Rift test server

They're reopening Alpha and letting anyone with an active account test out the updates. Also for those who were already in Alpha we get to keep our characters. So a good place to hang out when the regular servers are down.

Elrar;1518898 wrote:

Update - 12:33PM PST: Very soon happens to be Today! Players can have their first look at the premiere update for Rift today (Saturday 3/5/11) starting @ 2:00PM PST!

We’re already hard at work on Rift’s first major update and soon we will need your help! We will be temporarily opening the Alpha test shard for all players with an active subscription very soon, here you will be able to have a firsthand look at all the new content and improvements we have in the wings.

Alpha will only be open during certain periods so be sure to check it out and give your feedback when you can! Of course, being a test shard means that at times things will not go as planned – expect bugs, bumps, and frequent maintenance.

While you can’t copy your characters, those who played on Alpha before headstart will find their characters are still available. Lastly, try to avoid sharing spoilers across the forums; many players enjoy learning and discovering the game on their own, we appreciate your understanding.

Thanks for your help and feedback, we’re making Rift better together – have fun!

Start patching today – Download the Alpha Client

If you still have your client installed from pre-headstart Alpha testing, don't re-download the game. Simply launch Alpha and patch up!

You’ll find the latest notes in the patcher!

Not sure what the format needs to be to get the link to work.. but here it is without the HTML

http://update2.triongames.com/patche...

So Rift is coming out with some new souls sometime in May in their 2.7 patch. They are available now on the PTR so I figured I would check them out for the small lot of you still interested in this game. (probably only me) I saw some footage of the new souls and they look pretty fantastic. I know it is way too late for all the archtypes to finally be able to fill all roles but this look like it will do that trick.

The warrior will finally be able to heal and looks like a very active healer along the lines of a warrior priest or perhaps more like the disciple of khaine. The mage will finally get a tanking soul. The cleric will get a support soul that works like the bard except instead of channeled heals, they will be absorb shields (pretty darn cool). And the rogue will get a true healing soul.

I will let you know. I really liked the souls they implemented in Storm Legion. I just fired up the regular client to get my feet wet and man was I totally lost in my ability rotations. Hopefully the fresh start on the PTR will make things go smoother.

And, forget it. The process to get the new souls is unnecessarily complex and only works for level 50 plus (or really 60 because the gear available to you is for level 60 for different raid tiers)

I got a look at the skill trees though which are interesting but overwhelming for someone who's highest character is level 24.

I tried this one out a long time ago, but couldn't remember it for some reason. Loaded it back up after this post, and it's... weird for me. I like the idea (story), I like the character models. I like the general feel and animations of the game. I like the art, and the landscapes. I like the fact that while it's a two faction game, neither side looks inherently evil or ugly. I like having a lot of choice in the skill trees, though this thing where it's asking to spend points for me based on my choice at creation is a bit... irritating.

Out of all that, I still have trouble really getting into this game, and I have no idea why.

PurEvil wrote:

I tried this one out a long time ago, but couldn't remember it for some reason. Loaded it back up after this post, and it's... weird for me. I like the idea (story), I like the character models. I like the general feel and animations of the game. I like the art, and the landscapes. I like the fact that while it's a two faction game, neither side looks inherently evil or ugly. I like having a lot of choice in the skill trees, though this thing where it's asking to spend points for me based on my choice at creation is a bit... irritating.

Out of all that, I still have trouble really getting into this game, and I have no idea why.

I like Rift, but soooo many abilities, so many buttons or macros to spam through about 8 abilities.

EDIT - as in of the 30 or so active abilities there are eight you want to use in rotation with various cool downs or other conditions so one makes a macro with all eight of them, and still have 11 other buttons to push for the other abilities, pots, etc.

I think one of the issues I am having now is the lack of variety in the world. It is a lot of grunge and dirt aside from the elemental rifts. It makes one wonder if WoW would have been as successful in sepia tone? Things may open up at later levels but at least on the defiant side, the first 30 levels are muck and stone.

I am not sure that while there is diversity in the look of monsters, they lack personality other than what their physical appearance provides. Things either charge you when attacked or pluck arrows and sling fireballs from afar.

There is a lot of running around and too much back and forth as well.

Man the rogue tactician is still such a blast and I found out something new today. They have a mentoring system so that I can level from 10-50 in the freemarch (level 10-20 questing area) instant adventure mode. My level will be scaled to level 14 for the duration but I will be earning xp and gear appropriate for my real level no matter how much higher it is from the current area is intended for. It is working so far up to level 21 which is right around where I get bored with the game and its quest chains.

So I will probably be able to stick with the game longer this time around. And I can't wait to try some of the new souls coming in patch 2.7, again. I guess I am glad the PTS doesn't have them available at level 1 yet or ever. That way I won't burn myself out on them and the progress I make with them I will be able to keep once they hit live.

It has taken some time but I have settled into some really fun builds with something other than a rogue. My cleric was the first to have a break through with cabalist/defiler/purifier. It was funny that I was a single target wrecking machine with some group damage but I had no real sustained survival (as a healer no less). Hence that is why I exchanged my 3rd soul for a zero point purifier for the absorb shield. I may try swapping that out for a druid for the zero point healer or tank pet. I love the cabalist because of its aoe dot and dark water which is a stacking 50/50 nuke/dot spell. The defiler is just a great well rounded soul that was launched with the Storm Legion expansion. A lot of its stuff is powerful but delayed which is unique enough to tickle my combat strategy bone.

The latest class revelation is for my mage. I really, really, really like the dominator soul. And to think that since launch I completely poo pooed it because its zero point skill was transmogrify, a gimmick skill that I had no interest in. But 4 points in it has a debuff that damages an enemy whenever it attacks. And at 12 (13) points it has a channeled mana drain that does a lot of damage. The reason I say 13 is because that includes 3 points to lower its cooldown from 25 seconds to 10 seconds. (gravy!) I have been in flux as to what souls to pair it with but I have found great success with elementalist or necro. I do not have enough points yet but with 12 points into elementalist, I get the air elemental ranged damage pet that I am really looking forward to. If that doesn't work out (I am guessing it will as I see a lot of air elemental pets cruising around the servers) I will go up the necro tree for the dots, pet heal buff and deathly calling bonuses.

Again, all of this will change once the new souls come out. I don't know how I am going to pass up healing as either a rogue or warrior. Or I cannot over look the support cleric. ( I am guessing that it will let the cleric's dual wield?) Also, I don't really have a 3rd soul for my dom/elem or dom/nec so the tank soul will work wonderfully.

So the new souls (warrior and rogue healer, mage tank and cleric support) come out on Wednesday. I can't wait.

The price is 5000 credits which currently is either 2x $20 credit packs (with 1500 credits left over) or 1x $20 plus 3x $5 credit packs (with 500 credits left over)

That is insanely overpriced.

Well there is also the REX (RIFT exchange) so you can potentially buy the souls for a ton of in game cash. But I don't have even 1 plat let alone ~4000 of them. They say that most server exchange a REX for 900+ plat. One REX is worth 1250 credits (+2500 loyalty).

That is insanely overpriced.

So I would hold off on purchasing the new souls. They are pretty unimaginative save for the Oracle support soul for the cleric. The other souls pretty much do what they say they are for with little flavor. I am really shaking my head just wondering what the mage tank soul is supposed to do other than provide resistances and armor. It seems like sort of a half thought out companion soul to the harbinger melee dps soul from Storm Legion. (that was awesome btw) They probably would have been better off just moving some of the armor and resist bonuses to strengthen the harbinger tree and worked on something really unique.

I think that is the problem with RIFT's skill system. The souls are all over the map in fun, utility and power. At some point they majorly revamped the mage's Dominator soul and it went from one trick pony (the only soul across all archetypes that has transmogrify) to unbelievably awesome currently with mana tap channels (which are useless since mana regens as fast as the rogue's focus or the warrior's power). Still despite the mana tap portion being useless, the damage is great and looks cool plus the dominator has things like debuffs that damage based on movement or attacking.

They have also done somethings to blur the lines between the souls even further. The cleric's cabalist soul is incredible at dps in both aoe and single target. They are on par with all the top dps (ranged or melee) souls from the mage and rogue except for the rogue tactician.

The rogue tactician is easier and better at both single target and aoe dps than any other souls. You don't even have to put points into the soul for this to be the case. They have a series of flame thrower style attacks that are just devastating on single and multiple targets. They are channeled aoe with a pretty wide range that is narrow enough to avoid aggroing more than you want and they don't require nor generate combo points. They do have a small nerf in a stacking damage debuff for successive channeling but it was a smart nerf where the skills are still useful.

The thing with a lot of the older souls is that they had flavor and implemented twists on skills that were shared with other souls. The new souls do have some of this but it is not enough. The 2 healing souls, the warrior and rogue, are different in that one provides absorb shields in addition to the heals and the other provides small heals to its damaging skills but it is not much more more than trivial. Their skill trees have a lot of filler with things like increasing heals or damage or spell power by 1-5% or 2-10%. They also put more powerful versions of early skills after 10-20 points in the tree that just boosted damage by 20% which would have been better served by tweeking a bit more by adding a debuff or converting a portion of the damage/heal over time or allowing stacking of the damage or buff.

Contrast this with the defiler soul from Storm Legion where the theme was corruption and not tied to heals, damage, tanking or support. all of the skills were related to mutation so instead of a traditional pet skill, you had a grotesque stationary summons that taunted, did no damage and absorbed half damage that was then transferred to the cleric. The defiler had links/bonds like this with other players that they could exploit with other support skills and passives. They also upended damage and healing spells by making them time delayed and then interlocked such that other skills could trigger them early and add debuffs. They also added an absorb shield to the middle of the tree that is a poorer substitute to those of the purifier (the absorb shield specialist soul) but they worked in a pinch or for soloing.

I think one of the other problems is that even with the souls that work well, there is a leveling off in utility past 12-16 points. At this point you need to start dumping a massive ton of points into a tree to get further utility or to reach a sort of soul ultimate ability at 31 points or above. I think this may be why I struggle to level passed the mid twenties because I have enough skill points to cover a lot of good basic skills in 2 trees. Anything else I am interested in will require 12-20 more points which is 10-16 levels of superfluous changes to my character.

LOL I posted this on the RIFT forums and was told to shut up until I got a character to level 50+ or 60. I asked if they felt that was a healthy attitude and someone else posted in response that yes, all the souls were garbage until level 50+ so I did in fact need to level to 60 to start commenting.

So the standard trap of most older MMO's, everything is catered to the end game and if anyone has problems at low levels they should just stfu? I really hate that. It's like self generated stagnation. Games like STO have tried to fix this by just making levelling to max as short as possible and WoW just flat out gives you a max level character. That idea I don't like, at least with STO you have what amounts to an 8 hour tutorial to help you learn the game.

I know. Isn't that fun?

I mean I understand the frustration of higher levels being constantly trolled by complaints by players not as invested in the game as they are. But I am really invested in the game and I posted impressions backed up by many hours of experience from trying several attemps to find a lasting rhythm with this mmo.

And this is beside the point that I clearly stated that one of the problems is that I get to a point where it seems like anything interesting in a souls tree comes after spending a further 12-20 points. Which based off my current highest level character at 35 would mean that I would have to hit close to the said level 50 "real game start".

Serenj wrote:

That is insanely overpriced.

It is functionally the price of an xpack, which is how they treated the souls from the first xpack when this went ftp.

Not saying it isn't spendy, but I think Trion's approach (so far) is that new souls = xpack.

LOTRO does something similar with the newest content being gated to those who buy it then opening (or making it hella cheap) later.