MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy returns from the Trion Worlds event in San Francisco and delivers his full report on Rift: Planes of Telara, formerly known as Heroes of Telara.

Heroes of Telara is no more.  Long live Rift: Planes of Telara.  Aside from being an all around (in my opinion) better and more interesting identity for the game, the new title ties thematically into the game’s rather deep and involved lore.  The world of Telara is experiencing a sort of dimensional phenomenon called “Rifts” which are basically portals to another dimension or plane of existence.  The Rifts are causing creatures and life from other worlds to seep into and threaten Telara.   It would appear that the beings from other planes aren’t interested in being friends with the people of Telara.

Read the full preview here.

This is awesome! I was so looking forward to hearing some news about this game. The concept art looks very promising

Originally posted by bronecar

This is awesome! I was so looking forward to hearing some news about this game. The concept art looks very promising

I second that! The more I see and hear about this game the more excited I get. Thats a rare thing for me where mmos are concerned. For years I have been seeing one boring badly designed game after another come out, to the point where I have pretty much given up on the genre. Trion might actually be the company that gets me back into playing mmos.

Its the dynamic content aspect that has me interested the most. I'm so sick of these dumb mmos with their rigid stories that encourage players to ignore each other and play the game like a single player game. Storylines should not be rigid and they should not be the same for every single player. That works fine for single player games but for online multiplayer games its ridiculous. Trion seems to be trying to get away from that by giving players reasons to interact with each other and influence the world they inhabit. That afterall should be the whole point of a massively multiplayer game.

The only thing I dislike the look of is the way that players will be able to switch classes on the fly. That sounds a bit daft to me but I will wait and see I suppose. It might work out fine in practice.

Wow, I know there was already a game similar to this called "Rifts" published by Palladium Publications...Well actually it is a pencil and paper RPG but the theme is very much the same as "Rifts: PoT"...Originality: FAIL.

While i didn't thoroughtly read the article....I have a question:

Is Heroes of Telara changed in terms of what the game was going to be, or is this just a name change? I was looking forward to Heroe of Telara...

Sounds good. Sounds like some innovation for the first time in a long while, lets hope it pans out. I've watching this one since they announced it and I'm thinking it could be the "sleeper" hit of the year(whichever year it comes out in, heheh)

Actually i was looking forward for this game but when i saw the trailer it reminded me for Aion: The tower of eternity. The expectations were great but at the end it turned to be nothing but a grind fest. Both trailers seem very similiar. Just my opinion nothing more.

gamne looks freaking awesome, is there any eta? is it 2010?

Originally posted by neo6

gamne looks freaking awesome, is there any eta? is it 2010?

 

 Says they are aiming for a 2011 release.  The game looks promising.. hopefully it turns out to be good.

hmm not so "refreshing" info for me yet, and by the time it comes out it will have mr Tera, FFIV, Cataclysm, SW:TOR... to fight a tiny spot for.Well let´s see.

Completely psyched for the game since it was announced. Been waiting for some information for a while.

I'm not sure if it's just a name change or a complete re-work of the game like Tabula Rasa did, but if it's the same game as Heroes of Telara was intended to be, this game sounds so amazing.

Those of you who say no "refreshing" info on it yet should read more about the actual game on information posted up. Very, very promising title.

Looks very interesting. I'll have to keep my eye on this.

Originally posted by ProtoClone

Wow, I know there was already a game similar to this called "Rifts" published by Palladium Publications...Well actually it is a pencil and paper RPG but the theme is very much the same as "Rifts: PoT"...Originality: FAIL.

 Ummm....I'm very familiar with Siembieda's Rifts and, apart from dimensional portals, there's no similarity here at all. Are you seriously suggesting that Heroes of Telara is somehow copied from Palladium's PnP game? It should be noted that the concept of an invasion through dimensional rifts didn't start with Palladium. Ever hear of Planescape? The works of Michael Moorcock? Magic the Gathering?

"FAIL" is making a wild statement like you did with absolutely nothing to back it up. Go do some research (no, I won't "google" that for you) and come back and try to tell us how the two games are anything alike. I'll be right here in my Glitter Boy mecha until you come back.

Sounds interesting, I'm a little bit tired of fantasy style games though, but I'll be waiting to see how this shapes up.

The 'ressurecting into another identity' thing could be used for interesting game mechanics imo, if they dare do it.

This game looks like yet another WOW clone.  Even though Ive never played it, I will still slam it and judge it as such.  No originality, nothing special.  Its going to suck and you are wrong if you have an opinion that states otherwise!

*disclaimer*

The above is intended as a joke (sorry if you left your sence of humor at the door).  I made it cause I was bored.  Do not take it seriously LOL.

Anyway... It does look kinda cool. :)

Well judging from this information alone this game looks to be very promising, the lore and visuals are outstanding however how many times before have we seen this?. As an fan of the MMORPG genre one learns to not get over excited over new games, as you all probably know very often games like this (Aion, Warhammer etc etc) come along and get you all hyped up then when they come out there a complete disaster (Aion was a complete grindfest and in my opinion a disaster whereas Warhammer was a little better in that it offered alot of enjoyment but eventualy I got pissed off by the lack of effort the developers put into the classes, they were all the fucking same?).

So early signs of this game are very promising indeed, it seems to have the kind of world event system that brings players together that I love in MMO's, Simliar to Warhammer. By this I mean that you events such as battles etc exist in the world and everybody can play together, another thing I liked about Warhammer was the ability to easily and quickly jump into a group to participate in these events.

Ill defintely keep a close eye on this game and hopefully some day in the future I will get the opportunity to test the game in beta, crossed fingers this one turns out as good as it looks. Now back to Bad Company 2! Crainey OUT!

This finally sounds like the next gen game we have all been waiting for!! HOOORAAAYYYY!!!! I cannot wait to play it! :D

It'll be interesting to see if they do actually use this Rifts system to introduce truly dynamic content in a way I mentioned in one of my blogs. Or if it'll just be a standard "Invasion of Group A" in January and "Invasion of group B" in February. The system has alot of potential if used creatively to make the game unique in a large aspect.

What I hope they have interesting enemies and no more fighting bunnies and wolves. I'm playing runes of magic atm and just can't get into game where I've to beat regular wolves, spiders, beetles and... ugh... mushrooms. I'm also hoping for tiered monsters so we won't be constantly outleveling missions and enemies! I think scaling monsters is pretty much a necessity if they plan to allow all levels to enjoy these potentially  "game wde" changes. Otherwise this content is going to be end-game heavy soon while potential new players get left behind.

Seeing how the graphics are promising. I'm also hoping for a lot of character customisation as that's one of the things I enjoy doing. So rather than keep changing your equipment with every new items I'm hoping you can keep the looks while changing stats for the item (essentially taking stats of another item and putting them into the ones you wear). Plenty of sliders too!

There are quite a few things I look at when evaluating a new MMO. All things below are important to me:

• dynamic missions and zones (!!!) and subgoal driven quests
• high level of character customisability (looks, powers, items)
• great ambience so monsters are not just standing around in groups and waiting to get slaughtered or wandering around aimlessly - bonus if there are scripted "story" cutscenes
• interesting enemies to fight (both looks and strategically) from the very beginning
• character progression both visually and in actual power (so no endless chain of same powers with only difference being names)
• real exploration rewards, housing, collections, tradeskills, roleplaying tools... these are also all important for me as is all kinds of fluff that makes you say "wow" be it simply wings for a character or special effect or class specific emote or what not.

I'm a vocal supporter of tiered gameplay where the sense of growing power comes through tiers. Levels merely give you more abilities and points and fall within three or four tiers. Enemies and quests are tiered but not level bound, so as long as you fight and quest within tier your level doesn't matter. When you move from one tier to another there is significant boost in both visuals and power, and enemies you face change from lowly grunts to mighty dragons, so you won't be fighting spiders at level 1 and spiders at level 60. Saves developers the headache of having quest for every level and players from outleveling items, quest and enemies constantly.

Anyhow. I'm not really expecting Rifts will fill all these needs but dynamic environment goes a long way providing they can actually pull it off.

Looked nice until I saw it was forced Gank

Pass.