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Only in RIFT

This post is also featured on Rift Watchers. Since it will fit in both places, and there’s not necessarily a ton of overlap in readers, I think it’s worth sharing both places. I may keep doing this so neither place gets neglected.

My journey in RIFT has been going excellently. I don’t think I’ve felt this comfortable in a new MMO since I played WoW for the first time. I’ve been leveling up a Cleric of the Cabalist variety (Druid and Purifier off-specs) and recently hit level 26. That officially makes it the most invested I’ve been in an MMO since LotRO where my main is level 46… after two years. I haven’t checked my /played but I feel confident saying that it’s at least 30 hours and probably more. The game has a lot going for it but something really cool happened the other night that I had to share, and it’s something that could only happen in RIFT.

I was questing in Stonefield, talking to guildies in vent, when all of the sudden our resident 50 exploded, “Guardian invasion in Granite Falls! Come quick! Guardian invasion right now!” I’m nothing if not a sucker for un-planned adventure, so off I ran, a lowly level 21. When I crested the nearby hill, I was met with a sea of red. At least 30 Guardians had stormed the bridge and were taking over the town. As I sat on the atop, ready to run down, a full on invasion spawned shaking my screen and destroying the ground as an earth rift opened over my head. I checked my map and nearly a dozen footholds had spawned. Not just rifts but real footholds with rifts interspersed.

When the Guardians swarmed the zone, the game recognized the huge influx of players and reacted with a major event – on a scale bigger than I’d ever seen in Freemarch or, well, anywhere to date. In an instant, the zone had gone from a mostly tranquil questing area to an incredibly dangerous, solo-at-your-own-risk,  death trap. What’s worse, the other people in the zone were having trouble getting to us because of all the new footholds and roaming patrols. Still, what were we going to do? The ten or so of us went forward and defended our town.

What’s more, we did a pretty good job of it, too. PvP in RIFT is actually fairly balanced, group-on-group, so our strategy was to take out their healers. Teams are made or lost based on how good their healing team is, so we focus fired them. Their plan was to zerg us back into the footholds while they took out our wardstones and nabbed their objective (invading forces get a quest to take these out).  Their plan backfired. Attacking the wardstones instantly aggroed the NPCs in the area and through careless use of AoEs, pulled the rift invaders too. We carefully avoided hitting the rift creatures and used their forces to bolster our own. Before long, they were on the run and we easily took out the stragglers.

Imagine every single one of these locations has a foothold and more, then add rifts in between.

It was epic. It honestly felt like we had our backs to a wall as we got pushed towards the rifts. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do except fight. Then to use those same rifts against them was incredibly cool. We felt triumphant.

After that, the members of Immortal Council got together and cleaned out the footholds in the area so players could quest again. All told, we got lots of favor, lots of planarite, and a crapton of experience.

This is the kind of thing that I love about RIFT. The unexpected can really happen. While cynical players might nab on rifts for “not really being dynamic,” no one can argue that it’s reactive. The guardians invaded and the game saw it as an opportunity for takeover. It challenged us and lead to one of the most exciting times in an MMO many of us have had in ages. And it wasn’t questing, raiding, or organized in the least. What it was, was a lot of fun.

If you’re looking for a cool guild to run with, consider joining us on Sunrest RP-PVP. It’s a great server community and the guild is a ton of fun to play with. We’re still doing open applications until more of us hit level cap and have members from every demographic. See you in-game!

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