The Rift Beta Bonanza. Part 1: Character Creation

While our digestive systems might still be feeling a little grouchy, and looking dubiously at the coming weekend, it is no time for slacking here as phase 3 of Rift’s beta is in full swing! With the NDA dropped, I can finally speak the words that everyone (give or take everybody other than me) has been waiting for. I declare a Beta Bonanza!!!

Hopefully this one will go a little better than the Mortal Online one, where I was so shocked by the full nudity during character creation that by the time I’d recovered from the vapours the beta had rudely ended without warning!!

How these tend to work is as a semi-stream-of-conciousness affair as I play through the beta. Rather than posting hundreds of posts, I just keep updating the existing one until it gets too big or there is a sensible cut-off point.

This is Phase 3 of Rift’s Beta, and there has been an impressive new patch ahead of the servers opening up.

8:30 pm GMT, 29th of December

So, lets do this thing. Osgard the dwarf has stepped forward to volunteer for this mission, so I’ll be playing on the Guardian side on the Wolfsbane server. Before I create him, lets have a quick peek at the races the Defiant faction has to offer. It’s always handy to know who’s going to be trying to kill you.

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The Defiant Races of Rift



(Like most pictures on this blog, you can see a bigger version by clicking on the smaller one above.)

So, the technomagical Defiants have a human, and elf, and a sort of big galoot. There’s something of Asheron’s Call 2’s Lugian about the Bahmi, and perhaps also the Roegadyn of Final Fantasy XIV, via the ogres of Norrath. The females of the species are a lot less chunky, mindyou, looking much more human, in a purple sort of way.

Enough of those Defiant heretics! Time to check out the Guardian races!

9:20 pm GMT, 29th of December

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Rift's Guardian Races

On Team Guardian we have humans, dwarves, and, oh good, more elves. These are just the default appearances I’m being presented with, and I am sure Osgard will end up looking a lot more imposing than that scruffbag.

Next we pick an archetype. Warrior, Mage, Cleric, or Rogue. Within those classic archetypes we’ll be able to pick and match between souls (or subclasses as they might just as easily be called), but you can’t combine, say, a warrior soul with a mage one. This is a pretty important and irreversible choice then. As Osgard is best known for his Engineering career in Warhammer, I’m going to go with Rogue, where I believe there are some ranged DPS souls lurking.

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Rift Class Archetypes

The character design page offers all the sliders and widgets that we’ve come to expect. This leads me to spend twenty minutes desperately trying to make a dwarf that does not feel weird-looking in one way or another, but eventually I end up with someone who looks a bit like Osgard.

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Osgard is reborn in Rift!

A cut-scene plays which explains that Osgard recently had a very unpleasant actual death experience while taking part in the war against the Mathosian ruler, who had unwisely decided to sacrifice his entire world to an entity of death and destruction, Regulos, the Dragon of Extinction. He opened up a portal to the plane of death, killing everyone in the vicinity. Fortunately for Osgard, the local pantheon, The Vigil, has decided to bring him back as an Ascended; a state of being somewhere between the mortal and the divine. He’d have been more impressed if they’d stopped him from getting killed in the first place, but he’ll take his luck where he can find it.

Tune in next time as Osgard discovers his new powers, and tried to find out how much the Vigil is going to bill him for all this, in The Rift Beta Bonanza Part 2!

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