Rift (video game)

Rift (previously known as Rift: Planes of Telara) is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Trion Worlds. Rift takes place within a fantasy world called Telara. The game was released in March 2011. Rift received generally positive reviews from game critics, with many noting its innovative features for the genre. In August 2011, Trion announced that 1 million subscribers had played the game and by January 2012 it had earned $100 million in total revenue.
==Setting==
Rift is a MMORPG set in a fantasy world called Telara, which is the focal point of several different elemental Planes. These Planes are realities representing the elemental forces of Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Life, and Death, and it is at the one point where every one of these Planes intersect with each other that Telara exists. Each Plane is governed by a Dragon-deity, which is the personification of that elemental force. Through the actions of the Dragon of Extinction, Regulos, the various Dragons have united in an alliance known as the Blood Storm, for the purpose of invading Telara and gaining use of the intersection of all of their realms. In the past, the Blood Storm was defeated by the inhabitants of Telara with the help of the Vigil, the most powerful of the native gods of Telara.
Regulos was cast out into the elemental Planes, while its five compatriots were trapped within Telara and chained beneath a Ward designed to close Telara off from external threats. However, recently, Regulos has gained entry to Telara, destroying the Ward and causing Rifts to open to the elemental Planes, feeding the strength of the trapped Dragons and allowing their minds to enter in a bid to destroy Telara's defenders. Opposing Regulos within Telara are two factions: the Guardians and the Defiant. The conflict between these two factions serves as another source of tension and gameplay. Players have the role of Ascended, superhuman resurrected warriors whose task is to defeat the forces of Regulos and cleanse Telara forever of the threat of the Storm.[6]
The Guardians piously follow the religion of the Vigil, the supreme gods of Telara. They include the high elves, the Mathosians (a warlike culture of humans from the north), and dwarves. Ascended Guardians were resurrected by the Vigil after dying at the hands of Regulos during its return to Telara. Players of Guardians fight and die against one of Regulos' commanders, only to be brought back at the beginning of Rift.
The Defiant are those who, for cultural, historic, or personal reasons, do not follow the religion of the Vigil and have put their trust in science and technology as a way to conquer the forces of Regulos. They include the Eth (a highly advanced human culture from the south), the Bahmi (descendants of interbreeding between Air spirits and humans), and the Kelari (animistic, cabalistic dark elves). Ascended Defiant were resurrected through technology based on the study of the soul-structure of Ascended Guardians in an apocalyptic future in which Telara has nearly been consumed by Regulos. At the beginning of the game, players of Defiant are sent back in time from this point to the beginning of Rift, allowing them to fight at an opportune moment in Telara's timeline, to overthrow the religion of the Vigil and defeat Regulos.
===Rifts===
Rifts are areas of elemental instability that represent the intrusion of elemental planes into the land of Telara. Once opened, these rifts begin to spawn monsters that proceed to march towards important points on the map. It is then up to players to defeat these monsters and to close the rift. If rifts are left unchecked, the invading monsters will eventually conquer large portions of the map, killing and significantly impairing the players in that area. Entering the area surrounding the rift will trigger a prompt that allows the player to join a public group, rather than forcing the player to manually create a group. Players sealing the rift are rewarded for many things including healing, attacking and buffing. The severity and locations of the rifts are entirely dynamic. Rifts of six different types (earth, fire, air, water, life, and death) are possible, and rifts of different types will oppose each other. In addition, Non-player characters hostile to the player may engage rift invaders.
===Character Customization===
====Classes====
Each character chooses between four different callings: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage. Each class starts with access to eight different 'souls' from that calling, which have trees to which they can allocate a number of points gained each level. Rift's soul trees have two levels: branches, which are the specific abilities/bonuses that the player allocates the points to, and roots, which are the soul's base abilities that are unlocked as the player allocates a certain number of points into the branches. All races may become all classes.
The soul system allows players to customize their characters to a high degree. The player chooses three souls from within their calling, and allocates earned points into talent trees for each soul. A Cleric wishing to tank may select justicar for its defensive properties and ability to heal the group as it deals damage, sentinel to increase his healing capabilities, and shaman to increase his melee damage output (thus increasing the amount of damage-based healing and threat generation). A Cleric may have both justicar and sentinel, but may have more points allocated into sentinel than justicar, and then choose warden as the third soul for its burst damage and heal-over-time spells, to make the character more of a healer than a tank.
Players may also keep up to six different soul configurations (called roles), which may be activated whenever the player is not in combat, meaning a player can switch from a healer to a damage dealer as the group needs. Because the player's abilities come from the points allocated in the soul trees, two roles that share no souls will have no abilities or bonuses in common with each other. This allows players a greater degree of versatility than is normally allowed in MMORPGs. These combinations allow players to play multiple roles in PvE, party, and raid gameplay. Therefore, a rogue could either do ranged or melee dps, off heal, or tank. Clerics, unlike in other MMO's, allows for damaging and tanking abilities instead of being confined exclusively to healing. Mages are still the only class though that is left without melee souls; their gameplay revolves mostly around pet classes, damage over time, and direct damage. Warriors can only fulfill two roles, of either damage or tanking, lacking a support soul like the other classes.
====Physical Appearance====
Rift's character customization allows players to alter specific aspects of their avatars. Characters may change hairstyles, facial features, height, sex, tattoos, and skin colors during character creation. Once set, these attributes cannot be changed in game. Each race has a limited skin color palette and set of race-specific features. For example, the Bahmi's hairstyles for females include numerous bald or almost-bald options while the high elves have hairstyles that contain flowers. You can also customize the appearance of all armor by applying a coloured dye or by using the appearance of another item. Rift also features an expansive wardrobe system. If a player finds a particular piece of equipment that pleases them visually, they can equip it in a wardrobe slot that overwrites currently equipped items, visual model. For each wardrobe slot, a player can equip alternate gloves, shoulders, boots, pants, and chest pieces. There are various vanity items that players receive for completing dungeons, quests, or rift events in game. All together, the player can purchase up to five wardrobe slots, with the price of each subsequent slot increasing substantially.
===Weapons===
At launch, Rift included approximately 12,000 weapons which players could equip to their character. Weapon rarities are common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple), and relic (orange). Weapons include swords, axes, maces, staves, wands, bows, daggers, and shields. Swords, axes, and maces may also be two handed.
===Subscription===
After initial purchase, Rift requires a monthly subscription fee for continued play, or buying prepaid game cards for a selected amount of playing time. However, in January 2012, Rift became free to play up to level 20 with some restrictions.
==Development==
Rift was in development from 2006 until its release in 2011 and underwent extensive alpha testing, with beta testing finalizing the stress test portion of development. Trion Worlds CEO Lars Buttler has stated that Rift had an initial budget of "over US$50 million".
A trailer featuring game footage was released for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in late May 2009 and was featured on the 2009 Spike TV Video Game Trailers program. The preview was viewed favorably by 1UP.com.
==Reception==
The game has been well received by critics, currently holding an overall score of 85.07% on Gamerankings based on 28 reviews. GamingExcellence gave the game an 8.2/10, calling it "one of the best MMOs released in years." PC Gamer UK gave the game an 85/100 saying the game is "Absolutely colossal, Rift aims high and hits its mark, proving that there’s room to grow within the traditional MMO format." GameSpy gave the game a 4/5, but with the reviewer stating that "Rift itself merely delivers commendable refinement" and also questions "how well its initially refreshing concepts will hold up after months of playtime" IGN gave the game an 8.5/10, stating that "soul building is very flexible and rifts are great fun" and that although "there's not a lot of originality[,] [...] everything works exactly as it should"; and concluding that "Telara is a worthy alternative to Azeroth for anyone looking to explore a new world." GameZone gave the game an 8.5/10, stating "For what RIFT tries to do, it does very well. I rarely felt bored with all the random events and rifts constantly breaking up the monotony of questing. It’s also important to give Trion a tremendous amount of credit for releasing such a “complete” MMO." At the 2011 Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas, RIFT won awards for Best New Online Game and Best Online Technology. 
==Links==
*Official website
*Official Forums
*Trion Worlds - Official developer
*YouTube - Official YouTube channel
*Facebook - Official Facebook page
Category:2011 video games
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