Rift: Bobbing Along

My good friend Belghast, over at Tales of the Aggronaut, has really kept me abreast of recent and upcoming changes to Rift. In his latest, wherein he covers several topics about what he is doing, he also talks about a webcast from Trion Worlds that happened last Friday on Twitch. What he said made me want to watch it to see what additional details I might glean. I'll have to schedule some time to watch it this week. The show runs about 2.5 hours, so consider yourself warned.

In any event, Belghast shared some details from the webcast that intrigue me greatly about Rift 3.0, which he speculates could drop just in time for Christmas.

The first is that it apparently will be centered the Plane of Water. Only it won't simply be underwater—which honestly will deter some people. Guild Wars 2 has the best underwater implementation I have seen, though I know there are still some who limit their time in the water as much as possible. But there are many possible environments dominated by water, such as "glacier, ocean, giant overgrown coral forest, underwater areas, undersea caverns." It would be interesting to see how they implement that.

The thing that got me really excited was the new souls Trion is adding to each archetype. When I played Rift, I mostly played a Cleric (as is my wont, though I did dabble in all four archetypes.) Right from the beginning, the Cleric could fill almost any role, both melee and ranged DPS, Healing—of course—and even Tanking. The Rogue was almost as versatile, though the Bard soul that was supposed to heal got nerfed pretty quickly. The Mage and the Warrior both got the shaft, to be honest, since there was no tanking soul for mages (and the healing soul also got nerfed) and no healing souls for warriors. So much for their "bring the player, not the class." All that will change with 3.0 apparently, with the Warrior finally getting a healing soul, and the Mage finally able to Tank.

I've long thought it was silly from a lore standpoint that Mages in any game would not be able to hold their own in a pitched melee battle. In stories, wizards are always extremely powerful and more than capable of protecting themselves. In the rock-paper-scissors world of MMOs, that all has gone out the window, in the name of balance. On the other hand, newer games, like GW2 and especially TSW, while not always making every character equal in every instance, at least provide enough versatility that most if not all characters can fulfill all roles. These new souls in Rift will add to the versatility of each Archetype, while having to choose them will maintain roles in any given fight.

If Trion is taking suggestions, I think there should be a Plane of Music making incursions into Telara. Tell me it would not be Totally Excellent to fight a Guitar Rift!