Guardians
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Exclusive Rift dev diary unveils the lives and times of Dwarves
They may be short and extraordinarily hairy, but across all fantasy realms, Dwarves have built a reputation as a hardworking race, masters of both ale and craftsmanship. In Rift: Planes of Telara, the Dwarves are a fallen race, even though it was by their hands that the great cities were built. In this exclusive dev diary, Trion Worlds lays out the foundation for the stocky, proud race from the beginning of time up to the start of the game's events. Hit the jump to discover how Rift's dwarves aren't just a stereotype, but a rich and complex people to whom the world owes a great debt.
E3 2010: Hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara
We've had our eye on Rift: Planes of Telara for some time now, especially after getting a little face time with the game back in April. Fortune smiles upon us all once more as Trion Worlds made the trek to E3 to showcase this gorgeous fantasy title. Shouldering our way to the front of the line -- hey, hey, I'm reporting here! -- we took the wheel of an interactive demo while the developers were kind enough to answer a few questions about Rift. Your very first decision in game will be to choose a faction: the Guardians or the Defiant. Both are tasked with saving a world under attack, although they each have their own approach and butt heads against the other in the process. The Guardians are blessed by the gods and are chosen to be their holy knights, while the Defiant take the anti-hero route and rely on their own technology to wage this war. The Defiant had created vast cities in the desert using their magical tech, but they were infiltrated by dragons and saw their great achievements wiped away, reducing them to desert wanderers. There are races unique to each faction, as well as races shared by both. We learned that the Defiant have access to both the Eth (human) and Bahmi (human/elemental) races.
Lichborne: PvE Gems for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly dose of Death Knight discussion.Now that we've covered most standard pemutations of gear gathering in past Lichborne columns, I figured this week would be a good time to start talking about taking the extra steps to really trick out your gear. This week, will focus on gems. Not only will this help you take your gear to the next level, but it gives me a good excuse to talk about some new discoveries and discussions going on as we try to figure out the best ways to squeeze the most DPS out of a Death Knight. So to start, let's talk about which statistics you'll want to focus on when you gem.
Tabula Rasa patch notes look promising
We've been waiting for a while now, and they've been teasing for a while now, but Tabula Rasa's 1.4 patch notes are finally available for perusing on the official website. On top of the promised universal attribute respec, there's a huge list of changes (both announced and not) too long to list in this space, but we thought we could pull out a few of the ones we're most excited about: Item rarity has been changed again. Purples are now only attainable through Shared missions, blues through instance missions, and greens will be regular quest rewards. This might just fix the economy. Hybrid races have been added, allowing players to make clones with Thrax, Brann, and Forean DNA spliced in. It's not even three weeks into January and already we have our #1 wish for 2008 fulfilled! Changes to the Guardians staff abilities were implemented, upgrading their melee power and hopefully acting as their ticket out of nerfville. Health and armor have been brought closer together for both players and enemies, enhancing the importance of health and healing. Higher level enemies have had their health and armor bumped down a little bit to allow for higher player survivability. All positive changes, and all things we're looking forward to trying out on the PTS. Among the concerns we still have that aren't addressed though is the long-term viability of the game in terms of quests, crafting, and PvP, none of which are really addressed in these patch notes.
Guardian pets need a mind of their own
This forums thread points out something interesting about player "guardians." Not pets-- guardians like Shadowfiend (which a priest I know called his shadowfriend), the druids' treants, and my shaman's totem elementals. After players wonder why shadowfiends keep breaking shackles, Neth says something that made me do a double-take: shadowfiends, as guardians, have an actual AI that is supposed to go after non crowd-controlled targets first.That's news to me. I haven't spent a ton of time around shadowfiends, but in my experience, shaman and mage elementals and other "uncontrollable" pets (that's why they're called guardians) tend to go after anything that happens to be close to them. That's why they don't get popped when there's sheep or shackles around-- my guild could have used that fire elemental DPS on Moroes, but because it was so important to keep those shackles up, I've been saving the elemental for later. If there really is an AI (and if it works-- even Neth agrees that may not be the case at this point, though she says the shadowfiends on the PTR are supposed to be doing things right), then maybe we can start trusting summoned guardians not to touch CC'd targets until it's OK to do so.Of course, there's other ways around it-- normally, I just don't pop my pets out until I'm sure there's no more CC left to break, but my pets are leashed to my totem, so with careful positioning, I can still avoid CC. And I believe both mage and druid guardians are targeted-- they open fire on whatever you've got targeted at the time, right? But I'd love a little AI, or at least a little control, in something like my Searing Totem. If there's a CC'd target out there, it's not worth the trouble to drop it even for the extra DPS.
Guards bugged in Silvermoon City
As a sidenote to the Valentine's Day guide from earlier: Don't even bother to try the Love quests in the new cities. As Memory from Scilla notes, the guards there are completely bugged-- in Silvermoon, guards talk about Stormwind (I even, as a Blood Elf, had one try to speak Dwarven to me).Now, Drysc says it's a known problem that has to do with the event itself, so if the problem isn't fixed soon, it'll go away for sure by Thursday, since that's when the Love event ends. And there's no real point to tooling around looking for love in the expansion cities anyway-- Kwee Q. Peddlefeet isn't there at all (because not all players, I suppose, have the expansion, and that would mess up the popularity contest, since all the rewards are city specific). So this isn't exactly the end of the world, even though when you get Heartbroken, it may seem like it.But for the moment, good luck trying to find your way around an expansion city you don't know. I was trying to find the Mage trainer in Silvermoon, and had to just give up and run back to the newbie area to train my new spells.
