RIFT Head-Start Begins Today

For me, the fall tends to be the best time of year for game releases, but given how 2011 has kicked off so far, I think the springtime is going to be just as good. In the past month alone, I’ve been inundated with different game releases, and I’m having a hard time clearing through them all. Today, that list just got one game longer, with the help of Trion Worlds’ “RIFT“.

RIFT is another one of those MMOs that sets out to deliver a World of Warcraft-like experience that should cater to the masses. At least, that’s what I gather from reading around. Like most games, I didn’t read up on RIFT at all up to this point, judging only by the screenshots that it could interest me. I didn’t sign up for the beta, and today, I’ll be playing the game for the first time ever. Wee.

To be honest, I dislike WoW… a lot. As a player of MMOs that no one could ever call “easy”, WoW struck me as being a seriously dumbed-down offering that made progression too easy, and not exactly that satisfying (when things are just handed to you, the lustre is gone). So because of this, the number of WoW comparisons to RIFT kind of bothers me, but I’m willing to keep an open mind and see what the game offers, nonetheless.

The most common comparison to WoW is the UI, and overall it does quite look like they’re the same. The graphics in some cases also look the same, although as you’d expect from a game some seven years newer, RIFT’s graphics are a bit more refined, and the detail level is higher.

As a long-time player of Asheron’s Call, an MMO that lets you truly customize your character, RIFT intrigues me because it promises much of the same. From what I gather, you essentially choose a primary class, and then always have access to any other sub-class related to your type. So as a Mage Pyromancer, I can sub with Elementalist and Archon, and gain benefits from those as well. You’d focus on your primary, and then your secondaries when it makes sense to.

Since I’m a total newbie to the game, I’m going into the deep-end first, so to speak, and know so little about the game, that it’s scary. I’ll be updating the thread linked-to below with my thoughts as I play, and hope to do that leading up to the time when I publish a review, which I’m hoping will be mid-March.

And if you are playing the game, and happen to be on Shatterbone, give me a shout! My character name is “Deathspawner”.