*Release* Rift Catch-All - if it isnt for any of the other threads - it goes here

I've been waiting for this. I liked Rift, but not enough to subscribe to it, or rather, subscribe to it instead of WoW.

Now that it's going F2P, let's do this!

Curious that Storm Legion download is 40$ but physical copies run 20$.
It does not include 30 days game time right?

I hung out on yesterdays Reddit AMA and followed the big feedback thread on the Rift forums. One of the takeaways from the Q&A information is that what you've bought before F2P conversion affects the bennies you have afterwards. It was recommended that you buy SL now, for example, rather than wait. Another point (revelant to the first) is that current benefits are account wide, where F2P benefits purchased from the cash shop will largely be bound to character (and thus more expensive).

The loudest topic of concern was the selling of gear in the cash shop. It sounds like they won't sell the top two raid tiers but will sell tiers below that. So you'd be a couple of content updates behind the raiding crowd, but it is arguably a P2W move and therefore a hot topic.

Since dimensions are my endgame, and it sounds like the cash shop has a large section for dimensions, I'm guessing my monthly sub will be spent there.

fangblackbone wrote:

Curious that Storm Legion download is 40$ but physical copies run 20$.
It does not include 30 days game time right?

The $20 physical copy at Amazon does indeed include the base game, the Storm Legion expansion, and 30 days of game time... at least, according to the description. I'm sorely tempted by this... but equally tempted to gamble and see if I can get it for $10 as we get closer to the free-to-play launch day.

I'm tempted to get it. My highest character was only level 24. I'm sure the 30 days is for new accounts only so I wouldn't be losing much. I too am hoping they open up more options prior to f2p launch but it is less than a month away...

I'm surprised noone has tried doing "starter packs" for existing mmo's that make the f2p conversion. For $$$ give them subscriber access until the f2p launch and include scaling f2p perks depending on how much you spend. (including an option that includes the expansion content pre and post launch such as unique "founder" housing items, mounts or pets)

Just picked up the $19.99 boxed version of Storm Legion from Best buy and it did not add time to me account. It was worth a shot.

Oh wow. I was jazzed about the new souls when they first announced the expansion. The videos are a whole other story.

But wow did it get lost in the shuffle with GW2 and Borderlands 2 releasing at a similar time. I just saw all the reveal videos for the new souls and they look really fantastic!

The cleric defiler seems really creepy.
The rogue tactician they mostly showed some really effective flamethrower skills and what seemed like a tether damage skill. There was a turret/totem skill that I couldn't really make heads or tails of.
The mage harbinger looked like a tank with a bit of mobility/teleports (maybe that was from a support soul). The summoned weapons seemed cool too.
The warrior tempest looked like it was very powerful at range. Dual wielding looked really nice with lightning leaping from both blades.

I think it is a case of show don't tell. They stretched out the tell at the beginning and then made us wait a long time in between updates. They couold have just ramped up a soul video a week leading up to launch and probably got more attention/sales. I really hope that now that there is room to breath, the f2p conversion goes well for RIFT.

Arovin wrote:

Just picked up the $19.99 boxed version of Storm Legion from Best buy and it did not add time to me account. It was worth a shot.

Try contacting a GM; there's a thread from a few months ago where someone claimed to have gotten 30 days added -- it's the result of some server-side limitation, or something, which caused you to NOT get the 30 days...

I actually got a Storm Legion key for free about a week ago through a Raptr giveaway and it came with 30 days of subscribed time. This was used on an account that I'd played up till 50 then gotten bored and let it lapse a couple years back.

While the Raptr key may have been special somehow, I'd definitely at least open a support ticket and ask. One would think that they're likely to be pretty generous handing out paid playtime right now anyways.

merphle wrote:
Arovin wrote:

Just picked up the $19.99 boxed version of Storm Legion from Best buy and it did not add time to me account. It was worth a shot.

Try contacting a GM; there's a thread from a few months ago where someone claimed to have gotten 30 days added -- it's the result of some server-side limitation, or something, which caused you to NOT get the 30 days...

Official response from GM after waiting around in queue for 45 mins on my lunch break was:

The expansion for RIFT, Storm Legion, does not come with 30 free days, I am afraid. Only the base games has the free play time.

From what I am seeing online it looks like if your account is inactive and you apply the expansion it will add 30 days. If you already have any time on your account and add the expansion you do not get any time added. I had trouble getting back into my account the other day after the F2P announcement. After getting that fixed with a GM they added 3 days to my account. I bet if I had waited until those 3 days where up to input my expansion key I would have gotten the 30 days.

Crap, I just reset my password for my inactive RIFT account and they wanted me to re-reset it and change my security questions. As a bonus for doing this, it gave my 3 days of subscription. So I wonder if this will bork my chances of getting the 30 days if I purchase the boxed copy.

There may be a chance. My account is still de-activated. To risk it or no, hmm.

fangblackbone wrote:

Crap, I just reset my password for my inactive RIFT account and they wanted me to re-reset it and change my security questions. As a bonus for doing this, it gave my 3 days of subscription. So I wonder if this will bork my chances of getting the 30 days if I purchase the boxed copy.

There may be a chance. My account is still de-activated. To risk it or no, hmm.

I would let those 3 days run out.

Sweet, i got the Raptr Storm Legion key as well, didn't even realize. Thanks for the heads up:)

Definitely going to get back into Rift now. Especially since after several years I am probably dropping my WoW account.

STUPID I SHOULD KNOW BETTER QUESTION: You buy the hard copy it should activate on Steam?

Hmm.. looks like I never played rift via steam even though I bought it through steam so raptr thinks I have never played it.

Budo wrote:

STUPID I SHOULD KNOW BETTER QUESTION: You buy the hard copy it should activate on Steam?

No the code does not work via steam. I am betting the f2p client will show up on steam.

Strange, I play through steam, on an older account, I had an active ongoing subscription and the Rapt key applied 30 more days time to my account.

Started playing again earlier this week- I resubbed last fall but hadn't really touched it because GW2 and Secret World got in the way. I rolled a new character to get used to playing before attempting to hop back into my lvl 50 from launch, and the new melee mage "Harbinger" soul is all kinds of awesome.

It does look all kinds of awesome.

The only one I am worried about is the Rogue/Tactician. Don't get me wrong, the flamethrower looks a ton of fun. I just worry it will get old much quicker than the other new souls. The footage doesn't show enough of the traps. I was under the impression that the Tactician soul had several trap-like skills.

Oh dear:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05...

I have some old co-workers and friends who I believe worked on Defiance. I hope they are okay.

I also hope that this doesn't put a fork in the plans for RIFT f2p.

edit: layoff numbers exaggerated. RIFT team not affected apparently.

Budo wrote:

STUPID I SHOULD KNOW BETTER QUESTION: You buy the hard copy it should activate on Steam?

If your base game is from Steam, you can still launch the Storm Legion expansion through Steam as long as it works the same way as buying their expansion from their online store. I originally bought Rift on Steam, then bought the expansion straight from Trion and it loads from Steam just fine.

So Bestbuy online has the game for $20 but all the copies in my local store are marked $40. Well of course the only solution is to buy from the online store for in-store pickup and then grab the copy off the shelf and take it to the store pickup counter =)

The only new soul I haven't tried yet is the Mage Harbinger. They are all fantastic so far and pretty much must haves. The tempest warrior is very much at home and deadly completely at range. The tactician is amazingly fast, fun and devastating aoe. I really want to try this soul mixed with the bard. The cleric defiler is more straight forward solo but has an instant cast, 6 second delayed blast nuke that mixes things up a bit. I think also with 16 points in the tree there are what are best described as debuffing, tanking totems that I can't wait to try.

I do not like the fact I can't select which souls I want from the start. They have 5-6 pre-made packages that you can choose and include interactive build guides that tell you where to put points when. I cannot believe they don't have a custom option. They don't tell you what souls are included. You have to guess from the packages description.

fangblackbone wrote:

I do not like the fact I can't select which souls I want from the start. They have 5-6 pre-made packages that you can choose and include interactive build guides that tell you where to put points when. I cannot believe they don't have a custom option. They don't tell you what souls are included. You have to guess from the packages description.

You can, on a new character you have access to all the souls. during creation pick whatever pre-made choice you want. Then right when you get into the game open your soul tree menu and you can pick any souls you want. Once you put points into a soul you are stuck with it until level 10 where you can then reset a tree at your class trainer.

fangblackbone wrote:

I do not like the fact I can't select which souls I want from the start. They have 5-6 pre-made packages that you can choose and include interactive build guides that tell you where to put points when. I cannot believe they don't have a custom option. They don't tell you what souls are included. You have to guess from the packages description.

That's how it was setup at launch... You just picked one of the four archetypes during character creation, then quests walked you through picking your souls in the starter zone. I think the current setup was a botched attempt to make the souls system friendlier to newcomers. As it is, you can still switch back to the custom options in the soul tree window.

You can, on a new character you have access to all the souls. during creation pick whatever pre-made choice you want. Then right when you get into the game open your soul tree menu and you can pick any souls you want. Once you put points into a soul you are stuck with it until level 10 where you can then reset a tree at your class trainer.

Thanks. I just figured that out and was about to post those very same things.

Note: you auto rank up spells/skills as well. Very nice touch. You know I am beginning to believe "the best mmo you are not playing" is true. There are a few conveniences from GW2 that I miss. (namely the "F" key) But that is it. Also, the mage/harbinger is pretty bad ass! I just found a mage trainer, and reset my points to get a necro to go with the harbinger. Heh, the pet will do some damage but more importantly, it will serve as a reserve hp pool and healing with transfer/links.

My 3 days are up, but I am working towards the Raptr promotion hoping that will give me active time until it switches over to F2P.

I do enjoy Rift, but playing it the last couple of days feels sluggish compared to the more action orientated MMOs I have been playing lately. I think it will take some time for me to adjust.

Heh, even as a rogue/tactician? If that doesn't spell flamethrower engineer, I don't know what does.

Arovin wrote:

My 3 days are up, but I am working towards the Raptr promotion hoping that will give me active time until it switches over to F2P.

Well, I qualify for the Raptr award now, but they ran out of keys.

Will have to wait to play again until the game goes f2p.

fangblackbone wrote:

What was the raptr promotion anyways?

Free copy of the game plus the expansion + 30 days of game time.

http://raptr.com/dashboard/rewards/r...

It looks like they ran out a few hours before I was eligible.

What was the raptr promotion anyways?

Okay so I really think this IA (instant adventure) and GW2's dynamic event system is the way to go for mmo's. I mean it is the perfect hybrid of themepark's structure with a casual grouping system. And RIFT proves that casual grouping works without the holy trinity and without everybody-gets-a-heal-button. (of course it has the most flexible class system instead*)

IA in RIFT are sequential dynamic events that don't have to be triggered (you queue for them)and send you all over the region without have you run too far in between most events. Instead of the loose grouping of GW2, they place you in a part and/or raid group depending on the number of people queued. Goal objectives are shared and difficulty is scaled per number of players participating. It does sound like GW2's system but RIFT's was first and GW2's is more refined. The pacing of RIFT's is better (it is more rapid even including GW2's living story events) and I like the fact they don't have to be triggered. GW2 is better because dynamic grouping is much better than throwing everyone into a raid, there are more than 2 options for a given level range, you also don't haveto wait until level 10 to participate and the events are more random whereas RIFT's it is the same 10 goals for the region that they feed you 5-6 at a time.

One thing that bums me out is it seems RIFT underwent some skill revamps some time ago. The changes are positive but they got rid of almost all of the channeling skills. I absolutely love channeling skills. (arcane missiles and shadow flay in WoW, DAOC's heretic, archmage in WAR, flamethrower skills in GW2 and RIFT, etc.) I could have sworn RIFT's sentinel or purifier had a channeled nuke and now its gone =(

*I did say that it has the most flexible class system. That includes mmo's like Secret World too. Because I don't see much more flexibility in TSW where certain builder skills only work with certain finishers and it seems to be 50/50 whether a skill requires a certain weapon or not. To me the difference in the amount of flexibility between RIFT and TSW is minimal or mostly preferential.

fangblackbone wrote:

One thing that bums me out is it seems RIFT underwent some skill revamps some time ago. The changes are positive but they got rid of almost all of the channeling skills. I absolutely love channeling skills. (arcane missiles and shadow flay in WoW, DAOC's heretic, archmage in WAR, flamethrower skills in GW2 and RIFT, etc.) I could have sworn RIFT's sentinel or purifier had a channeled nuke and now its gone =(

The new Tactician rogue soul relies heavily on channeled elemental "flamethrower" abilities called torrents. All the new souls are pretty awesome, but Tactician has possibly become my favorite.
My main is currently running a Bard/Tactician build and it is an absolute beast. The passive healing effects from Bard combined with the buffs and aoe abilities from Tactician let me tear through obscene amounts of enemies without my health bar moving at all.