Last night I ran around the same battle ground in Rift healing and laying the smack down. Was I invincible? No. Did I get pwned? Oh yeah quite frequently. Did I have fun? You bet your sweet keister I did!
Skeleton Jack picked up Rift and is giving it a shot. He knows I’m in the dumps lately over some IRL issues and figured I could use some cheering up via pounding the crap out of NPC’s and players alike. SJ sent me a friend invite for Rift and said he’d hang with me a bit here and there if I decided to give it a shot.
I was feeling cranky as hell. I played a wee bit of Rift during beta and it really didn’t grab my attention. But I figured I’d give SJ the benefit of the doubt. I downloaded the game, installed it and created Geistig the Defiant cleric on Keenblade.
Most of the game is pretty much just what I remember from my short stint in beta. Which was pleasant, but not really enough to grab my attention. There have been some changes though. I really like the fact that now with a few coins you can pick up all of the souls. In beta you had to do a quest or something which pretty much totally turned me off to the whole idea.
Opening up the ability to change souls was a REALLY wise move. Maybe not from a quest/lore position, but from a user standpoint it was a wise move.
Swapping out your role via the soul system is a BIG part what makes Rift unique. Making players jump through hoops before they get a chance to partake in that mind blowing MMO experience doesn’t help the game stand out.
Granted I had Skeleton Jack there walking me through stuff over vent which helped immensely. Otherwise I probably would have been looking for the quest givers to pick up the rest of my souls like the noob I am.
As soon as we hit 10 Skeleton Jack queues us up for a battleground. Next thing I know I’m thrown into Rift PvP. Yeah I had NO IDEA what was going on, but I had a great time.
Hey at least in Rift there’s no risk of friendly fire.
After the first few rounds Skeleton Jack asked me what I really want to do with my build. Of course my gut reaction in any given situation is to heal. I’m an instinctual healer, it’s just what I do.
So I picked up a second role, I picked up the Warden soul and I set up a Sentinel, Purifier, Warden build. Yeah it’s not much in the DPS department but it does turn me into a full healbot.
In the next few runs I would just find whoever on our team had the flag or fang or whatever, and I’d just keep healing them. I’d also rotate out a knockback I have to get people off of that person as well.
Safe to say it was a lot of fun and I ended up with so many PvP points that I blew out the trial account limits. That made me kind of sad. I did end up with enough points to pick up some blue PvP gear (boots and gauntlets). For one night’s worth of work that’s not too shabby. All I had to do was run around healing people and occasionally blasting someone that finally figured out I was a squishy target.
After years of playing MMO’s, questing really, REALLY gets on my nerves. I’d rather tell the troll to take the bone out of his nose and go kill the 10 rats himself than have to do another effing mission. I know that’s the fastest way to level in MMO’s but it really gets old after a while.
I like that Rift helps break up the questing monotony. You have the rifts themselves that spew out baddies to run after and you can hit up some PvP battle grounds. Now that I’m actually a fan of PvP it’s a very welcome option.
Fallen Earth really got me into PvP, but Rift makes PvP a bit more fun really.
If I want to be a healer, I can do that. If I want to swap out for DPS, I can do that. If I want to be more tank like, I can do that. I’m not bound to any one role in gameplay. I really, really like that.
That was why I loved the Shaman and Paladin classes in WoW, they had that kind of versatility. That’s why I really liked my build in Fallen Earth, I had that kind of versatility. That is of course why I’m a little leery about getting back into Fallen Earth PvP under the new system, but I really can’t knock it until I try it.
For now though I think I’ll give Rift one more night, maybe two. I want to see if it grabs me or if it was just really fun getting a chance to play with a friend.
