Rift - PC

So I played the beta version of this game and checked out its various mechanics before it launched. What I noticed then is that this game had a lot of potential and a fairly smooth launch.As with any MMO you can wait a year and come back and find the game has changed around more to your liking. MMO's are in a constantly shifting development state. As such, you are basically paying for a game that developers are not intending to just leave behind and maybe pump out some addon packs for every few months that only apply to multiplayer aspects of it.So after a year I came back and checker out the changes, getting myself up to level 46 so far.Review:The Rifts have been knocked down in intensity in many of the zones pre-level 40. You will now experience content that is more solo friendly throughout the game as you level. While you do this there will very likely also be a World Event occurring. What I found out is that these special events also reward a currency that allows you to buy gear to help you level, and also some fluff fun items like pets if you want. I include both of these together in this paragraph because they are very much apart of what Rift is all about (World Events, and Rifts). These zone events bring groups together to share loot, experience, and all around help you to meet others and have a good time. There are also smaller events which occur like footholds where you have to fight off an enemy incursion into your area. In addition there are Zone Events which will give everyone in the zone a quest to help defeat major enemies in a progressive manner. What I mean is that you will be told to help defeat invaders, close Rifts, and eventually take on a boss and get some decent experience and loot as well.PvP instances (multiplayer locations in Rift where players battle each other) do allow for some fairly fast groups to be put together and also reward decent experience. There are quite a few in the game and more and more of them will unlock as you progress in level.The questing itself does indeed leave something to be desired, but the plus is that there are other things you can do while doing quests. Now this is an RPG also, and what this means is that it is a bit grindy on the leveling side of things. As you level you will need more and more experience in order to progress to the next level. When you do this you will get talents which help you improve on your characters abilities in the game. There are group quests in this game, and also elites that do run around in the world, so you have to be careful when running around. Eventually when you hit level 45 you will be able to do Instant Adventures which allow you to instantly group up with players and help take down various quest objectives in each factions high level zone's. These can reward excellent experience and loot and will also get you from 45 to 50 rather quickly, but this does depend on the size of your group.This brings me to the Soul System! This, along with the Rifts and World Events, are what help Rift stand out among the crowd quite well. You can essentially build a character that suits YOUR needs while leveling. It might or might not be viable to keep your own custom 'build' (which means how you choose to customize your characters Soul Tree's), but Rift also allows you to have several Roles for each character that you create. Each of these roles will let you switch between many different Soul Tree's that you have created to help you take on content in the game. It is a great customization option that Trion World's (The Publisher and Creators of Rift) has created and they continue to refine it as time goes on.All in all, there are some negative aspects however. I don't want to sound all happy doo dah here. While Trion World's has created a Dungeon Finder to help you find a group to take on more difficult content, it does also tend to take awhile to find a group. When you die you will often find you have to spend about a minute or two getting back to your characters corpse to resurrect yourself. Each time you die you loose Soul Vitality and this will cost you in game currency to repair. It can be rather annoying later on in the game when objectives become more challenging. And lastly, just the sheer amount of time you need to spend to level to 50 to experience everything Rift offers kind of stinks. While Rift does offer plenty to do while leveling, it doesn't compare to the level 50 content that the Developers create. The End Game is where the game really starts and the developers have said as much.Hope that helps. :)

I want to make my official review for this game and explanations because I think this game is severely understated. Many people played during beta, it has changed a ton since. All of their patches are actually really big deals that enhance an already great game. Kinda like when WoW would make a major patch, but these guys do it a lot more often which is another reason to love it.Talent Tree - The backbone of your character. While other games will have you theorize over which might be better, their engines make it to where it's a solid better tree or not which is just great. The way in which you can buy these trees and so forth is also unique in it's own way.Leveling - Amazing! Just for the sake of it, I didn't do a single dungeon, rift, or bg and was able to skip entire zones from all of their quests. What's super super super great is only (literally) a few times did I have to kill mobs to complete a quest without having to do other fun stuff with it. When you level your second toon, you get to experience all of the other zones you didn't before.World Events - I gotta say it's only been out for half a year at this point so I wont really comment but they do have world events often and they offer nice rewards.Dungeons - yummm I love these dungeons! They are fun, group oriented, need to know what you're doing but not insanely hard to where you have to organize an actual group to get through them without wiping over and over again. You might still need to briefly explain fights.PVP - Loving it! I'm equally into PVP as PVE and have to say I love the BG's and they have these things called PVP Rifts when randomly appear in the world..even on a PVE server you can join and try to destroy your enemy. The BG's are really fun, the normal type of capture the flag, defend, etc. They get a lot more extreme as you level compared to the same exact thing, just different levels.Atmosphere - People generally are far more nice here, they like to get stuff done but at the same time aren't Nazi's. They set the game up so you can take your time or if you're a hardcore raider, you can do that as well. The Raids are really nice and offer a challenge. People in trade chat dont troll nearly as much, you do have gold spammers which unfortunately is part of an MMO. When people go on zone chat and ask for help, people respond right away. It's really unique in the community it has so far.Shards - Here's the deal. You don't like your shard, move to another one pvp or pve for free. It's a 7 day period until you are able to go to another one. What about the lack of people playing the game? That would be a problem, but you see..there are a lot of medium populated to high populated shards. The one I'm on actually isn't the most populated pve shard yet there are always people in whatever zone I'm at and I've yet to see either of the two AH empty.Longevity - The people who make this game have a lot of really great strong ideas. Unlike other games, they promise something and it really does get done and guess what? They do it faster than any MMO I've seen...in fact people who hate this game due to being hard core WoW fans will even admit to that. They know what people want and give it to them without compromising the game. Achievements to leveling, as of this time in Rift I do not see people waiting doing nothing in the major city which is another awesome thing.The Negative - To some this is a good thing, but no flight. I personally really like flying around. Arenas are not there, that IS NOT the games fault at all. Name one game like this that was able to start off with arenas and fill them. Rifts can get buggy when you're trying to level, but I leveled at off hours which is why that became an issue. Graphics are really high so no grabbing your outdated lab top. Mac owners, well that sucks because it's nice playing on a mac you spent so much money on. $15 a month but I'd much rather pay $15 than free any day for an mmo.Give it a shot, it's cheap to buy. Level, don't say it's crap before you've hit level 50. Also, have fun. It has video recording built into the game which is great so you can see you killing a bunch of people...I mean on the game of course, fake people....

came with all the bells and whistles that were expected. great for new accounts.

Enjoying this game very much. Friends recommended it and so far so good:) Love the Hellbug rides, specially the Ghost one.

Very good, better on system resources than Lotro. Good mechanics, great implementation of free to play!!! The patron perks for the 30 days you get with this game are very good

Love it

Worked as intended, was very pleased!