Rift Character Generation

Or: Look at the Shiny!

Long post. TL;DR: Gushing about/describing Rift. You should probably buy that. Or you can try it free. Y'know, whichever.

So, Rift. Holy crap, my Warcraft addiction has been completely displaced. If I ever feel the need to play an MMO, I reach for my Droid instead of my keychain (since I need one or the other to complete the two-factor authentication both games boast).

What is there to say?

What isn't there to say?

Rift is yet another popular MMO boasting the dubious reputation as "next potential WoW-killer." They even boast in their advertisements, "We're not in Azeroth anymore." Now, in my own humble opinion, no game is actually going to kill World of Warcraft. That honor rests squarely with Activision-Blizzard, whose various policies have elicited more than one rant that I'll save for another time. As it stands, however, if a game could kill off World of Warcraft, Rift would be it.

Let's start with the basics. Like Aion before it, Rift is simply beautiful, the graphics absolutely stunning, with almost as much control over 'how much death this will wreak on your graphics card' as the former. (The graphics have also, at least on one occasion, killed off one of my characters - I momentarily forgot I wasn't playing Aion and therefore didn't have wings to catch my fall.)

Rift has significantly more character customization options than World of Warcraft, but not quite as much variety as Aion, resulting in a marked absence of flea-people and deformed monsters with gigantism (and real-life celebrity copycats), yet still managing to offset the, "You ALL look alike!" feel of World of Warcraft.

There are ... four? ... ish? distinct races in this game, two of which are split into ethnic subcategories that totally don't evoke any unfortunate implications or anything.

Totally.

The humans (every game has humans, even Aion had humans - in fact, Aion only had humans, even if some of them did have talons and manes) of Rift are split into two nationalities. The light-skinned Mathosians appear to be setting themselves up as the idealistic, gods-fearing "good guys" of the piece, while the dark-skinned Eth are the last remnants of a technomagical empire, and will do whatever is necessary to save the world from itself. With SCIENCE.

The elves (most every game also has elves. Aion didn't, but the 'pointy-eared willowy thing' look was an option) are also split along faction lines. On the Guardian (Mathosian) side of things, we have the High Elves, pale, nature-loving, also gods-fearing folk who, inexplicably, developed the powers of flight upon ascension ... or something?

On the Defiant (Eth) side, there's the Kelari, dusky-skinned, branching-eared, Uncanny Valley-eyed technomagical prodigies, with a side of heathen spirit ... uh ... negotiating. The Kelari believe themselves equal to the gods, not subservient. They strike deals with the spirits they work with, not prayers. Instead of flight, the Kelari turn into foxes, which in turn makes all Kelari foxy ladies, excepting the men, anyway.

Finally, the spares. On the Guardian side, we have Dwarves. All dwarves are alike. You don't really have to describe dwarves. But I will, anyway: short, kind of broad, generally bearded, scary fanatics who accidentally destroyed their underground cities by using the chained souls of their deceased for gasoline. Wait, what?

Anyway, their Defiant counterparts are the Bahmi, taller, broader, descendants of wind spirits, who gain by this descent a racial super-jump. They're big into ancestor worship, which given their ancestry, wouldn't be terribly different from the Kelari's practice, except for the whole I AM ALSO A GOD thing the Kelari sport.

Ultimately, choice of race and faction boils down to 'do I want to come off as a conservative judgmental zealot, or do I want to come off as an egotistical mad scientist?' Followed by 'How exactly do I want to get around the world faster, on foot?' (Unless you're a dwarf. And then it's WHEE FALLING.) And after that, y'know, actual aesthetic concerns. The +resists would be more distinguishing except everybody fights everybody else, especially all kinds of rift invasions, with more life and fire invasions in the Guardian starting zone, and more death and water invasions in the Defiant starting zone. (Although everybody always hates the death plane slightly more, so +death resist might be for the best, except for the recent influx of fire and earth, and ... yeah, it's basically irrelevant.)

So that's getting past the intro screens. From here on, either Arthas - er, the ... new leader of Mathosia ... guy ... is very, very proud that YOU. ARE. A. GUARDIAN! or Asha Catari is calling you Obi-Wan Kenobi, because you're everybody's only hope.

More on actual gameplay at an unspecified point in the future. Whee, non-permanently fatal gladiatorial deathmatches!

Aion Reminiscing

So, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. I did that for a while, when I was still convinced I could break my horrible World of Warcraft addiction. While I'm thinking about it (en route to EPL from Stormwind), I figure I might as well talk about it.

I have an odd fetish for winged humanoids. It's a probably unhealthy fascination, what can I say.

That's why I ended up buying Aion, that and the fact that half of my old guild was seriously considering wandering off there, and then did so (only none of them could agree on a server/faction combo).

On top of that, the story was fairly well-written, translated, and localized into English. In fact, even during the Closed Beta I don't recall seeing any Engrish, really, and there were cutscenes everywhere so even the literacy-impaired could get an idea as to what's going on, and what they were supposed to do (quests were often introduced with a cutscene).

So why am I not still playing it? It was a solid MMO, not entirely different from WoW actually. This is partly because, it seems like, all MMOs are EverQuest clones, just prettier. And oh, Aion was beautiful. One of the more recent patches for World of Warcraft improved that game's graphics to the point where it reached 'on par for minimum settings Aion.' At maximum settings. However, this beauty made Aion a graphics hog, and given that it's a PVP-heavy murder-fest (fortress battles going up to about 100 people a side), in real combat it's rare to be able to have your graphics max'd and still be able to move. Like, at all. Minimum settings for Aion also included turning off everyones' character models. (Shift + F12, if I recall correctly?)

So there's been an expansion (for free, unless you care overmuch about purchase-exclusive minipets) called Assault on Balaurea. It bumps the level cap from 50 to 55, and, I gather, is supposed to try to help resolve the game's other issues (I wouldn't know, I never tried the expansion).

What were those other issues, anyway?

Well. Last time I played, anyway, it was a grind-fest. (Predictable enough for an Korean MMO.) Given what I know of FFXI, Aion isn't as bad as it could be, but the grind is painful, with few (mostly repeatable, kill-some-mobs-and-take-their-stuff) quests.Well no, that's not true. The early levels offered an ease familiar to WoW. 1-10 is set up so that just questing is sufficient to level you, 11-20 can be done with minimal grinding in the interim. It's only after level 20 (out of 50) that the curve starts becoming more of a drag. Quests started thinning out at 20, becoming incredibly rare around 30, when you could start entering dungeons. I made it to 44 - within a month or two of the endgame, I swear! - and quit.

Beyond that, well, I'm not much for being ganked while grinding. Especially when you lose experience for dying in PVE, and the PVPers will do their level best to make sure you suffer a PVE death - and you lose honor points for dying to the PVPers, as well. Any time I'm forced to just lose my time and effort because someone at level 50 feels like being an (expletive removed), well ... the only good news, such as it is, was that you couldn't level down, and could buy your EXP back. At generally-speaking, exorbitant prices.

Maybe I've been babied by WoW. But I'll take a totally revamped, super-speedy leveling experience over standing around in the same zone - the same fifty feet of the same zone - for five hours and making 2/20 (with five separate +EXP gain buffs) bars because there are no quests and no one needs a 'ssin. Thank you.

Introductory Thoughts - Vashj'ir Rant

Okay, so having discovered that Gilneans get a tree on a tree so they can ... uh ... piddle on a tree? Filled me with rage. That said, I took my Worgen to Stormwind and quit in a huff. (I'll be back soon, though, the RP as a Worgen is quite interesting.)

That said, I rolled out my hunter again and started poking around in Vashj'ir. It's ... interesting. I am, more and more, seeing elements in World of Warcraft that seem ripped from Aion directly. Oh, Aion, how I loved/hated you.

First off, there are cutscenes just about everywhere, for everything. That was one of the huge selling points for Aion, and although these aren't voiced, and World of Warcraft lacks the super-sharp awesome models Aion offered, it was jarring to me to say the least the first couple of times I got thrown into one, and left me with a distinct feeling of Deja'vu.

But then I get to Vashj'ir. Oh, Vashj'ir. How I love/hate you, as well.

This whole 'three dimensional world' thing is interesting. We'll go with "interesting." On the one hand, it's fascinating to see a billion dots on my minimap - being a hunter - yet no enemies ... until I look up. It's interesting and neat that we're seeing terrain built around that whole Z Axis thing.

However.

Little things about this frustrate me. For instance, without any frame of reference, my depth perception goes into such disarray that I often have problems telling if a monster, box, or NPC is even in front of or behind me, unless at extreme distance. Not realizing that a certain number of boxes - which I needed to find, in order to progress through the zone - were not on the ocean floor, but instead floating about in the water wasted easily fifteen to twenty minutes of my time, and then locating those boxes wasted even more. Hello, three dimensional environment. I sure did miss Aether Gathering a lot.

Wait, no I didn't.

The only good side of this is that there's no such thing as a flight timer / breath timer in Vashj'ir - more on that later - and that 'good thing' is offset by the fact that mobs are floating around in the 'air' along with you. Ambush from above, anyone? The groundbound existence every World of Warcraft player has gotten used to has also handily trained most everyone not to look up - a habit that, you know, players being human, we have already well-ingrained.

In regards to the breath timer thing: It ... hurts my immersion, somewhat, to be just floating around at the bottom of the sea, with only some magical spell attached to me, allowing me to breathe and talk underwater (without being crushed by pressure). Moreover, other people being able to talk underwater - and me understand them - well ... it just hurts me a bit.

That being said, all in all Vashj'ir isn't really unenjoyable, I just have some gripes about the more annoying parts of three-dimensionality and unrestrained movement, as well as Blizzard's handwaving your survival 20,000 leagues under the sea. Or, however many anyway.

Oh, also, the Whale Shark is kind of intimidating.

As is this massive shellfish, which is also kind of a zone. All to itself. Imagine if it just suddenly started attacking people ....