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

In the latest episode of Ten Ton Hammer Live!, Jesse and Ben sat down with Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer of Rift: Planes of Telara. In this wide ranging interview, they discuss many of the unique features of Rift such as the class system and the dynamic world setting. If you be either Guardian or Defiant, read on!

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Ten Ton Hammer: For those who have been living in a cave or under a rock and haven’t heard of Rift: Planes of Telara, can you tell us something about the game?

Scott Hartsman: Above all, Rift is a high quality, AAA fantasy MMOG that evolves the genre in interesting ways and revolutionizes it in a couple of others. You have this entire world in peril; the world is facing complete annihilation from the power of the Blood Storm, which is a swarm of gods that have been caught up in their travels through the universe and they have their eye on this planet. On this planet, you have two ideologically opposite factions, the Guardians and the Defiant, and they’re both trying to figure out how to save the world in two incredibly different ways. Also on this world, you have all of these rifts from all of these different planes of existence opening up to either swallow the world or attack the world or take from the world into themselves. So, you have a world with an eight way war going on, and it’s a game about why your side is right, why the other side is wrong, and what is the best way for you to go around fixing everything wrong with the planet.

Ten Ton Hammer: What I like about this is the different spin from other MMOGs. What else is different compared to all the other MMOGs out there?

Scott Hartsman: Sure, that’s the first thing everybody wants to know. Fantasy MMOGs are a pretty crowded space. There are a lot of games out there, there have been a lot of games out there, and I think it’s fair to ask why the hell I should care about you? I can go on about this for a couple of hours, but the two biggest things that grabs everybody right off the bat and makes them understand that there is something really cool and unique going on here is, first, the entire world is dynamic. What I mean by that is that we have this game that has all of the elements that people have come to know and depend on in fantasy MMOGs. It’s got quests, items, levels, and all of that stuff. Then on top of that, we have this dynamic layer of things going on in the world that represent this global struggle. Think of it almost as a LAN controlled game where you have rifts opening up from these other dimensions, big massive social events taking place in this world where people can just walk up and join in starting the fight. It goes one step beyond that as these invaders are actually trying to take over the world. What I mean by that is that they are literally trying to attack all of your outposts and set up their own footholds in the world because they are out to take over the world. The invaders don’t necessarily get along with each other. Every one of the planes is controlled by a different god, and every one of them has their own wants, their own needs, and their own desires. They are using this world as a stage for their own grand battle, and the players are caught up in the middle of it. It’s on the players to try to survive in this world as well as to push back the invaders and take the fight to the invaders as well as taking the fight to the other side. That’s one of the things, the entire layer of dynamic activity of large scale events that is always going on.

The other difference is our class system. We set out, very intentionally, to create a class system where people would be free to make choices that actually matter. You can think of any class that you’ve ever wanted to play in an MMOG or any class that you have been able to play in an MMOG, and, chances are, you’ll be able to find a way to put that class together in this game. This is all about taking all the fun of investing in different classes, spending points, and getting cool abilities and creating what you want to play out of those component parts. The way we do that is that we have this concept in the game of once your character starts out in the world; you’re actually what we call an ascended soul. That means that your soul is so strong that you died and your soul came out the other side and you have the ability to control multiple souls and you’ll learn to control even more as you level up. At the end of the game, you’ll be controlling three different souls that are effectively three classes, and you get to choose which parts of the three classes you wish to take into yourself. We expect, and already see, players taking a ton of time experimenting with different builds, different class combinations, and different tricks that they can use to play the game. It’s a game where we don’t just want the content not to get old, but we don’t want the classes themselves to get old. The idea is that you can keep playing with this over and over again and have fun with it for months and years.

Ten Ton Hammer: Trion Worlds is a new company. Can you tell us about the expertise you have in the company on this game?

Scott Hartsman: Sure, the Rift team is up here in Redwood City, California. The team numbers over a hundred people, and I have gone through the exercise of adding up all of the games, single player and MMOG, that everybody on the team has worked on. It turns out that it was over two dozen online games and platforms and another two to three dozen single player games. From the MMOG side alone, we have people who have worked on games that most players would be familiar with, such as Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, and even some of the smaller games. A lot of us come to this with our own experiences and lessons that we’ve learned in the past and we’re really trying to improve on the things that all of us have learned. It’s been great to make a game within that environment with that much experience. In a way, while we’re sitting here together, we’re learning from each other. I’ll be the first guy to admit that there’s people on this team who’ve worked on games that I wasn’t part of and just being able to learn from them in ways why they think that this will work, why this won’t work, and why this doesn’t work so we should do it this way, has been fantastic.

Ten Ton Hammer: I think that you’re being modest. For those who don’t know who Scott Hartsman is, he was the guy that really, and forgive me for being blunt about it, put Everquest 2 on the map. In terms of your MMOG knowledge and experience, as well as your style and creativity, it really brought that game forward. I think that you have a great team over there.

Scott Hartsman: I definitely appreciate it, but I can’t take credit for all that. Yes, I was the guy in charge after that thing launched, but at the end of the day, it was all about empowering developers to make the decisions that they wanted to make about things that they felt strongly about and could back up after actually playing the game. I mean that is such a critical thing, and it’s one of the core tenets of this team too. At this stage of development, we have more people who have been playing the game for months on their own personal time than any other game that I’ve worked on. It’s something that has worked really well for us. As you mentioned, it worked well for us in the past on EQ2 also where you take the people who have the hands-on experience… there’s just this entire other level of information that you only get from sitting in your own chair at your own computer at your home, trying to play the game. You know what’s frustrating; you know what’s not in a way that really helps inform all of the data that we’ve pulled from all of these games to see what’s working and what isn’t. If you ask me, it’s more about empowering people to do that rather than one guy chucking down proclamations from up high. It’s making sure that the people have the tools to do their job.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no better or worse than a lot of other people. I’ve learned stuff from fairly junior people and I’ve learned stuff from fairly senior people, and I like to think that it goes both ways. It’s mainly about making sure that there’s an environment where everybody can be in on the conversation.

Ten Ton Hammer: You were talking about the class system. Can you give us more details? Are there any limits to it?

Scott Hartsman: Absolutely. When you create a character, you pick your calling. Your calling can be considered an archetype. You decide whether you want to be a warrior running around in plate mail or a mage running around in cloth armor. Once you choose that, and what that does is fix the type of armor that you can wear and the power system that you’re using. For example, warriors use attack points, mages use both mana and a mechanic called charge, and so on. Every calling has their own power set and armor type. Inside that calling, you have a set of souls to choose from. Some of the souls you start out with, some of the souls you discover or earn by leveling up. I’m going to pick a random example. My character on our alpha server started out life as a humble warrior; a guardian warrior. He’s one of the chosen of the gods and he started out his life as a paladin because I like paladins and they’re kind of fun. He leveled up a few levels and unlocked the ability to have a second soul. The soul that he was granted and equipped right alongside that of the paladin soul was the beast master, and the beast master is a plate-wearing melee character who gets a pet. The idea of a paladin with a big dog seemed kind of cool, and so I ended up playing him that way for a few levels and then respecced his points a few times. When I got the chance to do my first instance run with a group, I went to town and bought the ability to take on a second role, or a spec, and built a second role that was slightly different 100% paladin that was all about tanking. Now here I am tanking, with two sets of specs I can go back and forth. When I’m soloing, I can be a beast master/paladin because it has good armor, good shield, and good damage in a pet. When I want to go tanking in an instance, I can be a pure paladin and be all about the defense.

Later on in life, I unlocked my third soul, and for the third soul, I decided to take on a champion because champions, by default, get this ability called bull rush, which lets you zip back and forth between targets. Then they start getting more damaging abilities, and I was doing more soloing than grouping at the time, so I respecced myself entirely and picked up a third role that was all about the champion and beast master talents. It was very heavy into soloing and doing damage. The last time I played the guy, which was about a week ago, I had him with his three specs flying around and I have the ability to pick up another one if I want. He has the capability to solo and take on mobs or being able to be a really cool tank. One of the other cool things about the class system is that we very intentionally made sure that no matter which calling you choose from the get-go, you have the ability to take on a few different group roles. No matter what you pick, you’re not always a tank, you’re not always a damager, you’re not always a healer, you’re not always support, and you’re not always control. You have the ability to be able to do two or three of those activities just by swapping souls around. I’m sure that most MMOG players, myself included, are aware of the situation where you have a bunch of friends who would love to go off and do stuff together, but it’s five DPS guys sitting around town with their thumbs up their butts because they can’t do anything without a tank or a healer. In this game, we intentionally made sure that people can fulfill multiple group roles. So far, that flexibility has really been paying off. People are having a lot of fun playing with the class system, and they’re having an easier time getting groups together because at the end of the day, it’s about getting online and playing and having fun with your friends.