T w e n t y S i d e d

After making our way through character creation, Jarenth and I found ourselves in the Defiant tutorial zone, a barren, dessicated wasteland full of strange monsters just waiting to reduce your hapless avatar to a pile of ethereal goo. Which is to say the tutorial zone was full of monsters with an agro radius the size of my kitchen that all went down in about five hits. It’s probably pretty obvious that I find tutorial zones to be exquisitely boring – I don’t really know many MMO players that don’t. Still, a tutorial zone done well can be something special (I again draw to Guild Wars when I point to pre-searing Ascalon). RIFT’s… are not. I can understand the necessity of introducing new players to the game’s mechanics but for anyone who’s played an MMO there’s nothing new being introduced here, aside from a brief explanation of the soul system. The only interesting lore bits in the entire tutorial are the exposition drop you get at the very beginning and the boss battle at the very end where you step through the time portal.

Which is really a shame, because it was not until after we finally got out of the tutorial zone and into the actual world that I got a taste of the second (and much more potentially interesting) unique mechanic of RIFT.

…Well, actually I stopped playing after we got out of the tutorial zone so I could drive through a nearby Raising Cane’s and get some awesome chicken fingers but then I got a taste of RIFT’s second unique mechanic (and some awesome chicken fingers).

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Let’s do the Time Rift Again!
RIFT Beta Impressions, Part 2″

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.

RIFT: Planes of Telara. I have to admit, right out the gate here, that I haven’t really been following RIFT at all. Trion Worlds even had a booth at PAX back in September, but there was so much stuff to do at PAX, and I didn’t see anything there that piqued my interest, so we didn’t visit it. This ignorance held true until about a week ago, when Jarenth, a certain Twenty Sided fan and friend of mine, tossed me a key for the RIFT closed-beta.

The one thing I did know about the game before playing it was that it had built up something of a dubious reputation of late in that one of the game’s tag-lines is “We’re not in Azeroth anymore!” despite appearing, for all intents and purposes, to be heavily derivative of WoW. Now I’m not really much of a Warcraft player; I’ve tried the free trial once or twice, but it never really grabbed me like it seems to have for so many other people. I’ve only really learned to dislike it by proxy â€" simply because so many other studios seem so intent on ripping off copying the WoW formula. Badly.

Plus, I’m kind of addicted to Guild Wars.

I think I need professional help.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Let’s do the Time Rift Again!
RIFT Beta Impressions, Part 1″

Josh Viel is the primary editor and producer of the Spoiler Warning video series. You can support the show by backing the Patreon.