Rift - addons not required

[FatherJack]

I'm pretty sure most of us would be in contravention of RP naming policies if our names are like the ones we normally use.

[Anery]

Do we have a shard that we're gonna put the 5punk guild on? Apparently our existing one is for trial players only.
I'm gonna move to the PVE-RP one (Argent) and see what it's all about.

I've moved all mine to Icewatch already, also RPers freak me the fuck out.

[Grimmie]

I'm just gonna have a nose around. It can't be that bad, right? Right?

Maybe I'll do a pictureblog :D

[FatherJack]

I've updated Raptr with links to all my other accounts, XBL, PSN, Steam and XFire and now have a mighty 8792 gaming hours tracked - just over a (leap) year. I only started tracking precisely eight years ago when I joined 5punk.

I think I shall send a link to my Mum so that she knows I am not wasting my life.

[tandino]

Annoying. Just missed out on the free copy of rift reward from raptr. There were 1800 left last night and now there's none. I left it running at the login screen last night so I was arguably cheating the system a little. Played about an hour or so of it and so far nothing really grabs me. Way too early to make an informed decision yet though.

[FatherJack]

Annoying. Just missed out on the free copy of rift reward from raptr. There were 1800 left last night and now there's none. I left it running at the login screen last night so I was arguably cheating the system a little. Played about an hour or so of it and so far nothing really grabs me. Way too early to make an informed decision yet though.

That's a shame, I only had three hours to make it to the required level.

[Anery]

I'm in the same boat, if I had stayed up a few hours longer on Friday night/Sat morning I would probably have got one, alas I had to sleep. From what I have been hearing these were not full game codes but a strange cut down version that didn't include the souls (talent trees) that are locked out until you purchase SL - but now I shall never know for sure.

I have bought a guild charter but I play at some random times of day due to my bonkers work schedule, need to try and get it signed by all of youse at some point.

[Anery]

Raptr rewards are go again.

[Grimmie]

Well spotted, grabbed it this time :D

[tandino]

Hopefully me too

[Anery]

I've been meaning to write a re-review of this seeing as I am playing it again after over a year.

So, last time I compared Rift to WoW, it was the biggest and I had just finished playing it myself so it was the natural thing to do.
Now I have ALL THE MMOS to measure it against.
I'll start with character creation, it is pretty much what you would expect, tweak the face, hair style, skin colour...yadda... against most MMOs this is pretty standard. Choosing a class and play style has been made a fuck ton easier, now, when you choose which of the four classes you want to play (Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Cleric) if will ask you what playstyle you want to choose and present you with the three 'Souls' (talent trees) applicable to that style, as well as an appropriate weapon. Instead of throwing 8 souls at you and making you choose which ones sounded best.
The starting area has also been put on a diet, the area is still the same size but a lot of the filler quests have gone, only the core introductory ones remain and you burn through them pretty quickly.
Combat is pretty standard, unlike GW2 you cannot cast whilst running about but anybody used to wow will get to grips with this pretty quickly. You don't get a massive repertoire of skills until about level 20 or so, it doesn't overload you with rotations to remember and cooldowns to monitor - my ranger (rogue) is level 15(ish) and uses 3 skills in rotation with 2 buffs and one situational. Of course this does change but the learning curve is pretty shallow.
IT HAS ALL THE THINGS, need to sell all your grey crap to a vendor? there is a button for that - sure GW2 had that too, but hey - need to know where a quest mob can be found? it is highlighted on your map - sure, wow did that but only after a long time - need to grab some dungeon time? there is a LFG tool - sure, wow has it, GW2 doesn't (incidentally the reason I hardly play that game any more) The game is about CONVENIENCE, if something is inconvenient then there is something in the game to negate that effect. Even fucking up your talents and gimping your character is no big deal - unlike wows escalating respec costs which punish experimentation.
Don't get me wrong, it is far from perfect. The graphics are a little bit dated, you do have "kill 10 X" quests, a lot of travel is done on foot/mount, resources are competitive, I repeatedly tried to double tap dodge and it took me some time to stop attempting to move and channel at the same time. But none of these things make it bad, or even irritate that much (seeing some twat suck up a resource node you have just cleared of mobs is a pisser mind)

ALL BADGERS HAVE ARSES!

It has some new things too, like a version of player housing called dimensions that you can keep private or open up to the public. These are small instanced areas of the open world where you can stash special items that drop or build stuff - it can get a bit minecrafty and some folk have been quite creative - I visited a public one the other day that somebody had turned into an assault course in the air, only he had hidden most of the walkways under trees and bushes with hidden drops.
There are new souls with the Storm Legion expansion - mages can now melee, warriors can now cast (sort of) rogues can do some kind of weird engineer thing and clerics can, well, they can heal aggressively.
Also new are the cooking and fishing skills, yes I know WoW had those but so did Ultima Online, these provide new ways of picking up collectable but also new ways of sourcing that important health renewal.

All in all, it is polished but it needs more people. I suspect that won't be a problem as soon as it goes F2P.

TLDR: Go get a trial account.

[Grimmie]

I'm level 20 on my rogue archer now. I tried PVP the other day, and it was a rather lovely experience.

Hit K on the keyboard and it comes up with a quick join option, no matter where you are in the game. Take part in a round and get a huge chunk of experience (roughly 2-3 times as much as standard level 15-20 quests). Respawns are quick, and at the end of your match you get a random item.

Instant Adventure is pretty cool too. You get rewarded with Planar Soulstones (another kind of currency, they're the pounds to planarite's pennies.) for simply teleporting across the map and completing quests against a clock in a randomly generated group. It's fun, and you can spend your planar monies on rare armour.

The soul system, as Anery said, is far more accessible now too. You can pick a "purpose" when you start out, which is a mix of three souls of the eight available. The game will guide you through skill point distribution level by level, so you don't necessarily have to google "BEST ROGUE BUILD" to come out with a decent character. The option to choose a second purpose and switch between them is neat too. You can deviate from the build, but it effectively takes you off the hand-holding purpose system for those souls, I believe.

And, as I remembered, the huge server-wide NPC invasions are as exciting and fun to work against as I remember.

[Pnut]

Apparently my character is too high a level to play at the min (28), so I will be waiting until it goes FTP before joining in again.

[tandino]

Managed to grab my free copy of the game & expansion. I've played around a little and got as far as level 7 with a Magey Deathy thinger, but I'm debating taking more time to start over with a class I'm going to enjoy. What shard are we all on?

[Anery]

I'm on Icewatch, it has the highest pop at the moment which is good for finding random groups. Grimmie is doing the RPthang over on Argent I believe.

[Grimmie]

Argent ain't bad. It's a nice little community with people chatting about lore in the main channels.

People appreciate a good "Hail, adventurer" in /say when you team up in an event. Pleasant

There was a 51 minute wait for my character to log in to Icewatch earlier, so.. Yeah. I played my Argent characters instead.

[Anery]

Seems I was wrong about the grouping, I never noticed that some folks in my dungeons (brave people indeed to rely on my tanking) have an @Blightwield or @stormpike after their name - never seen at @Argent, probably because you are RPers they might keep you seperate.
So it might be worth checking out Blightwield, I understand that server never has queues. The only problem with that is that the economy will be down the shitter, though it should pick up when F2P goes live...along with the population. If anyone is over there already let me know what it is like.

[Anery]

I've moved my characters across to Blightweald, that way all my resource gatherers and money makers are all in one spot.
I'm putting together a guild charter, I know Pants normally does that stuff but I figured to get everything ready.
If we have the resources I am looking to (re?)create The Waugh Arms in one of the dimensions (StoneFlask Tavern) costs a lot though (300P)

[tandino]

I'm doing ok with my super hardcore DoT cleric at the moment on Icewatch, but I have a few quests that really need you to group up with randoms. When there are randoms, they're pretty sound, just can't find them often enough. How's the population on Blightweald? I like the idea of creating a Waugh there. Might need some help though.

[Roman Totale]

I just transferred to Icewatch. I now have a million buttons that I can't remember what to do with.