Rift

Pimp my guide

Disappointed already, alas. Yes, because despite the aggressive marketing there really isn’t much in the way of character creation at all – who am I again? Everyone looks like Draenei but ugly Draenei with rubbish hair and, believe me, a bit of dyed cloth does not make up for bad hair. I finally chose to be a Kelari Cleric druid because, hey, what's a girl without a fairy?

Does my plum look big in this?

There are various customisable classes that looked like they could be fun. The ability to change your three soul trees around would, I’m sure, come in super handy at later levels – raiding, soloing and the like. You can choose a basic class of Mage, Warrior, Priest or Rogue each with eight soul classes that you collect and personalise, such as a rogue who has the soul class of an assassin nightblade.

You start initially with one soul, brought back from the dead and formally belonging to a banished or imprisoned hero. You earn more as you slog your way through all the countless minions and the storyline starts by throwing you straight into a battle – nice. In no time at all you are able to combine up to three of these classes to create and change your character around. This then gives you a range of abilities and a palette of numbered cool down attacks to finger at frantically in your relentless quest for peace, booty and experience points.

No matter what mission I was questing for, I felt I was pretty much doing the same thing over and over again and never felt involved with my character, the plot or anyone else in the RP PVP world that I came across. I couldn’t even name my druid's pet fairy William Hague.

I am the God... well, demon of hellfire

The character levelling system is totally blandflakes and very limiting. Only having one point per level to allocate, yet having a bunch of stats that could be used to sculpt your character, seemed a little basic. Yay! I got +1% to my crit damage, fear my roar or rather fear my whimper. The 'storyline', aka the character grind, was dull after a couple of hours. It consisted of the same number bashing over and over mixed in with the odd right click to complete all the missions in and outside of rifts. There are some nice cut scenes, but I wasn't impressed with the story telling. After all, Trion could easily have banked on getting enough cash through monthlies to add some classy voice acting – grrr.