Rift

[Razgon]

I thought you were going to play on those smelly, queue-ridden yank servers Raz?

nope - there's a slight lag that annonys me, so I'm sticking to Euro and the RP-PVP servers I think :-)

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah that's why I'll always go for Euro servers when they're available.  No PvP for me though I'm afraid - or not for a while, anyway.  If you play on any of the PvE servers let me know.

[Razgon]

Yeah that's why I'll always go for Euro servers when they're available.  No PvP for me though I'm afraid - or not for a while, anyway.  If you play on any of the PvE servers let me know.

sure - we can have a look-see whenever the final serverlist pops up :-)

[Elmo]

The Wanderers guild is now live on Briarcliff.  Add Pulpit to your friends list and whisper me for an invite.

[Hotfreak]

The Wanderers guild is now live on Briarcliff.  Add Pulpit to your friends list and whisper me for an invite.

I tried Briarcliff the first 2 nights and hit major queues.  Have those cleared at all?

edit: nvm, I'm in as Hotfreak.  Bard.

[Elmo]

Beta 5 Extended!

 

   Hello!

    That’s right! We are having so much fun with you in Telara that we have extended the Beta 5 event through Saturday morning at 10 a.m. PST!

    Thank you for all of your feedback and we hope you enjoy the extra time in RIFT!

    Cindy Bowens
    Sr. Community Manager
    Rift

[naednek]

maybe they should keep it open until they fix the main issue, people can't even get in the game...  Otherwise they are going to hurt sales come launch

[ericb]

Excellent...having more fun this time around and I'm getting past the beginning areas and participating in rifts.  The XP is great doing rift kills and quests...in the teens you might get 500 xp for a raid kill plus a big bonus for finishing the public quest compared to 150-200 xp for a regular mob kill.

[Harkonis]

maybe they should keep it open until they fix the main issue, people can't even get in the game...  Otherwise they are going to hurt sales come launch

have you tried launching in both full screen and windowed modes?  I think you overestimate how many people are having the problem.  I know it's incredibly frustrating when you're the one with the problem, but the majority of people can get in just fine.

edit: they just posted this about the issue

UPDATE: We believe this is due to a problem with our random number generator, of all things. Under certain conditions, the game will spend huge amounts of time generating random numbers, causing it to appear to freeze while loading, and to run very slowly once loading is finished. We're working on a fix now.

[naednek]

maybe they should keep it open until they fix the main issue, people can't even get in the game...  Otherwise they are going to hurt sales come launch

have you tried launching in both full screen and windowed modes?  I think you overestimate how many people are having the problem.  I know it's incredibly frustrating when you're the one with the problem, but the majority of people can get in just fine.

edit: they just posted this about the issue

UPDATE: We believe this is due to a problem with our random number generator, of all things. Under certain conditions, the game will spend huge amounts of time generating random numbers, causing it to appear to freeze while loading, and to run very slowly once loading is finished. We're working on a fix now.

Yep windowed as well.  I can get in the game now, it's just 2 FPS all the time, on the lowest settings.  I can play Crysis just fine in decent detail.

[Hotfreak]

maybe they should keep it open until they fix the main issue, people can't even get in the game...  Otherwise they are going to hurt sales come launch

have you tried launching in both full screen and windowed modes?  I think you overestimate how many people are having the problem.  I know it's incredibly frustrating when you're the one with the problem, but the majority of people can get in just fine.

edit: they just posted this about the issue

UPDATE: We believe this is due to a problem with our random number generator, of all things. Under certain conditions, the game will spend huge amounts of time generating random numbers, causing it to appear to freeze while loading, and to run very slowly once loading is finished. We're working on a fix now.

Yep windowed as well.  I can get in the game now, it's just 2 FPS all the time, on the lowest settings.  I can play Crysis just fine in decent detail.

The patch they just put out about 40 minutes ago purports to have addressed this issue.

[Wargus]

I've played multiple combos of cleric (and enjoyed most of them) however I'm really having fun with my saboteur right now. 

[naednek]

maybe they should keep it open until they fix the main issue, people can't even get in the game...  Otherwise they are going to hurt sales come launch

have you tried launching in both full screen and windowed modes?  I think you overestimate how many people are having the problem.  I know it's incredibly frustrating when you're the one with the problem, but the majority of people can get in just fine.

edit: they just posted this about the issue

UPDATE: We believe this is due to a problem with our random number generator, of all things. Under certain conditions, the game will spend huge amounts of time generating random numbers, causing it to appear to freeze while loading, and to run very slowly once loading is finished. We're working on a fix now.

Yep windowed as well.  I can get in the game now, it's just 2 FPS all the time, on the lowest settings.  I can play Crysis just fine in decent detail.

The patch they just put out about 40 minutes ago purports to have addressed this issue.

Yep, smooth as silk, on ultra!  Finally!  heard they extended the beta till Tuesday

[Huw the Poo]

It's just until Saturday as far as I know.

[Razgon]

It's just until Saturday as far as I know.

Its until friday at 10 - at least, thats what the launcher states

[Huw the Poo]

Until Saturday 10am PST is the latest official word I can find.  That's roughly 6pm here, and I just happen to have the house to myself this weekend too.  That's most of Saturday sorted!

[naednek]

Until Saturday 10am PST is the latest official word I can find.  That's roughly 6pm here, and I just happen to have the house to myself this weekend too.  That's most of Saturday sorted!

I guess I read this the wrong way...

From the patcher

The beta servers are scheduled to be available for play from Tuesday

  it just stops there.  I read from as till.  kinda like kratz=devil

[naednek]

So finally after being able to play for the first time, I'm impressed!  They almost lost a sale.   Love love the graphics!  I've been out of the MMO scene since warhammer, and man this game is fast paced.

[ericb]

I'm actually glad they are having all of these problems now...it is beta and they are actually fixing them.  All of this means a smoother launch in March which is much more important in the long run.

[naednek]

I'm actually glad they are having all of these problems now...it is beta and they are actually fixing them.  All of this means a smoother launch in March which is much more important in the long run.

no I agree. I just wouldn't have bought it going in blind

[YellowKing]

For the beta veterans in the crowd, can anyone comment on the size/linearity of the game world? Due to soul experimentation I haven't yet gotten out of the 1-10 newbie zones, but those are disappointingly linear and almost identical between factions. Does the world open up a lot more?

[Harkonis]

it does, you can check your world map in game as well to see a rough size of playable areas

[Fez]

Yeah, the world starts to open up after level 10 or so.  I'm guessing those areas will stay the same at release, but they keep adding content for the later levels to each progressive beta.

Last night I noticed more hitching than usual after the last update.  Hit a few sound loops that worked themsleves out, so I never crashed, but it did stall things for a few seconds at a time.

[Harkonis]

using teleport while mounted is quite fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGiIXwLjosA

[Elmo]

For the beta veterans in the crowd, can anyone comment on the size/linearity of the game world? Due to soul experimentation I haven't yet gotten out of the 1-10 newbie zones, but those are disappointingly linear and almost identical between factions. Does the world open up a lot more?

The starter areas are roughly levels 1-6.  After that you enter Freemarch (Defiant) or Silverwood (Guardian).  Those areas take you from roughly 6-20.  I did not find them all that similar buy YMMV.  The game is not a sandbox so don't expect a completely open world.

World map here:  http://telarapedia.com/w/images/8/82/Telara_WorldMap_01.jpg

[Huw the Poo]

The rifts are indeed great fun, but I'm finding them to be very easy at the moment.  I hope the difficulty ramps up later in the game.

[Harkonis]

the difficulty is definitely higher later.  (unless playing cleric  O_o )

my cleric at 12 had higher melee attack power than my assassin at 20.  kinda depressing.

[Huw the Poo]

I suppose it's down to how you spec your souls.  My cleric is healing-focused and definitely has a much lower DPS output than my warrior.

[Huw the Poo]

Well, I'm done with betas for Rift now, unless they introduce a lot of new stuff later that needs to be tested.  But the starting areas are too tedious to keep ploughing through so I'll wait until the game is released before I play again.

Definitely had a lot of fun though.  The world looks amazing although it could do with being more open.  There's so much to the soul system that I'll be spending as much time tinkering with builds as I did with Guild Wars.  The rifts are a great feature and as long as the difficulty ramps up at later levels I think it's a part of the game I'm really going to enjoy.  I haven't seen any invasions first-hand yet.

I want the boxed collector's edition (big surprise to anyone who knows me eh?) but I'm having a bugger of a time finding a retailer where it isn't hideously expensive and are participating in the headstart scheme.  One way or another, though, I'll be in on release.

[Harkonis]

I suppose it's down to how you spec your souls.  My cleric is healing-focused and definitely has a much lower DPS output than my warrior.

that's kind of an obvious statement.    I'm just saying that a dps spec'd cleric has more dps than a dps rogue or dps warrior and more survivability than a tank rogue or tank warrior.  It's a bit too easy to play with this character.  It really bites me in the butt when I switch characters and then get wiped because I forgot I wasn't my godmode cleric.

pretty sure you can get the boxed collectors from Trion

edit: oh, and you don't start over with each beta wave fwiw so not sure why the starting area being boring is a reason to not play the future betas.

[Huw the Poo]

pretty sure you can get the boxed collectors from Trion

Nope, digital only.  Even if they did, I'm sure it would still cost a fortune since I'm in the UK.  Their digital versions are expensive enough...

edit: oh, and you don't start over with each beta wave fwiw so not sure why the starting area being boring is a reason to not play the future betas.

I didn't know that.

[Lockdown]

Just finished another fun-as-hell beta.  I love me some Rift!

...but Jesus, do they ever need to tone down the Clerics!  How is it not obvious as fuck to these devs!?  My poor melee rogue is nothing more than a speedbump as the clerics make their way single-handedly through our team.

[naednek]

yeah, i just preordered it at d2d for 20% off.  Accidentally bought the collectors edition.  Oh well, giving me another 24 slot bag might be worth it

[Wargus]

I pre-ordered the collectors from Steam. 

I've played several cleric types, caster and melee based.  I think i had the most fun with my saboteur/riftstalker/nightblade.  It isn't as survivable as the cleric however that adds some challenge.  I was finding that I did really well in rifts too with all the AOE they have.  Not sure what I'll go with live though.

[jersoc]

yeah, as of right now I'm not cancelling my preorder. It depends if my guild in wow wants to actually start doing something.

[CeeKay]

yeah, i just preordered it at d2d for 20% off.  Accidentally bought the collectors edition.  Oh well, giving me another 24 slot bag might be worth it

plus at level 20 you can get an exclusive giant turtle to ride 

[The Grue]

Are you guys finding this to be a WoW ripoff that isn't as good as WoW?  I have been pretty unimpressed in the sense that I play WoW and while I see the things they add (multiclassing and rifts) are neat, they aren't really enough to pull me away from WoW.  What are you guys finding so great about the game?

[Harkonis]

Pretty much everything in Rift I like better than WoW.  From the graphics to the story to the classes to the mobs, etc.  I never cared for the 'feel' of WoW.

Rift feels like the perfect mesh of the things I liked in lots of games I've played.  As someone on Qt3 pointed out it pretty much takes the best ideas from WoW, DAOC, Aion, WAR and just puts them all together in one game.

I also think that WoW is very bad from a PvP standpoint and I like PvP. 

PS:  Flying mounts ruined all sense of exploration and large world in WoW as well for me.

[Grimwar]

Are you guys finding this to be a WoW ripoff that isn't as good as WoW?  I have been pretty unimpressed in the sense that I play WoW and while I see the things they add (multiclassing and rifts) are neat, they aren't really enough to pull me away from WoW.  What are you guys finding so great about the game?

For me it's the atmosphere.  The art design, the story, the world over all just feels more alive to me than WoW.  I enjoyed WoW for a time, but it has always felt very plastic and static to me.  For all the crap going down in the Warcraft world, it never felt to me like anything was really happening. In my opinion Rift portrays the impending doom in a better way and sucks me into the world much more than WoW ever did.

[CeeKay]

yep, this game definitely feels more alive than WoW.  it seemed like everywhere I went you could see signs of war, it really felt like a conflict was going on.