Playing Lost and Found in Rift

I did it!  I found my old level 42 cleric in Rift! He was buried away in a "trial" server with about 10 other characters. I just needed to shift my "Shard" at the selection screen and track him down.  Once I did that and renamed him, it was as simple as shifting him over to a playable shard.

I loaded him up, logged in and found myself in the beautiful wintry world of Iron Pine Peak. Looking at the map also told me I was over-leveled to be in this location, so all was well . . . I could mostly wander around and not have to worry too much about getting into a scrap I couldn't handle. I even killed a cat while not knowing my skill points were all reset.

Iron Pine Peak . . . that's a pretty decent sized chunk of land to explore!

Then pressing B for bags revealed something terrifying . . . a 9 year old stash of goods where I had no idea what was what.  If you're an old time gamer that loves to revisit MMOs, I'm sure you've felt the same panic and fear.  What in the world is going on here? Oh no . . . Buff Scrolls?!?! Crafting Supplies?!?! HELP!

What in the world are these full bags and mishmash-ed skill bars? I'm terrified!

My ability bars were a tragic mess and come to find out I needed to completely respec my character.  It was an absolutely terrifying 10 minutes that resulted in me finding a lot of lost and forgotten items. I imagine it's like someone renting a storage shed, leaving the country, and coming back nine years to find a pile of strange microwaves and coffee pots they had completely forgotten about.

My favorite "lost coffee pot" that I found was a cosmetic pet I had named "Lil' Wally" since I bought a card that came with him at Walmart. I think it's a frog?

Yes, you're alone, but you've got a frog and a pixie, so things can't really be that bad can they?

I ended up choosing an "easy" build with a healer pet and we spent some quality time killing mobs and completing quests in my immediate vicinity . . . things like winter wolves, mountain cats, evil cultists, fire elementals, and six-legged basilisks.

It was a good couple hours of fun last night re-experiencing this old world.

It seems an unlikely place to find a fire elemental, but what the hey.

And I must say . . . my dude could totally be in a fantasy K-pop band with his purple faux-hawk and perfectly pixie-like features. LOOK AT THIS HOTNESS!

go ahead . . . swipe right.

I also spent some time just "looking around" at things, like this swirling Air Rift (at least I think it's an Air Rift?) in the cold mountain tops. giant swirling chunks of rock with uber looking Griffons prowling around. Wow!  Just super visually stunning . . . especially since I bumped my graphics up from Low to Ultra. I could have never experienced this game in all its splendor on my old rig, that's for sure.

Really this should be video footage to show how amazing this swirling meteor field looked.

I'd say I still need to experiment with all my skills a bit before I can say this character is fully ready to rock in a level appropriate zone, but I had fun wandering around here and rediscovering things like my mechanical horse mount and Lil' Wally.

I think I at least have another couple play sessions in me for Rift. No pressure, just a big world to explore and more lost things to find. Sounds like fun, right?

Happy dueling

Was there a Rift between us?

The other day I decided to download and check out a "now" older MMO, good ol' Rift.  You remember Rift, right?

Look, a Rift that's undulating like a giant octopus in the sky!

Sure you do! So did I! I was there during "Beta 5" for Rift and it was full of people, and Twitter was annoyingly barking out screenshots for every achievement you made. It was crazy, and it seemed like anyone who was anyone was out there playing Rift.  I even made a special blog I was going to devote to Rift that . . . never really took off. Oh well. Let's just forget I mentioned that.

2011 was a crazy time when MMOs were still all the hotness and the term "WoW-killer" was a thing.  Every new MMO that came out was going to be the next WoW-Killer and promised to be full of fun and interesting people . . . and they were! They just didn't kill WoW. That time really felt like the peak of MMO production to me. What did we get out of that time frame? SWTOR! GW2! AoC! LOTRO! ESO! and so many more cool acronyms!

I'm not sure what happened to my old (level 40? level 50?) character, but it's probably hiding on either a different account or a different shard. Either way, kicking up a new character and running through the old intro zone was almost exactly as I remembered it, but with a few differences.

Gotta love this first Rift boss battle in the Rift Tutorial  

The first big difference of course was that the game didn't have as many new players like me running around in the tutorial area.  That's to be expected. Rift is a nine-year-old game at this point and from the looks of their community landing page, all that's being talked about are the new mounts and things in the shop. I'm just happy to see the game servers are still running and I can log on and play for free.

The second thing I noticed was that it all seemed a bit easier than it was when I was playing back in 2011.  Agro radius was smaller, and things didn't feel like they presented as big of a challenge as they did back at the day.  That's also to be expected.  When something is too punishing too quickly, people just tend to check out of the game and say #sorrynotsorry #ImAudiHere.

The third thing that had changed was ME . . . great, I feel old now. Thanks a lot, Rift! But, seriously, I've changed a lot as a person and as a game-consumer, but that said . . . the actors were all standing in the right spots and I was there playing the hero of the game, Mr. Ascended himself.

I remember chain whip guy and in my memories, he's a lot scarier than this with more adds.

It was good to log in and at least look at the starting area of Rift again. I'm not sure if I'll keep poking around or not, but it's good to see this is still alive and kicking.

Here's to you, Rift!  Here's to you.

Happy Dueling

Rift -- my Impression after the first couple hours

So if you haven't heard about a game called "Rift," then you've been hiding away somewhere much cooler than the MMO-scape. I envy you people. You don't have to live your life thinking, OH MAN I WANT TO TRY THAT GAME OUT RIGHT NOW!

Yesterday, I got the chance to fulfill my destiny of geekdom and actually play in "Beta 5" of Rift. What can I say about this game . . .


LUCY! Sorry, my pink pet leopard thing gets all excited every time I ding a new level in Rift, but more about that later.

Yeah, it's all very . . . familiar. It's a button masher (no card dueling to be found whatsoever) like many many many MMOs out there. It's quest driven like many many MMOs out there. There's gigantically huge swords like many many MMOs out there . . .


But there is something to be said about auto grouping near a "rift" when one opens up. I like that. (From what I understand, it's kind of like how Tabula Rasa use to work?) It kind of has the flavor of someone auto-joining your dueling circle. When you're around a rift experience like this, you don't really have a choice . . . from what I can tell, if you're solo, you're auto-grouped with the people around the rift.


Yes, yes, it's like going to a community Thanksgiving Dinner! That's what it's like!

And because my pet Lucy asked me to tell you about the level up message . . . Yes, the main difference here for me between this game and all the MMOs I've played to date so far is the experience of the most unreal gaudy level up message ever.


I really do feel like I've just completed a fatality move in Mortal Kombat. FINISH HIM!

So, is this game something you might want to try? Is this game something a kid could handle?

/shrug . . . I've only played it for like an hour or two . . .

But, I can tell you that it's a Teen Rated game with what appears to be all open chat (I haven't seen much stupidity yet other than the mention of a Klondike bar--I'd kill for a Mount right now!" says random_stranger_01 "Or maybe for a Klondike bar!" says random_stranger_02.) I can tell you that it feels like I'm playing the Game Which Shall Not Be Named. I can also tell you that the computer requirements to play it are pretty steep; I have to play this game on low resolution settings to avoid lag. ugh. It's definitely NOT Wizard101 by any means.

. . . ultimately, it's a cool game because of one reason: They have a beastlord-esque class, which makes the Stingite in me happy. Will it be something I want to play forever and now I'm hooked? Not so far. I just happened to get in the beta and play it last night.

If you're looking to try this out, then here . . . I'll be an enabler for the first 25 people who want in:

CFFZ-RJR7-NCWX-YMPL-RZCQ

That's the VIP Beta Key they sent me, good for 25 uses. First come, first serve. Good luck! Remember to ask your parents first! (Unless you are a parent, but still, you should call and give your kids' granparents a hug. This is an MMO we're talking about here with the power to suck your soul out for six months to a year--they should know you love them before you ascend and whatnot.)

Happy Dueling!