Game-A-Week Episode 17: Rift
[10:19 PM]
Before we start today's Game-A-Week, I'd like to pay respects to a game that has passed us by.
[10:20 PM]
This game would have been next in line but sadly, it was shut down last year.
[10:20 PM]
It was Wildstar.
[10:21 PM]
I enjoyed Wildstar. It was a really fun game but I didn't get to play it that much since it went free-to-play while I was in college and I didn't have much time for anything in college.
[10:21 PM]
But, as per usual, when the game went down, I posted on its subreddit to say goodbye.
[10:21 PM]
This is that post:
[10:26 PM]
"Well, my computer chose the worst possible time to need a repair. I'm not sure if the game is still online right now since it's past midnight where I am on the 28th.
I really did like this game and even though I didn't get to play it much, I'll really miss my Aurin Esper, Meria Entis. The Aurin are a really creative race and I'll miss seeing them. At least I got to try out housing since that was the one thing everyone praises. While not my cup of tea, I can certainly see why people liked it. It's way better housing than literally every MMO out there. You can even change the sky. THE SKY, MAN! AND I COULD MAKE MY COUCH HUGE!
I wanted to be there for the game's final moments but since I can't, if anyone has any footage of that, I'd love to see it and if a good and populated private server ever does show up, let me know. I really did like this game and I'd very much like to finish it. The other night I was going the Outpost 13 expedition and during the ending I thought "That's cute. I'm glad I did this. This humor is right up my alley"
Farewell, Wildstar. You deserved better than a mismanaged dev team and a tiny playerbase. You deserved to live and I wish my computer waited just a couple more days to die on me so I could play you until the very end. Sometimes, Fate is a cruel mistress."
[10:28 PM]
(The Aurin were also a race of every single fetish in existence rolled into one but let's not talk about that)
[10:28 PM]
According to one of the game's developers, the game was doomed from the start and working on it was hell because the boss was a tyrant.
[10:31 PM]
And I can see why it failed after launch too. The game is INCREDIBLY hard. The first dungeon is designed to be a tutorial for group content and we wiped at least 10 times on my first run through. It catered to the hardcore players but it catered ONLY to the hardcore players. And the problem with that is, casuals make up the majority of any playerbase. The hardcore players are always the vocal minority. So when the game alienated casuals and they all eventually left, the playerbase was tiny and since the playerbase was tiny, the hardcore players also left. Leaving no one left. And so, the game died.
[10:32 PM]
I tried to find a private server but unfortunately, the only private server in development is still in-development and is not playable right now.I really wish I could have played this game more, it was a blast. But I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
[10:36 PM]
I actually do have a picture of my old character floating around on the internet. Didn't take long for me to find it. Here's my character Meria, in all her adorable glory. I miss her...
[10:37 PM]
RIP my psychic angel cat girl creature.
[10:45 PM]
Back when this game was first announced, there was a comment on this trailer that said "If this game doesn't work out, at least we got an awesome short film out of it." They had no idea how right they were....
[10:46 PM]
But that's where that story ends. Onto this week's story.
[10:46 PM]
This week I played Rift.
[10:47 PM]
Rift has a bit of a funny connection to me.
[10:47 PM]
In middle school, I wrote a story called "The Rift"
[10:47 PM]
One year later, the game Rift was announced and it was basically the same thing.
[10:49 PM]
A giant rift opens up in the sky and kills everyone. A chosen few were saved from the destruction and tasked with fighting back the darkness that came out of the rift and eventually close it.
[10:52 PM]
It was so similar to my story, I was convinced there was a shadow quasi-spy agency following my every move to cash in on my genius before I could.
[10:52 PM]
Yeah, I was THAT kid. Nothing was ever a coincidence, there always had to be a conspiracy behind everything.
[10:54 PM]
I was also convinced I could see the future and fly because I had one weird experience where I predicted something and then jumped like 10 feet in the air.
[10:55 PM]
The truth of the matter was, I just made a really good guess and my low body weight combined with my high leg strength meant I could jump high and stay in the air long enough to get a decent amount of distance.
[10:56 PM]
But we're getting off-topic.
[10:56 PM]
So yes, Rift.
[10:56 PM]
With such a funny coincidence, of course, I had to play this game.
[10:57 PM]
And that's not all.
[10:57 PM]
This is the beginning of a new arc here on Game-A-Week: The Roleplaying Arc.
[10:58 PM]
Yes. I am going to be trying my hand at roleplaying for the next 4 or 5 games we cover here starting with this one, each with a different type of roleplay.
[10:58 PM]
This time, we tackled serious roleplay
[10:59 PM]
Which pretty much means I tried my hardest to stay in character as my character whenever I spoke to another player.
[11:00 PM]
I had a few slip ups, I wasn't very good at it but I did manage to convince people that I was actually 73 years old so that was fun.
[11:03 PM]
That's got to count for something, right?
[11:03 PM]
When creating your character, you have to make four choices.
[11:03 PM]
Faction, race, calling and purpose.
[11:04 PM]
The two factions are Guardians and Defiants
[11:04 PM]
The Guardians are the chosen of the gods reborn to fight against the evil of the rifts
[11:05 PM]
The Defiants are those who deny the gods and choose to make their own fate with their machines.
[11:06 PM]
The Defiants had me on their side until they mentioned machines. when I play a fantasy game, I don't want any lame ass machines cramping my style.
[11:06 PM]
So I chose the Guardians.
[11:06 PM]
Each faction has three races to choose from.
[11:07 PM]
Guardians have Mathosian (Good Human), High Elves and Dwarfs
[11:07 PM]
Defiants have Eth (Bad Human), Dark Elves and Bahmi (Big strong purple guys)
[11:08 PM]
Defiants actually have the cooler races, but since I was roleplaying, lore was the only thing I cared about.
[11:08 PM]
I chose Dwarf because in their lore it said all Dwarves are the masters of their chosen craft.
[11:09 PM]
Callings and purposes are the same no matter what faction you choose.
[11:09 PM]
Your calling is basically your class. There's Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue and Primalist.
[11:10 PM]
I chose Cleric so, as a dwarf, I could become a master of the divine and even the gods themselves!
[11:11 PM]
Your purpose is basically your build. I won't list them all off because I frankly don't remember most of them and because there's like 8 for every calling.
[11:12 PM]
I chose Nature's Protector so once again, as a dwarf, I could also become a master of all life itself!
[11:13 PM]
So with those choices, I opted in for a random name for extra immersion and Makuzato, the wandering elderly dwarf who will master the gods, life itself and rule over all creation was born!
[11:15 PM]
Yeah, so that was my character. An old man who wanders from place to place, only showing his true power when he needs to.
[11:15 PM]
Yes, I fought most of my battles strictly using the auto-attack only in order to stay in character and only ever used my abilities when there was a chance I could lose. I also only used staves for the entire game. Which was really hard to do because the game gives you an absurdly strong warhammer at level 10 but I resisted temptation. I was determined.
[11:17 PM]
As for the game itself, its a WoW clone. There's no point in sugar-coating it. The game is most well known for being one of the better and most populated WoW clones out there.
[11:19 PM]
So there's not really much to say about the actual game as it doesn't do much that WoW doesn't. And if you don't know the gist of WoW, you probably aren't reading this anyway.
[11:19 PM]
Point and click combat, healer/dps/tank based group content gameplay, the works.
[11:20 PM]
But... There is one thing that Rift does differently.
[11:22 PM]
The Soul system. Which is a lot like WoW's talent system, a way for you to fine-tune your character to your liking, except WAY more impactful.
[11:23 PM]
Each calling has about 9 subclasses called Souls. You can equip three at a time and each time you level up, you gain soul points which you can allocate into your three chosen souls.
[11:24 PM]
On the top of the Soul Tree, you have the exact same thing as WoW's talent tree. But on the bottom, is the tree's "roots"
[11:26 PM]
Every single ability your character learns comes from these "roots". Which means, what skills and spell your able to use is dependent entirely on how many soul points you have in a specific soul.
[11:26 PM]
For example, putting points into the Druid tree for Clerics will get you summoning spells while the Shaman soul will get you physical attacks.
[11:27 PM]
You can basically create your own custom class giving you a level of freedom I've actually never seen in any game before.
[11:27 PM]
Well, that's the idea behind the system anyway.
[11:28 PM]
Remember the purposes I talked about earlier that you choose at character creation?
[11:28 PM]
Yeeeeah. That pretty much takes away any potential freedom this system would give you.
[11:29 PM]
Like I said before, your purpose is your build and you are 100% railroaded into that build from the get-go.
[11:30 PM]
What souls you have equipped and where your soul points go, are already determined for you based on what purpose you chose.
[11:31 PM]
If you try to choose a different soul or try to put your points in a place it doesn't tell you to, it will let you do it, but your purpose will be invalidated.
[11:31 PM]
Of course, I didn't want to invalidate my purpose for roleplaying purposes but also, the purposes are the only viable builds in the game.
[11:32 PM]
So while, yes, you can in theory create your own custom class, you will unfortunately be garbage if you do that.
[11:32 PM]
And this brings us right back to WoW where there's only one viable build for each spec.
[11:33 PM]
This system has so much potential but they squandered it completely by putting it on auto-pilot for you.
[11:35 PM]
Other than that, the game is standard WoW clone fare. Go place to place, kill X amount of things, go to the next place. You can do this in a group with a system called "Instant Adventure" which is basically a dungeon finder but for random quests in random places in the world.
[11:35 PM]
Its fun but gets old and repetitive quick.
[11:38 PM]
Also, I ran out of quests by the time I hit level 15. The game does a good job taking you quest to quest at the start but then after 15 levels, the questchain just stops and you're left thinking "Well now what do I do? Do I just do random quests until max level? Is there no game before endgame?"
[11:38 PM]
And that's pretty much Rift.
[11:40 PM]
I give Rift a 4/10. It has amazing potential but actively chooses to squander its own potential by making every decision for you. And since this game is a decade old now, that ship has long since sailed. But it was fun to experience my story brought to life, even if it is just a huge coincidence.
[11:43 PM]
I didn't realize he got Mike Wazowski'd by the giant waifu until it was too late but here he is, my Guardian Dwarf Cleric Nature's Protector: Old Man Makuzato! And yes, he had his own personal call girl.
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