Rift [MMORPG] talk

So this week I started playing Rift.

Last time I played, was in it's original closed Beta way back when, before it launched as P2P.

And I must say, it certainly has matured a whole lot since it came out.

And transitioned well from P2P to F2P.

One of the things that's a good thing, is the introduction of purposes for each calling.

(Calling = Base class)

(More after the break)

What is a purpose?

It's a pre-built set of souls and allocation of soul points into those souls.

They come with a brief description of the point of the purpose, so you don't pick willy-nilly.

What does this mean for the player?
If you're just starting out with Rift, it's a marvelous thing, since each calling have access to 8 souls, of which 3 has to be picked, and this can be a -very big- information overload right of the bat if you aren't used to it.

But, with the introduction of a purpose, you have to pick what role you want to play and then you can at each level up, automagically allocate your points according to that purpose, making playing very easy for the newbie.

Before, you picked a starting soul for your calling and then were introduced to more souls in time (the third received at level 10 if I remember correctly).

But you had no idea and didn't get any hints as to what was good combinations of souls, resulting in what could and up as a very gimped setup, making the game harder and less enjoyable than what it could have been for the new player.

If you're an old player, that knows the ins and outs of the game already and starting an alt och starting new on a new server, and don't like the purposes available?

You don't have to follow them!

So you get maximum customization for old players and no information overload for new players (well, no more than a new MMO normally offers in information overload)

And now; for some dislikes about it ...

For starters, it feels slight iffy that unless you want to pay (either through buying the ingame item that gives you RL credits or by actually honking up RL cash for said credits) you are restricted to two (2) bag slots.

While this might not be a huge problem, since you can sell stuff anywhere you like, it's still slightly irritating.

Instances.

MAN!

I'm playing a healing cleric currently, and the two first instances have been a snooze fest for me to say the least.

I've got so little to do in the way of healing, that on my first run through The Iron Tomb, I actually missed that we killed the first boss, only after the loot roll window popped up did I realize that we had downed a boss and it wasn't just another trash pack.

Higher leveled players say that it gets harder (and thus more interesting) later, but this still feels kinda boring.

While it is smart to make the earlier instances easy, just to propagate a feeling of power to the new players, for us that have been around a while and played a whole lot of different MMOs over the years, it gets a little tiring... Not to mention boring.

But, cheers to it getting interesting later!

But, the crux here is ... I want more people to play with!
I don't remember right now what shard (server) I'm playing on, but it's the EU cluster.. And I'll look it up when I get home from work tomorrow morning and post an update about it.

Now, time to get some work done.

Over and out~