However, the game ain’t perfect, at least not to me. It lacks some polish in areas that World of Warcraft has long improved on, but it’s also made some decisions independent of those issues that I either don’t get or just don’t like as a matter of personal preference. I’ll spare you the former for now, but I’d like to discuss some of the latter category here.

Again, this is strictly my personal taste, so take it how you will.

1. The game needs more “well known” races.

I really think Bioware floundered a bit here. Some of the race selections in this game just make no sense, especially when you look at what ISN’T here. I mean, your standard humans, Twi’leks, and Zabraks are fine. The Sith Purebloods make sense if you know the Star Wars timeline, and are just plain cool. And the Chiss are an amazing addition that I didn’t expect, but really, who doesn’t think the race that Grand Admiral Thrawn, villain of Timothy Zahn’s amazing trilogy of Star Wars novels, isn’t going to be fun to play as. But the rest? You’ve got Mirialans, a race of a VERY background character in one of the prequels. The Miraluka are a race of blind people who only appear in the second KOTOR game and are more or less identical to humans in every other respect. The Cyborg race had potential, but frankly, the “cybernetic” artwork looks less like robotics and more like something you’d wear in a hospital recovery room. I don’t even know where the Rattataki came from. They look similar to the slightly well known character Asajj Ventress (she mostly appeared in the Clone Wars comics and cartoons) but they aren’t apparently the same race at all, so I don’t even know what the deal is there.

So you’ve got a lot of wasted potential there, especially when you look at what’s missing. Just going from the original trilogy races alone, there’s no Wookiees, no Mon Calamari, no Sullustans, no Trandoshans, no Rodians, or any number of races to play as.

(Each link above, by the way, goes to the Wookieepedia entry for a well known member of each of the races that you’d recognize from the films. Just in case you don’t recognize the names. We’ll do it again below)

And while you might despise the prequel trilogy, they did give us some cool looking aliens. And again, far too many of them aren’t playable here. No Kel Dor, or Nautolans, or Togruta, or Chagrians, or Cereans. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, again.

“But Brandon, maybe they just didn’t have time to build graphical models for those races!” you might say. Except I’ve seen 90% of the above mentioned races as NPCs in this title so far. So clealy they could have done it. I just wish they would have. I mean, come on! Who wouldn’t want to play a Wookiee Jedi? That’s just COOL!

2. I don’t like the restrictions that are currently in place for lightsaber blade colors.

Currently in game, once you get at a certain level of dark side or light side “points”, you are unable to have certain colors for your lightsaber. Once you go dark enough, you can’t have blue or green. Going light enough restricts your ability to have a red crystal. Yellow, orange, and purple have no restrictions, though the latter two are apparently somewhat rare.

Yes, I know. You movie-only people will tell me that red blades are a Sith color and no Jedi has them. Well while that is true, there are written examples of Jedi wielding red blades. In the Clone Wars era, both Adi Gallia and the Padawan and later full Jedi A’sharad Hett. Want a later example? How about Leia Organa? She used a Lightsaber described as “ruby red” during her early years as a Jedi.

On the opposite side of things, the Sith Lord Exar Kun continued using his blue lightsaber that he had from his time as a Jedi, and even modified it to include a second blue blade, one of the first double bladed lightsabers ever recorded.

I know the restrictions are in place to cater to the movie folks (or heck maybe even Lucasfilm made them) and to give each faction’s Force-users a more uniform look, but really, they’re just annoying. I’d much prefer to just let it be open to any color you wish.

3. I really wish we could name our personal ships

Early on, around level 16, you get a personal ship. I just want the ability to name them. It would be a neat little touch, some extra personalization.

4.  There are a few, very few, minor art elements that could use an update.

Most of the artwork in this game is nothing short of astonishing. Things just LOOK amazing. Bioware has done an absolutly fantastic job trying to replicate the feel of the Star Wars universe.

Which unfortunately makes the stuff that doesn’t quite measure up stick out all the more.

When you make a character, it doesn’t take terribly long to get them gear that represents their iconic look. Jedi get robes with raised hoods on them. Your Bounty Hunter gets heavy, battle scarred with lots of weapons and a jetpack. Sith get some jet black hooded robes, and eventually a cool mask. The one thing that’s sticking out to me is the Helmets for Bounty Hunters. It’s taken me until my current level to find one that doesn’t look just awful. They look like helmets from ancient Japan. I’m not expecting a full-faced Mandalorian-style helm right off the bat, but something a bit more appropriate to the sci-fi realm would really be appreciated.

Cyborgs need an update, like I mentioned above. The implants that are currently available make them look more like hospital patients and have no real weight to them.

A common complaint I’ve heard concerns the limited number of body type choices for player characters. Most are seeking something more average than what’s available, the current choices are a bit limiting.

That’s it, so far. Admittedly it’s a very minor list. That’s really how good this game feels to play, as a Star Wars fan. I”m having a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see where the game goes from here. Again, please note this does not concern gameplay mechanics or features that other games have improved upon, because I feel these are things we can all universally agree are features that need to be added. I’m speaking of things like an automatic random grouping utility, an API for mods, a more customizable default UI, dual specializations, those sorts of things aren’t quite what I was going for here. Those are no brainers.

Anyway, how are you guys enjoying SWTOR and are their any other design choices you would like to see differently?

Anyone who knows me well knows I am TERRIBLE at making decisions. I question myself over and over again. I’m trying not to be this way, I really am, and I have to commend my lovely wife for having patience with me, heh.

But Star Wars: The Old Republic has presented me with one of the harder decisions to make in a long time: Picking which class to start with when the game comes out. There are so many awesome choices, and me being a huge Star Wars fanboy, all of them look appealing in their own ways.

I should state that I had made a decision at one point. I was done, committed. My guild from WoW was going to be on the Sith Empire side, I’d looked over the class choices available to that faction, done the research on what they could do, and picked one. I was good.

Then they announced that they were going to try something new in this game, we were going to establish guilds on both factions for this game, as an experiment. So now we’d have a presence on both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic sides! Well now my decision isn’t so firm! I have more options to consider! So I started looking over and researching the Republic’s classes, which led me to doing more research on the Empire’s classes, and, well, you see where this goes. I have too many options, all of which sound awesome for various reasons, and now I have no idea how to pick. So I’m asking for…I don’t know if help is the right word, because I’m not sure if I CAN be helped in this matter. Additional information, perhaps? Opinions I hadn’t considered?

Before I list the options, let me explain SWTOR’s class system. Each faction has 4 base classes to choose from. At level 10, your character can choose from 1 of 2 Advanced Classes. At the time of this writing, this choice is permanent, so you have to decide wisely.

The classes on each faction aren’t necessarily different, however. Each class has a “mirror” on the other side. One class and it’s mirror will play very similarly, but their look and feel will be different. For example, the Republic’s Jedi Knight Base class is a mirror of the Empire’s Sith Warrior. Both have one Advanced class that focuses on a Single saber, and the other that focuses on Dual Wielding Lightsabers.  With the Jedi and Sith classes, it’s easy to see the parallels, because they use the same weapons and their Force powers are similar mechanically, though they appear different.

Let’s try another example. On the Republic side, you have the Trooper class. He wears heavy armor, he wields big guns, and throws lots of grenades. His mirror on the Empire side is the Bounty Hunter. Heavy Armor, has rapid fire Blaster pistols, wrist mounted rocket launchers, and other fun toys. You see the idea. Similar design but with different flavor. And of course, their storylines will be completely different. It feels much like a different class.

So now, we come to the options I’ve narrowed down. I’ll list them by their Base Class, then Advanced class, then talk a bit about what the class is designed to focus on and what about that in my own Star Wars interest lures me to the class in question.  And I’ll link each to the SWTOR Wiki, you can go there and read more about the other classes that are available and berate me for not considering them. I can feel the Smuggler fans glaring at me already, heh. Sorry guys, never really wanted to be Han Solo as a kid. Aighty, here we go.

Trooper - Commando: The Trooper is the classic armored guy with a huge gun, mostly inspired by the Clone troopers of the prequel trilogy. These guys are the elite troops with the best equipment and most powerful guns. The Commando class focuses more on firepower, whereas the other class, the Vanguard, focuses on building up their armor systems. Consequently, the Commando gets access to the biggest heaviest blaster rifles in the game, and are pretty much capable of filling the air full of blaster bolts! Heavily armored with a huge amount of firepower, ya gotta love it.

Jedi Knight – Jedi Sentinel: The Jedi Sentinel advanced class is all about the swordplay. This class focuses on dual-wielding lightsabers. That alone is just made of awesome.

Jedi Consular – Jedi Shadow: The Jedi Consular splits into very two odd paths. The first one, Jedi Sage, focuses primarily on Force powers, and has a lot of telekenetic based abilities. Hurling rocks or other objects around, or Force pushing things over, that’s their speciality. The Jedi Shadow, on the other hand, is all about stealth, sneaking around, and quickly dispatching foes with a double-Blade lightsaber. Think a good version of Darth Maul here. I love the double-blade lightsaber and the idea of playing a stealthy Jedi that appears out of nowhere and takes down his opponents sounds sweet.

Bounty Hunter – Mercenary: Mercs Dual wield pistols and focus on their wrist and backpack rocket launchers. They don’t have as heavy of armor as their Powertech brothers, but they have more long range damage dealing to make up for it.

Sith Inquisitor – Sith Sorcerer: The Sith equivalent of the Jedi Sage, these guys focus on Dark Side force powers. That means lightning. Lots and lots of Lightning. I make lots of jokes about being a Sith Lord, well if I was, this is the kind of Sith I’d want to be, hurling lightning around like crazy, demonstrating my RAW POWAAAAAAH!

Imperial Agent – Sniper: I admit, this was the class I was dead set on before the Republic guild became available. Sniper Rifles? Check. Droids you get to control and have blow stuff up? Check. The Chiss as a playable race? Check.

So that’s my choices. I want to have SOMETHING chosen before I start. I mean, sure, I could create another character later, but I would still like to have an idea in mind before I get started on Day 1, you know? So if you have any advice, please share!

Edit: Now that I’ve added character class progression vids for all the classes I’m looking at, here’s the two I’m not thinking about, the Smuggler and the Sith Warrior

So I’ve got a ton of great games both in my hands and coming soon. But all that is to say, I’m still having fun in WoW occasionally. There are changes coming up that make me excited about it. Plus, I’ve already made the committment to a full year. Why would I do that, you ask? Well, for one, if I agree to it, I get Diablo 3 for free. I also get into the next expansion’s beta by default. So it’s a worthwhile investment for those alone. Plus I truly am excited about what Mists of Pandaria has to offer. So even if SWTOR is so utterly amazing, I will be playing WoW at least for a good while in the near future.

That being said, I do think it’s time for a change within WoW. Let me explain a bit.

Since I started the game way back when, I’ve always played my troll mage, Dahkar, as my main. My second character I created was a druid that has survived in various forms to today. Finally, the third character I created that I gave the most playtime to was my Warlock. In various forms, those three characters were the ones I focused most on. They were my first level 70s during Burning Crusade, and during Wrath, they got the most playtime overall. During Cataclysm, they were my first (and still only) level 85s.

But now that I’ve given up raiding and focused on a more casual playstyle, as well as other games, I find myself looking to the future of WoW and wondering I’ll go. Blizzcon, with it’s class previews for Mists of Pandaria, pushed this thinking into overdrive. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time for a change.

I’ve played the Mage for 5 years or so now, and there’s always been a number of problems inherent with the class. I had hoped that Cata would fix them, but if anything, they’ve made them worse. Arcane has been made very dull to play overall. Fire has been crippled by RNG worse than it’s ever been. And Frost (my favorite spec) remains uncompetitive in the DPS charts due to Blizzard’s insistence that buffing it would make it too powerful in PVP. The class preview at Blizzcon mildly addressed these concerns, but the talent trees themselves were worse. Many of the talents were ones we already have, and watching other classes, which had either crazy new options or ones that had been revamped as well as new resource systems, well, it made me sad. The level 90 talent options, as of this writing, are a joke. Yes, I know, it’s really early in development, and they’ll almost certainly be completely different by the time of release. But for me, I think I’ve had enough of dealing with the frustrations of the mage, and I want to take a look at something different.

Plus there are my other “primary” alts. The druid tends to be cyclically fun, but right now, especially with the playstyle the Mists talents seem to suggest, I think I’m ready to give him a rest as well. The Warlock, on the other hand, is one of the ones getting nearly totally revamped, and his talent choices look amazing. So here’s still a maybe, but only as an alt.

So going forward, my primary character focuses are going to look like this
Main: Shadow Priest
Primary Alts: Elemental/Enhancement Shaman, Rogue, or Warlock, two of the three.

The Shadow Priest is who I’ve been playing as whenever I played with my wife, and I’ve come to love both the playstyle, the utility, and the lore of the character. Plsu Shadowform just looks sweet. Come Mists, he’s going to be where I focus most of my efforts as of right now.

As for the alts, I’m going to pick two of the three for sure, and it will likely require the beta experience before I finally decide. As for why…
Shaman: I’ve always loved the dual-DPS style, being able to go melee or caster ranged, and I love the concept of wielding the classic elements. The talents look very fun, and I’m excited to see where the class goes
Rogue: Dual Wielding is awesome, and I’ve always wanted to focus on a character with it. The Shaman was a good place to start, but the rogue is all about it. Plus, stealth is truly fun. You never understand just how great a utility it is, until you play with it. Still leveling it, so time and the beta will tell, but right now, he looks good.
Warlock: Right now, I really want to stick with the idea that I not focus on any toon that I’ve heavily played before. But the sheer amount of awesome love that Warlocks are getting are holding me back from discarding him right now. It’s going to have to be really good to keep him around, so the beta will tell for sure.

I think these changes will help keep my interest in WoW strong through the upcoming year I’ve got with the game. The contract was already worth it for getting Diablo 3 free, along with the other perks, but I’m looking to enjoy the game on its own merit as well, and this should help.

So my fellow WoW players, what do you think? Any changes coming in your play in the future?

Well, in between doing stuff for all of the other places you can find me online lately, the many other things I’ve been working on, and enjoying being with my wife, I just haven’t really had a reason or time.

So am I promising to get better? Nope, I make no such promise. If it happens, it happens. What I can tell you is where the heck you can find out what’s happening with me, or what the heck I’ve been doing.

Best spot? Twitter. And follow my better half too.

Other good spot? Facebook

Semi-Decent spot? Google Plus

Wanna catch my podcasts? Yes, I do podcasts, two of them. Click the link to learn more about what podcasts are, if you don’t know. The first one is called the Anecdotalist (twitter)(website). Deci and I share stories from you, the listening audience, and our special guest cohost every two weeks. Submit your entertaining stories or just listen and laugh with us! We have some amazing people on this show.

The second is the Doghouse Podcast (twitter). Put out by the fine folks at Doghouse Systems, we discuss PC hardware and gaming. Every other episode, I review a PC title for the show. Which means I spend a lot of my freetime playing said PC games, heh. We also do lots of giveaways, make fun of each other, and in general have a good time. Give it a listen. Or read our reviews

Wanna play said PC games with me? Be my friend on Steam. If you don’t have a Steam account, you might want one, since the Doghouse podcast gives all their titles away via Steam.

So yeah, if you’re interested in what’s up in my life, there ya go. Yes this thing will be less frequently updated, and what I do post here will probably not be anything interesting to anyone but me. I occasionally feel the need to write something just to get my own thoughts organized, you’re welcome to read it if ya like, but if general life is what you’re after, you’re better off with the above options.

Love ya guys.

Specifically, the “Meh” one!

(and yes I swear I’ll try to write more)

Yeah that’s right, unless you’ve been ignoring me the past couple of weeks, you’re probably aware that I’m a married man now. I don’t have a whole lot of photos yet, I know that’s what you’re all waiting to see those, but our photographer is getting married herself soon, so she’s kinda busy herself! But I want to talk about my thoughts and feelings surrounding the event, the honeymoon (I’ll spare ya the salacious details, heh), and the few days of “regular” life.

I’ll admit, I was uncertain how the wedding would all come together. It just seemed like so many various little threads had to all come together to make a wonderful tapestry, and I wasn’t sure it would actually happen. Boy was I wrong. The Baker Building was just gorgeous. They did an amazing job putting it all together.

We did not follow the tradition of the groom not seeing the bride before she walks down the aisle. Caitlyn, the photographer, wanted to get photos done before the ceremony/reception, so we did some “First look” photos. She stood me in the middle of the aisle and had me close my eyes until Karen was right behind me, then let me see her. I can’t wait to see how the photos turned out, because Karen was incredibly beautiful. I was floored. That’s not to say I was any less teary-eyed when she walked down the aisle, because I did. It was still an overwhelming experience, knowing she was coming ever closer to being my wife with each step.

We actually had 2 men officiate the wedding. Dr. Rex Butler, who if ya don’t know is the father of my best man and the man who prayed with me to receive Christ, presided over most of the ceremony while Ryon Price, the pastor of Karen’s church in Lubbock, lead the opening prayer and handled the communion. I loved how that turned out. Rex’s service was very unique in how it approached the traditional ceremony. It felt perfect for our wedding.

If you were at the wedding, you might have been able to see that we took Communion, but I doubt you could see the details. But what we planned on doing was the “dunking” method, as in taking the crackers, and dunking them in the grape juice. However, Ryon forgot, and we ate and drank seperately. I was amused, but I wasn’t about to say anything, because I much preferred the way we did it. If you get a chance to see the DVD of it, you’ll see what I mean.

I love my ring. I’ve put some photos up on Twitter, but I’ll try to get one in here as well. It’s a silver ring with some Hebrew on it that says “My beloved is mine, and I am hers”

Onto the Honeymoon! We went to the Grand Pineapple Resort in Negril, Jamaica, for a total of 4 nights. And while we had an amazing time, I learned a few things about the choice in the process. Don’t get me wrong, we had an amazing time, the scenery was gorgeous, and the food tasty, but a number of things made it less appealing as a future choice.

I ordered our package online through Grand Pineapple’s website. And maybe I should have checked it out a little more thoroughly, but I was under the impression that everything was handled. Well, I was wrong. Apparently transportation between the airport and the resort was not included. So when we got there, we ended up looking a little foolish because we were the only ones who had no idea that we were supposed to have transportation vouchers or something. Yeah, well, at no point was that made clear, so we ended up having to pay seperately for that.

Also, we made a HUGE mistake on our first morning there. When we went to South Padre, one of our favorite things to do was take morning walks  on the beach. It was peaceful, we could enjoy being with each other and enjoy the sound of the water. Do NOT try to do this in Jamaica. We were accosted by several vendors who would not listen to us when we tried to tell them to leave us alone, practically threw their merchandise at us, and got all indignant when we refused to pay for it. We got so sick of dealing with it that we just turned around and headed back. I guess that’s the price you pay being in a foreign country that’s so dependant on tourism, but I couldn’t stand it. Just made me mad.

Still, we had a lot of fun. I think I drank more alcoholic beverages those few days than I ever have in my life. Easy to do when they’re free and an expert is making them right? The food was amazing, especially the one night we had a beach BBQ dinner, complete with a local band for entertainment. I think the best thing we did was going snorkeling. I’ve never done that before, not over a lovely reef like where we went, so it was an awesome new experience. Still, I tried breathing through my nose way too much and ended up tasting seawater. Oops.

I love being married. Having Karen here all the time has been amazing. It just feels…natural having her here, as if we’ve always belonged together. It just works. We’re still making lots of adjustments, but we also understand each other amazingly well. I mean, who else is going to banish me to our room to play the game i’m reviewing for Doghouse Systems? She really is the best wife ever. I can’t wait to see where God takes us. I know it’s going to be awesome.

All righty guys, the next post should have a lot of wedding photos. Our photographer has gotten home from her own honeymoon and we’re incredibly excited to see her work! I’ll talk to you guys later, because I will definitely update more frequently!

Rift is the new kid on the block. Trion has taken the lessons that Blizzard has already learned, and it’s applied them to Rift, with enough of their own ideas that make it an individual game in its own right, and they’ve done very well. Rift has had more success than any MMO since WoW came along and became the dominant player. Rift, if handled very well, could evolve into the game that finally truly challenges WoW’s spot at the top.

That being said, neither game is perfect. Each has things the other does not, things that make it great. Things that the other company should look into incorporating, or at least a version of it. I’m going to list 5 such things for each game.

We’ll start with WoW. Here are 5 things that Rift has done that could make WoW even more amazing and even more dominant.

1. Better player character models & customization. WoW has an extremely limited set of options for customizing how your character looks. You have 5 customizing options, each with about 6-8 choices. End result, you often see a lot of characters that have minor if any differences at all. And let’s face it, some of these races need their graphics completely redone. The Orcs and the Humans, WoW’s most iconic races, are so hideously ugly it’s a wonder they get played at all. Rift has an amazing amount of depth to it’s creator, which allows you to be much more unique in your design. Not to mention the fact that all the race options look amazing.

2. Zonewide events – Rift is brought to life by the rifts and invasions that happen in each of their zones. You see tons of players come out of the woodwork, stop what they’re doing, and band together to defend key points, and take the fight to invading enemies. Now, I’m not saying the Burning Legion has to invade every zone in WoW at random intervals, but perhaps in a few key zones, recurring zone-wide events can occur. Maybe a surge of roving silithid suddenly spring up in Silithus, or minions of the Twilight Council suddenly invade a zone. Especially with proper rewards, I think this would drive a lot of players out of the main cities and into the world more, and it would make the zones in question feel much more alive. Actually, a good example of a start to this is the constant battle between the Dragonmaw and the Wildhammers in Twilight Highlands.

3. Updates to the Class System – Okay, I’m not bashing WoW’s class system. I like what they did with it in Cataclysm. But they really need to step outside the box here and think of ways to make each of the classes, and even then each of the schools/Talent trees more unique. Each of Rift’s individual souls plays very differently. WoW should definitely take a look at some of the archetypes Rift introduced and consider how to incorporate them, but not only that, they need to take a look at some of the concepts they came up with. Having souls specifically to serve in a “Support” capacity is an amazing idea. Many classes have debuffs that are unique to the player that serve not so much to hinder an enemy, but to modify how the class plays, such as the Stormcaller’s Electrocute or the Necromancer’s Deathly Calling. Blizzard really needs to come up with either more interesting and unique classes and paradigms, or think way more outside the box with the ones they have and make them a more unique play experience.

4. More customization of the Default Interface – Rift’s basic default interface is extremely customizable. Everything can be moved around without the need for addons. Blizzard is LONG overdue for needing to do this. Many of the default UI elements are in extremely awkward places. Let us move some stuff around by default, Blizzard.

5. Artifacts – Rift’s Artifact collecting (and to a lesser extent, puzzles) is what Archaeology should have been. Archaeology is terrible, and needs a serious revamp.

All right, we’ll move on to Rift. Here are 5 things WoW has incorporated that I’m honestly shocked did not make it into Rift.

1. A Random Dungeon Finder – Come on, Trion. This thing was universally hailed as the best thing to ever happen to WoW during Wrath of the Lich King. Why would you not incorporate it? I get that you’re big on the whole exploring the world thing, as evidenced by the lack of Flying mounts or taxis, but really, you need to add this in.

2. Addon support – This is another no brainer, as it continues to be one of WoW’s greatest selling points. You’ve done a good job incorporating many things people would want to have from addons into the game, but you can’t really have thought of everything. Give us this, please.

3. More exotic variation in player racez – Ugly though some of them may be, WoW has an amazingly diverse array of races as player characters. Trion, you do not. The Guardians are your standard Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. The Defiants are….Other humans, other elves, and Bahmi. The Bahmi are the most exotic race you have, and even then, they’re just big beefy humanoids with cool colored skin. The thing is, you already have exotic looking races in your game that are unique compared to anything we’ve really seen before, you just made them all evil. Look into establishing some faction of some of these races to join the existing factions, or create a neutral one entirely.

4. Better traveling options – Okay, I get it, you want folks to explore the new world. And you have the porticulums to move folks from zone to zone easily. But your zones are really really big, and we sometimes have to spend an inordinate amount of time running or riding our mounts just to get back to areas were in. Having some sort of flight paths (perhaps a series of smaller teleporters that only go to a few towns in a zone) would make this less of a hassle, and would help out a lot during invasion events too.

5. Guild Banks – This one also seems fairly obvious. It was a great addition in Burning Crusade, and many other MMOs have done it since then. I’m really shocked it wasn’t implemented on Day 1. I hear rumors that this is coming soon, so let’s hope it’s the case

I am enjoying Rift immensely, so much so that I’ve let my WoW account lapse into inactivity (meaning, not paying for it at the moment, something that was easy, since my old debit card expired at the same time I got Rift, so I just decided not to update the payment info with the new card). That hasn’t happened for a very long time, so it’s rather astonishing to think about.

One of my personal biggest draws to it is the class system. You guys are all aware what a sucker I am for a good class system in an RPG, and Rift has one of the more innovative ones. I’m going to go into a bit of detail as to how it works, and what I’ve personally done with it on my level 24 mage.

I’ve already covered a bit of the basics in an ealier post (http://thebmatt.com/2011/02/15/362/), but I’ll rehash again. The game gives you four classes (known as “Callings”) to choose from (Warrior, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage), but within each Calling, you have a choice of 8 “Souls” to pick from. They’re known as “Souls” because in Rift’s storyline, the players play “Ascended”, heroes returned to life (by the Gods if you’re a Guardian, and by techno-magic if you’re a Defiant) and imbued with the Souls of fallen warriors of Telara’s past. Each Ascended has three Souls “active” within himself at any one time, essentially making him three times as strong as an ordinary being in this world.

In terms of game Mechanics, what this means is that upon character creation, you choose your Calling. During the initial storyline of the game, you choose the three “souls” that you will be imbued with. Each of these souls functions like a Talent Tree in World of Warcraft or Diablo, meaning you’re given a tree of abilities and attributes, and you spend points to unlock them, but instead of having a pre-determined three for your class like in those games, you get to pick your trees.

Each tree is built around a thematic class in it’s own right, and each has a different playstyle. Let’s take a look at each of the souls available to just the Mage calling.

Pyromancer – Pyromancers are all about fire, and they play similar to how you would expect a Fire mage to play: Front-loaded damage with some minor Damage-over-time effects plus a good amount of area damage.

Elementalist – The Elementalist is one of two pet classes the Mage has, summoning creatures of the various element types to battle their foes. They also have elemental themed magic of their own, but their primary source of power is their pets

Stormcaller – The Stormcaller focuses on weather-related magic, using the cold of winter and lots of Lightning. They build up several debuffs on their foes, and then once those are in place, unleash deadly lightning until they need to reapply them.

Necromancer – Necromancers focus on summoning undead minions and using various debuffs to augment the minion’s damage. Without those debuffs applied, the undead minion does only a fraction of it’s potential.

Warlock – The warlock studies the magic of Death (itself an elemental plane), and focuses primarily on Damage-over-Time spells as well as draining away enemy health. Unlike WoW, they have no pets.

Chloromancer – Chloromancers are mages who study the magic of plants and nature. They are the only healing soul available to the Mage, and they heal by transferring the damage they do to their opponents into heals for their allies. They do not posess the raw power the other souls have, but they make up for it with their healing prowress.

Archon – One of two support souls available to the mage, the Archon is a buff specialist, dealing damage to their foes (and occasionally themselves) to provide additional power to their allies. This soul is difficult to utilize on it’s own, but does very well in a group

Dominator – The other support Soul, Dominators focus on using magic to overpower their foes’ will. Dominators are control specialists, able to force their enemies to move how and when they want them to, and damaging them if they do not. As with the Archon, the Dominator is a Soul more sorted to a group role.

So as you can see, you have a wide varity of options available to you to mix and match from. Selecting a good combination is key, and can make a lot of difference in effectiveness. Let’s take a look at how this works, and some good combinations, again using the Mage calling as an example.

When you choose a Soul, you gain access to that Soul’s Tree. The Soul has two parts, the Tree and the Root. The Tree is where you spend the Soul points you gain as you level, and by doing so you get benefits to your existing abilities, and in some cases learn new ones. The Root is where you get the base abilities of the class. As you spend points in the tree, no matter where you spend them, you unlock new abilities. Each tree has a set of 1-3 abilities in the root that unlock just for choosing the Soul.

Soul points are gained at a rate of one per level, with an additional point every third level. Additionally, you cannot have more soul points in a tree equal to your current level. From this, you can start to see a pattern of how you choose your soul combinations.

1. The Primary Soul – This is the soul you want to play primarily as. You’ll be building points in this soul every level, and get access to most of the Root abilities.

2. The Secondary Soul – This is the Soul where you will generally spend the extra point you get every third level. You will choose this based on wanting abilities or Soul tree talents that compliment your primary soul that are available early in the tree or root.

3. The Tertiary, or “Zero-Point”, Soul – This soul is chosen only for the base abilities you get for choosing the soul. Likely you will spend little to no soul points here.

As an example, for a high damage soul such as the Pyromancer or Stormcaller, a good build is to choose Elementalist as a Secondary Soul, along with Chloromancer as the Zero-Point. Elementalist gives you access to an Earth Elemental pet to tank for you, as well as a mana-recharge ability to quickly get back in the fight. Cholormancer offers you the Radiant Spore ability that helps heal both you and your pet, giving you extra survival while soloing.

Conversely, let’s take a look at the Necromancer, a strong pet class with many options to heal your minion and you. The Warlock works very well as a Secondary soul, due to the Sacrifice Life: Mana ability, which allows Necromancers to convert their health into Mana. The Dominator works perfectly as the Zero-Point soul, offering the Polymorph ability to remove one enemy out of the fight for when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. The Archon, which provides an additional Damage-over-Time ability that also buffs your Endurance, is another potential option.

These are just a few of your options to pick from for just ONE of the Callings. And, if you don’t particularly like your choice of combinations, as early as level 13, you can complete a series of quests to unlock the other five not chosen during the starter quest chain. From this point, you can simply pay a trainer to reset your soul points and create a new combination. And if you want more than one, you can also pay the trainer for a new Role, which allows you to store another combination of Souls to switch between in the field. You can purchase an additional three of these, allowing a character to have four soul combos at any one time.

I absolutely love this system and the high degree of customization it affords. Coupled with the game’s very detailed character creator, and it’s more and more unlikely that you’ll ever run into a character that looks or acts anything like yours.

Rift is by no means perfect, but the developers have shown that they understood the mistakes other MMOs have made, and have built Rift to incorporate as many of these good lessons as possible. If they keep doing this, the game will last a very long time indeed, and I hope to be there to watch it for a long time.

Rift is a fantasy world that also incorporates technology to some extent. The machinery in the world is equally fantastical. It’s not exactly steampunk, it’s more of an arcane design. Telarapedia refers to it as technomagic.

There are 2 factions in Rift: The Guardians and the Defiant. The Guardians (which consist of the Dwarves, High Elves, and humans from the nation of Mathosia) are devoted to Telara’s Gods, a Pantheon known as the Vigil. The Defiants (Humans from the nation of Eth, the Kelari Elves, and the Bahmi) believe that the Gods failure to act during the Blood Storm War (in which Telara was invaded by evil Godlike Dragons, their elemental minions, and the cults that worshipped them) means that they are not infallible and thus do not deserve the devotion the mortal races give them. The Defiant make great use of the Arcane technology developed by the Eth to fight the war against the Blood Storm and their cults, something the Guardians consider heresy. Now the two factions fight each other as much as the Blood Storm.

With that background set, you can see a real world parallel here, with the Guardians representing those who call themselves religious, and the Defiant representing those who reject religion in favor of science.  Now I have no doubt that Trion Worlds (Rift’s developer) is not trying to make a statement on that debate, only drawing upon real world inspiration to tell their own story.

Personally, I see Rift as a world where only the extremes of the two sides are represented, and neither are a section I find myself within. I’m not a person who believes faith and science are mutually exclusive. To me, they’ve always complimented each other. I don’t pretend to know all the answers with how to reconcile the two where they would seemingly contradict, but I do believe God made this world, and made us with the desire to understand how the infinitely complicated world He built works, something we have made tremendously amazing strides in doing so. I also believe there is a ton of knowledge for us to uncover that we have yet to do so.  I can’t wait to see what else there is out there.

As for Rift, well, Telara’s not Earth, the Vigil isn’t God, and the people of Telara may have parallels to Earth’s humans, but they’re very different. I may not be entirely comfortable with either of their philosophies, but that’s what makes this a role playing game. We take on a different persona in them, adding as much or as little of ourselves to them as we wish. And I’m having a great deal of fun playing the role of using magic and technology to protect Telara from Regulos and the rest of the Blood Storm.

The initial choice did present a bit of uncomfortability though, as silly as it might seem. As any reader of this blog can attest, I do put a good deal of myself into my characters. I don’t exactly have a story written for my characters in Rift yet, but I’ve no doubt this practice will continue. So by picking a side in Rift, I felt like I was internally making a decision with parallels in the real world. I know, it seems silly. I’ve already stated I reject both sides of the extremists in reality, yet i cannot deny I did feel a bit of discomfort with it. Maybe I need to use this as a reason to stretch myself creatively.

What’s your take on the whole subject, readers?