I had kind of fallen into one of my “off again” phases with RIFT shortly before the free-to-play announcement, and of course being a grump I certainly wasn’t going to log on again after. In fact, I wasn’t planning on logging into RIFT at all, but as is so often the case my friends are terrible enablers.

One of them IMed me late last night and said simply, “Hey, did you know you can buy the space horse with F2P credits?”. For over a year the space horse, a.k.a Nebula, was the thing I coveted most  in RIFT. Was it worth relenting on my grump stance and checking out the game’s changes? For a horse that looks like it’s made of space? Um, duh.

The first thing I noticed — thanks to the big pop-up and tickertape rain — was the new loyalty system. What was previously sold as veteran rewards on a special vendor is now available through loyalty tiers. Loyalty was granted to subscribers based on their activity, and can be earned in the future by buying and using cash shop currency. To be fair you get perks sprinkled throughout a loyalty level and a bunch of stuff at the end, and the gifts seem to be everything that was on the old veteran reward vendor plus funky new things like a pet gift box and hats. Apparently I’m already halfway through the “epic” loyalty tier.

Speaking of the cash shop, I have to admit that I’m pleased with the amount of credits I received in the F2P switch as permanent subscriber and one of the suckers who got the Storm Legion 12-month package. I had almost 12,000 green diamond thingies, worth about $60 on the store, and mounts ranged from 200-1200 in price. The selection of items in the shop is pretty much the usual — mounts, pets, costumes, dimension stuff, cosmetic changes, and so on.

A new set of gear is available for players every 10 levels, going up to a tier below whatever is current. Someone on the official forums worked out that it would be roughly $50 to buy gear from level 10-59, although why someone would spend money on level 20 pants totally escapes me.

The new cash shop also seems to have replaced the lingering post-event vendors. Applicable items can be bought with the pre-requisite event currency (for those who participated but forgot to buy things) or green diamond thingies. This new system enabled me to buy my pretty space horse, so I recognize the hypocrisy in what I’m about to say, but I hope event items aren’t available for cash until after the event is over.

I like spending a week or whatever collecting special currency for event items, and it will honestly degrade the value of said items to me if someone can come along at the same time and plop down $5 for an instant horse. Honestly, I feel sort of bad for people who went through the huge grind during Summerfest to get Nebula, particularly as it was a grind I opted to skip at the time because it seemed so heinous.

Akylios balloon pet

But now is not the time for sombre reflection — now is the time for ponies. I spent just over 800 green diamond thingies for the space pony, and then picked up an Akylios balloon for another 200. Judging by the prices that’s roughly $6 for the mount and $1 for the pet, although thinking about it that way makes me feel awkward. The remaining 11,000 or so credits are unspent. I’m not sure if I’ll get anything else, or at least not for a while.

the pony in question

So, in conclusion, ponies are nice and the RIFT F2P conversion seems to be pretty generous for long time subscribers. Meridian and Port Scion looked quite busy, although the quality of General Chat was much, much worse.

Logging on again did remind me of one thing — I truly have loved RIFT, in a way that was previously reserved only for World of Warcraft. It’s a great game, run by what I think is still a great company. I’m sorry to see that they had to resort to free-to-play, but on behalf of me and my spacepony I wish them nothing but the best.

I kind of fell out with MMOs for a bit. Back in December I had a million new single player games from the Steam Sale taking up my leisure time. In January I just kind of lost the urge to play games, and instead I spent most of my hobby time trying to cook the perfect chili. (FYI: No beans, lots of home-roasted chili peppers.) I think that happens often in long-term hobbies though, and I figured the urge to play games would return when it was ready.

Boy, was I ever right. I now find myself involved to some degree with three different MMOs at the same time!

Before Christmas I hit 60, the new level cap, in RIFT, and I was sort of feeling directionless. Fortunately around then I also joined the RIFT chapter of AIE, and those good folks recently started organizing retro raids of “Chocolate RIFT” content that most of us had never seen in its prime. My love of group content is no secret, but even I was surprised by how revitalizing it was to spend two hours running around killing dudes with 19 other pleasant people on Ventrilo. The bosses weren’t hard, but doing something that vaguely resembled raiding put a spring in my virtual step.

I’ve logged on RIFT regularly since then, my interest in character development renewed. I’m also looking for more large group event opportunities, as clearly that’s where my heart lies in a “main MMO”.

But as I wrote about earlier this week, not every day is right for engaging content. Sometimes you just wanna run around and kill some junk, and for those times there’s World of Warcraft. Liore (the original Liore!) is up to level 87, and currently.. defending turnips from evil rabbits, as far as I can tell. The quests in Pandaria are occasionally less than epic in scope.

Surprise, war is bad! A Sha thingy.

I enjoyed the Jade Forest plotline, in the first expansion zone, although I think it highlighted one of the problems with standard MMO questing which is that we’re really just helpless bystanders in the story. I knew right away that creating armies of monkey dudes and fish people to fight each other would cause nothing but problems, but no one asked me! There also seem to be more cut scenes so far in Pandaria questing than in previous expansions, and again I feel like it’s just wresting control of my own character from me for the most part. (It ain’t no Wrathgate.)

What the heck, Blizz?

My loose WoW plans are to “12433″ my way to level 90 whenever I get the fancy to play. I have no idea what will happen then, but I’m not worrying about it either.

BUTTS

MMO producers and business people, if you’ve ever wondered about the true power of social ties when it comes to getting people to play your game, ponder this: I, Liore, renowned hater of catgirls in tiny skirts, downloaded and occasionally play TERA entirely because an awesome friend is enthusiastic about it and I want to hang out with them. The power of peers, ladies and gentlemen! The game went free-to-play a couple of days ago, so in my defense at least I’m not paying for it.

TERA, if you’re not already familiar with it, was likely based on the stolen codebase of Lineage 3, which means it’s strong in the tradition of grindy Asian MMOs. It is also ludicrously obsessed with sexualizing the female figure. My goat-lady started out in a skirt with NO BACK. Look design people, if I wanted to stare at lady ass every moment of my gaming I would put a mirror on my chair.

Aw yeah statue booty

The mildly concerning “little girl” race aside, truth be told the male gaze in TERA’s design is so over the top that I find it hard to take seriously or offensively. I mean look, even their fountains are suggestive! It’s pretty hysterical, if eye-rolling.

The gameplay thus far (at my advanced age of level 5) is.. grindy! I have a Sorcerer (mage) who shoots things with spells. The much vaunted “action combat” is essentially circle-strafing although it certainly requires more movement than the average “hotbar” driven MMO.

But hey, as I said before the player company is great, and that is what counts in any MMO.

I would like to dedicate this post to the official RIFT forums.

As something of a veteran of MMO expansions at this point, I generally know what to expect. There’s always a period of adjustment, and feeling overwhelmed by all the new content. If you game has character levels usually the cap is increased. You know, the usual stuff for WoW and WoW-style themeparks.

And yet, each and every time an expansion comes out it seems the official forums explode with shock and dismay. So let’s just clear up some things about the usual MMO expansions that we all need to learn to accept, okay?

Yes, you have to level.

So here’s the deal, folks: when you play an MMO that includes character levels and they release an expansion with a new, higher level cap.. you’re going to have to level. I know, I know, it’s so unfair, insert the rending of clothes and wailing of small children.

And hey, I kinda dig it. I don’t like levelling either, vastly preferring the more open-ended level cap activities. But man, I knew it was coming and that’s the way these games work. At my super casual pace I predict I’ll spend about 5 weeks getting to level 60. Storm Legion should be around for at least 18 months, or 78 weeks. That’s a pretty small part of the time to be leveling.

Yes, your old gear will no longer be good.

Expansions are, generally, gear resets. I too have had to put hard-earned, attractive raid gear in the bank when I picked up a superior, ugly green item, and it made me a little sad. But hey, that’s how this whole thing works.

A gear reset every couple of years is often a good thing too. They give players a chance to switch mains with no damage to their raid team. They give new players who may have joined the game halfway through the previous expansion a chance to catch up. It levels the playing field.

Besides, if you hit 60 in your top-of-the-line level 50 gear wouldn’t you be kinda bored? The fresh level capped character is honestly my favorite period of an MMO because everything is an upgrade. Achievers rejoice!

(And don’t start with the “time sink” complaints about the gear grind. That’s like saying that watching 40 minutes of Law and Order is a time sink when you just wanna know who did it. Gear treadmills are the entire point of Everquest/WoW style games, otherwise you really don’t have much of a game there.)

Yes, new content is hard.

At the end of an expansion’s life, there usually isn’t much new under the sun. People have had a year or two of gear collecting and running content. Progressive nerfing makes things easier, as does progressive buffing of classes. We can slam through dungeons in 15 minutes while watching television on the other monitor because we’ve run it a million times before and have excellent gear.

Then the expansion hits. Gear is reduced to a mish-mash of whatever we can put together, and we have no idea what any of the mechanics are. The new dungeon content is scary and mean, and we die a lot.

This too shall pass, my anxious player friends. Again, in another month or two we’ll be a lot more familiar with the fights, and have filled in many more holes in our gear. We’ll understand our new specs better, and have taken the time to read all the new spell icons. New content is tricky. Patience is key.

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Certainly some of these things could be changed from the original design outset (I’d be interested to see an MMO with no character levels, for instance), but that’s not really going to happen unexpectedly in the expansion for a WoW-style MMO.

So suck it up, buttercup. In another six weeks you’ll be 60 and experienced and better geared and then you can start the 12+ months of whining about how you’re bored at level cap.

I’m still in that post-expansion content glow when all I wanna do is play some RIFT.

History has proven me to be a notoriously slow leveller, and it’s certainly not a part of MMOs that I particularly enjoy. The level requirements for Storm Legion feel steeper than I’m used to, although it’s probably just the memory of gathering XP and heirlooms in WoW. That being said there are a number of ways to accrue XP in Storm Legion and I’ve managed to stave off boredom and impatience by hopping between the story quests, the carnage quests, dungeon runs, and Instant Adventure.

In fact, last week I was levelling at a frankly un-Liore-like pace. In under a week I had gone from 50 to 54 and felt on track to hit 60 in fairly short order. I wanted to be near the forefront of the new content, if for no better reason than to harvest high end nodes and bring in sweet, sweet new expansion dollars. (Money Tip: Sell all crafting materials for the first couple of months of an expansion, then level your own skills by buying materials for cheap once the market crashes.)

In fact, it was while basking in the glow of hitting 54 in good time that I decided to celebrate by buying my first dimension. I was originally intending to wait until 60, but I had the platinum in the bank to buy the biggest, most picturesque personal housing area (Dormant Core) so why not just get it now? Then later I can worry about building a house and decorating….

That was over a week ago and since that night I have earned exactly two bars of XP, which is a teeny, tiny amount. Instead I have put literal hours into perfectly aligning concrete walls, hanging lanterns, and staring at furniture vendors deciding which bed best represents Mercredi’s modern décor.

In short, dimensions are the horrible horrible wonderful timesinks that we all anticipated they would be and kudos to Trion for giving them to us. Fortunately I am going to run out of platinum for building materials soon so I’ll be forced back out into the levelling wilds.

Until then if you need me … I’ll be in my room.

The view from my house-in-progress:

The shell of my attempt at a weird mod 70s house. Originally there’s nothing here except some sand:

See that new cartoon in the sidebar? Earlier this week my coworker created this wonderful character version of me in real life. (Well, a stylized version.. I’m not always toting around a giant sword.) If you need any contract graphic design work done, look her up! :)

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Someone said the other day that for the MMO genre the first expansion is always the best expansion. I’ve only been playing it since Tuesday, but thus far Storm Legion would seem to fit that pattern. It certainly feels like Trion has taken the original game, applied all the lessons they’ve learned over the last 18 months, and refined it.

Quest mob tagging was removed and quests are laid out in a more organic way, which in turn allows for a little more freedom in zone design. Thought has clearly been given to making towns and cities feel like a place where a virtual person could actually live rather than just a hub for quests. Almost every mob you run into is part of a carnage quest, which  you can pick up, complete, and turn in while out on the move.

Although I’ve only seen a smattering of the gear and wardrobe items available, my initial feeling is that Trion has spruced up their design as well. Complaints about RIFT’s original character and costume design were always well founded, and while it would be nice to see a race option with an unusual silhouette at least the gear is showing some imaginative flair now. (And weird hats. So many weird hats.)

The new zones have embraced RIFT’s more steampunk, “magitech” design elements, and the move away from archtypical fantasy is welcome.

There are so many things to do now, although to be fair that’s always the case at the beginning of an expansion. There are a million different ways for me to level, there are new souls to investigate, new dungeons to run, crafting to level. I haven’t even bought a Dimension yet, although that’s in large part because I’m saving money to buy a fancy one.

There are certainly things that other games provide that RIFT does not — the story in SWTOR, or the crafting in GW2, or whatever — but if you want a solid themepark game in my opinion Storm Legion places RIFT solidly ahead of WoW, LotRO, and other similar MMOs.

Oh, and speaking of Dimensions, I poked my head into one of the public ones that has been heavily upvoted and saw this amazing statue. It was created by combining boulders and wooden planks and other standard objects, and it is even more impressive in person. Enjoy this photo and a few more below it, and I’m gonna get back to playing!

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Right now is a good time to be a RIFT player. Beta tests for the expansion are in progress and we’ll be playing it for real in 26 days. Trion has been doing live streams every week to talk about the new content and releasing some awesome videos (did you see that Dimensions trailer?!). Today marks the arrival of Patch 1.11, or the “oh my god what happened to all my buttons” patch that introduces all the expansion changes to existing classes.

Two months ago I wrote a Storm Legion Bucket List, and now seems like a good time to review how I’m doing.

1. Finish levelling my professions – Partially Complete

I’ve got my one crafting skill, Artificing, up to the maximum level of 300 and started hoarding crafting tokens for the expansion. Foraging and mining are coming along at about level 225 each, while I still haven’t touched Fishing and Survival. We’ll see…

2. Run all the dungeons and chronicles – Almost Complete

The chronicles are all complete, as are all but one dungeon on expert mode. Thanks to pugs and guild alliances I’ve also killed bosses in two different 20-man raids (RoS and HK for those in the know) and finished the 10-man Guilded Prophecy. I am honestly feeling pretty good about how much I’ve seen of Vanilla RIFT’s group and raid content, particularly considering how casual I am.

3. Faction rewards and cosmetic gear – Meh

My patience for faction grinding wore out faster than I anticipated, although to be fair one can slowly eek out reputation simply by playing the game thanks to rifts and events and crafting quests. I did make a concerted effort to complete all four major events in Ember Isle for the utterly amazing achievement hat, pictured at the start of this post. (Hat screenshot from MMO2Go.) Ember Isle events are actually super fun all on their own, with multiple waves of tasks like closing 8 rifts or defending waypoints, and the hat is clearly awe-inspiring.

4. Finish the Saga questlines – Partially Complete

I completed the Water Saga chain, giving Mercredi a crocodile mount and some sweet titles. I’ve been kind of slacking on the Fire Saga and the Cult Saga, as I know the rewards aren’t that compelling at the moment. I’ve added completing the Ember Isle story quest chain to my list just because I’d like to catch up on all the old world lore before the expansion.

5. Make some plat – Complete

You may be asking yourself at this point, “okay, so what HAVE you been doing in RIFT, Liore?” and the answer would be squeezing every drop of content out of the Autumn Harvest Festival, which ended on October 11th. That included taking advantage of all the artifact farming to both bolster my own collection and to sell on the auction house. And sell they did — I went from about 300 platinum to 1300 just from artifact sales. I’m starting to liquidate my bank in anticipation of the expansion, so that should help too.

Huh. I was feeling a bit of pre-expansion malaise setting in before writing this list, but now I’m pretty invigorated again! It’s easy to start thinking that with an expansion a few short weeks away one’s actions no longer matter, but in fact there appears to still be plenty for me to do and accomplish before November 13th.

Let me end this Bucket List update as I did my last one: with a screenshot of an awesome new mount, this time the Spectral Najmok from the Autumn Harvest Festival.