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Rift General Article: Plane of Fire Overview
Trion Worlds has provided us with an overview of the Plane of Fire, one of the six planes that are tearing through rifts in the world of Rift: Planes of Telara.
By Guest Writer on August 27, 2010
Fire Rifts: Death and Destruction
Beasts rest in a glade, sipping sweet water from a trickling stream, soothed by birdsong from boughs high above. And then a glowing, orange slit opens in thin air, waves of searing heat pulsing from it in all directions.
Small volcanoes rise from the ground as grass and soil burn away, leaving cracked, ashen bedrock. Ungerground gases poison the tress, the smell of sulfur seeping between withered roots. Where once brooks flowed, trees bloomed, and life abounded, this Fire Rift brings streams of lava, charred stumps, and the smoldering corpses of every living thing caught in the inferno.
Every rift carries the threat of death and planar invasion, but the incendiary magic released by a Fire Rift consumes everything. Monsters rush from the rift, roaring like a flame, eager to waste the land and roast the innocent in their homes.
The Plane of Fire: Fields of Flame
The Plane of Fire is a broken and cracked expanse of sharp rocks and blasted mountains, valleys obscured by smoke and ash. Volcanoes rise thousands of feet into the methane sky, spewing rivers of molten rock into seas of fire that the plane’s denizens walk upon as if it were harmless soil.
Razor shards of stone carpet the scorched plains, where fire elementals and ifrits clash together in a riot of joyous violence. Demons fly between the jagged peaks, plucking goblins from their lairs in handfuls to gorge upon.
Tainted by Fire: Devouring Hordes
The creatures that come to Telara through Fire Rifts make up for a lack of subtlety with pure ruthless aggression. Goblins have lived in Telara since the Age of Dragons, and every mother scares her children with tales of the goblins’ vicious cruelty. Recently, the Gedlo priests have joined their lesser goblin cousins, honing anarchic tribes into war-bands that harass and butcher even well-armed patrols.
Invaders from the Plane of Fire overwhelm their victims with bursts of devastation, but this does not mean they are stupid or without foresight. Tall and beautiful in their monstrous way, Devils can incite victims to mindless fury, or enter such a state themselves when one of the lesser races has the nerve to pose a threat. If bested, they may fall on their own swords in arrogant spite, denying their lessers the honor of ending such elegant malevolence.
Dragon of Fire: The Flame Sire
The red dragon is chaos incarnate. Any goals beyond sowing turmoil and ruin are a waste of his time. While many of the other dragons of the Blood Storm have additional motives controlling Telara, Maelforge sees anything beyond the cycle of annihilation, regrowth, and new destruction as decadent self indulgence.
A creature of rapacious lust, the Flame Sire would tolerate no other Blood Storm participating in the destruction of the world, and so he turned against his fellows. Unlike Regulos, who seeks to end all creation once and for all, Maelforge would let the world regrow, only to return and burn it again and again, an endless cycle of fiery torment.
Cult of Maelforge: The Wanton
The Wanton revel in senseless violence and brutality. For these cultists, the only goal of conflict is more conflict. Devastation, fire, and chaos fan the flames of the Wanton’s passions, their dearest desire to sow mayhem. Every person killed, every town destroyed, every forest burned is a sacrifice to Maelforge.
The least organized but most fanatically loyal dragon cult, the Wanton ranks boast many monstrous humanoids such as goblins or dragonians. In Telaran communities, cells of Wanton can rise up suddenly, burning and despoiling in huge swathes before dying out. Many cultists seek to emulate the brutal centaurs: doing violence without honor, seeking a meaningless death, a body-count their only contribution to the world.
Ritual sacrifice is common among the Wanton. The dismembered limbs and spilled gore of their victims fueling the cultists’ hideous magic. As the Flame Sire decrees, death sows the seeds of new destruction.
Ranger-Captain Dio Booras (newly-promoted) on the destruction of Diokesi Village,
Captain Gaiane broke ranks and rushed the smoking ruin. I suppose she could no longer stomach the screaming. As if to counter, the ground broke in her path, magma welling in the cracks like blood in a fresh cut. Her legs a blur, she cleared the lava, dodged gouts of flame, then leapt, spear twirling, into the smoke.
A huge clawed hand plucked her from the air and dashed her against a blazing hut. The captain jabbed into the smoke, but the beast only chuckled as it stepped into view. It had wings and cloven hooves, and its forearms were twisted inside out, bone over muscle. But none of this mattered. Its bestial maw split crosswise, ear to ear and nose to jaw, to reveal a second set of humanoid teeth at the end of bleeding gums… It shoved the captain in there up to her waist and bit down, twisting its head to the side…
This part is in there twice:
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Ranger-Captain Dio Booras (newly-promoted) on the destruction of Diokesi Village,
<and the text below it>
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Also, just below the first pic it says this:
The creatures that come to Telara through Fire Rifts make up for a lack of subtlety with pure ruthless aggression. Goblins have lived in Telara since the Age of Dragons, and every mother scares her children with tales of the goblins’ vicious cruelty. Recently, the Gedlo priests have joined their lesser goblin cousins, honing anarchic tribes into war-bands that harass and butcher even well-armed patrols.
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Is the part about the Goblins a typo? It doesn't really fit with the rest of this piece of lore.
Aside from that, nice stuff. I love the writing style.
Always hated fire realms in games. They all tend to be very generic. Though the lore has me interested in what Rifts is doing.
flaming rifts sounds cool enough imo 0.0
they look pretty frakkin amazing, too... ;)
and the lore is soooo good.... want to buy Novel!
I'm sorry, but Planes? Plane of Fire? Gods? This game is making me feel as if EQ was being relaunched. Everything looks good so far too. I can't wait.
cant freakin wait for Rift.
That kinda looks like an EQ1 screenshot. Planes of Power era of course.
:D
I wonder if this is pure-lore or some hint that there will be a time when players can venture into the planes themselves to take the fight to these planar agressors rather than passively defend against them...
From my understanding, the eventual goal is to take the fight back through the rifts and fight the other planes on their own soil. From what I remember reading, it's a long-term plan that won't be available at release but is a logical direction to go in future content.
I'm kinda surprised people think these graphics look good... maybe they do in person but right now they look very blah and generic in my opinion... Also as I've said before the name Rift: Planes of Telera just makes me sigh heavily. Simply calling Planes or something along those lines would be better in my opinion.... I don't know enough about the game though to really comment on anything else but it sounds interesting enough.
These fire demons in the second screeny really remind me of bloodletters from Wh40k tabletop game.
The graphic engine looks totally fugly, like back to EQ1 aye.
They do like a bit of lore at rifts which is good as it seems to becoming the forgottern word in MMO design. Generic issues will occur when you deal with concepts such as 'fire' or 'death'. I don't think we have seen enough here to work out how much of a new slant they have taken.
I like the graphics...
I know they aren't top notch like some of the other games that come out, but what I've seen so far, I can live with, I just hope they have the content and gameplay to make up for it.
Then I'm good.
The secret World's Graphics doesn't look to be top notch either, but I'd rather they take it down a bit, so everyone can play the game, and focus on the gameplay.
Too many companies have made fantastic -looking, but shallow mmo's.. And we all get excited about it, but then quit short after cause they cared more about making it look good than make a good game.
I cant tell u what i think if i dont see it live
well from what i experienced at GamesCom(yes i went there and played it) the game is pretty standard, i know there will be some flaming but here's my impression:
Graphics: very standard, by that i mean that isn't cartoonish like wow or warhammer but not amazing like AoC.
Gameplay: typical 3rd person camera with WASD control, i played with a Rogue and i must say that it felt exactly like playing a rogue in WoW but with "Sinister Strike" and "Eviscerate" having different names, but i only played within the early levels i'm sure/hopeful it will be a bit different later on with different souls. The Rift system is way over-hyped, i wasn't amazed at all it just felt like the Public Quests in Warhammer Online got bored after the first one.
Overal:
the impression i have is that it feels like WoW with less cartoonish textures, public quests(rifts) a different class system and obviously a different lore, which might be good for those that are looking for something similar but still different to mainstream WoW, but in the end i wasn't that impressed specially for a next-gen MMO and judging from the quantity of players on the Rift booth compared to Guild War2 and Tera neither where they.
Woah.. Once I really was interested in this game, but the more I see the more I get turned off. The Gamescom videos did not look impressive and this looks...... errm... plain ugly. I never expected to see something like this after the first trailers. And since there is another game focusing on PQs, which is GW2, there will be a hard direct competitor
Those screenshots don't do it justice, trust me. I haven't seen the fire realm myself, but at Gamescon I was able to play Rift, and it really looked good. The vids and many screenshots don't live up to it.
Try this at HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyc12NSiteE&feature=related
It seems to me im seeing alot of hype....
"you never know where the rifts wil open","world under constant threat","no one is safe"....
So are we going to see rifts open everywhere in the game ?Towns,cities,inside other mob zones... etc...
Are we finally going to see mobs that actually are a threat to the towns,killing off npcs and capturing and or razing towns ?Will i be fighting at one mobs location and have the possiblity a rift will open right there by pure chance and spew out more and different mobs totally unrelated to the ones im fighting ?
Can i travel to town only to find a rift or three have opened in it, the npcs i came to see are dead,and more are dying as i watch ?
If not,than all the "talk " used to build atmosphere and sell the game ,is just that, talk.......hype.....
I don't think it will be that extreme, but from I understand, you may still get what you want.
There are 6 planes, all are very determined to move from there plane to Telara. Rifts can open and, if uncontested, can grow to full on enemy strongholds. From there the enemy will multiple and spread to pillage the land. On top of this, the planes will fight amongst themselves for control. So you may come upon your village being besieged by the plane of death or you may encounter a plane of fire stronghold being attacked by the plane of life.
But yes, NPC areas are not safe, but I don't think the rifts will open in town, but the chaos can spread.
This is how I understand it. Please correct me if someone knows something I don't.
There is a video that shows demons from the Plane of Fire beginning an invasion on a nearby town from the newly opened Rift. The mechanic is, if you don't stop them, they will attack and raze the town.
@skeaser: From what I read on other articles and their website, that is how the invasion system works.
if youve got the time and or the link, id really like to see that movie.
This type of feature is VERY high on my list, and one ive waited for,for years.Such a feature would be enough for me to overlook other weaknesses and give a game a go.
Awesome article
Im very excited about Rift
Please keep these updates coming :)
This is point and click auto attack shite is it not?
Why do developers even bother?
Just your standard EQ clone with some innovative lore.
Nothing to see here people - move alone. This is not the game you are looking for.
still excited about this time.
Graphics definatly could be better but people have said these don't screenshots don't do the game justice... if this is the case then I can't think of anything I don't like in this game yet. Can't wait to try it out
I wish people would not anoint games before they are released. Most of us have been burnt far too many times to be that foolish.
This appears like it will be a good game, but we won't know until we actually get to play it.
Am I the only one here who thinks the graphics look like EQ1?
no, you're not alone
The graphics are old school, like oblivion, but I dont care much about graphics.
But still it gameplay resembled me way too much WoW / EQ and WAR so I dont liked it.