I’ve been wrong before. That’s really not much to admit for me, true.

I’ve been an advocate for some games that make me cringe to recall. I’m looking at Aion, sure, but also at some others. I don’t want to name names, but their initials are Final Fantasy Eks Eye Vee. Like others, I seek the next big MMO release to bide my time until the Holy Grail SWTOR, and the Second Coming of BioWare. I usually avoid hopping on the hype train, one of the few rail systems to be not only on time, but consistently early. And so it is with great anticipation, and trepidation, that I look towards Trion and their Rift. I do hope ever so much that the only Rift is not in my wallet.

So here’s what I’ll do, not having played any of the betas yet. I’ll go over some of the things I’ve heard about it, and simply use the Way-Back Machine(tm) to illustrate where we’ve seen that before, and how it went that time. I’ll check for reader feedback here and on the multiplaying forums, and I do plan on looking up some podcasts, too. So anything you can share, by which I mean not forbidden by the NDA (or has that been lifted already?) would be welcomed.

So to start off with, the pretty. Rift looks good from all the screenshots, nice robust graphics that will likely age well, not as cartoony as some games and not as gritty and angsty as others. Might be a bit of a system hog, but I was able to run some other games with that reputation, so no worries there.  Any hiccups in beta?

The biggest draw for me will be the calling and soul system. I love the idea that you can switch builds on the fly. The ability to do a full re-specialization on the fly, without a hefty drain on resources, is a Good Thing. For example, in FFXIV, Spellborn, and apparently Guild Wars (never played it, so I’m sorry if I’m wrong here), the system worked quite well, allowing you an unprecedented level of freedom in creating your own skill sets. Yay! Because not all games allow this. I remember being stuck as a tank, ready for PVE, when PVP situations popped out at me. In Aion, I basically had to die, then avoid going back to that area for the day(maybe longer, it depended on whether the big kids were hanging around in groups of 6 or more to take my lunch money again), because I picked the wrong class. Bad Things, Man.

Another big draw for the game are the Rifts themselves. I like the idea of other factions coming in to spice things up. I’m not so keen on getting interrupted in the middle of my questing or gathering, but this may actually be fun. Apparently you can get credit for whatever you do in this, much like Warhammer’s public quests. I never played Warhammer, though from what I’ve heard these PQs made other quests, and PVE in general, pointless. So, mixed bag there.

PVP has never been my bag, baby, but the kids these days seem to like it. I can understand the differences between two factions, both alike in dignity, out to save the world in their own way, following their own philosophies. We’ve got the Guardians who get their juice from Praying Real Hard, and then we’ve got the Defiant, who apparently just listen to Thomas Dolby too much. Maybe a bit simplified, but you get the idea. So we’ve got two factions, morally similar; though I’m sure, as in most games of this nature, one will gain the childish moniker of ‘The Good Guys,’ while the others are obviously dastardly satanic minions of EVIL! Guess which one I’ll pick… Ah, another question for the early adopters: are the kiddies mostly going for the Guardians, a’la Alliance in WoW, or going all whiny like the Asmodaeans of Aion? (Whiny is what we used to call the kids that whine a lot- I think they’re called goths or emos now; you crazy kids!) In a game designed to have a lot of PVP, it’s important that the faction populations are balanced. In Warhammer, I recall there being some issues with servers that had nothing happening in the PVP lakes, while in Aion the artificial restrictions placed on the servers meant that getting into the server of your choice was not always possible.

Again, I’m mainly looking for input and feedback from those in the Beta. Nothing that will break the NDA, unless of course it has already been lifted.