RIFT MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Silverwood and Free Marches
Following a harrowing multi-stage boss encounter at level 5ish, your character will be transported to Telara. For Guardians, this means the lush sylvan dreamscape of Silverwood in the north, for Defiants it means the slightly more foreboding Freemarch area in the south. Advance parties of extra-planar minions stalk both areas, warping and empowering the local flora and fauna to the whims of their masters. Tears and Rifts break out in greater frequency here, and quests begin to revolve around putting an end to the growing distubances.

While we weren't able to craft anything usable at this early stage, some of the gathering professions were represented by trainers upon zone in. Butchering, mining, and gathering were among the trainable professions in the Free Marches and Silverwood starting area. Mining nodes randomly spawned atop rock outcroppings and Free Marches, being a bit more stark, is better suited for miners. Silverwood, on the other hand, seemed to contain more gathering nodes, and both areas were rife with animal-like enemies for butchering. Players can train a max of three professions and can retrain anytime, so it's worthwhile to train these professions even if you don't plan on crafting much for the extra soul tree training cash.

I spent the bulk of my hands-on time in Silverwood, playing in an around the level 9+ Argent Glade area deeper in Silverwood, and my Pyromancer continued to develop new skills, including a seven second root (perfect for kiting) and a long-lasting casting circle that amped up my damage spells even more. I evolved a tactic of creating a casting circle then moving forward a short distance and hitting the enemy with a long-cast fireball to pull, then using flame darts as the mob approached. Then I used the fire net ability to hold the mob in place moved back into the casting circle, and hit it with another volley of fireballs and flame darts. It worked pretty well, and I was pleasantly surprised that these kind of tactics were available even before level 10.

I looted my first collection around this time too. Scott explained that Rift will follow the EverQuest II model of collections, meaning that collections aren't just completionist tasks. Well, they are, but collections can be turned in or "stashed" (as Scott put it) for rewards.

It was in Silverwood that I had my first brush with death in Rift. It's been some time since anyone's tinkered with the MMO death mechanic. Rift's take? Once an hour, instead of respawning at a bind point, you can undertake a "Soul Walk." That sounds very nice and peaceful, but really it's eleven seconds of sheer terror as you rise from your corpse and run away from whatever killed you (and other things that want to kill you). Escape, and you're rewarded with no loss of progress or death penalty. In Rift, you're penalized for the crime of dying by surrendering a chunk of your hitpoint and power bars, and one way to gain back your precious pools is to eat special foods. The penalty is punishing but not too punishing, and the Soul Walk reintroduces some corpse run-esque excitement to a tired old mechanic.

Hopes and Fears
The Soul Walk, represents the proper mix of old and new required to successfully innovate on core gameplay. Truthfully, Rift is full of these sorts of minor innovations which add up to major improvement. Rifts resemble PQs but are (as I'll show you in part 2 of this hands-on report) PQs with a purpose. The Soul Tree is much like a talent tree, but offers more (including good reasons to spend points that players typically hoard). Aspects of classes and combat are very familiar, but Rift gives you more options sooner. Best of all, a comfortable level of solo and co-op challenge is back for low level players of a top-tier fantasy MMORPG.

That's not to say that I don't have concerns, primarily with how Rift is interpreted. Trion has garnered top devs from across the industry. More than a few of these devs, such as Producer Adam Gershowitz, came from the Warhammer Online design team, and classes like the Pyromancer and Bladedancer bear a striking resemblance to WAR classes like the Bright Wizard and Blade Master (respectively). Many believe that imbalance (or at least the perception of imbalance) played a big role in WAR's cold reception, and Scott Hartsman has made it known that some imbalance (especially in light of the 270 soul combinations) will be an ongoing part of the game.

While we didn't see an PvP action this time around, we did sneak a peak at UI frame labeled Warfronts. No details were available on this feature, but it seems likely that Rift is also adopting another favorite feature from Warhammer Online: scenarios. If that's the case, players who put a strong emphasis on fair play (or believe themselves to be the sole arbiter of fair play) will get to compare classes fairly early in the game, rather than when the Guardians in the north finally clash with the Defiants in the south at higher levels.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The most promising thing about Rift is how far along the game is even in closed alpha, meaning there will be plenty of time to get all the kinks worked out. And we haven't yet covered some of the more exciting things about PvE, such as what Rifts evolve into and what awaits players in dungeons and instances. This and more in part 2 of our Rift: Planes of Telara First Hands-On Preview!