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Recently, my guild on WoW has been talking about this new MMO that, before now, I had never even heard of.
It's currently at it's 6th beta and will be released sometime in early March.

Rift is being made by a new-ish company Trion and has already generated a lot of hype and followers among other MMOs. I've been poking around the forums and site a bit and find that I, too, have come to like it just from looking at it and reading about it's classes and gameplay.

Now, is it a "next-gen MMO?" I'll find out this Friday as a buddy of mine gave me a VIP beta code. Though, I've found that "next-gen" anything is simply a marketing ploy. But, we'll see.

Here's what I know right now.

Rift offers up the well-known traditional quests and deep story-arcs that everyone's come to expect from an MMO. So, what's so special about it?
It's unpredictability.
You know those typical quests, some estranged looking farmer is standing on the side of the road or in some encampment and tells you "Worgs have invaded my farm, go kill 15 of them." Killing 15 of them won't do s**t, it won't save the farm, it won't restore that farmer's life. You can come back months later and that farmer will still be there, handing out his "kill 15 worgs" quest.
Well, in Rift, you see the invasion happening. And, apparently, the lands change with the invasions. You can revisit places to see how they've changed for the better -- or worse. It's not a world that resets for the next person who takes the quest.
You can log out sitting in a peaceful meadow and log back in later to a raging battle all around you. It's a pretty nifty system.

Every enemy faction is actually an enemy faction. There are several that can be brought to your world through Rifts and they will actually tear each other apart if given the chance.

There are two factions: The Guardians and The Defiant. At first, it sounded like a glorified "cops and robbers" type game, but reading into it made the faction's names clearer.

There are currently six races to choose from:
Guardians: Dwarves, High Elves, and Mathosian
Defiant: Bahmi, Eth, and Kelari

The Dwarves and Elves are pretty well-known, so I won't explain what those are.
Mathosian are basically Humans.
Bahmi remind me the most of Trolls from WoW. They decorate themselves with tattoos that are all that's left of their heritage. Their tattoos mark great achievements in each of the Bahmi's lives and basically recount their history. These tattoos also have a sizable amount of elemental magic in 'em.
Eth are also Humans, but they come from a dessert area and look more like Arabians (but not all Eth looks like that, just the main race picture).
Kelari are rebel Elves. They look really nifty, imo.

Apparently, you build your class. You start out as one of four basic classes: Warrior, Cleric, Mage, and Rogue.
From there on, you collect "souls" and can honestly customize your own class. Now, as amazing as this system is, I hear that it's incredibly balanced already and the teams are still working on balancing it even more.
Each of the basic classes unfold into several other classes.
I'll choose Cleric (since healin' is my thing) as an example.
As you customize your Cleric, you'll fall under one of several different sub-classes:
Purifier
Inquisitor
Sentinel
Justicar
Shaman
Warden
Druid

They're still working on more sub-classes that you can fall under.
Each sub-class is basically a completely different role. Unfortunately, the website does not give in-depth descriptions or even clear descriptions of what each sub-class does. I had to poke around the forums a bit to learn which one was the main healing class.

A the other three classes branch out into several other sub-classes too.

The character customization is pretty in-depth. The videos I saw showed that you can customize your character's features (head bone structure), eye color, eye shape, nose shape and tilt, mouth, facial tattoos, ears, hair, hair color, make-up, skin color, and height. While the system is not as amazing as Aion's was, it's a lot better than many other MMOs and offers that special something to give your character a completely unique feel. It's not just some clone face you see on thousands of other characters.



The game is pretty. It has good graphics and I hear that even a decent laptop can run the game at full graphics without much trouble.
I've always been a stickler for good graphics.
"Then why do you play WoW" you ask.
Because I have nothing better to do.

"We're not in Azeroth anymore."
A bold statement made by this up-and-coming MMO.
Will it stand up to this statement or fall under the radars six months down the road?
I guess we'll find out when it's released.

This could just as easily be a review of WoW neutral

With cataclysm a lot of the quests became phased, so after you "helped the farmer" and came back, the farm would be restored.

Everyone assumes Horde are the bad guys, when we all know it's Thrall that's holding the world together and trying to achieve some kind of peace while the alliance king is some racist douche bag d**k lips smelly pants.

It sounds cool, but I'm not impressed by their, "bold," statement comparing themselves directly to the most successful MMO OF ALL TIIIIMMMME.

For the record the holder of the mighty nerfbat himself, Ghostcrawler, made a statement on "WoW-killers"

Even he agrees that it isn't fair to try to compare new MMO's that WoW since they've had what, ten years development time? Add on another six years of updates, fixes, and expansions?

Anyone attempting to make a "WoW-killer" is completely retarded and by tagging the game with "We're not in Azeroth anymore" they're inviting the unwelcome comparison.

If my Feral Druid is going down the tubes as the patch says they are, I'll be looking deeper into Rift.

Never looked at the game. But all of this sounds like fable type hype. Which is hilarious.

Regardless of overly bold statements, it looks like a fun game.

I got to play up until about level 15. Honestly, I enjoyed the first levels, though from 10-15 it was difficult because I honestly had no idea where to go/what to do.

Although I never made it out of the starting area, I enjoyed what I played. It can get really boring/repetitive because there are literally only two starting areas: The Defiants starting area and the Guardians starting area. So, making a new character was pretty boring, despite picking a different race.

The graphics are gorgeous and can even run on my s**t computer, so that was a huge plus for me.

The rifts kept me running around trying to get to the action. When a rift opens, it actually sends troops out to conquer and kill. These troops were made up of elites, for the most part, and were pretty tough.

What I enjoyed the most was that the game is actually a little hard. It's not hard to solo certain mobs or to quest alone, but if you wanted to do a dungeon or even just kill a random elite you find on a map, you actually need more than one person. My boyfriend and I were going to kill an elite we found that was a level below us. Him being a tank/DPS class and I being a dedicated healer/support class, we figured we could do it. Well, we did, but there were several close calls, he even died at the end and I had to run like a mad person and try to kill it while it was hitting me for half my health. We both agreed that had it been two normal/casual players, they wouldn't have been able to do it at all.

Anyway, I didn't play through enough levels to get a good feel of it.
But, honestly, if I had the money to buy the game and play, I definitely would.
It has a lot of potential and, from the beta experience, it actually has mods/GMs that really do listen to what the players have to say.

I'm playing if anyone else is.