Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland switches from Guardian to Defiant in the fourth Rift closed beta event. Follow along as he tries out the Warfront PvP maps and the Iron Tomb dungeon.

Warfront PvP Maps

I also tried out both of the new Warfronts: the Black Garden (level 10+) and the Codex (20+). First, the good. The Black Garden is a lot of fun. It's a game of keep away. In the middle of the map is an item called the Fang of Regulos which, when picked up, saps the carrier of his/her life and increases all damage against them. The effects seem to ramp up over time, making sure that eventually the carrier will die. Until that happens, their team scores points every second or two, depending upon their location in relation to the center of the map. At the very center a team will receive 6 points per tick, while they'll only get a single point at the fringe. This means that staying in the center makes a team more susceptible to attacks from the opposite faction, but it also nets them points much quicker.

The games were fast and furious; as a mage, I stayed in the background as much as possible, firing off DoTs on any enemy I could get into range and healing everyone else. Healers also receive very nice favor (the PvP currency), potentially too high; I frequently topped the list of my team when I healed.

The Codex was not nearly as much fun to me. It is functionally identical to World of Warcraft's Arathi Basin; there are four areas with flags, and the more flags a team controls, the more points they get per tick. The first team to 1000 wins, but capturing a flag takes 60 seconds. This made matches feel much longer than in the Black Garden, especially when your team refuses to defend a flag and it is quickly recaptured.

PvP Gear

PvP gear is also available, of rare quality and high on endurance (which increases a player's health). However, I found the gear choices a bit lacking. All the PvP gear is in-game now, so players can see the shiny items at higher levels. Yet, despite being able to join Warfronts at level 10, the first gear piece a player can buy is at level 25, which is shoulder pads from the Black Garden faction.

Buying gear also required notoriety with the faction; I managed to hit Friendly (the requirement for the level 25 gear) within a half dozen games on my level 23 mage, but once I purchase the item for around 700 favor, I will still have almost 2000 left over with nothing to spend it on. That means I need to wait 12 more levels before I can buy something new, and I'm forced to play the Black Garden again and again until I reach the required notoriety. It's fine for the first few items, but after Decorated we're talking tens of thousands of notoriety. Suddenly getting 30 every few hundred points doesn't seem like very much!

Minor Issues

After playing most of the weekend, a bit of shine has come off the game. I do have a few small issues that will hopefully be addressed. First, there is no quick overland transportation until level 20, when a mount can be purchased. Walking takes a long time and gets quite boring; I felt the Defiant area was a bit worse with the layout than Silverwood was for the Guardians, and it really made me miss flight paths from World of Warcraft.

Next, when it came to Warfronts, the remote queue is an amazing tool; a player can enter the queue from anywhere and continue questing. However, there is no analogous tool for dungeons. Players need to form a group before heading to the dungeon, often staying in the main cities asking for teammates instead of being out questing or chasing rifts.

The loot is somewhat limited and odd in Freemarch. For example, an emblem of heroism (the epic token from a zone event) can be traded in for a purple Greater Planar Essence. However, a planar focus with a greater slot isn't available until Stonefield, long past the usefulness of the level 13 Greater Planar Focus. Gear is also very limited, although quest rewards mean you'll never go without.

And finally, I hope some favor gear without a notoriety requirement is introduced; there are signs of this, with a prestige bar displayed in the PvP tab with no current use. Oh, and as said, pet health out of combat is bugged to regenerate almost instantly. I'm not sure that my Necromancer will be quite as much fun or as fast once that is fixed!

Despite these issues, Beta 4 was even more fun than the last phase. The servers held up well even with more players swarming into the phase, and the new Warfronts are entertaining, if not entirely new. Rifts, invasions and zone events are the only real "next generation" content I have found, but all the other content is solid, if not improved, when compared to other MMOs. While several items could use improvement, I don't feel like Trion will disappoint Riftlings come phase 5, which will be held from Jan. 25-28!