Well i have leveled my cleric to 40 now so the beta has officially sucked up my entire life at the moment. Leveling a cleric is no easy feat, they offer good soloing and you aren't wasting money on pots very often but man does it take to long to kill anything and multiple enemies can become a problem. At least when i feel like doing a raid there always seems to be a group needing some healing.

Now for what i think of the game

Release is quickly approaching and those who have preordered their digital copy will be starting a week earlier. For those who have not made up there minds or who where not lucky enough to get into the closed betas and level their toons here is my opinion of the game in its state so far

i will say i really like the rifts and the mass invasions have been quite epic although those at later levels never seem to strike that notion of awe that the earlier ones in Freemarch did.

There is plenty of monster variability and you wont been slogging it out through the same endless orcs and goblins (i'm looking at you Lord of the Rings) in fact every couple of levels will see you slogging it out against new enemies. Some of the quest chains are quite humorous as well, like scrubbing dirty squirrels with soap. There are also plenty of easter egg items, quest and the occasional puzzle out there to keep us explorers happy. Also artifact hunting is a nice way to wast time and can get you some cool things although they can start to take up alot off bag space.

Armour design is good, design is more realistic orientated with some detail work, there is a noticeable difference between different gear sets although with having to buy dye many will be wearing the exact same thing as you.

The soul system is rather inventive and offers some very good individuality and customisation to meet with your own personal play type. There is still unbalance in many of the souls and it will be a long time progress to offer balance. There seems to be some far superior combinations than others so i would recommend reading up on your souls first.

Crafting was a bit of an annoyance and disappointment. Produced gear although superior to the norm is quickly replaced as quests will continuously give new gear all the way making it rather pointless to produce or buy said items. Even making potions has become obsolete as buying pots is ridiculously cheap. Leveling is really REALLY (placing emphasis) annoying. Gaining exp is easy but to create the next tier items you need special credit with the blueprint vendors which can only be gotten by crafting the item and taking a long journey to a drop off destination, rinse lather repeat.

The Level design in the raids is quite astounding, i'm not talking about the monsters which do have some great variability, but the scenery which a noticeable amount of effort has gone into. Each area has its own charm. Although they offer great exp don't expect the gear you receive to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Dungeon Deepstrike Mines

Overall though in the short amount of time i have been in the betas i am not far off the max level which is kind of worrying, they have announced the 15 and 20 many raids but is that enough to keep you going. The Rifts although novel at first wear off after awhile and start to feel like your doing the same old grinding. That said and done i will probably be buying this game because i did enjoy it and that is coming from someone who hates WoW (have only played the trial but have been told numerous time rift plays like wow) as i found the areas enthralling and with the pace of quests and monster variability i never felt like i was grinding that much.

Sunset Gorge

The thing is for us aussie players and from what i hear our uk and european compadres the lag can get really bad as all the servers are in Texas. In many of the large invasions (in particular the starting area) i was disconnected a lot and when on i was unable to use any skills, although i could move easily enough. Pvp was unbearable with said lag and in open world i got ganked a bit because of it (my cleric actually took down quite a few people surprisingly), although i did get some good warzone games that can get quite competitive (only 4 types though).

For the $50 and included 1 month it is a great buy and will provide many hours of enjoyment and immersion that a single player game just cant provide but i just cant see placing the burden of subscription on myself, i may do it from time to time but so far it just doesn't offer enough in end game material, when new worlds are released i may go back.

Well Anet seem to be building up the hype train of late, with the Guardian reveal, More information on the race of Humans with another mysterious race getting the treatment in the weeks to follow, and a new demo at pax which has literally sent the rumour mill alight.

I personally have been a little underwhelmed with the information reveal so far.

They gave us hints of the politically dissent in Divinity's Reach, and some voice audios.

Changes to human appearance and comparisons between the first and current design clearly show the dramtic improvement. However they still manage to make city folk look like street workers.. velvet and thigh high boots... really. I will admit the textures look nice, the colours are far more dynamic, and the faces look less like porcelain

and there was a new video showing a little of the city.

So far though it seems to be just tidbits and nothing substantial and nothing we really already didn't know. Here's hoping the next race reveal will be more interesting or at least more interesting releases regarding the humans. Personally i am avidly waiting on the sylvari redesign as so far they just look like humans with green skin (sometimes not even that) with green armour and many were looking for a race a bit more unique.

So far i have thoroughly enjoyed my rift experience and it may be the very first mmo i sub for as i am very against renting a game i have already purchased. The world is absolutely beautifuly designed and i have added some really nice sccreenshots to my album.

The cooperative aspect is what sold me to the game, it is like the war public system but way more refined and polished as well as being on a much larger scale and more enjoyable. Beeing involved in a 150+ player based army going from rift to rift during an invasion was epic.

looking forward to the 16th to play more beta (15th pst)

I have been playing the beta recently and i can say the game has some potential. very intricate crafting, vast range of skills in many areas, and pvp was.. well ok.

However the game has many debilitating bugs. Tutorial area is quite frustrating and rather dull as it was continually the same kill 5 enemies with these weapons quest and was a lot of running. tutorial area mobs respawned very very slowly so there were quite a few camping in these areas just so they could finish the tutorial. When the beta went live with only a few thousand people who got keys there were constant crashes and i mean constant. You might have got on for a couple minutes every half an hour if you were lucky.

Once out of that area in the wide world crashes weren't as common but you would suffer from desync often making you log off and relog say every alf an hour to an hour.

frames per second was dismal, i was getting a about 15 most times. was getting a ping around 700 sometimes as much as 1000 which made the game unplayable ( am from Australia so ping to American servers is high sometimes but never that high ). This is a world pvp game with a death penalty of losing all the items in your backpack so being killed quite often by either a person you can't shoot because they are not where your aiming or by mobs you can't see and losing everything is very frustrating. There were also many gameplay bugs from enemies with infinite health too not being able to enter your attack mode as some examples.

I realise this was a beta but it is a beta a couple of days before release. A performance patch to fix some of these problems (if it does) will be released more than a month after release. The beta stress test showed the beta server to be woefully inadequate. This suggest they will be using an untested server upon release.

Many of the pvp devolpments are yet to be implemented. Territory sieges want be around to some time in march, vehicles in april and mines later than that. The only quest you every get are the kill ten rats kind which would be ok if the pvp was developed but it is not. crafting can get quite complicated and losing all your crafting items often will set you back.

I did have an ok experience the world is nice and the combat was entertaining but with aforementioned problems and with a price of $50 + 15 a month i would recommend holding off purchase until these problems have been fixed