While we wait for the third Rift closed beta event to kick off this week, Staff Writer LockeColeMA decided to reflect on his experience as a member of the Guardian faction in the second beta event.

In the distance I saw my first rift. Amid darkened skies and thick cloud cover, thorny tentacles were descending from a hole in the sky on a far-away mountain. I actually stared for a bit, thinking two things: “Man, that looks AWESOME!” and “How the heck am I supposed to fight that!?” This seems a good enough time to mention the graphics of this game are pretty darn good and very customizable. To maximize FPS I had lowered the settings in the beginning, but with full settings on the game looked very polished. Perhaps not the best of the best, but easily above average, as the floating tentacles halfway across the map proved. While the setting of the first town was bland, this was also due to it being a destroyed town – not exactly a tourist hub known for its aesthetics. 

I continued through the beginning quests, which kindly provided my new Reaver with some better armor and weapons, taking time to explore the areas before moving on. This actually helped me find a few Easter eggs – multiple items that were placed in collections out of my inventory, and places I could pray to receive a Vigil god's blessing. These were pretty neat, if somewhat confusing because I wasn't sure what a collection was, nor how the stats were helping me. After uncovering most the map I managed to finish a quest to receive a second soul — this time with new options! My second soul gave five new potential souls, as well as Paladin and Champion. I chose Warlord because it was the only one that looked like it backed up my Reaver. I replaced my soul points, and headed up the mountain to the rift.

I'm not sure exactly how the rift combat should have happened, but how it DID happen was that two other players were nearby, and the evil king came down from the rift, summoning waves of enemies to attack us and some NPCs. After downing the waves, we engaged a super-charged monarch, and crushed his body with a hammer. Everything went white; it was explained that we won and the Vigil took us away, and we zoned in a new area 20 years in the future (or technically, in the present). Tutorial zone over, bring on the meat.

The new zone began much the same as the last—with quests. The quests do a good job of explaining the situation for you, but they are a bit tedious. Look: several dozen guards in the water drowning... should the quest-giver help the poor guy almost dead 6 feet away? Nah, have the Guardian do it! However, the new area opened up two new important details — crafting and invasions. Crafting is most definitely not next-gen. You get raw materials out in the open, say minerals from mineral nodes. You turn those raw materials into armor by learning the skills and recipes from trainers. From what I saw, there are no random number generation issues — you click a button and make an item. The items are pretty decent for the level range, but the crafting itself is nothing new.

Invasions were fun, but as I only reached level 10 over the weekend, my experience with them was limited to being alerted there was an invasion and then seeing several fire elementals tear off toward town. I actually was pretty lucky not to get in their way — already at that level enemies start clumping up more, and while one at a time is easy, two at a time is tough and three or more can be deadly. While my invasion experience was limited, seeing a bit in action with NPCs attacking (and dying) side by side with players whetted my appetite for more.

Overall I enjoyed my brief foray in Rift; but more than that, the potential for it really made me itch to get back into it! The spontaneous invasion aspect (I suggest reading Scott Hartsman's Beta 2 wrap-up and our follow-up interview with him), the lore, and the potential of customization with the soul trees were fantastic; the graphics, music, and Easter eggs from exploring were above average; and the combat, quests and crafting were standard fair. In this week's third closed beta event, I hope to get into some group quests and instances, as well as try to close a rift outside of the tutorial. And it's worth noting — for being in beta, Rift feels like a complete game already. I experienced no bugs, and while the content isn't completely fleshed out, it has good amount to it already. Assuming the third closed beta event keeps improving what I've already seen, I think Rift has a good chance of being one of the best games of 2011.

The third Rift closed beta event, "Enter the Rift," will begin tomorrow, Dec. 28, at 10 a.m. PST and run through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. We're still giving away VIP keys that will grant you entry into every Rift beta event, and all you need to do is contribute in our Rift forums. Winners are selected based on their activity on our new Rift site, so keep posting in our forums and commenting on our articles!