Anyone else playing beta, its kept my interest, class system is kind intriguing, think they have 2 open beta weekends left before head start / release in FEB.

here's link to website:

http://www.riftgame.com/en/

whats the game like? is the pvp open world and faction vs faction like it is in wow on a pvp server or is it a pve game with optional pvp.

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2 factions, Guardians and Defiants, yes there is optional pvp on pve servers and total pvp servers, have not done a ton of the pvp stuff so can't really comment on it, for me its taken the best of the things I like the most from EQ2, WoW and Warhammer

my current set up is a Warrior, with the Champion/Riftblade/Beastmaster soul specs, that's alot to explain lol

basically it a dps warrior, who uses 2h weapons with alot of crits, has auras and magic based atks, and a dps beast companion, while wearing full plate armor, but there's alot more too it as well.

I fiddled around with Rogue a little bit but not nearly as much as warrior so I won't comment.

is there any reason to play a cloth class if these plate chars can just spec into magic based roles and pwn?

there not magic based rolls, its not like warrior can stand back and cast fireball, their auras are self only, that trigger on their melee attacks, mage classes, comprise all these different soul aspects, most of which I have not played.

Mage:
Elementalist
Pyromancer
Warlock
Archon
Necromancer
Stormcaller
Dominator

latest mage soul aspect added was Dominator, Druid soul aspect added to clerics, and Voidknight for Warrior and Saboteur for Rogue

Been playing the beta. The game was pretty exciting at first but its now a little meh to me. Outside of playing mad scientist with the class system, I really don't feel all that intrigued. I'll be more curious to see where this game is about 3 months after release.

There's nothing wrong with the game. I predict it will have a solid release but its nothing extraordinary by any means.

gonna give it a whirl, thanks for the Heads-up Drac

The class system look interesting. I might try it too.

I'm playing. So far I have a Bard/Asassin; a Inquisitor/Purifier; & a Warlord/Paladin. The only archetype I haven't played is mage.

I am not a quester (really they should call them tasks and the game a job) so the game has not been especially fun for me but if a narrow rails type of 'questing' game is what you enjoy then Rift might be fun. At first the synergies (or lack thereof) were fun to play with but I am still looking for a class similar to EQ's bard with lots of situational choices to make that really do matter. Rift doesn't offer that and given most of the feedback will probably go in the other direction.

hmm, a quest type game? That might be something for me to try.

quest is fastest exp, but by far not all their is to RIFT, its primary focus is pve, and post 30 the dungeons are very intersting and the raid content has been kept under wraps, again idk if that's a we have a fully polished extensive end game raid content ready to go and we want it to be challenging to all for the first time, or its a unfinished end game raid content ala old EQ and there are a bunch of giant naked human boss models waiting in the wings to be discovered.

For the four people that still read this board and don't have access to the beta yet, go here to get a key.

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=24901

beat me to it, givin. was just coming here to post the same thing after a guildie pointed me to it :p next beta event is jan 25th.

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Also, for those who may be interested, a few of us old Lanys players are starting up a guild and we'll be playing quite a bit (mostly for the PvP). Would love for someone to help lead this thing a bit.

Been working on a site for a day or so... for now the url is...
http://looksmatter.enjin.com

We have about 10 at the moment including myself, Xolar, Zeronus, and hopefully Duty. We have some other family and friends we've picked up along the way as well.

Curse jumping in with the beta keys as well.

http://www.curse.com/keys/rift-beta-2-eu/default.aspx

So you have to be "invited" even after you get a beta key? And you cannot DL the game client until said invitation? lame

The vip beta keys they gave out get you invitations to every remaining 'beta event'. Sounds to me like the servers aren't even up again until the 25th anyway.

There is a 24/7 Beta for the game going, which is levels 1-50 and all known (and unknown) content, but only the cream of the MMO crop (like your FoH, EJ, etc etc) got into that one. Everyone else is stuck with these level/content capped events that are basically both press/marketing hype machines and server load tests.

I've had a VIP key for months, but I've been letting my girlfriend play the majority of them. I did end up playing all of the 3rd event (where both sides were unlocked but cap was still at 20), and I personally am going to give this game a pass. It isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. However, it isn't all that good either. I'd call it 'OK' best and mediocre at worst. And before anyone asks, yes I did ALL available content (instances and PvP included) during the weekend I played...

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I will check this out when I get home today.

Funny, as soon as I post my rant I receive the beta invite.

I'm down to give it a shot as well.

BTW if you go to the GameFaqs entry for Rift and click on 'Board' people have been posting bulk VIP keys there that are good for the first 25 people. Just sayin.

I've got one. They apparently sent it out to people on their mailing list. Hit me up in PM if you are needing one.

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So, anyone got the low down on what the beta invite will be like for first timers this Jan 25th?

Do you start out level 1? Any tips from anyone who has done a few of these events all ready to help newbs from wasting time?

You start at level 1. Previous beta characters carry over. A lot of the low level experience is going to depend on how much actually gets brought over from Alpha into this beta phase. Best bet is to just try each of the four archetypes and find one that you like. Getting to 10 and access to your souls isn't that time consuming. You get to pick 3 via questing in the starting areas, then the rest you receive from quests in your factions main city. One thing that confuses most people on these last quests is, you go to a rift and help seal it. You'll get a black stone as a loot reward which you will then use out in the world to summon a corrupted soul that you have to slay. Once you slay that, just return to the quest giver for your new soul. The quest description was very vague on what you had to do exactly.

Nobody knows yet if the current rate of exp is final or not, but it feels way way too fast. The rift/invasion events were respawning super fast on purpose last beta cycle and will probably continue due to testing of the new rift specific grouping feature they just put in.

If you are looking to PvP you'll want to roll Guardian, the queues are much shorter.

Queues are across all servers and this is no indication as to how population is going to balance out at launch. Defiant was flooded due to being "new".

From Scott Hartsman of EQ2 fame, made famous for making the game not suck monkey cocks for 2 expansions and putting it back on track.

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.p ... lic-forums

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Beta 5 Preview - Crosspost for the Public forums

Hi, everyone -- Since the beta NDA is officially off, we wanted to post this here where those who couldn't make it to this beta would get a chance to see what we've been up to as well. Enjoy!

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Beta 5 Preview - It's been a busy couple weeks!

We’ve tried to take as much advantage of the relative calm between Beta 4 and Beta 5 as we possibly could. Here are some of the highlights to look forward to in Beta 5 tomorrow. We'd like to detail a number of them and also shed some light on a few things for Beta 6 and beyond.

New For Beta 5

We're expecting Beta 5 to be at least twice as big as beta 4! By the end of Beta 4, we were running a total of 18 servers. 8 in our Europe datacenter and 10 in the US. This time we're opening up with 16 in each region, for a total of 32 servers, all with higher population caps, more than doubling the number of people who can be online at once.

If you get caught in too long of a queue during the middle of beta, know that we'll be keeping an eye out to see if we need to open even more.

Public Grouping. This was a big one for us -- just about the single most requested item -- and we're really happy to have it in game for you to try out already.


First, as you're wandering around the world and target people, if they're solo or ingroups/raids that are willing to accept new public members, you'll see a new button in the target frame that lets you join their group or merge your group into theirs if it fits.

Second, when you walk into an area where there's an event occurring (or an event like an invasion walks up to you), if there are other friendly players in the area who are open to grouping, you'll see a button up on the top of the screen that lets you join the nearest Public Group.

Note that if your group merges and gets automatically upgraded into a Raid, you shouldn't take a huge XP penalty as with most games. Since Raiding is a valid way to play through the levelling up experience in Rift, most notably in mass zone events, we want to ensure that XP gains there are meaningful and fun.

Planar Foci and Currencies. An entire new character sheet awaits! Foci weren't as clear as they could be and Planar Currencies were taking up too much inventory space. The stats display was a little crowded at times as well. We've got a new version of the character sheet in place the addresses many of the issues people had been commenting on. Expect continued polish and functionality here in the future, and we hope you enjoy the inventory space reclamation in the meanwhile.

In terms of currencies, to make the whole system make more sense in general, the older per-zone token currencies are now various tiers of Sourcestone, and the common event tokens are now a single currency called Planarite. Expect to see more uses for these over time, including expansions of wardstone reinforcement and other world offense/defense metagame elements.

Rogue Energy. Rogue energy regeneration got a rework this update, and it definitely does feel a lot better. Give it a crack and let us know if you like the new responsiveness and lack of energy starvation!

Tab Targeting / Target Nearest. Tab targeting got a significant usability upgrade, and Target Nearest Friendly / Target Nearest Enemy are now bindable functions with F6 and F7.

Key Bindings. "How do I bind hotkeys?!" If you've been in beta, you've seen this question. A lot.

Our method of keybinding hotbars where you just mouse over the hotbar then press the letter was confusing a lot of people. It was the most asked "how do I" question throughout the beta so far. Our original way is still there, but the old-school method of listing out each keybind in the keybinds window has been added as well.

Discoveries and Firsts. As items, creatures and achievements get discovered for the first time, the game now keeps track of how many you’ve been the first to find. The messages around this are going to be a bit too frequent through the opening of beta, but will calm down rapidly as elements in the world are Discovered. It’s a system that we’re still tuning, and your feedback is definitely appreciated.

Ranged Weapon Sounds. We've had comments in the past on the sounds of these not being meaty enough. We've been taking those to heart, and we agree. We’ve started to improve some of these sounds and will continue to do so throughout the life of the game. See if you can pick out the new ones, and let us know what you think!

PvP Auto Flag. This is now an option available under Settings -> Interface -> Combat. You can disable it if you wish to not be automatically flagged while in PvE areas/servers.

Invasion Improvements. Invasions as a whole got some significant love this update. Expect a lot more variance in their size, and much better adaptability to the sizes of defending forces. (Which means you'll be a lot less likely to see a rift send out three waves of elite packs to deal with a relatively undefended area. They’re not supposed to be Global Steamrollers.)

On their Leashing and Social Aggro: Invasions were previously an all-or-nothing kind of experience. With larger numbers of players getting involved, they would leash and reset the whole invasion too frequently, and it was an item we got a lot of feedback on. We've addressed this in Beta 5. If you can peel one off while the others are distracted, more power to you!

New Visible Stats. Along with the new character sheet, you're going to see two stats that were previously not being displayed: Toughness and Valor.

Toughness is a PvE Tanking stat. Its purpose is provide a defensive upgrade path in upper tiers of PvE content, and is one more way to ensure that tanks can progress in PvE without being broken-overpowered in PvP due to their PvE gear. (PvE gear is still very useful, just not overpowering.)

Just like high end casters need Focus and physical DPS need some amount of Hit, high end tanks need Toughness to deal with more difficult monsters. All that said, Toughness, Focus and Hit make up a small amount of the overall stat distribution that you’ll see on your PvE items.

Valor is a PvP damage reduction stat. It's been in the game for quite some time and is now showing up on the new character sheet and in the tooltips for items that provide it.

Our game supports both PvP and PvE progression. A stat like Valor gives us an important tool to use in tuning the high end of those progressions.

NPCs and Players are not balanced identically, nor should they be. The pace of play is very different between the two styles. Fun PvE and fun PvP are generally two very different things. Nerfing PvE abilities for the sake of PvP, as other games have found themselves forced to do, is something that we're trying to avoid wherever possible,

In providing a good PvP progression, we need to ensure that we can provide good rewards, without forcing people to play a part of the game they might not care to.

PvE gear remains competitive in PvP, and PvP gear remains competitive in PvE. It just won't be a trump card in the opposite style of play. You shouldn't expect to need to "grind" two full sets of gear just to have fun.

A stat like Valor is one more tool we can use to ensure that, for instance, the ideal PvP rewards do not become the de-facto best PvE Tanking rewards in the game. (Without Valor, significant PvP survivability also becomes PvE survivability…and, conversely, the best PvE DPS loot would become the de-facto best PvP DPS loot). We’d effectively be forcing people to gear up one way just to succeed at the other, since NPCs are balanced much differently than players.

Some people think these are a great idea, and others are less than thrilled due to negative experiences with related-sounding mechanics in other games that provide E-Sport style PvP, which we have intentionally not included and do not have plans to. Other games have their issues to design for, and we have ours. The two are definitely different.

Q: Am I going to have to "grind" two sets of gear the entire time?

A: No. Gear from each kind of play is competitive in the other side. It's just not overpowering to the other side. It remains a great head start. We expect that the highest end PvP and PvE'ers will choose to care, but the majority won't find that its existence impacts their gameplay in a negative way, since we are not balancing the game around any kind of E-Sport style Arenas, as other games have.

Q: Why can't you balance everything around Health?

A: Players are infinitely smarter than creatures, and abilities are used in both PvE and PvP. Having PvP damage reduction be purely about health would create a situation where almost necessitate PvE tanks to have to gear up via PvP. We are primarily trying to ensure that people who choose to only take part in one style of play aren't "forced" to take part in the other.

We like to think that we've so far been pretty good at reacting once things have proven to work or not work in Rift. As with any other mechanic in the game, we'll be keeping an eye on it. If it's making the game not fun, it will be addressed.


Here's what's on deck for future Betas:

Activated Racial Abilities. We know that some of them are overpowered and bring the whole concept out of whack. Our original idea was: "let's make sure these things are really fun." In our doing this, they've almost turned into a powergamer IQ test. It's not good for anyone if we effectively lock a race to a given play style. (e.g. all Tanks must be one race and all DPS must be another, or you're Doing It Wrong). Expect updates to the racials following this beta.

Master Loot. Yes, it's coming! Groups and raids will be able to have a Master Looter who's in charge of assigning out loot.

Collections merge into the new Character Sheet. "Where are my mounts? Where are my titles?" Now that we've designed a character sheet that can fit them in a way that looks good and is more usable, collections will make their way into it as well.

War Powers. We have a lot of consumable items in the game that are focused on the idea of the war between the planes and the rifts and the land-control meta game. Expect a special place for them in the Abilities tab and a resource to power them soon. Time to get them out of your inventory, provide a better sense of discovering them, and get them into a place where they make a whole lot more sense. Expect more details here in the future.


We're looking forward to this largest Beta we've ever run. While there will definitely be some bumps, we'll be right there with you the entire time to make sure everything goes as well as it possibly can.

- The RIFT Development Team
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Knowing that this man is at the helm gives me hope for this game. His work on EQ2 was nothing short of a miracle and really turned the game around before SOE rammed it back into the ground after his departure.

those changes sound nice. I REALLY like how they are keeping the PVP and PVE stuff somewhat different and neither one set as needed for the other.

We have our guild currently on Lotham if anyone wants to say hi. Forgot to mention that earlier.

I just started the Beta for this game. It seems decent so far.

Are you Guardians or Defiants, Muli?

Guardians on Lotham currently. Guild Vendors were down yesterday and we moved servers so we'll hopefully get a guild up and going today.

We played quite a bit last night and my impressions are the same. The game is good and the invasions/rifts really added something fresh.

Played it for a little while last night. The soul system is weird but entertaining. I'm sure it is going to get min-maxed all to hell and there will only be a few 'acceptable' class combos when it does.

Easily the most boring, repetitive quests of any mmorpg I've ever played.

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My stuff on facebook.

Don't see how they are any more boring or repetitive then quests in other mmo's. There isn't anything new but there isn't anything lacking either.

Rift's whole marketing strategy, and in essence truly the game itself, is they are doing nothing radically new, but taking the best of each mmo and incorporating it with their own twists, to make a very good polished, playable game thru beta, launch, and after to end game content.

Pretty decent so far. Have a Shaman/Justicar/Druid up to 15ish. Trying to figure out how to choose the fourth soul as I can only find quest for Cabalist. Seems like everyone is playing cleric or marksman at low levels.

Rift events are decent and seem to scale with participants. It's very much like Warhammer's system except it gives higher level folks a reason to be there and allows solo'ing (so far) from the start. So basically it fixed the two main failings of PQs.

I didn't feel that regarding the quests at all. Actually, I can't even keep track of my quests because I find myself jumping into Rifts and WarFronts.

I preordered today. Each beta I have felt the game has shown improvements and yeah, its nothing all that new but its the best components done well from each game.

FYI, Direct2Drive has a 20% off everything promo code that works on Rift pre-orders, I just grabbed a copy myself.

Shameless refer link for 20% off code:
http://direct2drive.tellapal.com/a/clk/WT9qZ
or just use "wetkitty" if you don't want to hook a bastard up.

Anyone have a key they could PM me?

That's probably the most true statement about the game I've ever seen.

I've been playing through this event weekend again and quite a few areas have seen improvements (aside from the noticeable graphic upgrades with advanced options being turned on).

The biggest issue with the game I have coming off playing this week is that it's committing the worst sin possible when it comes to Questing in this generation; having to run back and forth halfway across the zone map from the quest hub to the quest objectives. With auto quest turn-ins or updates, it is really time consuming and mindnumbing to have to walk/run/mount halfway across a zone to do quests...only to turn them in and get 3 more quests back in the same area halfway across the map. This becomes especially tedious, not to mention dangerous, with Rift Invasions and 90% of the mobs in game being hostile. I could almost deal with the back/forth travel if it weren't for roaming packs (we call them Rape Packs) of Elites from Invasions. This leads to a sub-part of my complaint, graveyard placement at all levels is just bad.

The game will do well, it has enough going for it to be fun. Still weary about playing it at launch...we'll see.

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Have my Riftblade/Paragon/Champion/Beastmaster, (can only run 3 souls at a time, I just have 4 aquired soul aspects atm), up to level 30, dunno how it compares to mage/rogue but and with no parse to judge on, I think this soul aspect puts out a ton of dmg, especially the Rift/para/champ

Can self buff the shit out of myself as well =)

I had fun playing a bard/nightblade up to 13 but got a little bored and didn't play at all the last day of beta. How is the game at at 20+? Aside from the rifts and warfronts I was really bored in the early teens.

I've been playing with a mix of my girlfriend's friends, some old Oryx/guildmates, and some EJ dudes. Mostly 20+ is still quests, but we do a lot of PVP and instances with the people I know. I imagine pugging is probably just as much of a crapshoot as it is in WoW. I get the feeling that it's going to be the same going up to max level.

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I played this last round of beta and saw enough to see I won't be playing at release. I didn't play EQII for a reason and those reasons still apply to this game. You can gank all the "good stuff" out of other games you want, you'd still be layering it over a faulty base in my opinion.

To each their own.

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I did 20-29 with a minimal amount of questing. Primarily doing DD instance and RIFT'ing. The newest zone that they released steps it up in difficulty abit...a level 30 RIFT has a epic boss for minor rifts just to get to the bonus stage now. Me and my brother got it to 1% before the server went down but it took us 3+ minutes (bonus time is 30 seconds or less lol). Mobs start having a lot more abilities like knock back etc.

Anyways, RIFT so far is a pretty solid game all around. I had to temp. retire from EQ2 raiding in November due to a major project at work but finished that and plan on raiding again. I am probably going to play with some guildies from my EQ2 guild. If anyone is planning on playing with end game raiding in mind and does not have any particular server/guild they are planning on going to let me know. Not sure what are numbers are going to be like but its a decent guild (top 13 WW in eq2). This won't be as bad as WOW but I still rather avoid PUG'ing like the plague.

Turbo

I'm not running with anyone atm Turbo and defintely plan on playing this full time thru end game content, so Free Agent signing available, set up lunch, have my people talk to your people etc !

my agent is a reasonable person, and my signing bonus demands are quite reasonable as well !!

and I always talk in 3rd person in negoiations just fyi, cause drac loves me some me.

I'll be Mathosian, or Eth, dps warrior Riftblade/Paragon/Champion soul specs, will add Warlord Reaver and Beastmaster as well when I collect plane shards to do so.

sadly i missed the open 3 day beta due to work but i wish they would send me a damn beta invite already lol (unlucky when it comes to betas). The game looks great imo, id like to get in with a group of raiders and try out the end game shit later on.

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It looks like beta keys are still available at ZAM and Curse. I assume you already signed up to get one of those, correct? There's a new beta test starting this friday I believe.

Again, check the gamefaqs forums. Five or six people at work have gotten bulk VIP keys there.

Yeah i have a VIP key now. just waiting for an event to happen now.

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beta event 6 starts Friday Feb 4th thru Monday Feb 7th

OK, I would like to hook up with you guys in Rift. I was in Oryx and some other leveling guild with you Turbo? I think...that was what 8, 9 years ago? Anyway, I would love to hook up with people from lanys in Rift. Please post what server and what not in this thread or email me Locatis_Ravenhoft@hotmail.com.

Holla,
Locatis

Played this weekend. Enjoyed the game a lot. Going to preorder it tonight and wait til its released lol. It's a very fun game. The war front are not bad either. That and the rift events are nice ways to get great exp.

Been bored as hell with WOW so I canceled my account last night.

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I cancelled mine a week or so ago. It had more to do with Cataclysm than it did with Rift though.

Listened in on the RIFT podcast today since they were discussing instances and raid content, they stated there will be a fully itemized and ready to go tier 1 raid instance both 10 man and 20 man upon release, and within 30 days a 2nd tier 1 raid zone introduced.

Then also stated that short order after that will be introduction of 1 tier 2 raid instance, all in all their podcast was informative and gave me even more confidence in this game at release.

placed my preorder today for it. Kinda odd though because my credit card info is there but not the game listed in my game tab. does it take a few days to show up?

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I'm 12/12 in Cata Raiding...already canceled my account. Will likely preorder once my tax refund hits my bank account

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Update to my order issue. I called trion and wad connected to a account support person. Told him that when I went through the order steps it would time out and send me to my account page and not have the game listed.

He asked me what search engine I used and told him it happen to me using Google crome and internet explorer. He was friendly and said he spoke with others who had this issue and recommended that i use FireFox. I told him I was at work and that I would try it from my Android phone.

he held while I did it with my account opened on his end. worked fine and it went through. he said it could of also been a home network issue and FireFox may have not worked for me.

so this is ust an update encase anyone else is having this issue.

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Man, and my little guild hasn't even cleared one and spends hours wiping in the other.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW