Beta 5 complete this morning.
I'm really impressed with how smooth and polished it all ran, and I can't wait for it to go live.
The game feels like they took the good stuff from several different games, and made it just that much better.
I selected a RP-PVE serverfor a couple of reasons. The first is that RP servers generally tend to have a lower idiot population. I'm not really an RPer, but the community tends to be better.
Two factions in the game, the faith-based Guardians and the Technomagical Defiant. I selected Defiant as I liked the technomagical angle. The first class I went for was Rogue. Cause, well, that's what I like. I looked at the soul trees, and I thought that I'd like the Marksman soul. So that was the initial idea. Character creation was pretty straightforward. 3 races to choose from, Eth, Bahmi and Kelari. Eth are the humans, the Kelari are the Elves, and the Bahmi are... um... bigger humans. The starting zone puts you right into the story. The world is ending, and you've been "resurrected" to use a device to go back in time and stop Regulos (the big bad). Basically, you're a technomagical Terminator. After you select your first soul (marksman) you go on a couple of kill x, and interact with y quests. Its a starting zone, what do ya want?
At the end of the starting zone, you're introduced to your first Rift. Rifts are rips in the fabric of reality to the elemental planes (Death, fire, water, earth, air, and life). If you've played WAR, the Public Quest mechanic is back, and its bloody awesome! More on that later though. Some stuff happens, and you go through back in time. At the end of the starter zone, I was Marksman/Saboteur/Riftstalker, and level 6ish.
Rogue plays like rogue in WoW, Witch Hunter in WAR, etc. Energy/Combo Point/Finisher system. Marksman is the archer spec, with ranged talents, saboteur is a support/ranged class, and Riftstalker is a melee class. Played with that combo for a while, and ran through the second zone.
The world feels huge, and there are no flight points. There's a porting system to go from zone to zone, but that's not till later. The first world zone took me from 6 to 20ish. Mounts @20 so travel isn't all that bad. The main reason I think there aren't flight paths is the Rifts.
Which brings us to the Rifts. Every little bit (I don't think they're on a timer, but eh) a rift to one of the aforementioned planes will open up and evil will pour forth. The rifts will spawn packs of mobs which will then attack outposts. The only way to seal the rifts is to defeat the invaders. There are three intensities of rift/invader action. Footholds, Minor, and Major. The footholds are spawned at conquered outposts by invader packs, and the other 2 are actual rifts. The public questing mechanic lets anyone run up and join the action. Some rifts can be closed solo with a little forethought and planning, others will take a group or two or four. Every so often, there's a zonewide emote and a full blown invasion event starts. A quest pops up to close X number of rifts, and stop y number of invasions. At the close of this a boss will spawn and you gotta find him and kick his ***. Everyone is rewarded with loot for participating. Currency, and augments and such. By far, some of the most fun I've had in a long time.
I don't think there's too much more I can go into without breaking the NDA, all of this is publicly available info and whatnot. And I don't want to get all spoilerrific about things.
_________________ Holy shitsnacks!
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