Wagons Roll! : Rift

I stepped back into Rift last week. I'm subscribed right up to April but I've hardly logged in since late last year. When I read that Rift's first twenty levels were going to be freely playable (Not F2P. Oh dear me, no!. We can't be having any of that kind of talk) my first thought was "Great! Now I can cancel my account and just drop in and play low-level whenever I need a Rift fix".

The thought of seeing the first twenty levels hopping with new players like they were just after launch is a very pleasing prospect. The busier the zone, the more rifts pop, the more invasions fire. Things could be just like the good old days, back in the mists of yesteryear, lo! those long ten months ago.

Then I read about the changes to the Soul Tree system (as discussed here and here among other places) and thought that if I was going to pontificate about them I probably ought at least to try them out. Not that lack of personal experience usually stops me climbing on a soapbox. Nor lack of a soapbox, for that matter.

Before I could do anything I had to move all my characters off Shadefallen. And move the guild. (Didn't need to call a Guild Meeting on that one. The entire guild membership is me and Mrs Bhagpuss and she's not playing Rift even more than I'm not playing Rift so I just took an executive decision. That's what Guild Leaders do).

Look and wonder!

As promised, moving the guild was very straightforward, as was moving each of the characters. Well, it would have been if not for two things: the guild bank and my mail. Storage has always been at a premium in Telara and I've been in the habit of using the mailbox as a kind of poor man's bank vault. The Guild Bank was completely full of crafting materials and various consumables. Since you have to have an empty mailbox and nothing in the Guild Bank before your application to move can be approved I had a happy couple of hours shifting stuff about and buying larger bags and new bank vault slots before we finally got our passports stamped for Faeblight.

Which is where the next complication arose. Faeblight was the "reserved" destination server for Shadefallen characters because it's the only remaining RP-PVE server. That reservation had expired, but I still wanted to go there because of the RP part and because we have our Guardian characters there and, hey, it's easier to remember where they are if they're all in the same place, right? Only I'd forgotten that Rift only lets you have six characters per server and I had a total of seven and Mrs Bhagpuss had eight or nine.

To cut a long story short, I ended up moving all the Guardians to Millrush, which meant another round of mailbox-emptying, although at least we'd never gotten around to making a Guardian guild so there was no guild bank to deal with. Finally, about four hours after I'd had the passing notion to try out a preset Soul build, I logged in my Rogue and hit "N".

Oh that's where they go!

First off I compared the Presets on offer for each Calling with what I was using. Apparently I'm a bit of a maverick. Or an idiot. Let's go with "maverick". Whatever, my choices look quite odd compared to the presets, which make a good deal more sense. I chose the "Huntsman" model and, after paying a large chunk of money to my trainer for nine tiers of upgrades to abilities I'd never even considered taking in all the time I've played that character, I went Warfronting.

Guess what? Trion have a better idea how a ranged DPS class should spec than I do. Who'd have thought it? I imagine having designed the game gives them some kind of an edge. That and the fact that I detest allocating points and just try to get it over with as fast as possible. Either way, the "Huntsman" build plays a lot better in Warfronts than my Ranger/Bard hybrid ever did.

I did a few Warfronts and remembered how much I like Codex. Probably my favorite instanced PvP zone out of all the ones I can remember from DAOC onwards. Even more fun now that I'm significantly more effective so thumbs up for the Preset Soul. Pretty much kicking into an open goal as far as I'm concerned since I never wanted the responsibility of creating a build in the first place.

I'm in two minds now about cancelling my subscription. Chances are I won't want to play much Rift after April. Guild Wars 2 looms. And there's the free twenty levels sitting there if I do. But I did really enjoy being back. I'll wait and see how much I play over the next six weeks and then decide, I guess. Which is in itself a win for Trion. Apparently they do know what they are doing after all. Maybe.

Getting On At The Ground Floor: Rift

TAGN has a post up about Rift's recent decision to add preset builds. I'm not really playing Rift at the moment. I haven't even moved from Shadefallen yet so my characters are still under house arrest in Meridian. I keep up with the news, though, so I knew about these changes. They didn't really come as much of a surprise.

It's been very interesting to watch Rift change since launch, like watching an MMO on fast-forward. I understand why Trion decided to add the preset option but like most of the changes they've made it takes the game further than ever away from what made it so exciting and intriguing in beta. More than that, it chips away at one of Rift's USPs (if you can have more than one unique selling point).

Nice to have the place to myself for once

Rift's Soul Tree system has often been praised for its flexibility and originality even by commentators who otherwise didn't find much to like about the game. Similarly well-received was the frenzied pace of zone invasions and rifts during beta and around launch, when quest hubs were often overrun and had to be reclaimed by bands of players and system messages to "Find somewhere safe to camp" when the server was about to come down drew catcalls of derision as everyone yelled back that nowhere was safe.

An apocalypse is no reason to ignore personal hygiene

The fangs and claws were drawn from zone invasions early on and throughout the year incremental changes conspired to make Rift a lot more like other, familiar MMOs than had ever seemed likely in those heady beta days. It's hardly surprising, then, that Trion have finally gotten around to making the Soul Tree more plug and play than sit and ponder.

Most MMOs follow this path, from complexity to simplicity but I'm used to it taking five years not ten months and it makes me very glad I was there for the beta and jumped in with both feet at launch. I'm sure that if I came fresh to Rift now, never having played the game before, I'd have a great time for two or three months, just like I did in WoW when I joined it after it'd already been running for more than five years but I'm also pretty sure that, just like back then in WoW, I'd find myself reading about how things used to be and thinking "y'know, that really sounds like it would have been more fun than how it is now..."

Which isn't to say that MMOs shouldn't adapt to make it easier for latecomers to join in. I think they should. MMOs can bloat and become unmanageable for newcomers after a time and things that are fun when you're all in it together can seem frustrating when there's only you doing them. In the good old days that took years. Now it seems it just takes a few months.

One scoop or two?

What it It emphasizes for me is how worthwhile it is to jump on MMOs at the earliest opportunity. Get into the beta if you can, even if you plan on playing when the game goes Live. Maybe especially then. I've heard many people say that the most fun they ever had in certain MMOs was in beta and it's been my experience too, at least on occasion. Often that's just the excitement and the camaraderie but not infrequently it's because whatever was fresh and new about the game just doesn't survive the commercial realities post-launch.

Beta aside, If you know you're going to play at some point then play at launch. If it's not polished enough for your taste you can come back later and maybe it'll be better for you then with the corners smoothed off, but if you do like it you'll be getting a shot at something that will only be available for a limited period. And if Trion's example is anything to go by, that period could be lot more limited than it used to be.