What to say about Rift? Is it beautiful? Yes. Is it fun? Amazingly so! Is it different? Both yes, and no.

Visuals and Sound:

Are you tired of cartoony graphics that stress your video cards but don't really look all that good? I know I was! World of Warcraft knock offs abound these days, and I have gotten sick and tired of the same graphics every time I try a new game. I remember buying Age of Conan and being wowed by the graphics, why has it taken so long for another game to follow suit?

Well the wait for amazing graphics is over! Rift's graphics are on par or better than any other MMO out there. Everything is very "realistic" (in quotes because it is a fantasy world). Water looks like water, spell effects are top notch, and this is all done without stressing my 2 year old computer too much.

The sound quality is very rich. Yes, it can be a bit repetitive. A sword hitting a shield can only sound so many different ways. I do wish there was a bit of differention in the combat music but oh well. That is a minor gripe. Speaking of music: it is a mix of World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, depending on the area. I loved GW's music and am glad to see that someone else picked up on this style.

Gameplay:

If you've played an MMO recently, then you know how battles go. You hit your predefined buttons until either you or the enemy dies. What makes this game different is the range of skills you have available even very early in the game.

Speaking of skills: You do not just pull from one specific class (or soul as they call it). You can use up to 3 souls at a time. Yes, the three you are using are fairly similar in purpose, but the function is completely different!... By mixing the souls and purchasing their abilities how YOU choose, your characters can be very different even from someone else using the same 3 souls.

You can also change "Roles" on the fly. These are like Talent Builds in WoW. You can use any souls that you have available on different roles. I currently have a Tank role and a DPS role on my Warrior. This makes it much easier to make sure you are playing the right character for the job.

But is it "Just another MMO"?

Game play can be divided into a few areas: Open world grinding, Open world rifts, Dungeons, PVP.

PvP: This is done similar to other titles. There are battlegrounds with specific objectives. These are instanced and can either be really fast, or take a long time depending on the teams. PVP can also happen in Open World. Both reward you with points that can be spent on gear.

Grinding: Unfortunately, the quest grind is pretty much here to stay. At least it is very story driven in Rift. I do think they have you running around a bit too much, but this keeps the areas fresh and interesting, so I was pretty much ok with it once I got my mount (about level 15).

Rifts: This is a blast! You get another type of currency for closing Rifts and defeating "Footholds" in the open world. Every so often there is a major incursion which takes a large group to defeat. These are so much fun, everyone turns out to defeat the invasions from the rifts, and I always stop and close any Minor Rifts I find (it takes a small group to close a Major Rift). Footholds can easily be defeated in a couple of minutes by one person, depending on their level.

Dungeons: Pretty much your standard group of 5: 1 tank, 3 dps, a healer. So far the dungeons are a little shorter than some other games, but are still challenging and offer nice rewards. Definitely worth the time and effort!

Overall: I will definitely be playing this game a lot for the foreseeable future! The mix of Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Age of Conan is the perfect mix in my opinion. Finally, a gaming company learned from the mistakes of others and made very few of their own!

Okay, this is pretty straightforward. By paying for WoW using these prepaid game cards you get the game cheaper than if you pay month to month using a credit card. On top of that you get the added security of not having to give your credit card info for your subscription. For parents of young people who play the game this is even better, ensuring that your personal information will stay hidden in case the account is hacked. And remember, these cards ship free if you buy over $25 worth, so keep that in mind. Overall this is just a great value, and a cheaper way to feed your MMORPG craving.

It seems like the past few years have been dreary for the MMO market. Even games that I was excited about due to the premise and my history with the series (SWTOR, I'm looking at you) have failed to deliver a fun, polished, innovative experience. I have seen truly interesting games pushed out far before they were ready, I've seen almost direct ripoffs of Warcraft, and I've also seen a lot of games that simply have no heart. Because of this, and perhaps because I was only a mild fan of the original Guild Wars, I followed the Guild Wars 2 hype with a fair amount of skepticism. The energy and the passion of the developers began to intrigue me, though, so I pre-purchased the game in order to have access to the beta weekends -- and there was no turning back. The most important thing I should say is that you should throw out any pre-conceptions you have about the game based on the original Guild Wars. While there are certainly some familiar aspects this is a complete redesign of the Guild Wars experience.

The first thing that struck me about the game was the sheer size, level of detail, and outright beauty of the world. This is the first game where I have walked into a main city and could actually imagine thousands of people living there. It is a great deal of fun to explore, and this becomes a key part of the game. Rather than simply being pointed to a town where you talk to a handful of NPCs, pick up a handful of quests, trot off twenty feet to handle the quests, return, rinse and repeat, this game encourages you to get out and take a look around. When you need direction you can look at your map and there will be hearts indicating someone in need of help -- but the true purpose of these hearts is to get out you into that area to be exposed to the events that happen there.... These events can be as small as bandits raiding a farmer's field, or a massive Shadow Behemoth on the scale of a raid boss, but there is almost always something to be seen. Forget the blinders that most MMOs have you put on while you quest: Guild Wars 2 wants you to rip them off, pay attention, and wander off whenever something strikes your fancy.

The Guild Wars team has put a lot of thought into some of the social dynamics of MMOs, and I have to sheepishly agree that I was much like everyone else. I glared virtual daggers at any player that would show up and start killing 'my' boars, mining 'my' material nodes, and otherwise doing what any normal player should be doing. Prior MMOs fed this anti-social, territorial urge by limiting the ways you could cooperate and share resources. I had to group up with that total stranger in order to share kill credit, and I had to dash around madly to collect crafting resources because if the other player got there first it was gone. Though the purpose of an MMO was to play with others, it was often less beneficial to do so and enforced an every man for himself mentality. Guild Wars does away with all this nonsense and makes it exciting to see other players again. Anyone who participates gets credit, a player mining a resource node doesn't make it disappear for you, and some of the events are difficult enough that it is a relief when a large pack of players shows up to assist. As an interesting touch, the final area of player conflict (PvP/WvW) even opts to show you a generic name for the opposing team's members instead of giving you a player name so no grudge can be carried over from the match.

I could talk endlessly about the combat system and the crafting system, but these are certainly a matter of taste and best experienced on your own. Suffice to say, combat is smooth and the animations satisfying, and the crafting system is simple yet elegant. There is a level of polish here that has been sorely lacking in other games of late, and though I've only made it to level 20 so far it is obvious that there is enough to keep me occupied for months on end. Each class is distinct and rewarding in its own right, and if you find you don't care for the play style be sure to swap your weapons and try the other skill mixes before giving up on the class completely. Warrior felt distinctly 'meh' to me with the first set of weapons I started with, and then suddenly became ripping fun when I was able to switch to something with skills more fast-pasted. Even classes I didn't much care for in the original game, such as the Necromancer, shine in their new incarnation. Your character feels solidly connected to the world, without the sense of floating or gliding that ruins the immersion. This has been a huge pet peeve for me, and it's nice to finally see another game get this right. And to those who think ten skills is too little, I will pose this question: How many of those fifty+ buttons did you use in your rotation in World of Warcraft? In most cases, only a small handful that varied depending on your build, and then a few utility skills. This is no different, except for the lack of UI clutter and the fact that 'switching spec' is simply switching your weapon.

This is a gorgeous, fun, and well thought-out game. If you are on the fence I encourage you to go to their web site and read the developer blogs and other material, watch some videos, and if your curiosity is piqued dive in. Without a monthly fee you have ample time to explore every avenue the game has, and even if you find it is not to your taste I suspect you would find you've spent much more time with the game than many FPS titles of the same price. This is well worth the cost, if only to experience what I feel is a solid step forward in the gaming world, and that is encouraging people to play *together* instead of against each other.

Great little book. Tasty amount of action, a fair amount of mystery and almost enough DDo.

If there is a complaint about this book, it would be 60% of the book is set outside of the area in which the DDo game is set. Maybe that is the fault of the game and not the author. But as it is labeled the DDo book maybe a little more DDo is needed. But even that complaint is a small one when you consider that this book could move to any dnd realm and be entreating.

Totally worth the read.

And really don't you want some DnD books that aren't about Drow fighting their nature or were greybeard old has bins are to lazy to save the day their own damn self?

Good times.

What to say about Rift? Is it beautiful? Yes. Is it fun? Amazingly so! Is it different? Both yes, and no.

Visuals and Sound:

Are you tired of cartoony graphics that stress your video cards but don't really look all that good? I know I was! World of Warcraft knock offs abound these days, and I have gotten sick and tired of the same graphics every time I try a new game. I remember buying Age of Conan and being wowed by the graphics, why has it taken so long for another game to follow suit?

Well the wait for amazing graphics is over! Rift's graphics are on par or better than any other MMO out there. Everything is very "realistic" (in quotes because it is a fantasy world). Water looks like water, spell effects are top notch, and this is all done without stressing my 2 year old computer too much.

The sound quality is very rich. Yes, it can be a bit repetitive. A sword hitting a shield can only sound so many different ways. I do wish there was a bit of differention in the combat music but oh well. That is a minor gripe. Speaking of music: it is a mix of World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, depending on the area. I loved GW's music and am glad to see that someone else picked up on this style.

Gameplay:

If you've played an MMO recently, then you know how battles go. You hit your predefined buttons until either you or the enemy dies. What makes this game different is the range of skills you have available even very early in the game.

Speaking of skills: You do not just pull from one specific class (or soul as they call it). You can use up to 3 souls at a time. Yes, the three you are using are fairly similar in purpose, but the function is completely different!... By mixing the souls and purchasing their abilities how YOU choose, your characters can be very different even from someone else using the same 3 souls.

You can also change "Roles" on the fly. These are like Talent Builds in WoW. You can use any souls that you have available on different roles. I currently have a Tank role and a DPS role on my Warrior. This makes it much easier to make sure you are playing the right character for the job.

But is it "Just another MMO"?

Game play can be divided into a few areas: Open world grinding, Open world rifts, Dungeons, PVP.

PvP: This is done similar to other titles. There are battlegrounds with specific objectives. These are instanced and can either be really fast, or take a long time depending on the teams. PVP can also happen in Open World. Both reward you with points that can be spent on gear.

Grinding: Unfortunately, the quest grind is pretty much here to stay. At least it is very story driven in Rift. I do think they have you running around a bit too much, but this keeps the areas fresh and interesting, so I was pretty much ok with it once I got my mount (about level 15).

Rifts: This is a blast! You get another type of currency for closing Rifts and defeating "Footholds" in the open world. Every so often there is a major incursion which takes a large group to defeat. These are so much fun, everyone turns out to defeat the invasions from the rifts, and I always stop and close any Minor Rifts I find (it takes a small group to close a Major Rift). Footholds can easily be defeated in a couple of minutes by one person, depending on their level.

Dungeons: Pretty much your standard group of 5: 1 tank, 3 dps, a healer. So far the dungeons are a little shorter than some other games, but are still challenging and offer nice rewards. Definitely worth the time and effort!

Overall: I will definitely be playing this game a lot for the foreseeable future! The mix of Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Age of Conan is the perfect mix in my opinion. Finally, a gaming company learned from the mistakes of others and made very few of their own!

My only complaint on this purchase was that I was unclear from the product description whether or not it was non-fiction or fiction. It may have been listed somewhere and I missed it. But when I went to read it, I wasn't sure if I was reading a short story or a short essay on this guy's real life experience.

Turns out it is a short fictional story that is intended to be read like it is a true story. It reads in first person present narration so you are witnessing events as they happen.

I found it to be very intriguing and enjoyable. It is about a man who designed a great online video game and the consequences in his life because of it. It is only 17 pages long so you can read it in just a few minutes. But it was a pleasurable 17 pages that I think was worth the .99 that I paid for it. I would give more plot details, but it is so short that I don't want to give anything away. I will simply say this, while it isn't earth-shattering prose or anything, I liked it enough that I would gladly purchase and read a full length novel about this story and its background, or any other book by this author.

Sentinel Marshall Sabira Lyet d'Deneith is called upon to perform a mission only she can do but has to return to a person and place she promised herself she never would. Eight years ago she watched the murderous Nightshard die and saved a life that earned her the nicknamed "The Shard Axe". Now a series of murders in Stormreach are all too similar to Nightshard and Sabira must return to face her demons in order save a life. In a city full of enemies can she keep the past from repeating itself?

This is a book to be devoured in one setting. It is fast paced with bits of backstory dropped in at choice moments that flesh out Sabira's story perfectly. While I am not as familiar with Eberron as I am the Forgotten Realms, this book required no previous knowledge of the Eberron setting and can be enjoyed as a standalone novel. The key element of the story is Sabira, to say that her methods are unorthodox and she is a "bit of a rule breaker" is an understatement but she has a fierce sense of duty that guides her actions. So her prisoners are brought in a little worse for wear? It is part of her charm...

If you are looking for a faced paced story featuring a great fantasy action heroine that will keep you engaged and turning the pages until the very end, then The Shard Axe is the book for you. I hope to see Sabira, The Shard Axe, in more adventures.

My only complaint on this purchase was that I was unclear from the product description whether or not it was non-fiction or fiction. It may have been listed somewhere and I missed it. But when I went to read it, I wasn't sure if I was reading a short story or a short essay on this guy's real life experience.

Turns out it is a short fictional story that is intended to be read like it is a true story. It reads in first person present narration so you are witnessing events as they happen.

I found it to be very intriguing and enjoyable. It is about a man who designed a great online video game and the consequences in his life because of it. It is only 17 pages long so you can read it in just a few minutes. But it was a pleasurable 17 pages that I think was worth the .99 that I paid for it. I would give more plot details, but it is so short that I don't want to give anything away. I will simply say this, while it isn't earth-shattering prose or anything, I liked it enough that I would gladly purchase and read a full length novel about this story and its background, or any other book by this author.

I really like the idea of an Atlas for EQ2. It has a lot of zones. The maps though are tough to read. They are pretty tiny and in tough colors to stare at. One thing that the Atlas is really missing though is a level guide. As a noob for EQ2 I have no idea which zone is really for my character level or not and unfortunately this Atlas doesn't help.

Coming from someone who has been playing all type of MMORPG games from MUD to WoW and all that are in between. RIFT is a great game by its own rights. It's been a long time since the MMO community has a very successful launch. I'm not going to compare features between this game and that game, but here are the good and the bad from my playing experience.

Default UI is a great. Although many of the goodies are turned off by default, you can easily turn them on through the interface setting. No need to go to addon website to install extra stuff. Things like target of target, AoE auto loot, auto sell gray items, etc. The UI layout editor is very easy to use. I'm actually really happy with it out of the box. It's not perfect, but a great starting point.

Public groups. I thought it was dumb when I first saw it, but there's a plus sign above everyone's avatar. You can click this and invite yourself to create an auto-group with the person. This is great when you see someone doing the quest you're looking to do, you can just auto group and you both and help each other. When you're done, just leave and be on your way. You can turn this feature off if you don't like a random stranger joining you. This also works for Public Group when taking down world events, such as RIFTs and Invasions. If there are multiple public groups, it merges them in to one.

Warfronts. Essentially, it's instance battlegrounds. The queues are very quick since its cross-servers. You need to be at least level 10 to do your first Warfront. There are brackets from 10-19, 20-29, and so on. It's pretty much the same old same old here, so nothing exciting about it. The experience gain is enough that you could level from just playing the warfronts if you choose to.... I don't recommend it though, it gets boring pretty fast if playing it back to back... to back. Plus, you'll be pretty weak because you can't get gear efficiently if this is all you're doing.

Rifts and Invasions are pretty cool at first. After awhile it's just a zerg fest. I don't mind doing this, but again, in moderation. The blue and purple tokens you get from it are zone specific, so spend those to get yourself stronger. Not a lot of experience from invasions, so you can't level off of it like you can from warfronts. If you farm the invasion currencies you can buy items to make yourself stronger.

Quests are pretty much a straight shot. What is great about them is that you get pretty decent gears from following quests line. It will continually upgrade your gear as you go along. So this is the most effective way to get decent gear if you're playing by yourself or with a friend.
Dungeons are also pretty much like other games, but a lot prettier! It's hard to describe in words. The first instance is the Realm of the Fae, and the winter top mountain is pretty amazing, a must see! I won't spoil it.

This brings me to another point. The graphic and game effects in this game look very nice. Warrior's cleave bring up dust from the ground looks amazing. If your computer can handle ultra setting, the game is very pretty. I enjoy the graphic a lot. The last game I play that I thought was pretty was LotRO, this beats it.

Sound effects is pretty good, nothing that stands out. The script events and voice over is a nice touch, but nothing special. I turn music off when playing so I can't comment on that.

The loot is pretty also straight forward. The nice touch here is that all souls in the class use the same stat no matter what you're doing. For example, all clerics will use WIS gear. So I won't have to haul STR/DEX gear when tanking, WIS when healing, and INT/DEX when trying to DPS. All cleric uses WIS as the main attribute and that gets converted depending on the souls. If I'm tanking as Cleric Justica my WIS converts to STR for tanking. All I have to worry about is if I want to tank with 2H weapon or 1H and shield. Pretty awesome!

The Classes and Souls system is also nice, because it's very flexible. You can also purchase new roles to swap out from Tank to Healer on the fly. Since you're using pretty much the same gear from one role to another, it's painless.

In my opinion, this game doesn't bring anything new or innovative. It takes all the things other games done well and implement them in a nice package. There are a lot of improvements to be made. Like I said, it's not perfect, but it's a great start.

NOTE: If you are looking to buy this game, I recommend getting the Digital Collector's edition for $60. An extra $10 will get you a mount right off the bat (no level restriction) for all new characters that you make. The cheapest mount you can get is about 2.5 plat. I didn't get 2.5 plat until about level 20 from a normal play. I created 3 characters to level 20, and it's pretty much the same pace. Having the mount as soon as you can get to the mailbox is awesome.

The fact that I am able to type a review here at Amazon for The Guild is kind of amazing. Considering this, the first season, was funded by Felicia Day with donations/help from the audience and considering how unlikely such a collaboration is, it's amazing that the show has become such a hit, spawning additional seasons and a more mainstream acceptance. Not that it should be very surprising since it's probably one of the funniest and heartfelt shows I've seen on either the web or TV.

Stepping back a bit, The Guild is a show about...well, an online guild of friends who live in the local area but only know each other through their online alter-egos. Cyd/Codex (Felicia Day) is struggling with what appears to be an addiction to their current MMO, dealing with a psychiatrist who hangs up on her and a gnome warlock who shows up at her front door, thinking they are romantically involved.

What works for The Guild is the fact that the characters are so vivid and played pitch perfectly by the entire cast. Yes, they verge on walking stereotypes, but the hilartiy and the love for these people (some of the kinds of people I know personally) gives the show a much needed heart. What's great is that, while a gaming geek will get the most enjoyment out of the show, I have shown this to friends who think gaming is limited to Rock Band and they, too, kept coming back, week after week, to watch it.

You can go view these shows online, still, either via the website, MSN or Xbox Live. I'm personally glad that there's now another option in this Amazon exclusive. Give it a chance. I bet you'll come back laughing.

I played during closed beta and all of the open beta weekends. As the beta progressed, I began to realize that this was not an MMORPG for me. I really really wanted to like this game, so I decided to purchase it as well. Unfortunately, not much has changed gameplay-wise since closed beta.

I have played MMORPGs since 1998, and I primarily get my enjoyment out of them through acquiring new armor/weapons. I enjoy progressing my character seeing my character look more badass as he levels up, and it has always been my motivation for leveling up. However, GW2 does not cater to this type of player. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your opinion. Stats on loot are relatively negligible and most armor is essentially cosmetic (this is a slight simplification of the system, but holds true compared to other MMORPGs). This is not really a surprise, since GW1 ran under a similar model. I guess I was hoping things would be different. I don't want to give the impression I'm a hardcore gamer. I've never really raided much or anything like that, but I guess I felt like there was no motivation to level up. You can compete PvP and WvWvW from level 1, you unlock the majority of your skills in the first 10 levels, your armor is largely cosmetic, and your character is scaled to the local content (so if you're level 50, but want to level in the level 1 - 15 zones, you can still get your ass handed to you). The end result, for me at least, was little motivation to play.

With that being said, if you enjoy MMORPGs, I would definitely still recommend buying it, as it is a well polished game. Also, since it doesn't have a monthly fee, you can easily get your money's worth even if you only play a couple months.... However, if your primary drive for playing MMORPGs is leveling and character development, this game may leave more to be desired. Unfortunately, it wasn't for me.

Edit (12/10/12): It looks like, from reading other reviews, that this game has changed quite a bit since I wrote the review. It sounds now like they have added a gear grind to the game. I can't really comment because I don't play anymore, but my review is now slightly out of date.

I just spent the last week playing the World of Warcraft Stress Test Beta, and I can tell you that it was better than I expected. Even though the game wasn't finished, it still has many features that make it head and shoulders above every other MMORPG I've played.

Now, I, like many others, have been waiting in ancicipation for this game to come out, and when I had the chance to play the stress test, I was elated. Considering the majority of my MMOG experience is in EverQuest, I will list a few of the improvements (at least what I see as improvements) over the MMORPG "norm."

1) Experience from completing quests is noticable, and the rewards from completing them are worthwhile. I was always frustrated with EverQuest's quest structure, and the only reason to do a quest was for the item quested for, not for the experience gain. In WoW, it is possible to gain more experience from completing a quest than from killing a monster.

2) Experience progress is anything but vague. Every time a character kills a monster or completes a quest, the experience points are clearly given, and a meter with the character's progress within a level is clearly marked with numbers. So it's impossible not to tell how much experience killing a monster was worth. No more questionable meters with random values.

3) The world is easy to get around in. And it doesn't take an hour to get where you need to be, if you know where you're going. This was one of my biggest problems with EverQuest, because, as a semi-casual player, sometimes I don't have the time to run for an hour to complete a quest, or, in some cases, die, then have to make a corpse run and take twice as long as it originally was supposed to take. Which leads me to my next point.

4) Death is reasonable.... If your character dies, its ghost spawns at the NEAREST graveyard, so there is no need to manually bind your character somewhere. Also, there is no XP loss if you choose to run your character over to its corpse. In my opinion, the death system is one of the best, as you can choose to lose XP by ressurecting right at the graveyard, or just run to your character's corpse and revive there with no experience loss. And before you can ressurect your character in a graveyard, it will let you know exactly how much XP will be lost. This replaces the 3 hours of grinding time needed to replace the lost XP.

5) An XP grind is perfectly possible, but not necessary. It is very possible to level up consistently without having to play for 5-7 hours a day. Between XP from killing monsters and the great quest completion XP, I was able to level a character to 17 in 3 days of semi-casual play. Now granted, those were the first 17 and the easiest, but it's also possible to gain a level a day, almost unheard of in EverQuest.

To make a long story short, this will be a great game, but there is still a lot of work needed to make it release-ready. Since there is no official word yet on its release, I wouldn't hold my breath, but it's certainly something to keep an eye on.

-Bullroar