A Giant in the Stonefields

This weekend’s fourth Rift beta event introduced seven new levels, two new zones, two new dungeons, and Warfronts. Warfronts being Rift’s version of instanced battlegrounds.

And aside from the new Defiant-side dungeon, I saw all these things. I played a heck of a lot of Warfronts, each time tuning my various specs. With so much choice and so many combinations and so many styles of play, players should plan on making their specs flowing, freely changeable plans.

Granite Falls

I had two clerics at 20 — a Guardian druid/inquisitor/sentinel and a Defiant justicar/druid/shaman. With them was my character from beta 1, a Defiant blademaster/riftstalker.

Warfronts were my plan for all three.

My Guardian cleric, Peridot, had the best healing spec, so her role in the battleground was fairly simple: Keep healing. Joining a warfront auto-inserts you into a raid, and the player names in the raid window light up when they are in the range of your heals. So largely I looked on the map to see where people were, kept near them, clicked names on the raid window and healed them.

The Sentinel is such a SLOW healer that I’d get lots of notice from the enemy Defiant, but since the Guardians (for whatever reason) tended to stick together fairly well, I’d come out of the battleground usually a winner and placing fairly high up on the healing chart.

I spent some time on Peridot earning some more souls. (My Defiant cleric from Beta 3 got all the cleric souls before they put the quests in). All the soul quests are the same. You help seal a rift and get a planar shard as a reward. You use a special item you were given to open a small rift into the Plane of Death and pull out the spirit of a dead hero with the soul you want. You battle this spirit, then draw their soul out into a soul collector. Return to the quest giver and you have your new soul.

You CAN use your new soul without buying a new role. Go to your trainer and ask them to “reset your souls”. When you open your soul window, all your points will be refunded, but you’ll only see the soul selections you’ve already made. Click on one of your soul icons and choose the new soul from the popup list.

I made Peridot a druid/sentinel/warden and signed up to heal the dungeon in the Gloamwood (at just short of level 22). Things went well until we came to the first boss; none of us were high enough level to do much and we eventually had to give up. Even though the monsters are around level 22, you should probably be level 25 to go…

Ghost Trap in Iron Tomb

Clerics, especially healing clerics, are fairly easy to play, and even the wide variety of healing souls doesn’t lift it much from the select target, hit heal level. I’ve hardly ever had trouble healing in any MMO I’ve played unless my gear sucked.

I really wanted to see what it would be like as a bard.

Ever since EQ, I’ve loved bards. Bard fast. The EverQuest bard NPCs would zoom around Norrath delivering the messages that druids and wizards could not trouble themselves to carry. Player bards were the ultimate shiny blue Swiss army knives — able to do pretty much anything, if they had enough skill. Bard songs only lasted nine to twelve seconds, and took three seconds to cast. By casting a new spell every three seconds, they could keep three or four buffs active, or mix two buffs in with crowd control, or… there were lots of combinations. Every EQ class had its “masters” who could do amazing things you wouldn’t think possible, but only bards demanded mastery at very low levels.

The trick of keeping several buffs going while also meleeing and carrying on a conversation was called “twisting” or “juggling” or “using my gaming keyboard to twist for me”.

Dark Age of Camelot’s Albion Minstrel was similar to the EQ bard in a lot of ways. That was my first experience playing a bard as a main — and I was hooked. In EQ2, I picked troubadour as my main, and had lots of fun with the twisting and the juggling, until they removed all that and made bards buffbots. Cast your buffs and forget about it.

At least I could still run fast, though there were class/race combinations that could run faster.

My first rogue soul with Rift’s version of Tipa was Bladedancer, a straight-up melee rogue. In Beta 1, the bard soul wasn’t available right off. When I was able to choose a second soul, I passed over bard in favor of Riftstalker, mostly because the description on the Rift web site made it sound really cool. It wasn’t wrong; Riftstalker IS cool. It’s the tanking rogue spec. You get to buff yourself up really high, comes with some self heals, and you teleport all over the place. I highly recommend it. In Iron Tombs, I offtanked and, when the main tank died, main tanked for a time (though I hadn’t trained the taunts, so I wasn’t as effective as I could have been).

Defiant-Tipa didn’t even have a third soul, and she was 16 at the time. I popped into a couple of warfronts just to see how they were as a melee. A slaughter, basically. The Guardian force seems to keep together a lot better than the Defiants, something I’d noticed while playing on the Guardian side as a cleric. So the Guardians would just run around as a group, with one holding the artifact, and kill everyone they saw.

I’d use my teleports to get behind a caster and start the killing, but my full-on Riftstalker spec didn’t have enough dps to take anyone down before the rest of the group would catch up to me.

I figured I’d get the Bard soul and start leveling.

Bard buffs come in three flavors — Anthems and Fanfares are your long duration buffs, and Motifs your short duration buffs. You vanilla Motif lasts 12 seconds, but you can get it up to 30. They are instant cast.

I joined an Iron Tombs group at 19 with two specs; a Rifstalker/Bard spec for DPS and some buffs, and a Bard/Riftstalker spec for extreme buffage.

I was having a bit of trouble figuring out my specific role in a group. We wiped a few times; I think we were all getting the hang of it, and I don’t think any of us had been in the dungeon before. I kept swapping between my specs, and by the end of the dungeon, I was running purely on the Bard/Riftstalker spec.

The dungeon, BTW, was fantastically awesome, as was Realm of the Fae on the other side. Since none of us had any idea what to do (though the cleric had heard about the final fight from someone and gave us some tips), we were just figuring it out as we went along.

Dinged 20 in the dungeon, and afterward went back to the Warfronts to see how my new bardic abilities would fare in PvP battle.

It was not pretty. Nobody was close enough for my buffs or heals to hit, my combo-building channeled ability “Cadence” was constantly being interrupted by my death, and I did poorly in every possible way. I did try to grab the Fang of Regulos whenever I could; with my slightly higher run speed and self-heals, I figured I could keep it pretty well, and I did, but the carrier of the Fang always dies in the end.

Bards are mostly casters. I quested for the ranger soul as a companion, and that turned out to be the best PvE combo I found all day. I’d send the pet in, use Cadence and Power Chord to build combo points in a couple seconds, then spam Head Shots. Stuff would essentially just fall over, dead.

I did some rifting in Stonefields. Tagging was awesome, though my pet tended to die fairly quickly. All was sunshine and roses until I brought this spec into the Warfronts.

Once again, it was pointed out to me, suddenly and with great force, that players who stand in one spot channeling spells while the rest of their group runs away from them, are dead meat. Ranger spec notwithstanding.

So, warfronts: Most success with a cleric, least with a bard. Riftstalker did okay.

Dungeons: Iron Tombs great, the one in the Gloamwood, too much for level 21/22s.

Stonefields/Gloamwood: I preferred Stonefields.

Looks like I’ll be playing a Defiant Ranger/Bard at launch. Perhaps with Marksman or Saboteur as the third soul.

Trion has announced the third beta event for their Rift MMO. It’s been described as an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary game, and that seems about right. Like fantasy novels, I guess, where very few ever try anything new, and yet people still buy, read and enjoy them.

It’s a decent genre entry, and as I don’t currently play any games in the fantasy MMO genre, I’m very much looking forward to it. (Wizard101 is so entirely different that it cannot be compared to the WoW-likes in any way. That’s what I love about it!)

In this third event, beta testers will be able to play both Defiant and Guardian characters. While the test description doesn’t specifically mention PvP, in the beta world, the newbie areas for both factions meet — and I expect to see some action there.

The official goal for the current test is simply to help seal a rift. That won’t take long, so players will have plenty of chances to try the things they haven’t gotten to in the previous tests. We’ve been promised more training points to play with.

It’s important to note that the NDA is back in effect for this third test. This was an error on the part of the Rift team, there is no NDA for this or any other beta test (see comments).

Enter the Rift
Adventure in the world of Telara as a noble Guardian or technomagical Defiant. Enter a dynamic fantasy where eight primal forces battle for control of an ever-changing landscape. The planar invasions grow more numerous and the Ascended must rise to the challenge!

Play to Win!
Participate in sealing a rift and receive planar loot and you could be eligible to win an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card! Terms and conditions apply, click here for details. In-Game Prize Packs will be given away to ten (10) select players who complete the objective!

This mysterious e-mail just mysteriously appeared in my in-box. My in-box OF MYSTERY!

I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be leveling my lower gluteal regions over the weekend as a warrior brought from the past to defend the Vigil against the rifts — and from the evil warriors summoned from the future by the Defiant. E.g., the folks that were the community of the first beta event.

Here’s Trion’s official teaser on the matter:

Guardians of the Vigil

The Vigil has raised an army from throughout Telara’s history, as the people cry out for saviors. Only the strength of the Guardians can seal the rifts and keep the Defiant from destroying the world. Join the Guardians to drive back the planar forces that threaten Telara!

Play to Win! Survive Mathosia and you could be eligible to win an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card! Terms and conditions apply, click here for details. In-Game Prize Packs will be given away to ten (10) select players who complete the objective!

The first “winning condition” was to escape the apocalypse at the end of the world and get to Freemarch, the Defiant stronghold in the past. What Mathosia is and what must be done to survive it in the second event? No idea.

And you won’t read the answer here! Thanks NDA!

Time to put on your shades, spin the name wheels and step into your time machine, because it’s 2004 and SOE has just released World of Warcraft: Kids Edition.

This isn’t a criticism. WoW is a great game, but the similarities are unmistakable. It looks JUST like WoW, the game is HIGHLY polished, consistent look everywhere. You are in a cartoon, but it’s a fun cartoon.

Character creation is meant to be easy and simple. The small number of choices will be instantly familiar to anyone who plays WoW or Wizard 101 because in Free Realms, as in those others, you are recognized by your gear. Fifteen different outfits for fifteen different jobs. The name wheel will also be familiar to Wizard 101 players, though you can request a custom name which, if approved, will replace your name wheel name.

There are no irreversible choices in Free Realms. It’s nearly always, can’t decide between Option A and Option B? Choose them BOTH! Your first choice in the game proper is which job you should train first, Chef or Brawler. No matter which you choose, you get to try the other before you leave the tutorial.

The choice between Chef and Brawler is, in reality, the choice between Minigames and Combat. Free Realms is two interlocked but separate games. In one, you travel from location to location playing minigames to advance — Chef, Kart Driver, Demolition Driver, Postman, Pet Trainer, Miner, Blacksmith and so on. In the other, you enter instances to fight monsters or take treasure from dungeons — Brawler, Ninja, Wizard, Medic, Archer and so on.

There’s a bunch of non-profession specific minigames as well — harvesting, certainly, but they have a broad selection of themed games like various flavors of Tower Defense and an in-game collectible card game that, like in Final Fantasy VIII, has you seeking out trainers all over the game world.

The professions themselves are evenly split between free jobs everyone can play, and those requiring you to be a member. There’s no need to pay real money for anything in game, but if you want to be a blacksmith and make weapons, or an archer and zap from a distance, you need to be a member.

Free Realms isn’t shy about pushing their membership; you’ll see a basic version of a minigame available, with a more advanced version stamped with the Members Only badge. And so forth.

Free Realms offers SO much variety, it’s hard NOT to like the game… except for the issues, which may be because I have a crummy computer, admittedly.

The game sometimes gets in a state where it starts choking and stalling. I think this might be because of interactions with XFire, the tool I need to run because it is the official communication tool of Nostalgia the Meta Guild. In this state, it becomes impossible to play unless I reboot.

The chat window plain doesn’t work for me and I don’t know why. It’s okay until it needs to scroll, and then — it’s a jumbled mess.

Even with the issues, it’s a fun game that I look forward to playing when it goes live. There’s a sense of humor — and a sense of wonder — that I enjoy, and for a kid game, the dungeons are extremely clever and cool and often quite challenging.

The game is even MORE fun in a group!

Totally recommend this game, and Free Realms is one of the big reasons why I think 2009 will be a fantastic year for MMOs.