Rift review

“Defend the Wardstones!” the warrior beside me bellowed, seconds before being overrun by Breathless Banshees. Undead hordes were invading Telara, spewing out of a dozen swirling, inter-dimensional rifts in the canyons of the Scarlet Gorge. The army of the Plane of Death—banshees, ghosts, ghouls, and drake—marched forth, cutting down any players, NPCs, and wildlife in its path. We, the ragtag group of players who happened to be there when the assault began, were all that stood in the way. From atop a tower in the last remaining city in Scarlet Gorge, I frantically fired off healing spells, but things weren’t looking good. If the Wardstone fell, the event would be lost, and the undead would occupy the land.

Just in time, an uneasy alliance of players from both the Defiants and the Guardians (Rift’s rival factions) finished sealing the last of the Death rifts. While they’d normally have slain each other on sight, they stood together against the common threat, and managed to turn the tide. This truce was short lived, however. Closing the final rift triggered a boss stage: a huge wave of zombies (which, like a group of crows, is known as a “murder”). Once the horde showed their decaying faces the factions once again crossed blades, each hoping to defeat the zombies and claim the best quest rewards for themselves. In the end my faction, the Defiants, emerged victorious, and all who contributed were rewarded with fabulous items.

These frequent, zone-wide events aren’t a distraction from Rift—they are Rift, and they’re some of the most epic, fantastic experiences available in MMOs today.

The Fire Plane sent an invasion of pro wrestlers.

To protect and serve

Without these rifts, Telara would be nearly indistinguishable from any other generic fantasy world. At one point in its lore, it was a typical fantasy realm, filled with elves, dwarves, and everything else stumbling out of a Lord of the Rings convention. These days, the veil between planar dimensions is as weak as a damp Kleenex, allowing invaders from the planes of Air, Death, Earth, Fire, Life, and Water to open rifts and appear anywhere. The world is constantly under attack, and new rifts open as quickly as they can be closed. An ideological conflict on how to deal with the crisis created the two factions, with Guardians praying to their absentee gods and Defiants attempting to repair the veil with powerful machines. This creative story in a familiar setting works in Rift’s favor: I actually felt as though I’d seen it before the rifts tore the world asunder.

Someone should really do something about that.

Put a rift in your Rift

Fundamentally, Rift’s rifts are an evolution of the public questing system that has become prevalent in MMOs, putting major, memorable battles in public areas that you don’t have to quest an hour or more to reach. Sealing one involves a multi-part mission that anyone who happens to be nearby can take part in, defeating waves of foes that grow exponentially more difficult and scale to the number of players involved.

If left unchecked, rifts spawn invasions: groups of enemies that set their sights on nearby towns. Once there, they’ll take out the quest-givers and set up a home away from home until players liberate it. This could have ended badly for Trion, since players usually consider anything that stops them from turning in quests to be effectively design-level griefing. This time, though, it works—when I return to a quest-giver to find that fire demons have set up camp on his corpse and that I need to kick the beasties back to the hell they came from if I want him to respawn and pay me, it really sells the idea of a dynamic world at war. Since the game rewards me greatly for evicting these inter-dimensional squatters, I don’t mind the extra work one bit.

This same concept extends to the zone-wide events that regularly occur in Telara, popping up as frequently as hourly (depending on the total players in a zone). Without warning, one of the elemental planes can begin a full-blown invasion, marching armies out of dozens of rifts and into cities. Without organized player resistance, an event can be over in minutes, but when everyone works together the outcome is extraordinary. Watching hundreds of allies take down bosses or destroy bases is exhilarating every single time, especially considering the potential to earn rare gear.

Earth Plane invasion? I've got this.

Know your role

Not every moment is spent fighting extra-planar invasions, though. There’s a full MMO beyond the portals, with rewarding crafting and a massive number of NPCs that need my help collecting flowers, killing boars, and breaking stuff. The quests are varied, if somewhat uninspired, and there was never a moment where my quest log wasn’t completely full of missions spread out over a number of different zones, giving me plenty of options and making grinding enemies for experience completely unnecessary.

The 100-or-so hours it takes to hit the level cap (50) would be nearly indistinguishable from its contemporaries if not for the rifts, but considering there are usually at least three or four open at any given time in every zone (sometimes many more), the path to the cap was never boring—unless you consider traditional “hit the buttons on the bottom of the screen a lot” MMO combat to be boring.

Having played a few MMORPGs in my time, I went in assuming the usual shortage of healers and created a Cleric as my first Rift character. It’s a habit I’ve picked up to avoid the song-and-dance of spamming every healer on the server to find backup whenever I want to enter a dungeon. As it turned out, I didn’t have to.

Rift solves this problem without abandoning the customary tank-healer-DPS “holy trinity” of MMORPG play by allowing players to adapt on the fly. By swapping between customizable “Roles” at any given time, the classes (Rogue, Cleric, Warrior, and Mage) can adopt sub-classes called Souls. Combining three of these into a Role, a single click can turn a tank into a healer, a damage-dealer into a tank, or a healer into a damage-dealer, without giving up the traits that make the classes distinct. My Cleric tank, for example, can buff his stats to double his armor, add a big chunk of health to his pool, and heal himself (and his party).

Hey jerk! Make like a tree and die!

I love that I don’t need to have multiple characters to experience the different elements of the game, though I do wish I could tie armor and weapons to the different Roles to completely transform my character without manually swapping out my wardrobe each time. Still, the ability to run dungeons with almost any party makeup beats the hell out of trying to recruit perfect groups.

End of the road

Once you hit the level cap a new set of quests open up (some of which require raids of 10 or more players to complete), and all of the lower-level instances are revamped and scaled up with additional bosses and rewards like tokens used to purchase specialized gear. They don’t feel all that different from their low-level counterparts, but the incentives make them worth replaying—especially for anyone looking to compete in Rift’s player-vs-player instanced battlegrounds, called Warfronts.

Until level 50, three different Warfronts are available, providing their own takes on Capture Point, CTF, and keep-away. The fourth Warfront, Battle for Port Scion, is only available to level 50 characters, and it’s a PvP fan’s dream. Set in an enemy-occupied city, players earn points by completing objectives, defeating powerful, high-level NPCs, and summoning great allies, all the while doing battle with other players. Here’s the kicker: killing the enemy faction doesn’t actually help your team towards the 1,000-point goal. This emphasis on teamwork over ganking leads to more strategic battles—an accomplishment that other PvP-focused MMOs should really take to heart.

That's the second-biggest centaur I've ever seen!

Opening the rift

Virtually all of Trion’s concepts in Rift have paid off, and instead of turning out cheap or punishing, these features help make Rift’s world feel epic and rewarding. Rifts are undoubtedly the best execution of public quests to date. They make exhilarating experiences like slaying massive golems from the Plane of Earth part of the daily routine, and the massive, zone-wide events feel unlike anything I’ve experienced playing an MMO. The core experience of the MMORPG hasn’t been reinvented, but arguably that’s a good thing. Rift’s ideas build on the concepts of MMOs that have come before it, creating a refined game that can stand with the best of the genre.

Written by Jonathon H. Cooper

Minecraft Review

No other video game has unleashed my creativity like Minecraft. I've spent countless hours chipping away at blocks, gathering the necessary materials to complete the next masterpiece that would otherwise only occupy my mind's eye. I've also spent just as many hours exploring, spelunking and slashing my way through monsters with bravado. My character – my entire Minecraft world – constantly evolves into whatever I want it to be. I tell my own stories, I write my own destiny and I bring my fantasies to life one brick at a time.

Minecraft stands out not only for the way it inspires me creatively, but also because of its unique aesthetic. Look, I know the visuals look dated and a bit silly, but few games have visuals so endearing and charming. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way either, or else Minecraft's graphics wouldn't be so iconic. Could you take a texture from Gears of War, Halo or Uncharted, put it on a shirt and have players identify it? I doubt it. The looks just work, giving the game a super unique appearance that's memorable, and brings up a bit of nostalgia in me for 8-bit era games.

I love creating in Minecraft, but my gratification is due, at least partially, to the fact that I have to earn everything. Survival Mode generates a random world with nothing to your name, forced to gather resources in order to construct food, shelter and tools. By the time I crafted and installed a wooden door in my first mud hut I felt a sense of ownership . Other games let you buy a home with the money you earn, but none of them really challenge you to forage for the materials and build it yourself. When I look at my home and see every piece of furniture and wall is exactly where I wanted it, I love it all the more or change it at my whim. From the moment my home was built, my mission was clear: tunnel into the earth in order to get whatever I needed to carve out a fortress in my little part of the world.

Creating items in Minecraft is one of the most important actions you do. The problem, though, is the necessary information isn't found in Minecraft. The first time I beat my way through some trees and gathered wood, I had no clue what to do with it. Thankfully, like many Minecraft players, I had a mentor who pointed me to the various online forums, communities and wikis. I have pages that I return to all the time, often tabbing out of the game itself when I can't remember exactly how to craft an item. For many this is just a rite of passage, but mostly it's an obtuse way to handle crafting. I'd love for the recipes to be integrated into the game somehow, even if I had to find them throughout the world. There's not much of a sense of accomplishment in reading a wiki and just following instructions verbatim.

Even after you find a good resource, it still takes a lot of effort to learn everything. The sheer amount of recipes and items you work with in the game is intimidating and time consuming to learn. Many games have poor documentation, but Minecraft has none at all, and what's available isn't easily digestible.

But Minecraft is still more than fun enough to warrant the learning curve. The addiction, though, really begins as you craft items and gain mastery over your surroundings. Suddenly night time, when monsters spawn and take over the unlit portions of the world, isn't as scary. I mean, it's always a bit scary, but having a sword in hand – even a simple, wood one – instills a sense of power. Like a caveman whittling their first spear or stoking their first fire, building simple tools and torches in Minecraft makes me feel safer, like I am the master of my fate because I have the power to create the items that can save me.

Why? Because you can.

Beyond safety, crafting creates a whole new set of goals in Minecraft. I crafted items as needed (tools and torches), but eventually I expanded my repertoire to include superfluous pieces. To finish my first stone keep I had to craft stairs and ladders; simply jumping up a simple series of platforms was unbecoming of the king of the land, after all. Crafting slowly became something I did less to survive, and more to complete the next big project I set out for myself. Creating panes of glass didn't really give me an edge in my world, for instance, but it did make the viewport of my scale Star Wars AT-AT look a lot more badass. Crafting even gets more complex if you want it to. You can create tools and buildings or elaborate self-powered rail systems, taking you from the stone age to the 20th century,, and making you feel like the fate of my world lies squarely in my hands. It's exhilarating, and instills a sense of power that I rarely feel in games.

After I secured a plot of land in my world, my intentions during a session with Minecraft changed. Each session became an adventure, wherein I challenged myself to go exploring for the next crucial component parts needed for the next recipe. These self-imposed quests are why I sometimes venture into the Nether, a hellish other world where monsters – who just so happen to drop precious materials – live. Other times I venture into dark caves, donning crafted armor and enchanted weapons so that I can tackle whatever enemies I come across. I don't know what exactly I'll find, or what terrors I'll face, but I do it all in the name of finding precious blocks – and the thrill of the experiencing the unknown.

That thrill, that experience of unplanned and unpredictable adventure, makes every session with Minecraft exhilarating. Sometimes I might end up spending the evening doing mundane activities like farming or hunting for food, but other nights I might end up stumbling upon a gigantic, randomly generated mine that's full of monsters and treasure. Because each world is procedurally created, I never know just what I'll stumble upon next. One day my character may be a simple builder, the next he's a dungeon conquering hero who slays horrors in the dark.

Of course, adventuring is always better with friends, and Minecraft's multiplayer is great fun if you can get it working. It isn't broken or a completely buggy mess, but requires a lot steps to get started compared to most games. If you want to start a game you'll need to download additional software, and go through all kinds of online tutorials to get it working. Players who just want to join a game have to know the server's I.P. address, since there is no server browser built into the game. Still, annoyances and tedium aside, if you have the option to play with others you definitely should; exploring, adventuring and building up epic structures is a lot more fun with friends. Besides, if you're going to spend hours of your life building gigantic monuments, you might as well have someone else to show them to. You can post them in online videos, but it just isn't the same as having your friend right next to you sharing in your accomplishment. Or, even better, having them log on after a period of inactivity to be stunned at the marvels you've built in their absence.

This is yours for the taking.

If you're not the type to play with others, and you don't want to earn all your materials, you can always jump into Creative Mode. In this world you're invincible, and have access to every item in the game. It's great if you want to, say, create a gigantic Wampa from Star Wars, but it doesn't give me the same sense of reward or accomplishment I get when playing Survival since I don't have to earn the blocks or fend for my life while doing so. Many blocks take considerable effort to acquire (some even make you journey into monster filled labyrinths), so when I build them in my Survival Mode it's a lot more impressive. Still, it's a fun distraction.

CLOSING COMMENTS

Like any review, my feelings on Minecraft are the result of my experience with it. Maybe you don’t thrive off random adventures like I do, or maybe you won’t feel the same sense of accomplishment I did when I completed my first house. If not, then you likely haven’t or won’t enjoy Minecraft in the same way. And that’s OK. Minecraft, more than any other game I know, isn’t about playing it a specific way; it’s an open-world, a blank page just daring you to jump in and do with it what you will. The question, then, isn’t what you need to do to succeed, what’s needed to win, but what are you willing to do to make your dreams come to life?

Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He loves any and all sorts of games and gaming questions. You can reach out to him on Twitter and MyIGN.

History of World of Warcraft

By: Hunter Crowell

World of Warcraft stands as the greatest game in the popular Warcraft series

World of Warcraft has been an extraordinary success since its launch in November 2004. It has impressed game critics and has captivated millions of players, who adore the world that the game has created. It is no longer just a game but is now a genuine phenomenon, and one that shows no signs of abating. It is one of the key games of recent times, and stands as a landmark title for online gaming.

World of Warcraft's appeal lies in that it has created a truly engaging online world. This massively multiplayer online role-playing game is set in the world of Azeroth, a fantastic land that is filled with heroes and monsters and many other creatures. The game's strength is that it functions as an experience, as a world that exists on its own terms that you may visit and explore as you please.