Wednesday, November 16, 2016

[Off Topic] Starfall Prophecy Is Go!

     The prophecy has been fulfilled! The Comet hovers threateningly over Telara and the call for aid can be clearly heard throughout the land. Will you answer, Ascended?

     Woohoo, the long anticipated new expansion for Rift has finally gone live as of earlier today! Of course, I had to work today so I just now got a chance to log on and check things out! Lots of new happenings in this expac, including of course, all new content to explore, new mounts, titles, puzzles, dungeons, raids, gear, achievements, and a dozen other things I can't even think of, as well as a whole bunch of new features added!!!

The details on Starfall:
  • New lvl cap: 70! You can now continue on your lvling experience and make your way to lvl 70 by completing quests in the new zones. In order to do so though, you need to pay for the expansion. This one isn't free, and costs you some real life $$, but that's nothing new or shocking to me since I've been playing and paying for Rift since launch, as well as my other favorite game, WoW, so having to pay for an expansion is old hat. I pre-ordered Starfall eons ago back in....August? No I think it was the end of July actually. It was before the flood in my town anyway. And every day when I log in, I get a Starfall Prophecy currency that I can spend to get stuffs. Now that the game has gone live, I'm going to buy my Opie (artifact squirrel mount) and the mystery box!
  • Level 65 Character Pack: I got this in my Rift store mail when logging in after launch. I'm not sure if it's given out with all purchases of SP, or if it's something only the delux edition got, but it sure is handy! I will definitely be using it! It's BoA so I can mail it to any of my characters, which is a definite plus! I also got a lvl 60 boost with the last expansion, but that one was BoE so I gave it to my sister as a present since she is a slow lvler and I wanted her to experience Rift's end content too! :) It comes with:
    • Instant Lvl 65 boost
    • 3 Exceptional Crafting Boosts
    • Boosted 65 consumables
    • Boosted 65 equipment
    • 4 Ascended Sachels
  • Free Heroic Prophecy Pack: Trion is giving a free special bundle through the Rift store to all players who log in between Nov 16th and Nov 30th. Just click on the Rift in game store, and in the upper right corner there should be a little claim box where you can get your Pack. If you are a patron of Rift like me, doing this is automatic when logging in for the day anyway. Included in this pack is:
    • 5 individual reward charges-From what I gather, these individual reward charges are what you need when doing dungeons to get yourself gear and things. They are changing it up this expac to kind of mirror WoW's system. Instead of the entire group getting 1 thing per boss, the RNG gods will give each individual character a 1-100 roll chance at loot, regardless if your fellow players got anything or not.
    • Cosmic Earth Core bundle-Not sure what this is...
    • Void Drake lock box-A box containing currency, artifacts, gear for your lvl, and a chance at the new Void Drake mount, which is kind of like the Etheral Drake, but dark colored and "Void" themed.
    • Scatheran Lily-Not sure what this is lol...
    • Large Artifact bundle-a whole bunch of artifacts!
    • Planar Pellets-the food that Opie the squirrel requires to hunt artifacts
  • New Zones of course: I listed these in the initial announcement post I made, a bit ago.
  • New Features: Also listed in my previous announcement post, and will go into lots of detail with the lore and gameplay pages to come! :) Same with the zones. I'm excited to start the questing and story!
  • New Void Drake Mount: Increases mount speed by 160% which is pretty nice, and looks really cool in game too! Of course the only downside is that they locked behind a random draw on the lockboxes and who even knows how many of the darn things you need to buy before you get a drake. Which sucks. I really wish they would just add a cash shop mount tab, where you can flat out purchase the mounts with $$ instead of spending money on a CHANCE to get one. :(
  • Hotfixes, nerfs, the sort of thing you expect with expacs. Not as many as I was thinking though. I guess I'm just so used to WoW's expansion, where all the classes get flung up in the air and reset at the beginning.

     Some of the things I wish I could see in a Rift expansion would include a new race/calling. It would be super cool to add a new race into the game. I know it's a lot of hard work integrating a new playable race, but it would be so fun and exciting to have something new to play with! Maybe a race that broke off from the bad guys and decided to join Telara in the fight, or a mysterious, hidden away race that had been obscured by the mists of time and now rediscovered? Something like that would be so cool! As for callings, I also know that it takes a ton of effort to keep the callings balanced as it is, and they recently added the Primalist, but it would be neat to have a new fresh calling, maybe something shadowy and sinister, kind of like how the Shadow Priests are in WoW. Just a thought. With a new starting zone! That would be really nice. I'd also like more chronicles for those of us who play solo or at such odd times that it's impossible to be included in raids and guild activities. It really leaves me feeling frustrated and disappointed that I can't get into and experience the content and lore that the raids provide because I play mostly in the graveyard shift hours, between midnight and 5am mountain time, so it's hard to find people willing to raid or do dungeons at that time. I don't mind for lack of gear or things like that, but I would love to just experience any of the story or dialogue that goes on in the raids and high end dungeons!
     On the note of dungeons and raids, I'd like to see different difficulty stages like in WoW. I'm not sure if Rift has this already or not, but in WoW, you have LFG (for the noobs and casuals), Normal (for those gearing up and gaining raiding experience), Heroic (for those who are serious into raiding and a stepping stone toward better gear), and Mythic (the highest and most difficult version, where only the serious raiding occurs.) It would be nice if Rift had some challenge at the end game for raiders to keep their interest. It's hard to keep hardcore raiders' interest after the first few weeks of an expansion, I know, and I feel if we had stronger, more clear cut stages to a raid or dungeon, the serious players would appreciate it, and would hang around longer.
     And the PvP...don't even get me started on that. I'm not an expert at PvP nor do I ever intend to be, but it seems that PvP in Rift is dead in the water, which is kind of sad. Even WoW, which is mostly a PvE and RP game, has a good pvp system in place. It's not the best either of course, but it works. Maybe if Rift offered arenas and championship games like WoW did? They should jump on the Esports idea like other games, and offer prizes and things to the best guild on each server or something. Make challenges, arenas, special combat teams, that sort of thing. Draw people into it, make them want to do pvp! Something is needed desperately that's for sure! I feel like arenas would definitely help! Have a special window like WoW has, where you can sign up players to join your arena team, have it customizable with names, a standard and tabard, and than have a window for the team to sign up to battle against other teams from that shard, and other shards, depending on your teams overall rank and your own individual rank! I would even join in on that and I don't pvp!
     That's just my own thoughts being put down to paper.

     And now I'd like to say, enough with the gabbing, and get on with the playing! I'm off to immerse myself into the awesome world of Telara, and you should too!!! Enjoy Starfall Prophecy and let me know what you think!

     Dark out

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