The other grass: Rift

After entering the competition I mentioned in my last post I received a Beta key for Rift on Sunday. Wednesday rolled around and after a quick install and a 7.5gig update I was into the game.
(Sorry for the image size for some reason Blogger is not accepting the thumbnails)

After watching through the intro cinematic I was greeted by half an our of failed server connections as every man and his dog with a key tried to get in at once. However after some persistence I was able to progress to the Shard (server) screen.
Initially the Shards were very hard to choose as every time a server's information updated it would just that Shard to the top of the list, this made trying to log onto the unofficial Oceanic Shard a game of 'Whack-a-mole' as the Dev's described it. This has been fixed since and is now much less taxing to do.

The Next step is character creation. While you have more options than in WoW this feature feels more limited, leaving everyone looking the same. It is defiantly nice to free pick skin hair and eye colors, slightly modify height and while the facial tattoos are very nice but there are only a handful of hair styles and many of them look alike. With very little physical customization and the limited hair styles your toon still ends up looking like everyone else around you.

Although all the races are very human like and look mostly the same, race will play a big part in how you play your character. In Rift races have very unique and powerful racial's i.e. 'Heals for 30% of damage taken, up to 50% of your total health.' or a 40% boost to Spell and Melee haste for several seconds.

Once your Character is made you can enter into your starting zone, each faction has one starting zone, however with how classes are set up you really should not need to play through it anymore than 4 times. Your first quest will be to choose your first Soul(Talent Tree), there are NPC's around the starting area to explain how your souls work if your new and have done no research.


From there its into your typical questing and lore experience.


There are 4 different classes to choose from in Rift, the Warrior, the Cleric, the Mage and the Rogue.
Each of these classes has 9 different PvE souls and 1 PvP Soul. You choose your fist Soul at level 1 right on your first quest then again at level 3 and the third Soul slot shortly after.
While 9 Souls might sound daunting you can ignore some as they apply to different Archetypes i.e. Warrior has Tanking and DPS Souls so DPS does not have to worry about the Tank Souls.
Like in WoW you can reset your points via a trainer and like WoW you can by additional Specs except where WoW only has DuelSpec, Rift has QuadSpec.

Your skills are also determined by your Souls. Rather than learning new spells as you level you learn them by going deeper and deeper into a given Soul, the deeper you go the stronger the spell i.e. At 2 points in Paladin you learn an attack to hit for heavy damage after you block and at 4 points you learn a Power Word: Fortitude.

For a better idea of how the trees work try the Zam Soul Calculator.



Once you finish your starter zone


It is onto regular questing.
Questing in Rift is very linear, you go to one hub get 2-6 quests in the one area, do them, hand them in and move on. If you finish a hub then the last quest will lead you into the next quest hub to hand in there so that your not back tracking.

After the starter zones the questing is broken up and made more interesting by the constant Rifts and Invasions.
Rifts work similar to Public Quests in WAR in that raids of random people in the area work towards a goal, Exp and Loot. Unlike Public Quests, Rifts are random in location so they may be next to the quest hub or out in the wild somewhere. Each rift will show on your map so that you can find them.
Rifts come in stages, alternating between trash packs and mini bosses before you kill the final Elite mob and seal the Rift.



Once the Rift is sealed everyone who participated will get loot based on how much work they did, loot can range from combat items to Planar currency used to buy character enhancements and powerful gear.
Rifts will also scale with the number of people in a zone so populated zones get many major Rifts and as the population moves on and the empty zones end up with only a few Rifts that can be handled by those still hanging around.

Invasions on the other hand are like very large Rifts except that instead of being in a single location Invasions will move towards camps and even citys killing all in their path.
Invasions require many more people to finish, have a lot more Elites, give considerably more and higher level loot and if not stopped will move in and attack NPC's.


Another of Rifts unique features is that it comes default with a customizable UI.



Rift also comes with features called Antiques and Collections. Think of these like Archeology except without the grind and surveying. Collections will be things like Books you find lying around the starting zones . Antiques are similar except that they show up ether from Invasion loot or as little randomly placed sparkles on the ground beside rocks e.t.c. as you explore.
You use the picked up item of ether kind and if it is a collection it is instatly added to your collection, Antiques will bring up a new screen that shows the collection you are working on and shows which slot your item goes in. When you complete the sets you are rewarded with new items or even epic gear.
The Antiques are not farmable however due to the somewhat random nature of their spawn points.

The rest of Rift is very much like WoW, you move the same, gather mats the same, chat the same, craft the same, it even has an achievement system.


This is not a bad thing though, It means that anyone coming from another MMO particularly WoW will know exactly how to do a lot of the functions and can focus on the game rather than learning basic functions again.

Overall I think this is a really polished game for just being in the Beta stage and most issues are fixed very quickly by the Dev team.
The Dev team has been very active in the community to date and seem to be listening to their customers well.
While Rift has a lot of unique features they have not tried to do anything to new which looks to be working well.
The game does take a bit to get into and is nothing special until you leave the starting zones and start encountering Rifts. The core gameplay almost needs a bit more work to come up to scratch and become addictive as with the more unique game aspects but are not bad in any way.

This game has a lot of potential and I am really having fun playing the Beta, from all the MMO's I have played recently Rift has the most potential to succeed, is the most clean and polished and its still in Beta with a releace date not for another 2 months.
I swore off buying new MMO's on release after Aion and FF XIV but with how Rift is going I think I might pre order the Collectors Edition for it and possibly play for more than the free month.


I will leave you with a screen cap of my level 13 Paladin-Reaver-RiftBlade Tank not tat the gear looks quite good and yes that is a one handed mace.

Free Rift Beta Keys

Just a quick post for anyone interested.
Guildlaunch is giving away Beta Keys to the new MMO Rift.

To enter simply follow the instructions on this link and you are all but guarantied one.

If you are asking what is Rift?

Rift is a up coming MMO that hold a lot of promise at the present. Think of it like Warhammer: Age of Reckoning except done right(hopefully). I will be playing the Beta and seeing for myself whether it is worth buying or if it will just end up in the pile with WAR, FFXIV and Aion.

If you want further information I recommend this video by the Yogscast crew.

What about Prot?

The lastest Beta build has brought about alot of nice changes for Ret, some nice things for Holy and for Prot, well we just go sideways and maybe a little backwads.

Protection
•Divine Shield can now be used with Avenging Wrath.
Very nice quality of life change, no longer will we have to worry about being locked out of our CD's because we popped wings at the wrong time.
•Hammer of Justice no longer interrupts spellcasting for 3 sec.
This is a very dissapointing change, with Rebuke only avalible to Ret HoJ was our only interupt and a very poor one at that, with this interupt gone we are not only the only tanks without a off GCD way to interupt but without an interupt at all(assumeing AS silence still does not effect bosses, although as our main damage proc it would be a bad idea to hold it off to use as one anyway).
•Sacred Duty revamped - Your Judgements have a 25/50% chance of making your next Shield of the Righteous a critical strike. Lasts 15 sec.
Not really a change in any direction with the chnages to improved judgement this really just keeps the damage the same but with different spells.
•Vindication revamped - Your Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous have a 50/100% chance to reduce physical damage done by targets by 5/10% for 10 sec.
Another very nice quality off life change.
•Holy Shield is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4. Revamped - Using Shield of the Righteous or Inquisition increases your block chance by 15% for 20 sec.
This one is interesting, we now get to choose between more sinlge target burst or more damage overall without dropping HS, very nice for AoE to Boss fights as well as PvP.
•Grand Crusader now also procs from Hammer of the Righteous.
Nice addiation, will be interesting to see how much this effects proc rates.
•Hammer of the Righteous revamped - Hammer the current target for 40% weapon damage, causing a wave of light that hits all targets within 0 yards for 1061 to 1407 Holy damage. Grants a charge of Holy Power.
While the damage loss hurts I am happy to see the return of Blinding Shield as a change to one of our existing spells. The increased proc on GC should make up for the lower base damage but the removal of the three target cap makes this a boost for AoE situations.

Retribution
•Divine Purpose revamped - The following attacks have a 20% chance to generate Holy Power: Judgement, Exorcism, Templar's Verdict, Divine Storm, Inquisition, Holy Wrath.
More HoPo is good plain and simple.
•Eye for an Eye now has a 20/40% chance to proc from magic attacks. (Old - 5/10% chance from all attacks)
A nerf for Prot paladins, while this seemed to be possibly OP so PvE the new change makes it an almost all PvP talent now excluding dragon fights(maybe we spec into if for the Deathwing fight).
•Improved Judgement is now a Tier 1 talent, down from Tier 2. Now increases the range of your Judgement by 10/20 yards instead of increasing its damage.
A nice talent really for Holy alowing them to keep healing at range if needed, however the real pain comes with....
•Long Arm of the Law *new* (Tier 3) - Your Judgement has a 50/100% chance to increase your movement speed by 30% for 4 sec when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.
Another shot in the gut for Prot, first Rebuke now Ret get a gap closer. I would be interested to hear from Ghostcrawler about why they feel that Ret needs these very usefull and desired ability but Prot needs to be locked out of them. Quite a painfull adition.

A Call for Help

The fine folks at Eorzeapedia have started a competition giving away FFXIV Beta keys to its members who registered for the Beta and did not get in.
As one of those people and someone disappointed with FFXI this excites me almost as much as Cataclysm.

Here is where you come in, to win the keys you need to gather votes from friends.
If you follow this link and enter Orthien under the name you can gift me your vote. Those lucky people with the top votes will be given Beta access.

Please dear readers I as humbly for your help, get me into this Beta.

Thank you in advance for all those that vote for me.

First Look at Beta

There is plenty of information coming out of the first release of the beta and my first thoughts are just how beautiful everything looks now.
The level of detail on the new zone maps is gorgeous and the finished Skywall is just wow. I hope I have finished my Thunderfury before I hit 85 so I can tank Skywall with the spirit of their prince.
The new water is still looking great but it seems to not be the only precipitation to get a work over with a screenshot from Deepholm showing off what looks like a newly updated mist or fog graphic.

Not only has everything gotten better looking but larger to. The raids and new BGs have a very epic size feel to them with huge open areas or giant rooms with very tall ceilings.

The more than is released on the Worgen the more I am wishing they had Paladins for me to race change to one. Their /silly and /flirts are the funniest, naughtiest and well written yet with gold like "At least I don't sparkle" and "What big ears I have? You should see the rest of me!". On top of that they speak in a British accent and have a slight voice change when in Worgen form, the male even sounds like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.

Of cause the most important is the Paladin info, there's not alot but what we have is looking good.
For new general paladin news we have a new heal named Divine Light which seems to be our Greater Heal. Divine Plea doesn't seem to effect any of the new heals but that's most likely an out of date tooltip. Finally Consecrate now does less damage but lasts 15 seconds with the 8 sec CD remaining, however still only one can be up at a time. This change seems really bad for later game heroics when you can chain pulling as you wont be making full use of consecrate and therefor wasting mana.
For the Prot changes, so far there are only two. First is that Blessing of Sanctuary is now a permanent Aura and the second is that our crit reduction will be folded into the Holy Shield talent but not tied to the spell.

Its looking promising so far and should get a whole lot better in the coming weeks.
Hopefully a few of the Paladin bloggers start getting Beta invites so we can start seeing this stuff ourselves, hopefully I am one of them.

Cataclysm Beta and the NDA Lift

As I edited into my last post the Beta has started and that means the NDA has most likely lifted letting MMO Champion unleash the flood.
The is a full wall of information and new screenshots.If you haven't head over now and bring something to mp up the drool you will be awhile.

I will give more of my thoughts once I can sort through it all.

FFXIV Has It Right and Predicts Cataclysm

Final Fantasy 14 for those unaware is the upcoming MMORPG from SquareEnix. Their plan is to take what they now know people hated from their first MMO and what they know people love in WoW to make a bigger better MMO for their fans and for the market.

The reason this is important to note to any WoW player is for two reasons. Here is a link to Eorzeapedias article on the release

1. They have just announced their collectors edition pack and what goodies it will contain. They have obviously been watching WoW and reading people thoughts on authenticators as SquareEnix are including one in their collectors edition.
This is important for us to note because it sets a very strong example for security and is something Blizzard fans have been calling for for a while. This move could possible force Blizzard to follow suit in order to keep face in the realm of security.

2. SquareEnix had also announced a September 30th release date for FFXIV.
Keeping in mind Blizzards love for squashing other games under its new release heel. I would not be sup prised to hear Blizzard are going to try to push Cataclysm out within a month or so of Final Fantasy, as they have done with both Warhammer and Aion. If Cataclysm is to come out in October then to match the it would also indicate that the Beta is very, very close if they want to keep their usually 4 monthish Beta period.

Of cause this is still all speculation, but following Blizzards track record it looks very likely.
I guess all we can do now is wait and see if my prediction for a mid July Beta still stands.

Edit The Blues have just confirmed the Cataclysm Beta has begun so my push back to mid July was under-optimistic. However the good news is this does bode well for that October release still as per prediction.

Get Ready for Beta

That's right Cataclysm Beta is coming and to prove it Blizzard have officially reminded us to set out Op-In setting in account management. Just go to this link and follow the steps from there. Blizzard are getting technical with one requirement of the Beta Op-In that you download and run a Battle.Net systems checker. It seems that Op-Ins will be given based on computer specs not just a luck of the draw. Mines in now so all that's left to do is cross my fingers and wait, hopefully we wont be waiting long.