Rift: Planes of Telara [Review]

Rift is the MMO that came out of nowhere and has caught the entire genre off guard. Since the rise of World of Warcraft, every single MMO has struggled to take a real foothold in the market. Lord of the Rings: Online achieved some success, especially with its re-launch as a free-2-play title. There have also been some niche titles such as EVE which are massively (yay for puns) successful. However as a whole, the fantasy MMO genre only has one name, and it is World of Warcraft; or should I say had one name.

Rift takes everything that WoW did right and innovated around it to create one of the best MMOs on the market. What I find interesting about this is that Blizzard owes much of their success to "borrowing" key features of other games and reinventing them in to their own title. Rift basically borrowed Blizzard's entire formula for success, and what I love is, they don't even hide it! For god's sake, their marketing slogan is "We're not in Azeroth anymore," (which for those that don't know is a direct stab at WoW's world, which is Azeroth).

As I stated all of the normal MMO goodies are here, crafting, dungeons, raids, etc., etc. I won't bore you with what you already know about; let us talk about why Rift is something refreshing. The first thing that stands out and is probably one of the two largest innovations, the soul system, or as the more common player might generalize to "classes." Instead of choosing a class, you choose an archetype: rogue, warrior, cleric or mage... Once you have your archetype selected you get to unlock souls, which look similar to a talent tree in other games. What is incredible here is that each archetype can unlock up to nine souls! You do the math, you can have three souls active at a time and can unlock a total of nine which you can interchange, and yeah, it is a lot.

You might think that this kind of elaborate system would be overwhelming, and truthfully I was worried that it would be. However, it isn't really at all. Being how each soul acts very similar to a talent tree, balancing three talent trees is something any MMO veteran is used to and something a noobie could pick up on quick enough. The only thing that can be a little overwhelming is the sheer amount of skills you have access to. However, through creative macro use and some other advanced techniques even this can become a non-issue. This game has just an unnecessary amount of soul, skill and talent combinations. It would keep even the most creative theory-crafter busy for many, many hours.

The other big innovation is the game's namesake, rifts. I will be honest, if you read my preview you know that I was fairly underwhelmed with rifts... I thought they were more of a constant annoyance than something that actually added to the game. However, with a lot more playtime under my belt and an open mind, I love rifts. They add an entirely different set of progression in the game for both experience and loot. They give you a much needed break from the constant grind of quests. They also breed player cooperation and some of the zone-wide invasions will have your adrenaline quite literally pumping. Simply put, I was wrong; they are awesome!

There are a whole slew of other little innovations, rift raids as open world endgame content, AoE looting, collection questions, exploration rewards, zone puzzles. This list can go on and on and on. Simply put this game took the basic MMO formula and added a startling amount of innovation. Anyone who has played this game and told you "Meh, it is WoW" has simply not put any real playtime into this game. At first glance it is very reminiscent to games such as WoW, but if you are still of that opinion by level 15 or 20 then you are doing something wrong or playing the wrong game.

I can't have an entire review, even one that is awarded a 10 without something negative, right? Frankly, I struggled to find something bad to say about this game but here it is: balance is still a little bit of a sore spot, especially in PvP. However, imagine four classes, with three accessible souls out of a possible nine each. Even with that massive amount of juggling Trion still managed to keep the game balanced enough that most players will easily be able to find comfort in their creativity regardless of build.

Balance is still something that will need to be addressed and Trion is clearly working diligently on making their game as balanced as possible... I have seen at a minimum of one or two patches or hotfixes every week since launch. Any issues that do exist are being fixed and quickly, my hat off to Trion for it! Also keep in mind that even MMOs that have been out for over 5 years are still being balanced regularly so as far as MMOs go, this isn't really a huge issue. As long as balance (or lack thereof) doesn't make the game unplayable; which it certainly doesn't here.

If you have ever been looking for an MMO to get your "feet wet" in the genre, I highly recommend this title. Maybe you are an ex-WoW player or someone looking for something new to steal your soul, well, here it is. This game is accessible for everyone and I would highly recommend this game to anyone. I would already nominate Rift as the surprise hit of 2011 and it is only March.