Rift: Planes of Telara Interview
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The MMO Gamer: Aside from the name, what else has changed since our conversation last year?
Russ Brown: The main thing that's changed is last year we had this idea that you could be any class any time. You could swap on the fly.
Once again we did some focus testing on that, and one of the things that came back was, (Hey wait, if I can do anything, then I'm not special. Why would a guild need me, if everybody can do my job?)
So we said okay. We still want customization, we still want people to change and dabble with things, so we basically broke the class system up into (callings.)
We have Warriors, Rogues, Mages, and Clerics, right? What that does is we still allow you to have this idea of souls, but the main difference is you start with a certain soul, you pick the soul for your starting class, and that's what you were before you died.
Then as you adventure through the game you pick up more and more souls which you can swap out. Then you decide how you want to invest into a soul, how you want it to play.
For example, when I'm playing my Rogue, I start out as a Riftblade, I believe it's called. Classic PvP rogue. Then when I want to get some range, I'll put a Ranger in, I won't go very deep into it with pets, but I'll go deep enough that I can start building up my points with melee.
So my playstyle is, (Pew pew pew,) shooting the guy from ranged, and then by the time he reaches me, he's almost dead and I can do a finisher.