'Till I Collapse: "Rift" MMO Journal No. 2

If you thought you were going to skate by on a mission to "kill 10 rats," you've found the wrong online role-playing game.

We're knee deep in a rift--in Rift--with no idea how we got in, and no idea how to get out alive. This is the second journal exploring this beautiful dark twisted fantasy, so catch up.

No Church in the Wild

I didn’t sign up for this. Standing on piles of dead citizens is a long ways from how things used to be ten or even five years ago, back when I used to dabble more often in any old MMO for its free 30 days. Back then we’d head out and grab the local flora, attack the local fauna. Collect five apples for a farmer’s prize-winning pie, maybe kill a dozen Rodents of Unusual Size. Nothing too crazy. But Rift has different ideas. I return to the calmer confines of the Sanctuary, just to collect my thoughts before pressing on, and I see a golden-skinned healer with pointy ears tending more wounded. I realize this war isn’t going to end itself, so it’s time to leave this nightmare of a holy place on high, charge down the hill, and do what I was called here to do: to stop this madness.

Crazy Train

I drop down into the town of Ardenburgh. The scene is chaotic. Homes built like castles are reduced to ruins. Fires rage unchecked. Dark knights ransack the residences and execute the populace. “Technomancers” set up blasphemous machines on holy sites. And the catapult attacks persist as I carefully tread the cobblestone streets--streets now paved with corpses and limbs from corpses, some of the dead bodies speared to the ground with tall blades. These people were caught completely unaware; some homes still have laundry hanging out to dry on clotheslines.

Get At Me, Dog

Back and forth I hack and slash my way through Ardenburgh, smiting Corrupted Knights, Deathbound Thralls--whatever those are--and even less identifiable abominations.There is a fountain in the town’s center where an Amazonian elf and a tough-as-brimstone dwarf dole out orders to me and to other players. The prevalence of war-trained warthogs and tigers speaks to the popularity of the beasthandler class, a type of character with Dog Whisperer skills. We need all the help we can get, sure, but beasthandlers are the Michael Vicks of the MMO world. I’ll go ahead and fight my own fights, if it’s all the same to you.

Neck of the Woods

Outside of Ardenburgh’s walls is a belt of leafless trees twisting up toward the dirty sky. These woods are pockmarked with enemies staging more of their technomantic machinery. Thankfully the citizens of Ardenburgh are “safe” behind city walls. Well, they’re still being slaughtered mercilessly, but I must push on, and newer players cropping up behind me must do their part for the citizens, too. The denizens throughout these particular woods drop worn baskets as loot. I wonder if there’s a Little Red Riding Hood metaphor to be found in all this, but I don’t encounter any wolves disguised as grandmothers, nor woodsmen to come to my aid. Just the baskets which sell for a few silver coins with the local merchants.

Sky High

I walk out the other side of the woods and see my first rift. It doesn’t look too scary. At least not from this far away. That upside down black hole with Kraken tentacles anchored to a distant plateau while smoke and unnatural light pours out of it? Totally not fazed. Even further in the distance I see the evil-looking tower from the intro movie. I half expect to see the Eye of Sauron staring out from its summit. Nearby is a forward-deployed Guardian camp, circled by a log wall and filled with tents and skill trainers. The rhetoric is a little more bloodthirsty from these patroling soldiers, but it has to be: this is where so many warriors have already died--including myself in my former life, before I was brought back as an Ascended by a scantily-clad angel. Hallelujah.

My Chain Heavy

It’s easy to see why the Guardians are losing this war. The creatures populating the bad guys’ side--the Defiants’ side--are far meaner looking than our equivalent soldiers. We have the occasional ten-foot-tall war general, but our troops are much more workmanlike in equipment and deportment. The Defiants, on the other hand, have nasty skeletal wizards magically binding very sad hill giants to their will. It looks like the hill giants don’t have much say in the matter. If those wizards send them on a rampage, I won’t be able to stop the wake of destruction. Thankfully, it looks like all those wizards’ resources are going toward keeping the giant bound up, so no one notices even as I inch closer to inspect the scene out of morbid curiosity.

Da Mystery of Chessboxin'

Mounted on a rocky outcropping high over the battlefield, more of the Defiants’ technomantic machines hold a Guardian helpless. I destroy the machine and release him, but his mind is already too far gone. He attacks and I have no choice but to lay him low. What thrilled me, though, was that he watched himself fall to pieces like a knight-versus-knight fight in a game of Battle Chess; or something similar to the Black Knight’s death scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s a relief to see some sense of humor seep through an otherwise grim storyline. Cruelly, I wanted to fight this noble hero again just to see his fantastic death animation one more time.

I'm on a Horse

Events move faster than I anticipated. I’ve barely assembled my first set of matching armor when the field general in the Guardian camp mounts me on a horse and pretty much pats me on the back with a “Good luck, son!” as he orders me into the rift. This is the kind of pacing I’d expect any other MMO to take a hundred hours to reach. But here I am, just a handful of (admittedly casual) hours into this thing, and I’m “ready” to take on the black dragon Regulos and his lackey avatar, King Aedraxis. If I’m feeling a little unprepared I only have every MMO I’ve played before to blame. Even the battle-heavy Warhammer Online can’t match this breakneck turn of events.

All In Together Now

This could be a problem. I appreciate everyone’s vote of confidence--“Hooray! The Ascended will save us all!”--but I’m unsure how me and my two-handed claymore are supposed to handle this little situation. From a distance, I’ll admit, the rift looked somewhat innocuous. But now that I’m staring up underneath of it I’m having second thoughts. Thankfully, two other players show up at the same time, and without jumping through any hoops to formally group ourselves together, we all simply join a “public quest”: everyone’s here, so everyone gets to fight the boss together. Easy peasy.

Death Around The Corner

This fight is out of control. Regulos and Aedraxis form some ungodly physical union, little dragon-ettes chomp on everybody’s faces, while two-headed giants swing their fists in every direction. Basically, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. The Little Red Riding Hood analogy I was searching for earlier just might be faintly applicable: whatever Aedraxis was has been devoured by something much more vile, and even though there aren’t any woodsmen here to cut me out of the belly of a wolf, several non-player characters I’ve met along the way are now at my side, fighting the good fight. If it weren’t for them and the other players that joined this public quest, I would’ve died under this black cloud. The battle is hard won, and afterward I am summoned back into the heavens on a beam of golden light.
In my next journal, I return to the planet--twenty years later, apparently--to face an even greater threat: other players.

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