Any of you fellas planning to play RIFT at release?

And don't forget release day isn't until march 1. So its not like the game is knocking down our door a week from now.

How about:
Reborn with Jobs
Executive Washroom Ascended

Just a heads up Steam has this up for pre-order now.

I'll be playing at release.

I hope we're planning to have the guild on the bad guy faction!

Definitely a decision that needs to be made. I think they will be stronger in PvP due to everyone wanting to play the bad guys.

Shadowklr wrote:

Just a heads up Steam has this up for pre-order now.

Picked up my CE version this evening.

SpyNavy wrote:
Shadowklr wrote:

Just a heads up Steam has this up for pre-order now.

Picked up my CE version this evening.

My husband and I did as well this evening!

The PvP balance in beta has been a real mixed bag, with regards to Defiant vs. Guardian. It depends entirely on whether or not there's a decent-sized, well-organized guild working together. That consistently tips the balance, even when they are outnumbered.

That's based on the overland pvp stuff I was watching from the last beta. I think in warfronts (next beta) it will be even more pronounced.

and also, I vote we go Defiant.

Have they decided yet whether you can go Guardian and Defiant on a regular PVE server yet?

I would like to try one Guardian character, but other than that, I am Defiant all the way.

AFAIK, there are no restrictions about having characters of both factions on the same server.

I have seen no restrictions at all. I actually like both sides so I am good with Defiant as a choice.

I have this on order and plan to give it a spin upon release.

I have skipped the beta but am buying based on the good buzz I'm hearing.

I also planned on going Defiant for my main and will probably tinker with a Guardian alt of some sort.

I think most people seem to prefer the Defiant both within GWJ and other forums I have perused. Everybody likes to be the bad boy :). Really looking forward to the game - I have been quite impressed and hopr to dabble in some PvP this weekend.

Which beta server you on, Spy? I'll be on Lotham most the time. Would be fun to pair up for some PvP, I have a healer on that server.

Tyagaraja wrote:

Which beta server you on, Spy? I'll be on Lotham most the time. Would be fun to pair up for some PvP, I have a healer on that server.

I honestly don't remember, but I will generate a toon on Lotham. I am a big fan of trying out new toons and haven't played with a warrior or Cleric yet. My hope is to jump on around 9pm EST on Friday. Meet me in vent and we can coordinate or just pm me here.

FYI - anyone who pre-ordered through Steam. I was not able to log in and patch using the client Steam installed. But I downloaded a fresh patcher from the Account management page and got in with no issues. Might have been a temp glitch but if you have issues going through Steam just go direct.

Had no issues with Steam at all. Got my code and registered, may have been temporary.

I also had no issues. Hope it was just a temp thing so no one else has problems.

Anyone who hasn't purchased Rift yet and is interested can pick it up at D2D for 20% off. They are having a sale on all MMOs, for the release of DCUO I think. Promo code is JOKER. Worked for me. At least about 30 mins ago anyway.

Been in the alpha for a few months and while I cannot say anything about that I will definately say I have already preordered the collectors edition via steam and cannot wait until the game launches.

I am 100% on board with starting up a GWJ Guild and will do whatever is needed to make that happen straight away. My vote is for Defiant.

I have played the last 4 betas and I love it. It is the alt fiends dream game. Preorder as well. My problem is sticking with a character as aforemetioned alt fiend.

Well as we get closer to the head start we will have to work together to make sure we are on the same server and get a guild up and running.

Yep, we will need to determine server and it sounds like everyone wants to be defiant so that will be the likely faction. I will post an interest thread later in the month.

I just got into the beta this weekend and am enjoying it. I'll be keeping an eye out here for a GWJer group for this game.

Some quick impressions of Rift after six or seven hours of the beta.

The good:  Public quests are fun with groups, Character builds are interesting due to the ability to pick multiple talent trees

The bad:  Welcome to 2006... Primitive quest system, lack of automated grouping tools, poor graphics, awful inventory management

If you are happy with your current game don't bother, you are not gonna miss anything.  If you are bored and can look past the lack of modern MMO features than there is some fun to have here for a month or two.

Graphics are a real mixed bag.  The environments look great.  Not Aion level but close.  But the character models are awful.  Fallen Earth level at best.  Limited animations.  But the worst part is the lack of AA support.  Just ugly jaggies everywhere.  The lack of interesting armor models in the first 20 levels does not help either.  Appears that all the newbie armor comes in ten shades of brown...

The game just lacks a lot of items I would consider standard quality of life for a new MMO.  Inventory management is awful.  Collection quest items get dumped into your inventory, as do multiple types of currencies for the public quests.  Add in consumables and trade skill items and about 70% of your inventory slots are filled before you pickup anything.  The rifts and invasion public quests are fun but fairly useless to a solo player.  So you would think a Dungeon Finder like automated grouping tool would have been the first thing implemented but no such luck.  Not even an open group solution like war hammer has for their public quests.   Hope you like sitting around spamming chat channels with "LFG" or "Invite pls invite pls invite pls"

I hate to bash these guys.... Wait a minute.  No, actually I do not.  These things are not impossible to solve.  Why do so many developers not focus on getting the basics right?  There really is no excuse for all this.  

The sad part is the dynamic public quests are fun.  It really makes a difference that the rifts can pop up anywhere or invasion forces can hit different quest hubs.  But without a full suite of automated grouping tools all that is going to be useless a few weeks after launch when masses have moved on to higher level zones.  Fall behind and you are stuck with a bunch of kill ten rats quests to grind on or picking off the first round of a rift before the elites spawn to crush you.  I pre-ordered so will be playing for the first month but I do not expect to stick around beyond that.

What Graphics are you looking at, I think they are spectacular. Blows Aion out of the water.

For anyone who *ahem* "may or may not have played in beta"; how's the class balance in this (both pve and pvp)? Judging from the class descriptions and based on past experience with mmos of this sort I expect it to be completely horrid, just once I'd like to be pleasantly surprised though.

Aside from that as far as I can tell this looks to be roughly war hammer online meets wow, which is fine, but isn't it maybe 4 years too late?

I pretty much have to disagree with everything sampan has said. Graphics are very good. The character models have some ugly running animations, but serviceable. Sound is very good. I would prefer that source stones and quest items didn't take up space, but other than that sampan is pretty much off base IMHO.

sapman wrote:

Some quick impressions of Rift after six or seven hours of the beta.

No doubt that first impressions are important and that they will make or break a game for many people. But I feel like you might be off base with some of your criticisms. None of the problems you mentioned regarding gameplay sound like "the basics" to me.

The graphics look great. I'm not sure what your settings are at. The client does require a fairly advanced GFX to run well. Anti-aliasing is really unnecessary at high resolutions. At 1920x1280, you really shouldn't notice it.

A LFG system for the public rift content and zone events is really unnecessary. The whole point is that you can participate and be rewarded based on contribution without actually being grouped up. Dungeon finder would be a nice feature, but it's hard to fault them for not having a feature it took Blizzard 4 years to implement. I imagine it will come relatively quickly after launch.

As far as the primitive quest system, do you mean that it doesn't have phasing, vehicles, or private instances? If that's your definition of modern, then I suppose you're correct. On the other had, it's offering a whole different kind of content with rifts, invasions, and zone events.

Inventory management is a problem, given all the currency and consumables. But it's been addressed as a problem by the devs and they have indicated they're working to fix it.