You could be forgiven for not catching it immediately from our E3 hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara, but there are some unique things going on with the game's class system. It's hardly the first game to allow you to change classes, but the game also goes into combining them, shifting aspects, interplay between multiple class types... it's a maze of inter-relationships. Luckily, we have an exclusive video developer diary from the staff at Trion Worlds that discusses the whole setup at length, giving future players a much clearer overview of how the system works.
When players start, they choose one of four Callings -- Warrior, Rogue, Mage, or Cleric -- which determines the player's core playstyle. As they level, they gradually acquire Souls, and it's there that the bulk of a character's abilities come from. It's a fusion of the talent tree system popularized via World of Warcraft with something much more interesting, and the possibilities for mixing the different Souls together can give rise to all sorts of interesting theories. But don't take our word for it -- watch the exclusive developer diary just past the cut.
This game looked excellent when it was HoT, but now it looks more like "yet another WoW clone with a twist". The art style is less gritty than what we saw in Hot. They seem to have moved away from the layered PQ's they were boasting with HoT. HoT's subclass cards sounded more flexible and varied than this soul system. As time goes on this game looks more and more generic.
I think it looks pretty cool, it's not exactly a WoW clone, WoW doesn't allow much freedom of choice. Also, I think it's just as gritty looking as when it was Heroes of Telara, all they changed was the title. When it was Heroes of Telara they only had a few very basic screenshots up, and like one video. The design hasn't changed at all, in fact they have used some of that old footage in newer videos as well. The PQ's are still there, in fact that has a lot to do with how the rifting works, and dynamic events within the world.
I really wish they would talk about the other dynamic elements. It has been stated that the rifts are just 'one type of dynamic' content but have been totally silent on what else is dynamic. Here's hoping the HoT stuff is still in the game (although obviously the totally open-ended multi classing is not).
So far the only way this game is different from HoT is that they are emphasizing the rifts (were in HoT, name was just changed since people liked the rifts so much), and your class switching is restricted within a calling/archetype, and now it is two factions. If they still have all the other cool stuff that was planned, the game could be a winner. The marketing isn't at the moment, though.
SHOCKING NEWS FOR ALL THE 14-15 YR OLD PLAYERS OF MMO: WORLD OF WARCRAFT WAS NOT THE FIRST MMORPG IN THE WORLD !!!!!!!!!!!! that's right, it is true, look it up on google. oh and BTW if you didn't catch the point of the news feed: STOP COMPARING ALL MMORPGS to WOW.
Um...this is kinda of a useless statement and one that is not needed. Comparing games to WoW is only natural, since for good or bad is the most famous one currently out there. Thus it's a good place to start for making comparisons...so there really isn't anything wrong with that.
If peeps complained that this was a WoW clone, then I can understand your issue, but this is not what I gathered from reading most of the replies posted about this. I have also noted there was a lot of comparisons made to Guild Wars too.
And I am pretty am sure for most of us that 15 yr's old was a decade or few ago. Just saying... :)
This is my first look at this game and it sounds pretty good. I am skeptical that all of these builds they are putting in will be a waste because only certain builds will be viable. Not everyone is a min/max player but nobody wants to play the garbage class. in FFXI you have a main job and a subjob and you can pick any subjob that you like but for each main job there are only 1 or 2 subjobs that enhance your class beyond having no subjob. I think alot of mmo players pick similar archtypes no matter what the game is. All those people who are crying I wanna mix warrior with cleric, let me just say I guarantee that warrior/cleric will suck bal*z and once you have one your gonna be like, hey warrior/cleric sux bal*z, let me pick something that I saw someone else using that looks awesome like warrior ninja. For the last 8 years I have been playing various mmo's as a bow and arrow ranger. Games that don't have that archtype I play whatever levels fastest, usually a healer. in MMO's its better to play a social class as opposed to what your heart's desire is. once you have friends then everything opens up but nobody wants to be your friend if ur playing a useless warrior/cleric. everyone loves that party enhancing dancer/minstrel tho. This game could be great but i've been disappointed too often with hype in the MMO world to get my hopes up. Remember how great Warhammer was supposed to be, what about LOTRO. They both were lauded as WoW killers and flop they went like a pile of baby shit falling out of a dirty diaper. WoW for better or worse has some of the best pvp, the most active players, the deepest and most rewarding endgame, the lighthearted but challenging quests, the ability to solo easily without getting bored and still have a balanced party system and its not only that, but WoW always gives little tidbits related to current pop culture. It may seem like a small thing, but blizzard is genius for figuring out that these little snippets connect the game makers to the game players. Its not the best because of its name, there literally isn't anything out that's as quality as WoW and if there was people would be playing that instead of WoW. The minute a better game comes out WoW's population will shrink quickly. No matter how good the game is, you can't change the fact that WoW is old and people especially western gamers like new and shiny much more than old and busted.
