Rift: Planes of Telara

Trion Worlds is currently taking applications for the upcoming Rift: Planes of Telara beta. Sign up on the official website.

One hundred million dollars.

It's a sum of money to strike fear into the heart of a more superstitious developer following the collapse of Realtime Worlds in September. But if the comparison between that other debutante MMO developer and the similarly-backed Trion Worlds has occurred to the team behind Rift, it doesn't show.

In many ways it's an unfair comparison, given that much of this sizeable investment has been poured into the technological infrastructure which will underpin the three titles Trion plans to publish - two in 2011 and one at a later, undisclosed date.

It's a comparison that also, happily, goes no further than a figure on paper, as Rift not only provides a full MMO experience but adds some unique twists to the genre.

In development since the studio's foundation in 2006, Rift: Planes of Telara tells the story of a world torn asunder by a cataclysmic event, leaving Telara exposed to the Planar dimensions seeking to invade and overtake your homeland. Reborn as the Ascended – a Telaran destroyed in the Shade War – players join one of two factions. The Guardians are a more religious group who seek to protect the world of Telara, while the Defiant seek to harness the magical power created by the Rift.

It's a welcome change to the straight good/evil alignment of other MMOs. Both factions believe they're right, but there's a sense of misguidedness in both. "The Defiant believe the Guardians are stupid. Guardians believe the Defiant are evil," chief creative officer Scott Hartsman explains.

The starting zones are distinct and we're promised variety in the quest lines for both factions rather than the simple copy, paste and light edit which has plagued recent releases. While there is a certain element of 'Gather X number of items', Rift is at least punching at the modern weight of MMO questing, and there are well-crafted stories and environmental interaction woven into the levelling.

Dwarves have feelings too.

The game's visual inspiration is best described as having its roots in EverQuest, albeit with the striking vibrancy of Aion. While it doesn't break the mould or even move away from familiar high-fantasy environments, Rift does achieve contrast between zones - a critical aspect of design which helps with immersion, making the world seem larger than its territorial footprint.

The styling will of course undergo little change between now and release and a sly peek at the interface screen reveals that this alpha - an alpha, incidentally, performing better than many advanced betas I've experienced - runs at barely half the engine's potential. At this stage of development and even with these reduced settings, the environments are rich, colourful and satisfying. Those with a beefy computer can look forward to a visual feast.

It's also possible to run from north to south across the continent without experiencing a single loading screen. It may not be the largest world ever to grace this gaming scene, but it is a world in itself regardless. In my mental checklist of MMO requirements, this freedom of travel and variety of landscape make for very big and very welcome ticks. When Rift launches early next year, it will do so with 11 dungeons available, more or less one for each of the zones currently in game. During our visit we tried two such instances - The Realm of the Fae and Deepstrike Mine. The former takes place in an instanced but open and lush forest enclave while the latter is grittier: think Wrath of the Lich King's Utgarde Keep.

In sickness and in elf.

I'm appalling at tanking but a volunteer is needed. With a deafening silence around the desk of PCs, my hand meekly raises an inch or two before shooting straight back down, but it's too late. We fire up our pre-made characters and enter.

Faced now with an overflowing action bar of buffs, de-buffs and threat-generation tools, I take a few minutes to read over the tooltips and cobble together a vague collection of what seem to be the critical abilities. Trash pulls provide an unexpected challenge that goes beyond a lack of familiarity with the skill-set . The mechanics of the bosses we face are intuitive and clearly presented, but my skills at maintaining aggro are failing the team:

"You shouldn't really have a problem holding threat with that character." I'm pink - wipe.

"Let's have a look at your abilities, this shouldn't be a problem." I'm crimson - wipe again.

"Hmmm, perhaps we need to look at re-tuning that encounter."

I'm a man, waist-deep in quicksand, being offered the hand of rescue. But I can't do it and, with British over-politeness, I cheerfully sink below the surface while explaining that I may not be the barometer they're looking for in balancing this aspect of the game. A fellow journalist gamely steps forward to take over the role and is also terrible at tanking, a moment of exceptional good fortune for which I'll always be grateful.

My personal skills aside, there's depth to the character advancement system that goes beyond a mere flood of abilities. While you'll initially choose from a base of four standard classes (Warrior, Cleric, Mage and Rogue) used to form the traditional holy trinity of MMO group play, each class can be further enhanced by adding two of a further eight sub-classes within each base role. Want to add a paladin healing flavour to your tank? No problem. Perhaps a magical de-buffer element is required for a particular encounter? Simply choose from one of your four saved configurations for the job at hand.

It's a staggering opportunity for player progress in the genre and, if my GCSE maths hasn't failed me completely, the system allows for 112 possibilities for specialisation of each class. Once you factor in the distribution of 'talent' points, the potential for unique development of your character becomes near endless.

With that said, complexity and competitiveness make for an explosive combination in the MMO community, and it remains a concern that this freedom to experiment will be over-taken by perceived advantages of cookie-cutter character builds within the collective audience. The technological backbone of Rift allows for the developers to make changes and update encounters on the fly without patching the client. It's hoped that the variety of content promised through event programming will keep experimentation alive in this wonderfully unconstrained system.

From my time with the game, it's not apparent which skill-sets another player has enabled. As a result, player-versus-player encounters may present either an unusually deep challenge or button-mashing frustration.

As with the crafting and economy, the PVP component of Rift was sadly not available for preview although we're promised a fully-fledged experience launching with four Warfronts (Rift's battlegrounds) which will include a variety of competitive objectives. Clearly, balancing the expansive class system in a PVP environment is going to be a significant challenge, and it will be interesting to see how both the developers and the community react.

So Rift will fulfil the elements we've come to expect from a triple-A MMO release: dungeons, the holy trinity group composition, a vibrant world and PVP environments. But what of the unique Rifts themselves?

Tears appearing in the world map can be opened by the players, initiating an event similar to the public quests of Warhammer Online. They're far more engaging though, with additional puzzle elements that make the encounters deeper than a mere DPS race or simple tank-and-spank.

Left to their own devices, Rifts will eventually spawn invasions into each zone, taking over towns, destroying quest givers, merchants and altering the environment. While the developers are quick to point out that these essential characters will re-spawn within an hour or so, it's a clever way of bringing the community together to combat a common foe, and bringing a static world to life.

Both initiating events and responding to invasions are extraordinarily compulsive experiences. With the former finely tuned to be neither too short to be unsatisfying nor too long to leave you feeling tied to the PC, the perfect balance between depth and one-more-go addictiveness is ingrained.

After a couple of hours feeling that I really should move on to experience a new part of the game, I have seen the future – and it's a Friday night, early hours, undertaking just one more rift and gathering one more essence before bed. If the rest of the game launches to this quality, what tattered remains of life World of Warcraft and EVE Online have left me will be no more than dust in the wind.

Trion Worlds is in bullish mood about the prospects for its fledgling MMO and on the strength of what I've seen at its San Francisco studio, it has good reason to be. The post-apocalyptic wreckage left in WOW's wake is littered with innovative features clipped awkwardly onto half-finished games. There is no shame in revisiting these missed opportunities in order to get them marching to a tighter beat.

More than this, the MMO industry has almost become defined by grand-standing, broken promises and thinly veiled inter-developer smack-talk. By contrast, Trion is to be applauded for waiting until the game can stand on its own two feet before earnestly talking shop and winding up the publicity machine.

Among the dispiriting number of titles released to face Goliath, stand their own ground and give something back to an audience craving innovation rather than re-iteration, Rift is a refreshingly complete game offering enough new experiences to make it worthy of close attention. In the battle of the heavyweights, Trion's first venture into MMOs may turn out to be the sucker-punch nobody saw coming.

Trion Worlds is currently taking applications for the upcoming Rift: Planes of Telara beta. Sign up on the official website.