And Now for Something Completely Different

From a British Shorthair, this quote is not surprising.

Notice:  If you come here for moonkin/druid/PvP/WoW talk, you can come back tomorrow for your regularly scheduled WoW blog post.  I just wanted to take one blog post to talk about the new MMORPG, Rift.

No man can live by bread alone.  As much fun as WoW is, there are times you have to try playing some other games.  For some, it may be Call of Duty: Black Ops or Halo: Reach.  For others, it may be Starcraft II.  I recently have been trying to diversify my game playing a little.  I first started with DC Universe Online.  While I'm sure I will return to it sometime, it just wasn't enough to hold my interest.   This could mainly be because I have never been a huge fan of comics.  However, when I heard the discussion about Rift, it sounded incredibly interesting.  From the description I initially heard, it was WoW plus prettier graphics.  I thought I would try it out some.  What I found when I started playing Rift in the Head Start was something more incredible than I could have come up with.

I first started off playing Guardian.  Nothing against the Guardian starting area, but it seemed to be same old, same old.  It starts off in the current game time with you trying to defend the world against Regulos. (God, I'm hoping I spell that correctly.)  I got my Guardian character up to level 6.  However, some of my Twitter followers said they were joining a group on Emberlord as Defiants.

Sorry DK and Worgen starting zones in WoW (I haven't played Goblin yet so I won't judge you), but the Defiant starting area kicks your ass.  As a defiant, you start in the future being brought back to life.  The world has collapsed under Regulos' terror.  Their goal is to send you back in time to prevent the future from happening.  There are explosions all around you and it feels like the final stand in a war.  And the area ends with your first boss fight, which is incredible.  After that, you go through the time machine portal back to current game time. 

As soon as you leave the starting area, you will likely encounter your first Rift.  Remember all the fun you had with the elemental world events and closing the rifts there.  Now imagine it on a zone wide scale.  It is a nice interruption from the questing.  You quest a little, then the sky turns black and you know you have a Rift to deal with.  It makes for incredible pacing that I have not experienced in an MMO in a long time.  As soon as a Rift happens, it gives you the option to join a public raid to help take down the Rift which gives you a good amount of experience.  Also, the game auto hands out the loot and what you get is in your quest log. 

Everything I have talked about is pure gameplay.  I have not even gotten to the deep class customization where you get to choose your main calling (warrior, cleric, mage, or rogue).  Then instead of being consolidated to one of three trees, you get to pick what three trees you want in the first place.  For my defiant, I'm wanting to experience some of the dungeons, so I decided to roll a tank build of paladin, void knight, warlord.  But you can buy other souls (their fancy terms for specs) to have multiple roles.  I'm thinking of doing a leveling spec of some sort with beastmaster and maybe some other things.  In addition, if you are used to WoW mechanics, you will feel at home.  In game quest helper, check.  Auto-loot option, check. UI customization, not only check, but kicks WoW's ass at it for the default UI.  Unfotunately, you can't have addons yet, but the interface is so good, you really don't need them.

However, I'm not gonna go without bringing up a few of the games faults.  First off, there are only 3 races per faction and to be perfectly honest, I couldn't really tell the difference between any of the 3 defiant races.  One has pointy ears, one looks more human, and the other looks like a human and a draenei from WoW hooked up and made a human baby with weird markings on their face.  Now, there is loads of personal customization you can do, but having a few more race options would have been nice.  Also, rifts maybe happen a little too frequently at times.  I'm trying to complete quest in the level 9 area, then a rift opens up and I have to struggle to find what targets I was looking for in the first place.  Thankfully, the rift events are really fun.  If they weren't, this would be a bigger issue.

I'm only level 9 so far, but I have enjoyed the hell out of Rift.  I'm still gonna play WoW as my main game.  However, this will be a nice distraction from WoW.  I encourage you to look me up in Rift.  I am Redhawks - Defiant Warrior on the Emberlord US server.  I'm going to be joining the Dregcast guild soon on that server, Negative Zero.

Also, I'm sure I'm gonna have a lot more to say about Rift in the future.  So as to not turn this blog in a WoW/Rift blog, I am please to announce Redhawks Ascension, my new Rift blog.  Starting off, I will be talking about my experiences leveling up in Rift.  Once I hit max level, which I intend to do, I will talk about theorycrafting, raiding, etc.  I'm going to be updating it twice a week which I will be intending to update this every day that I can, which is usually weekdays.

So, final conclusion, if you love WoW, I would really recommend checking our Rift.  There is a whole lot to love in there.