To coincide with Trion Worlds' announcement that Rift will enter closed beta on Dec. 3, Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff shares his experiences with the fantasy MMO from Trion's recent Gamer Day.

Deepstrike Mines

After we played through the new starting zones, we were all given level 30 premade characters to run through the Deepstrike Mines instance. I initially chose a Cleric so I could heal, but it turns out most of my group members had the same idea. Once we decided we needed a tank instead of three healers, I logged out and came back in as a Warrior, which I just got some experience with in the Defiant starting zone. The character's souls were Paladin, Reaver and Warlord, so at least the Reaver spells looked familiar. The rest of my abilities were all brand new to me, so I had to learn on the fly.

The group setup was Warrior, Mage, Rogue, and two Clerics. The first thing that struck me as we zoned into the dungeon was its layout. The bottom floor was completely wide open, while the top was comprised of a series of narrow walkways that connected tall pillars. This allowed us to try out different fighting techniques for both open and confined areas. There were some quest-givers right at the entrance, so we all accepted the quests and made our way through the instance.

If you're an MMO player, you know the concept of fighting through trash mobs just to get to a boss. None of the enemies in Deepstrike Mines felt like trash. Mobs were generally found in groups comprised of approximately three enemies, and none of them were too easy to kill. Admittedly, that may have been partly due to the fact that none of us completely understood all of the abilities of our characters. Regardless, each battle felt like it required teamwork to complete.

As far as my role was concerned, I hit every ability that said “generates additional threat.” I was throwing around my shield a lot while casting some DoT abilities. I had to tab through the targets to maintain control of the various groups, but one of the developers told me that I could have chosen an ability in my soul tree that instantly put the debuffs I had on one enemy onto the rest of them. That certainly would have helped.

Each boss fight was a bit different, but two stuck out in my mind. During one boss fight that included a lot of minions, I fell off the narrow walkway and had to run back up to my team. Even without a tank, the healers were able to keep everyone alive while I made my way to the battle. We ultimately succeeded because everyone worked as a team, which was a great feeling.

That great feeling ended with the final boss. This guy used crystals to heal himself, so the point was to destroy the crystals as they spawned and slowly chip away at the boss' health. We were down to four members at this point and tried multiple times, but we couldn't succeed. Another group ultimately defeated him after a very long battle, and everyone in the room cheered when they emerged victorious.

Oh, this may be a good time to explain the death system. Once per hour, you can choose to Soul Walk when you die. This will spawn you directly on your body and give you a little time to get out of aggro range. Every other time you die within the hour, you're going to be running back to your corpse. Thankfully, it spawned us at the entrance of the instance during our wipes at the final boss.

Warfront PvP Maps

To end the day, we got to try the three Warfront PvP maps that are currently available in Rift: Planes of Telara. This was the first time that the maps were shown to the press and community members. Our characters were automatically boosted up to level 50, so I'm not ashamed to admit that I did not last long in these battles against the seasoned veterans in the alpha test. However, I did come away with some descriptions of the maps.

Black Garden, also known as martyrdom, is basically a “kill the carrier” scenario. One player picks up an object in the center of the map, and the teams must either defend or defeat that player. Your team will earn more points for keeping the object near the center of the map, so it pays to keep the battle in the middle rather than running around the exterior.

Codex is a domination game where you have to hold control points, and Whitefall Steppes is a classic capture the flag map. You can queue up for the Warfronts directly from your interface, so there's no need to talk to an NPC. The game should launch with all three of these maps, but don't be surprised if more are added in the future.

Overall, Rift: Planes of Telara was incredibly polished for the alpha build. While it may be another fantasy MMO, the dynamic content and soul system, not to mention the detailed lore, certainly sets it apart from its competition.

Darryl Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief