Pages

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Thoughts Before The RIFT Head Start

Having taken a look at EQ2 yesterday, I'll look toward a more hopeful game today.  That's right, the RIFT head start period begins in a few hours.  I've downloaded the game so when I get home tonight I can jump right in.  Well, after doing my planetary interaction in Eve I'll jump right in.

The first thing of interest is what server to play on.  To tell the truth, I'll probably pick something in the middle of the list.  However, Trion came out with the server list and at launch we have 17 U.S. servers and 12 E.U. servers.  In the U.S., we have 7 PvE, 7 PvP, 2 RP-PvE and 1 RP-PvP servers.  Europe will have 7 English, 3 German, and 2 French servers.  What I will watch is how the server list grows.  Will Trion do a Warhammer Online and push too many servers live, or follow Blizzard's lead and suffer through login queues in the beginning?

One question I have that I couldn't find an answer to is: how many characters can I have?  Is it 6 per server or 6 per account.  I've read the forums and a lot of people refuse to believe the limit is per account.  I, however, started playing EQ2 when Scott Hartsman was the executive producer of that game and the limit was ... 6 characters per account.  Believe it or not, crafting gives me the reason that 6 is the magic number.

The RIFT crafting system is composed of 6 manufacturing professions and 3 gathering professions.  Each character can know 3 of the professions at any one time.  So in theory, if an account can only have 6 characters total, then 3 of those characters can be Guardians and 3 on the Defiant side and a player would have all the crafting professions for each group.  Of course, if the limit is 6 characters per server, then each character can have 1 manufacturing profession and the one or two gathering professions needed to keep the manufacturing profession in crafting materials.

Having figured out the basics of the crafting system, I have to decide which faction to play.  In Eve Online, both my main characters are Minmatar and the Guardians really remind me of the Amar.  Ick!  But I think the Defiant will be the popular choice, and I like playing the underdog.  What to do?  I'll probably make up my mind when I'm in the character creator.

Finally, what calling will I play?  Right now I can't decide between the Rogue in order to play a bard or a Cleric in order to heal.  But the bard soul really appeals to me right now.

That's it before I enter the game for real.  I never made it to one of the capital cities, so I'm looking forward to learning and seeing a lot of new things.  And who knows?  I might not even care about the end of Hulkageddon 4.

No comments:

Post a Comment