Rift: Planes of Telara Previews
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IGN:
As the game progresses and you level up, you unlock soul points, which can be spent on a "soul tree" that looks very similar to World of Warcraft's talent system. There is a very important difference, though. As you plug points into the tree's upper part or "branches," you automatically progress along the tree's winding "root," unlocking new skills along the way. These are the core abilities of the class. Pretty basic stuff, right? Then, fairly early on, you acquire your second soul.
GameSpot:
Rift will feature four basic character callings: warrior, rogue, cleric, and mage. But it will have multiple character professions along these lines, including different base flavors of each. For instance, the inquisitor, the class we picked, will be a spellcaster with some healing abilities but specialized in dealing damage. Our level-one bahmi inquisitor started off in humble robes carrying a quarterstaff in a dark, moonlit purple forest--a limbo world not of Telara that serves as the game's tutorial area. We were given a simple quest by a clearly labeled quest giver to go kill some bugs--something we had little trouble with between zapping it with our introductory damage spell and toggling on auto-attack to repeatedly strike the pests with our staff.
Massively:
As we cruised through the newbie experience, our character encountered several rifts (hey, just like the title of the game!). Rifts are tears in the fabric of reality that allow forces from other planes to pop through -- and this, of course, is not a good thing. The first tear we saw was a life rift, which roared into existence and affected the immediate environment. Rifts can not only change how the area looks and sounds, but transform wandering creatures into new monstrosities.
GamePro:
Rifts tend to create deadlier monsters, but they also spawn cool little interactive objects that can help players. This point was demonstrated to me when a life rift opened up, growing a plant that, upon clicking it, restored my life and mana. During a death rift, my character enlisted the spirit of a fallen warrior to aid him in battle for a minute or so.
And MMOsite:
There are two factions in RPoT, the Guardians and the Defiant, both whom are fighting for the survival of the planet, but each in their own way. While the Guardians stand as the chosen ones of the gods, and as such use their faith as their primary power. The Defiant, on the other hand, are the tinkerers of Telara, and believe that science and technology are the true keys to saving the world. Each faction has an iconic leader, and within each faction you find three races distinct in their culture and motivations. When I played Rifts, I played as an Eth mage who had been brought back by the Defiant. My character had at her disposal an interesting set of abilities, and I was happy to see that even the ranged classes got the chance to use the combo-point system normally relegated to melee players.
