Rift Dev Journals: Death Rifts: A Rot Upon the Land
Death rifts are the subject of a new lore article from the Rift: Planes of Telara development team. Death rifts are gateways to the planes of doom where the spectres, mummies and lichs wander hopelessly. Find out more about these blighted planes and the dangers that await the unwary.
By Guest Writer on July 21, 2010
There are places in Telara where death holds dominion: Graveyards that rot in the stinking swamps as inscriptions fade on the headstones, or battlefields where the grass has been crushed under charging feet, and the bones and blades of fallen warriors sink into the mud. Beware such places, for the air itself might tear open, spilling horrors like maggots from a corpse.
Around these Death Rifts, plants wither as the air stills, trapping rotten smells. The undead patrol the brittle dust, slaughtering and feasting upon passersby, the cries of fiends and victims chilling folks’ blood for miles around.
Places of decay are most likely to attract these diseased patches, but Death rifts can appear anywhere in Telara, blighting the pristine snow or the forest glade. Beyond each rift lies a plane of endless decay where even the Ascended cannot tread.
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The Plane of Death: Quiet Forever
The Plane of Death is an endless, flat expanse of dust and bleached bone. Shadowy tendrils slither across the horizon, while vast obsidian spikes tear from the ground to claw at skies of purple and gray. The few clouds are ragged and pale, and the occasional flash of lightning sets everything into stark relief.
Things rot under pools of black oil, ready to yank prey down to a gruesome end, and mummies wait in elaborate tombs that were not built by hand, but grew from the land like cysts.
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While death is the natural end to life, there is nothing of rebirth and healthful change in Regulos’s realm. The Plane of Death devours, it erodes the flesh from living bones, stealing vital energy. Its denizens spread slow, painful rot through virulent diseases, or infect the mind with fear, nightmares, or outright compulsion.
Tainted by Death: The Dead and the Doomed
When a Death Rift opens, the plane’s denizens pour into Telara to spread terror and despair in the name of Regulos. One group of invaders, the lorn, are hollow imitations of the glorious Ascended, husks that yearn to reclaim their lost spark by spreading pain and suffering to the living. They are often accompanied into Telara by the shadow elementals called umbrals, who leave their victims’ faces frozen forever in terror.
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Anything from the Plane of Death can enter Telara through a rift, from its monstrous natives such as mummies and vampires, to fell energies that send corpses shambling forth as zombies, or bind the souls of the wicked dead to Telara as spectres.
Even the living are touched by energy from these awful rifts. Mortals who run afoul of death-tainted witches are cursed to stalk the moonlight as ravenous beasts. Madmen in hidden laboratories stitch corpses together into loathsome abominations, composing with flesh as a musician composes an overture.
“From the journal of Maura Reinhard,
We lived at the heart of where the Shade appeared, my husband, my two sons and I. We tried to flee, but the land was dead in every direction. The undead beasts of the rifts did not slaughter us, but watched with hollow eyes, as if they knew. As if they knew.
My sons changed, skin tight over bones, and so pale I could see down to their dear hearts. Their father recoiled from them, but I could not. By night, they would tell me how alien everything seemed, how strange it was that father’s chest rose and fell as he slept, while ours did not. We decided to open him up and see why. My boys and I did not leave the shaded lands, but no matter how many people we open up, we can never remember how to breathe."
Regulos, Devourer of Worlds: Dragon of Death
Regulos lies. He promises his cultists peace through death, but the peace of the void is not prosperity. He promises his lieutenants eternal power over the undead, but will unmake and consume all of reality to sate his hunger. Even his dragon form is a lie, rotting flesh disguising his incomprehensible nature within a cage of bone and sinew.
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The Destroyer hungers, seeking to end the keening screech of life. Thanks to the treachery of his fellow dragons and the unforeseen heroism of Telara’s defenders, Regulos remains banished to the Planes. But when his pawn Aedraxis Mathos broke the Ward, Regulos’s hideous energy flooded once more into Telara. If he is not stopped, the Devourer of Worlds will consume everything, and stretch his bloated form across all creation.
Cult of Regulos: The Endless Court
Telara was young when Regulos first arrived, and his cult has festered in dark places ever since. Mighty Titans, haughty Elves, even the humblest human priest could fall victim to the Destroyer’s overwhelming vision of the end of the world. Throughout history, wherever thoughts of doomsday take hold, the Endless Court works its evil.
Ed note: Click the image above for a Death Rift Fly Through
From nihilistic madmen who believe Telara should receive the gift of tranquil death, to mortals so hungry for power they would rule over the undead, Regulos’s followers are the worst of the worst.
While Aedraxis once led the Endless Court, Regulos’s most famous follower has not been seen or heard from since he released the Shade, and his body was never produced. Folk everywhere fear that he might one day return, to hone the Endless Court into the scythe that reaps Telara for the dragon of extinction.
This game looks nasty
p2p or f2p???
p2p
This game's gonna be top notch hopefully. Bring it on already! ;)
It looks like this game will be awesome but.... c'mon people it's like WOW right?
wrong.
death rifts are gateways for the mmos of days passed"
Rift death-touches "your mmo" for 13000 damage
.. your mmo has been slain by Rift.
Wow. I'm very impressed by what they are doing, and how they are using the Rifts as part of the dynamic content system. Not only does it look great, it looks like a lot of fun to play. :)
BURN THE HERITIC!
This MMO will be like (The Mist) movie but better, now thats really cool.
*drool*
Oh..Sorry ;)
Yeah, I can't wait for it...
Everyone might want to slow the praise until more is known. It has a great background story, but will it have anything more to offer than other games out now or being developed. I like the ideas for dynamic content with random rifts opening all over (or GW2's version of having events happening out in the world to find w/o having to run back and forth to a NPC), but will these be really dynamic and random/unique content, or will it just be another way to guide the player to the same old quest/content. If a Rift opens and you have to fight a horde of mobs, or enter it and hunt down small groups of mobs, isn't that the same as following a quest to get to mobs/goal or running around fighting random mobs in the world. Hopefully there is more to it.
I enjoyed that article, well written and very interesting. I'm so pelased to see a lot of information around the major sites on this game - had been followign anotehr game and that's gone so dead quiet it's probably losing interest.
So excited for Rift.
I love playing with dead things! Now give me a Diablo-style Necromancer class and I'm good to go.
Looks awesome! :)
Aren't these rifts just spawning Public Quests (WAR style)
Podcast 4: Larry Boles clarifies aspects of the Rift System
Look really really good.
Thats quite a write up, The beginging part is especially good. So eerie. While this post dosnt give me much of an idea what its going to actually be like Im intrigued none the less. I was wondering when a rift post was going to be made after everyone had mentioned it in alot of the sw:tor threads.
have yet to read them say more than...we throw instances at you, doesnt get me excited at all. guess depends how engaging the game over all feels, but so far feel like this is glorifying the part of MMOs I dislike, instance grinding for the uber rare drops.
The story line seems vary ambitious. I just hope the game mechanics can live up to it.
RIGHT.
Rifts are not instances.
This game shows some promise! As long as it's not totally carebared up it should be good methinks.
Dont think they mentioned Rifts... There will be dungeon instances which is what I think was meant.
I'm sorry, did I miss something? The entire article was on the lore of death rifts; instances weren't even mentioned.
But if we're not talking about this article, even still the devs in other places have stated that the game does have instances, but that they are a "very small part" of the entire world. There will even be open world dungeons and raids.
Nothing has been stated from the devs regarding any possible gear grinding afaik yet.
Its an MMO.. There will be gear grinding. Whether or not it is an easy grind or something tedious is yet to be seen.
I also was not talking about the article.. I was talking about the post you quoted. That poster didnt mention Rifts but did mention instances which lead me to believe he was talking about the game in general and not the rifts in particular.. especially when he mentioned grinding instances for gear.
If not then they are misinformed but that is not how I took it.
Looks good, awesome mechanic. But dragons again?? sigh dragons are overused...
Hopefully this game comes out F2P but I highly doubt it since the game looks pretty awesome XD
There's plenty of "rhyme or reason". It's called the lore of the game. Take a few minutes and read it. It' not lazy development, it's their world and the state it currently is in (again, read the lore). You have your idea of a "holistic" world. Understand they have their own world built on their own ideas. Every game world can't (and shouldn't) be the one you have thought up in your head.
Lol, Trion established an entire fourth studio to build a radically new dynamic server platform technology from the ground up, just so that they could for once actually put honest to goodness real dynamic content like Rifts in their MMOs, and they get called lazy. No, I don't think you have it right. Hey, Rifts may end up sucking, but lazy they definitely aren't.
The six planes, Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Life, and Death are breaking through a magical ward that has protected Telara. Rifts are where they break through. You have this entire 'holistic' world in Telara that is dynamically, in real time, changed when a Rift opens up in the area. Additionally, there will be consequences to the zone when and if players do not close a Rift, such as where all the content that 'fits' there, slowly gets taken over from the denizens pouring out of the Rift.
One day you will be killing Ogres up in their camp in the Ogre Foothills, the next day you come back, it's been taken over by a death rift and all the ogres have been killed or turned into undead.
I have a question. When the rift opens does it change the world or simply spawn monsters and when you enter the rift you end up in different map? Can death rift open in a town and the next day the whole town will be dead, empty etc? or does it simply spawn some mobs?
Rifts are not instances, so when you enter them, you do not enter a new map. When a tear appears, a player can open the Rift before its ready, or if it is left alone, the Rift will eventually open on its own with badder mobs in it.
Since they are not instances, Rifts will actually change the real world map / terrain in real time when they are opened. They are also dynamic in nature and the way the play out determines on how they are fought. A person soloing a Rift will have it play out much differently than if more players join in (leading to a RAID level type boss), and further still on a PvP server. Basically, you will be rewarded based on your contribution, and the more players that join, the better.
Additionally, Rifts are dynamic events that can be triggered by a number of factors: they can appear just randomly, they can be triggered by a user event (examples would include, wiping on a boss, completing a quest, failing to craft something, etc), a world event, a specific time, or a number of other options.
The devs have stated there will be consquences for not closing a Rift, although they haven't gone into too much detail on the matter. But essentially, if a Rift is left open, it can start taking over the zone. When a Rift is closed, the remnants of the Rift are left for a short time until the land "heals" and returns to normal.
I think I've got most of that right. There's lots of other details, and still more information about Rifts that the devs haven't released yet.
Spot on Force. Adding to this anyone interested in real info and not the wild offthe cuff remarks made here by some who obviously haven't looked into Rift can go to the Rift official website. There you will find video of a rift opening and see the real time changes not only to the land in the area but also any creatures in the area. And yes, if left unchecked, that initial area that the rift affects will begin to spread and grow larger, affecting more creatures and such.
None of that is instanced. Are there instances? Yes, some dungeons. Note the emphasis on "some" as there are just as many, if not more, non-instanced dungeons (read: public dungeons) as well.
Again, go to the website. There's actually a very good thread on the forum by a guy named Irongamer that lists all the known information and has citations from sources. That'd be a good read for anyone really interested in the game.
This looks awesome! I am quite interested in this game. I like how in depth they're going with the lore. In game lore is one of the things that attracts me to MMORPGs, so an important criterion to fulfil.
At the very, very basic level, yes. Where it differs from WAR's PQ's is that:
Any word on the pvp system yet?