Oustanding new MMO from Trion who has unexpectedly managed to raise the bar for modern MMORPGs.
When I first stepped into the Rift beta I wasn't expecting much. And to be honest at first, I wasn't all that impressed from the beginning. Theres the typical choose your server, pick your faction, create your role and customize your character screen, nothing too special about any of this but it's simple and works well.
The starting area is nothing to write home about. You spend the first 6 or so levels in an instanced area, learning about the story, choosing your different roles, doing basic quests, etc. The game does a decent job of easing you into your character and the story, but again, nothing too ground breaking here.
At the end of the starter zone you are introduced to your first rift. A rift is basically a real-world event in which the environment around you suddenly changes and chaotic ensues. After defeating the rift with some help of the NPC's, you are forced to jump into a portal and are sent back in time to help undue the changes that have occured in the modern world. I won't get into the story too much, just say that it's semi-interesting and keeps your attention.
After existing the starter zone, you begin your new adventure in a totally different area. Right away you are thrown into the fray of endless quests, rifts spawning at random anywhere, public invasions, etc.
Feeling new to all of this, I wasn't sure what to expect and at first everything felt very gimmicky to me. I was beginning to feel that the game probably didn't offer up any more than then the public rift and invasion system, which is very cool on it's own but I could see how that would probably get old after a while. Boy was I wrong.
This is a complete mmo by any stretch of the imagination. There's so much depth to this game that I could go on for days but tbh, I want to get back to playing (servers down for maintenance atm).
Pros: Real world events (rifts, invasions), amazing environments, more than enough quests (no grinding here folks), nice fun 5 man dungeons in every new zone (every 10 levels or so), deep, uncomplicated and fun crafting system, amazing talent tree system giving way to almost unlimited specs, decent battlegrounds or warfronts, as there called in this game, great rewards for pvping and pveing, ability to changed roles on the fly, at will. Trion even made a viable tank spec for rogues, yes rogues!!! And it's simply an amazing class to play. Rifttalkers ftw. Bravo Trion, bravo. No shortage of tank or heals in this game since mages can spec to heal, clerics, rogues, and warriors call all spec tank if they so desire.
I could go on and on but trust me when I say that Trion took every clever system from current mmo's and flat out improved upon it, made it better, but also unique in it's own right. For example, in wow you can have 2 different specs. In Rift, you can have up to 4 and can change it whenever, wherever you want, including inside a battle ground. This creates a very dynamic environment and shows how far Trion has gone to take away all the rules and restrictions games like wow have got us use to.
Cons: The interface is a little clunky. When you execute spells it doesn't have that crispness that wow has. The spell animations are average. Bag space - the amount of crap that you accumalate on the way is mind-boggling. Crap drops everywhere and I found it very hard to keep up with all the stuff I was gathering, even with bigger bags.
All I can say is give this mmo a shot. Trion made an oustanding game here with plenty to do. What I have written here only scratches the surface. Every day I play this game I see or learn something new. Just yesterday I learned of a puzzle system inserted in each zone that once complete, gives you a nice reward. It's stuff like this that will keep me coming back.