We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

The soul system. A min/maxers wet dream.

I’ve been playing RIFT a fair bit and enjoying it quite a lot. In fact, probably more than a lot. It doesn’t offer up much that I haven’t seen before and instead it’s seemingly opted to amalgamate all of the best bits of all the other MMOs out there together into one. I reckon I’ve spent a far amount of time during my playtime guessing the game that a particular feature came from (spot the feature: quite a fun little mini-game). Still though, RIFT is good, even very good perhaps. Being unoriginal doesn’t necessarily mean bad or disingenuous. However one of the things it has brought to the table that I’ve never seen before and is, as far as I know it, totally original is its soul system. It’s unique and exclusive to RIFT.

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"I will blind you with my flashlight!"

Via Rock, Paper Shotgun I read an article today revealing that the good ol’ Beeb (what middle class Brits call the BBC) are going to be launching their very own Doctor Who MMO later this year. Now I don’t know how many of my lovely American readers even know what Doctor Who is (do you get it over there?) but it’s basically the British version of Star Trek but with a smaller budget, posher accents, and more plot and it’s as quintessentially part of Britain as teas, crumpets and teenage pregnancy. Suffice to say, if your a British MMO geek then you’ve probably experienced a nerdgasm and are in the midst of changing your pants right now.

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My real dreams are usually a little more bizarre and sexual frustrated than this

I have a dream. It’s a dream of a perfect MMO. Impossible to craft, inconceivable to design, impractical to fund and insurmountable to develop, my ultimate MMO will never be made. For years I’ve kept its budding ideas enclosed inside my brain, fearful that if ever slipped out it might kill someone with its awesomeness or result in me being locked away in an asylum for corrupting the innocent. But Copra asked. And so shall he receive.

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My milkshake brings all the boys to yard. It's better than yours. Damn right, it's better than yours.

It’s been a busy week in which we’ve seen the kick off of not one, but two appealing MMO ventures. RIFT hit open beta on Tuesday, the exact same day as the new Everquest progression server launched which, considering I was very excited about playing both (imagine a small child jumping up and down shouting “I want, I want” and you’ll have an accurate picture of how I was), presented me with a huge dilemma: which to play? Well the easy answer was to play both. So that’s what I did.

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Turns out the "hide UI on screenshot" option isn't working

Like the rest of the known world (I’m assuming Atlantis hasn’t been discovered yet) I’m playing the RIFT open beta and, as I’m looking for an excuse to write a blog post, figured I would share my first impressions of it with you (just like everyone else is doing). And when I say first impressions, I really do mean first impressions. I’ve played the game for about 5 hours so far which isn’t bad going for a single player game but obviously a drop in the ocean for MMOs. I’ve dicked around with a few classes on both sides enough wet my whistle but there’s still a ton out there to experience all of which will undoubtedly change my opinion of the game at a later date so don’t take this list as being a definitive judgement by any means.

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RIFT knows how to compete for its audience

Today’s an interesting day as it sees the simultaneous launch of the RIFT open beta (the new) and the new Everquest progression server (the old). It’s funny how we have one game, for all intents and purposes, opening its doors to the general public for the first time going up against another game that’s been kicking around for twelve years. There are literally kids who have been born and gone to school and grown up within the lifespan of Everquest (and if you happen to live in Scotland, become parents themselves) and that’s pretty incredible. But I can’t think of many of other genres where new games not only have to compete with every other release that year but also archaic dinosaurs from last century. Talk about tough.

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World of Warcraft. The greatest single player game there is.

Gazimoff from Mana Obscura made an interesting off-the-cuff remark in my post the other day about a world without Warcraft. He commented on how if WoW didn’t exist, he’d have a much more extensive games collection. And he’s right, so would I (at least if MMOs didn’t exist at all) and I’m sure a lot of other folk would too. In fact it seems to be that MMOs, by nature, conflict with the concept of single player games almost to the extent that the two can’t mutually exist. Single player games entertain us for a fixed period of time until we’ve completed them and move on to the next one whereas MMOs are endless and designed specifically to engross us to the exclusion of almost everything else. I don’t know about you but I barely touch single player games.

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