Dimensionally Challenged

I am having some trouble getting into the new player dimension feature that came along with the Storm Legion expansion to Rift.

I ran the little quest that introduced you to dimensions, and dutifully placed the few little items that you start with in my new space in Telara.

Dimension by the Sea

But I am not really feeling inspired to do much with it.  You can see all of my starter items have sort of been dropped off around the front of the little structure.

The view is nice… so long as you do not get too close to the edge of the dimension, at which point the invisible wall gets all non-invisible in your face.

Trying to see the wall edge on…

Anyway, my dimensional malaise sort of took me by surprise, as I have been much more enthusiastic about housing in other games, like LOTRO and EverQuest II.

I think there are two things that are different in Rift.

First, the dimensions are kind of a raw material, a palette on which to express yourself, on which you can build your own home.  A lot of people really go nuts for that, as I saw in the beta tour.  But  I don’t think I really want to actually design and build a house.  I think I prefer one pre-made, a structure within which to work.  Rift is, perhaps, a bit too much “from scratch” for me.

And then there is the second factor, which I think feeds into the first.

I have been playing some EverQuest II lately, and I went to look at the home of my berserker, Sigwerd, who has the base level house in New Halas.  It is one of my more decorated locations.  It is out-done by a couple of my original characters, but the theme is the same when you look at what they share in common.

Sigwerd’s living room

Almost everything in Sigwerd’s house is something he picked up on a quest, or an event, or via a LoN card, or as a veteran’s reward.  It is not so much a place I have decorated as a place that represents where I have been and what I have done.  This is especially true with the wall of prizes from the Lore & Legend quests.

Wall of Weapons

I think SOE made a good decision in creating so many such items that can be displayed in player homes.

I hope Trion picks up on that aspect… and maybe comes up with a few more house-like dimensions going forward.

In the mean time, Frostfell is nearly upon us.  It might be time to pick up some snow globes for Sigwerd’s place.

Images from the Rift Storm Legion Tour

Like some other bloggers, I was invited by Trion to go on a tour of the Storm Legion expansion.  Keen and SynCaine (can you imagine?) both have posts up about the tour already, and I expect more will pop up soon.  I will link them here when I find them. (Keen has his Part 2 up now, and MMO Gamer Chick has her tour reports under way as well.)

So for 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon, ending when it was about time to get ready for the Giants/Cards game, James
“Elrar” Nichols from the Rift community team showed me around the Storm Legion expansion.

And at the end of that, I have to ask myself, “What do I say?”

How do I sum up or expand upon what I was shown and what has already been announced?

“More” is probably the best word, because there is more of everything.  More souls, more levels, more dungeons, more raids, and more places to explore (each of the two new island has more landmass than the original game).

Quests are supposed to be “more” organic to the environment.  They are trying to step away from the hub to hub approach and put more out the field for players to find.

And there is “more” to keep you occupied when not adventuring, mostly in the form of Dimensions.

Dimensions are Rift’s version of housing.   Rift Junkies has a good intro to them.  You can have your own chunk of the world to call your own and decorate.  The level of freedom to do this is very broad.  You have EverQuest II levels of freedom (and more) to manipulated items in your dimension, as well as being able to open it up to the public for visitors.

And while the initial dimension you get… and you are handed a dimension pretty much as soon as you are done with the initial tutorial stage of the game, which is a great move and part of what made EQII housing so big… is pretty small, there are some huge ones out there.  We were in one that was basically all of the town of Granite Falls.

I think the only thing they are missing is a carpenter-like furniture crafting trade skill.

Anyway, while I could dribble on for a while about details that have been better documented elsewhere, I am just going to go with visuals.  The visuals are great, and my screen shots do not do them justice, but they will give you a taste.  Some of the places, like the raid instances, I will probably never see in game.  There are also some of the interesting Dimensions we visited among the shots.

I am including thumbnails of all the pictures after the cut so you can pick out and examine individual screen shots at your leisure.