Rift

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Antonis Pavlou
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Rift Review

RIFT is a free to play MMORPG that was developed by Trion Worlds and published from 2011 through 2019. Gamigo took over and the game saw little to no improvement. However, RIFT has remained a strong playerbase over the years, much to my surprise. Read the Rift review below and play for free!

You must choose a faction when you start the game. These two factions are at war with each other. This is similar to the Horde/Alliance, Playstation vs Xbox and Red vs blue. This is a story as old as time.
You then have to sit through a lengthy tutorial. This is a very old mechanic that is not required in modern MMOs.
You’re now free to explore the world and do what you like. You can explore, fight, fight, PvP, or run dungeons. At least, that’s what you could do in theory.

After the download


After starting the game, it was clear that a lot of the game and much of its early stages were obsolete.
Yes, there are huge RIFT’s in the sky that can be opened from the air, but no one does it. Yes, there are huge bosses that appear throughout the zone. However, they are too difficult to defeat on their own.
Me, and others tried to queue for dungeons with some of our community members, but we couldn’t get the required number of players to actually enter. Over half an hour passed waiting in line to find a player to join our queue for dungeons.
That’s okay though, as that isn’t how players play the game anymore.

We were told to wait in line for “Intrepid Adventures” as this is the only way to level up and is well worth the effort. So we did. We queued up and the queue appeared almost immediately.
That’s how we leveled. We waited hours for Intrepid Adventures in every RIFT stream, and we finally reached level 40. It was one of the most boring, monotonous and tedious leveling experiences I have ever endured in the past decade.
You are grouped with 3 to 5 random players. You kill monsters, loot objects, and face-roll over your keyboard without any coordination whatsoever.


The alternative is to quest in large open-world dungeons, which require teamwork, basic knowledge of your class and PvP against other players.
I find all this and the Intrepid Adventures to be a less strenuous process. But once again, it is about everyone trying to get to the endgame as quickly as possible.

Graphics

I’m not denying that RIFT looks great. Although I have never been a fan of the character models, the world, skill effects, and outfits are all beautiful.
Combat is tab-target and abilities are on a global cooling down so it functions primarily as World of Warcraft – the game that RIFT was first compared with.
These skill-trees give you a lot more control over your character. There are three skill trees available. Fill them out according to your play style.
You’ll have access to more skills than you could ever imagine. What, 20 levels? It felt like I had two hotbars full of skills. I didn’t know what to use, which element to focus on, and if I should do DoTting, AoEing, or single-target casting.
However, that’s all part of the fun. Players often ask for more freedom and control over their characters. It’s boring to see everyone play the same way.

Rift review: the verdict

We didn’t get to the end. We spent the entire month of May 2020 working to get as far as possible, and frankly, RIFT isn’t holding up very well at the moment.
Many people claim that RIFT has died. It’s false. The game is not dead. Gamigo still has a loyal player base that logs in to level up characters and run content.
What about the current state of the game? It is still worth it in 2020, yes. If you are a fan of the game I can assure you that there has been no change to the fun of it.
We had a lot of fun playing this game.

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