. Most people will have multiple roles to fill whatever the party needs.



Grouping



Grouping is handled well. With public partys/raids at invasion and rifts sites, to the partys for dungeons. Ill focus on dungeons partys though.

The dungeon party scene has me mixed with emotion. What ive been seeing is people who have a heal soul trying to fill a healers role. One dungeon run i went on had me dieing when pulling agro on ONE mob while there were two healers in the group. They were focusing on healing and not dpsin, and they had more then 70% of their mana. Why was I dieing then? My assumption is that they werent spec'd right to heal partially, and partially that they're not used to healing in dungeons. The drawback to having multiple roles is that you may have someone thats good at dps, but cant heal very well in his healing soul. If you get grouped with that person and he joins as main heals with his role? You get sub par heals and alotta whipes. The difficulty of dungeons seems to be just right. The boss fights are fun and require stratedgy to complete. You encounter the first one at around level 17.



PvP



PvP is decent. Nothing new of innovated here. You have warfronts that you queue for and join once theres enough people. The first two Ive played Were The Black Garden and The Codex. Black Garden has you fighting to hold the Fang of Regulos. Whatever side has control of the Fang gets points. First to 500 points wins. The Codex is a domination style warfront. You fight for nodes that give you points. First side to 1000 wins.



You get rep and pvp currencty to spend called Favor. As well as an option to buy your pvp soul and gear from vendors. You need rep and favor to purchase items. The PvP souls are different from regular souls, as they only apply when you fighting other players. I havent gotten enough currencty to buy the rogue pvp soul. But i cant wait to do it!



As you've heard, the class balancing when it comes to PvP is alittle off. Warriors are the best class to play for PvP at the moment imo. They seem  to have the most kills and do the most damage on average. My experience with my rogue is as follows. On my dps role (Marks/Ranger/Nightblade) i get around 5-7 kills, usually around the same amount of deaths on average. On my tank role (Bard/Riftstalker/Assasin) I get around 20-25 kills and 3-4 deaths. The reason i get so little as my dps role is because i cant out dps the defense/HoTs/Heals that a tank has. And since im a dps role, im targeted more by the majority than i am on my tanking role. Im wondering if the PvP sould will help it out. I will experiement with it and try switching up my DPS roles alittle and report back after the next beta event.



Crafting



Just your average run of the mill crafting. Nothing special. You obtain items you can add to your recipe to boost attributes. Its very WoW style other then that. Though I will add that alot of the gear ive made as a weaponsmith ive been able to use at low levels. I'm not used to that. Alot of systems have you making stuff that you cant even think about using or putting on the AH till your crafting level is alot higher. My equipement has been selling in the AH since ive started crafting. That will change in retail however, with more crafters out there to compete with.



I havent had to go node hunting to raise my crafting levels up either. I just grab one when i see it, and by them time im back to the forge i have plenty of materials to use. If someone where to focus a whole day on gathering and crafting, they could put a pretty big dent in it as it stands now.



Thats my poor impression of Rift. I wont rate the game, just say that im going to be playing retail. For how long? That depends on trion and what content they come out with. What they have now is a gem. Polished up shiney and waiting to be played and enjoyed. It needs afew tweaks, but MMOs always need afew tweaks. Its the first game in a long time that has had me pull an all nighter without having the intention of doing so.

Wickedjelly

Originally posted by Neiken

 The PvP souls are different from regular souls, as they only apply when you fighting other players. I havent gotten enough currencty to buy the rogue pvp soul. But i cant wait to do it!

Don't get your hopes up too much for now.  For whatever reason besides the first few traits you have to be rank 2 for the majority of the skills in that PvP tree.  Which from what I can tell isn't obtainable until you reach level 50.

Was rather disappointed in that myself.  I was also disappointed in how little gear can be purchased at the lower tiiers too via PvP and favor points.  Still, PvP is rather fun in the game.