Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Rift's 3 Faction PvP

While I do not play Rift, my interest was piqued when they announced 3 faction PvP yesterday.  I like PvP and the more factions the better I say!  So I figured I should look into it a bit more.  It is not exactly what I expected, but interesting none the less.

Warning Signs.  While reading about Conquest, a couple things stood out to me:  "the excitement of Open World PvP at its best"  and  "Capturing the Essence of Open World PvP".  They never say what, exactly, Conquest is, but from these it sounds like it is not Open World PvP.  That means it is probably a warfront (scenario) or something similar.

Three Factions, sort of.  Trion is not adding a new player faction to the game.  The Defiant and Guardians remain.  Instead, they are adding 3 new factions which players from either side can choose to align with.  When in the Conquest instance, that is the side they will fight on.

Capture Points.  There will be no fortifications/keeps, instead a number of capture points.  Holding these grants you buffs and new abilities, which actually sounds pretty interesting.  These do not seem to be game wide though as it mentions they are for you and your team.

It Ends.  The article mentions that 'the match ends' when a specific condition has been met.  That makes it really sound like a warfront, rather than a persistent PvP area.  BUT.....

They add this condition as well:  "or 5,000 players are killed"  That's a lot of players. So maybe it is not a warfront exactly.

I do have to applaud Rift for trying something new.  They may not be adding a true 3rd faction, but they are adding to the game.  Who knows how they can build off of these 3 mini-factions in the future?  It probably won't be enough for me to re-subscribe to the game, there is just too much out there to play.  I will be following how it goes though.