Two of the more common complaints about any new MMO during release can usually be summed up as lack of polish or lack of content.

Trion Worlds attempts to solve these problems in Rift by learning what has made other MMO’s a success and what has caused them to fail.  Then they make it better.

Rift contains all of the normal gameplay elements you expect to see in an MMO.  There is a deep storyline with accompanying quest chains that take the player from quest hub to quest hub.  There are beautiful instances that draw the player deeper into the storyline.  There is even harvesting and crafting that seem to work well together.  It’s not the fact that Rift has these features that is new, it is that each feature works and feels complete.  But the Trion team didn’t stop there and they continued to offer even more features to keep players busy.

Achievements

As with most recently released games there is a large achievement system in Rift.  With almost 600 entries as of this post it gives you a small glimpse into everything Telara will have to offer at launch.

Artifacts and Books

Like collections in other games these items are found all over the world in seemingly random locations.  (They are actually set locations, and the designers have put them in some fun places.  Makes climbing mountains and looking in nooks and crannies fun again.)  Artifact sets can also be turned in at your capital city for level-appropriate rewards.

Ascended Powers

A recent addition to the game that replaced numerous items that used to clutter your bags.  Ascended powers use charges that you earn by closing rifts in the world and can be anything from buffing a wardstone to summoning an invasion to destroy an attacking army. 

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content is one of the core features of Rift and gives life to both the rifts themselves and the huge world events that we’ve seen take over entire zones.

Player vs Player Combat

With both open world and instanced PvP players are given a wide variety of options to fight the other faction.  There are even open world quests that will send you over to kill a few of the opposition.

Puzzles and Hidden Treasure

Many of the zones contain puzzles and hidden treasure for the player to find and complete.  The rewards have been anything from a few silver to purple items and fun titles.

Raid Content

With both 10-man and 20-man raids planned for launch you will see both small and large guilds able to participate in end-game content.

Social integration

At launch Rift will have the Twitter integration that we all tested during alpha/beta.  Auto-tweeting achievements is fun, but more spammy than useful.  However the uploading and Tweeting of screenshots is a very nice feature, something I expect we’ll see used quite often.

Zone Lines

No invisible walls, no loading screens, and no zone-line bottlenecked roads.  Everything you hated about zones no longer exists in Rift.

Any one of these features could not stand on their own, but together they make for a great gaming experience.  While there is always room for improvement, Rift looks to be the first game in a long time that you can say feels 100% complete at launch.  As David Reid from Trion Worlds said, “The first thing you’re going to see is an incredibly highly polished, fully complete, premium game.”  And he’s right.