Mass Effect 3 mid-game mini review: SO GOOD. I am already melancholy that it has to end soon.

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By far and away one of the most common search terms people use to find this site is “rift review” or some variation. That’s true even now, when the game is a year old. I wrote a review of RIFT at its six month anniversary, but the public has spoken and I do love to talk about RIFT, so let’s address this issue again.

Hopefully the following will help you decide: Should I Buy RIFT?

1. Are you tired of WoW-like mechanics?

If you hated WoW, you probably won’t like RIFT. If you liked WoW at some point but got bored of it, you might also be bored of RIFT.

The basic mechanics of RIFT are startlingly similar to WoW. It has the standard action queue system of MMO combat. The interface uses almost identical keybindings. Both games have warzone PvP, raids in multiple group sizes, and daily quests. Both have dwarves and elves and rogues and mages. RIFT certainly brought a few unique ideas to the table — namely, um, rifts — but in general if you are really bored with the basic mechanics of WoW then you will be bored wth the basic mechanics of RIFT.

2. Do you enjoy fluff (non-progression content that is fun or looks good) in your MMOs?

If you enjoy “fluff” content like wardrobes, pets, and achievements, you will probably enjoy RIFT.

Trion has done an admirable job of adding fun content to the game since it launched. There is an elaborate wardrobe system with armor dye and they continually release new costume gear for all levels. There are a handful of major events each year which usually come with amusing new daily quests again for all levels. There is a full achievement system, and collectible artifacts sprinkled around the world. Additionally, RIFT has a number of neat pets and mounts that are obtainable in different ways and suit different occasions, from a pet corgi wearing reindeer antlers to a giant steampunk spider mount.

3. Do you enjoy theorycrafting?

If you like doing your own research and experimenting in MMOs, you will probably enjoy RIFT. If you cannot live without WoW on one monitor and Wowhead on the other, you may be disappointed.

The flexible class talent trees is a bonanza for people who like to fiddle with their characters and play with mechanics. If you want to get into serious progression raiding there are probably optimal setups that you’ll be asked to use, but otherwise it is up to you to find something that you enjoy and that does what you want it to. It is a theorycrafting paradise!

Also, for whatever reason RIFT doesn’t have the same array of online resources as WoW or even SWTOR has available. That means you’ll probably have to discover a unique rotation or where Questgiver X is on your own.

4. Is crafting important to you in MMOs?

If a robust crafting system is an essential element of your MMO experience, you will probably not like RIFT.

Crafting in RIFT feels like an afterthought, much like most big MMOs. It is the standard procedure of selecting a few gathering professions and a few crafting professions, and then AFKing for 20 minutes while you make stuff. If I had to come up with a positive comments about the crafting, it’s that at least some of the level 50 recipes are desired for gearing up new characters.

The Auction House has all the usual features and a nice interface, so if you like playing the markets then RIFT will fit the bill.

5. Are you a casual or hardcore MMO player?

If you are a casual MMO player — casual as in limited in time, not limited by effort — then you will probably like RIFT. If you are interested in hardcore PvP or PvE progression for notoriety, you should play WoW. If you like challenging PvE content, you will likely enjoy RIFT. If you like challenging PvP content, wait for GW2 like everyone else.

There is a ton of drop-in content in RIFT for characters of all levels. You can be just running around and hit a rift or invasion. You can swim over to Shimmersand and join in a crafting rift raid for a while, or keep an eye on General Chat for a daily raid rift or PvP rift. You can do an Instant Adventure (queued group quest), visit Ember Isle at level cap (special quest zone), or run a Chronicle (solo/duo dungons). Additionally, RIFT has the standcard automated LFG dungeons and PvP battlefronts.

I haven’t done the serious progression raids, but I’ve heard that they are challenging and fun. (And Trion has beaten out most of the bugs that drove early raiders crazy.) On a firsthand level I’ve enjoyed the 10-man raids I’ve run, and they are frequently pugged now as well.

So, best case scenario: If you are tired of WoW but not of WoW-like mechanics, enjoy character fluff and theorycrafting but don’t feel too strongly about professions, and are happy with either drop-in or relaxed progression content… my review concludes that you should try RIFT!

Thinking about RIFT yesterday gave me the urge to read up on the latest patch notes, and while doing so I discovered that the Android version of the RIFT Mobile app launched last week. Being something of an app nerd I decided that I should check it out in the name of science!

RIFT Mobile is Trion’s partner application for smart phones and is available for free on the Android Marketplace. The app requires an internet connection and an active RIFT subscription.

Included are a few features that will be familiar from other MMO apps. You can use remote guild chat including private whispers, monitor your friends list, and read your guild’s Wall (a bulletin board for players). Oddly enough I couldn’t find a way to post on the guild Wall, which was disappointing.

Users can log in to RIFT Mobile on more than one character at a time, which would be useful if my characters were spread around guilds but is kind of confusing otherwise. I keep appearing on my own “online friends” list and it’s weirding me out, plus there’s no obvious way to log off once you’re on. Generally, though, these features do what they’re supposed to do.

There are two additional features of the app that are unique to RIFT, the first being a Zone Event monitor and alarm. Need a major event rift in IPP or Shimmersand to finish a quest? Desperate for more tokens from fire rifts? The Zone Event monitor will give you a live listing of every event currently happening on your server. If you’re particularly eager you can even set up a Zone Event alarm. Choose a time limit (1-24 hours) and your desired zones, and the app will push a notification to you every time an event happens in your selected area(s) during that period of time.

Remote chat and zone event listings are nice, but let’s be honest: we love the mad loot, and RIFT Mobile has us covered there, too. Included in the app is a tab for “Lootables”, or virtual ”scratch and win” cards. There are three different card themes: Planar Invasion, Crafty Critters, and Shinies!. Each card requires one RIFT Mobile “point” to use. You gain a point every 60 minutes and can hold up to 6 points at once, which means essentially you can scratch one card an hour.

I scratched 8 cards or so over the course of yesterday and won little prizes most of the time, ranging from 300 planarite (event currency) to Flickering Shards (crafting material) to artifacts (collectables). Anything you win is automatically sent to your in-game mailbox.

A winner is me!

The overall stability of the app seems okay on my Samsung Vibrant running Froyo. It did crash once while trying to load a scratch card and I lost both my card and the point I spent to see it, but that’s hardly a catastrophe.

In short, if you play RIFT and have a smart phone you should download this app without hesitation, particularly as it’s free. It’s a good combination of standard MMO features and a few new twists, and definitely seems like a step in the right direction for mobile game companions.

The difficulty debate rages on, but I don’t have to say anything else about it because SynCaine at Hardcore Casual and a comment to that post by Syl from Raging Monkeys have said it all for me.

“What made UO/EQ/AC and such ‘work’ was that ‘putting in more time’ did not just mean grinding more mobs, and certainly not spending more cash in the item shop; it meant reaching out to other players for help, or finding a solid guild. It meant working with others, which in turn creates those solid player communities that keep you logging in day after day. [...] The mechanics now work AGAINST what it means to be a true MMO, and by doing so reduce the very thing that made the whole model originally work.” — SynCaine

“many of the things criticized about vanilla WoW, such as the lengthy preparation and organization efforts, the raid sizes etc. are actually side-effects of cooperation-focused content. people say this was a ‘false difficulty’, a timesink. right….I see then. cooperation is the new time sink.” — Syl

Yeah! What they said!

Okay, so anyway, let’s talk about something awesome, which in this case is the RIFT Water Saga questline. It was put into the game with patch 1.4, but I’m unclear if it will be removed in the rapidly approaching 1.5.

So why is this questline awesome?

1. It’s long. I worked on it at a very relaxed pace for about three weeks.
2. It’s stuffed full of lore and concentrates on one of my favorite characters for Defiants, the Faceless Man and his excellent hat.
3. The quest chain incorporates many different activities, from solo grinding to upper tier 5-man dungeons.
4. You get a bunch of cool rewards from it such as gear, titles, achievements, collectables, and eventually the Crocnard Mount.

The following is not intended to be a totally thorough guide, but it should give you an idea of what you’re getting into.

Act One

• Start the chain by picking up a quest in Abyssal Precipice, a Tier 2 dungeon.
  5-man group required
• Head to Iron Pine Peak and go pick on a camp of baddies. This is marked as a group quest, but it was laughably easy with four people.
  solo or duo; reward: collectible book
• Run around a lot and listen to lore in Meridian and Freemarch. Spoiler: you get a “madness” debuff during this stage of the quest that allows you to see giant tentacles and other horrible things around Meridian. It was actually pretty creepy.
  solo; reward: collectible book
• Head back to IPP and meet a very neat new lore-based character, and escort them out of danger. This was marked as a group quest I think, but I completed it solo.
  solo or duo
• Grind time! You have to kill 100 cultists in Iron Pine Peak. Yes, 100. Yes, you can do it in a group to make it go faster.
  solo grind; reward: epic essence
• Go talk to the librarian at Chancel of Labours. Get used to it, you will be seeing him a lot.
  solo; reward: the title “Tidelord” and an achievement

Act Two

• Head to the coastline of Moonshade Highlands and kill some elite and non-elite NPCs to collect four items.
  duo
• Head to Shimmersand and talk to the Dragonslayer faction. You must be Decorated with the Dragonslayers to continue. For what it’s worth I did all my Dragonslayer quests while leveling up and probably three days of dailies, and was pretty much exactly Decorated by the time I got to this quest.
  solo rep
• Swim out to the middle of the Lake of Solace and loot a chest. Then back to the Chancel to turn it in!
  solo
• You now need to obtain an item in the Tier 1 version of Realm of the Fae. It’s just after the first boss, so your group can quit early if they want.
  5-man group required
• Time for quests and lore in Shimmersand! I had no problem doing these solo.
  solo
• Back to T2 Runic Descent, this time to kill a mob near the end of the instance. Completing this will give you a hat that is both delightfully ugly and, for my bard, anyway, best in slot.
  5-man group required; reward: the title “the Soggy”, an epic hat, an achievement

Act Three

• Head out to lake shores of Freemarch. You get to do a few cool quests while wearing a neat temporary costume. (solo)Kill a named elite dude in the middle of the lake. We had three people doing this quest, and he still kicked our butts the first time. Also, some kind of water breathing ability or potion will help a LOT.
  4-5 people
• Next up is an exceedingly neat series of quests that let you run around up above Meridian.
  solo
• Complete an air rift of level 44 or higher for a special drop. I did one solo in Iron Pine Peak, but it would be faster and easier with a group.
  solo/group rift
• Run around the world doing some solo quests, then kill a named elite in Moonshade Highlands.
  duo
• Go back to Shimmersand and lure five cultists to a watery death.
  solo
• Head back to the shores of Freemarch and complete a ritual. We had six people helping with this particular part, but five would have done. You want the fight to be as short as possible, so don’t skimp on DPS!
  5-man group
• Voila! Turn in that last quest back in Meridian, and congratulations.
  reward: achievement, epic shoulders, a crocnard mount, and the insanely awesome title “Mistress/Master of Madness”

Now, I understand that it’s time consuming to develop long questlines like this and I certainly wouldn’t expect one to appear every couple of weeks or anything, but this is in my opinion a totally brilliant example of interesting end-game content. It encompassed an array of content and group sizes, sent you around the world a million times, and had both practical and fluffy rewards.

Trion: more of this, please!

I played RIFT when it first launched in March, getting Accolade the rogue to the mid-30s in levels. I was still raiding (and running a raiding guild) in WoW, though, and I didn’t really have the time and mental energy to be seriously playing two MMOs at the same time. Thusly, I came back to RIFT “full time” about six weeks ago.

Let me just get my fangirling out of the way now: I love this game! I mean, it’s not revolutionary. It’s a solid game that expands on a lot of WoW’s ideas. At the end of the day, RIFT has a good community, developers who seem to care, and fun casual gameplay, and I’m not sure what more I could ask for than that.

I have become distinctly casual (non-raider) lately, and RIFT has a variety of activities that I can do in an hour or two of time with a small group or pug. I can log on and join in on crafting rifts, or the daily raid and epic rifts, and can keep an eye out for PVP rifts. I can run around the world fighting off invasions and protecting caravans. Daily quests themselves are not exactly an exciting dynamic, but there are so many to choose from that I never get bored, whether it’s for the world event, various reputations, or the crafting and pvp dailies. I haven’t finished even a single zone puzzle, or gotten my epic questline past the level 30s. And, oh right, there’s the usual instanced content too, like T1 and T2 dungeons and warfronts.

My sense is that players who want to be the best at one thing — a world-first raider, say, or a PvP demon — will not enjoy RIFT. It seems to me to be more of a game for folks who want to dabble in a little of everything. Heck, the next patch will have 1-2 person dungeons and an alternative-advancement-like system, adding to the possibilities.

RIFT, of course, is not perfect. The graphics are beautiful but they do terrible things to my not-that-old computer and at least once a night I disconnect while trying to zone into the main city. Like WoW, RIFT also operates under the general assumption that “gear = progression”, although I would argue that there are more fun ways to obtain upgrades in RIFT. The quests are pretty linear, and leveling up alts seems like it would be a little boring.

RIFT is new. My characters are new. I am, probably, easily amused for this reason. The game is well-made and frequently updated, but in a year or two from now when I have slowly accomplished most goals on Accolade, will I still be having fun? It’s hard to say, but probably not. I guess after WoW I just don’t think of a single MMO as “forever” anymore. If I get a good year or two out of RIFT.. well heck, that’s worth my time and money.

So, the final analysis: If you are looking for a casual-friendly MMO that is not too dissimilar to the current offerings, I would highly recommend RIFT. It combines WoW mechanics with the mellow feel of LotRO, and adds new content at an amazing pace. (And if you are looking for a guild, I highly recommend the Catari Honour Guard on Byriel Defiant, cough cough.)

PS: On the list for this long weekend is finally trying League of Legends. Full report next week!

In the first few years of running the guild I would get anxious whenever someone mentioned another game, MMO or otherwise. I would try to slyly discourage it: “Oh, Aion! I hear… it gives you rickets.” Over the years, though, I learned from experience that there is room for more than one game in most people’s lives, and even if a Cat DOES leave WoW for another game (this has only happened once, though) few people ever actually leave our community.

I do feel a bit like I’m cheating on WoW when I play another MMO, but I really enjoy checking out other games, particularly at their launch. Despite its popularity World of Warcraft is not the best MMO currently available. It definitely wins in some areas but loses in many others such as crafting, cosmetic items, and honestly just some of the core gameplay.

Anyway, all this is just a really long preamble to explain how and why I found myself in the RIFT: Planes of Telara beta over the past few weeks. I played in the beta at the end of January, and again over the weekend in the Open Beta.

a dwarf rogue, kinda

Character Options: I did enjoy the character creation menus, although honestly it’s painfully easy to beat WoW on this front. There’s a height slider for certain races, two-tone hair colors, and options for things like eye rotation and nose size. The array of races seems interesting, too, from dwarf-ish to big giants elves.

Classes: This is one of the places that RIFT shines. You can make a warrior, rogue, cleric, or mage — but wait! You’ve probably already read the details by now, but essentially you have three talent trees and an almost unlimited number of spec options. That means you end up with healing mages and tanking clerics, and a rogue could be be a stabber or a hunter or a bard. Eventually I’m sure the community will math out ideal specs and set the dogs loose on anyone who does not comply, but until that point players can enjoy being truly unique (if not always efficient!). Over the weekend I made a bard/riftstalker who by level 9 could stealth, blink, buff stamina and attack power, and AoE heal a raid or party. It was a blast.

Gear: The gear paradigm of “pants on males, bikinis on females” is alive and well in RIFT, and honestly it seemed a lot more obvious than in WoW. At one point my adorable rogue sold off a chest upgrade because it looked like it had been sexily mauled by a bear. Cleavage is one thing.. melee in a half-shirt and no pants is something else entirely. The esteemed Spinks noticed another example. Guardian faction, in particular, seems to have a surplus of slutty elves. (I leave it up to the individual reader to decide how they feel about that.)

Quests: Honestly, the quests were not that impressive. It’s the “rails” style of questing that Blizzard introduced in Cataclysm, which I don’t necessarily dislike. However the quests are a little obtuse sometimes, and they’re just not interesting. Kill 10 of the local mobs. Collect 10 trinkets from different local mobs. Now kill their leader! Great, go to the next town. I know people complain that Blizzard’s questing is heavy with gimmickry now, but I LIKE those gimmicks! RIFT is seriously lacking in their equivalent of bombing run quests or vehicle quests or something that doesn’t involve just killing ten rats.

Graphics: I hear the graphics in RIFT are awesome, but I wouldn’t know because the game brings my 18-month old video card to its knees. I play on the Low Graphics settings. It makes me sad.

Rifts: These are fun!! I know they liberated the public quest concept from Warhammer Online, and I feel sure that one day Blizzard will liberate that concept from RIFT. As a social gamer, I like seeing everyone in a zone stream out from the trees to band together and kill bad things. The spontaneity of the events is also a blast.

All in all I don’t think RIFT has done anything that much better than WoW. If you are looking for a first MMO, or you have very tenuous ties to WoW and want to play something new I think this will be a fine game to make your “main”. For me there’s certainly not enough to warrant moving me or the guild. I expect I’ll play for a month or two, have some fun, and then move on to whatever is new and shiny then. (Helloooo, Dragon Age 2!)