[Opinion] Embrace yourselves, RIFT 3.0 is coming

Nightmare Tide is the second expansion of RIFT after Storm Legion was released in 2012.

RIFT 3.0 is coming tomorrow at last. I'm really psyched to see what TRION has cooked up this time since I didn't had the time to try it out on the PTS, but I'm guessing it will be either very good or very disappointing.

OK, now it doesn't make much sense to make conjectures about the xpac right on the eve of launch so I'll only talk about what I'm really looking forward.

Minions

Minions will be implemented as an adventure card game
within the game itself. Image from Massively.

Freaking minions. In my opinion it's a cool idea to place a card game inside RIFT as long as it doesn't make me feel that I have to spend too much time, attention or real cash on that mini-game to be successfull or gain advantages over other players. So I really hope they take it slow and don't end up making a Candy Crush Saga type of life sucking device making you coming back to the game every 15 minutes just because your minion completed the adventure you sent it to. Here is a sum up about the minion feature.

New Zones

Yeah, I'm that guy. Every time I enter a new zone it is a must that I uncover it all as fast as possible so when a new expansion comes out it's really funny checking what the designers had in mind for the mountains, vales, forests and...water! I'm really curious to see how the underwater gameplay will feel like, so two of the first things I'll do will be looking upwards - it is said that every zone sky had some love from the designers - and jumping.

Nightmare Tide zones will have three major zones with a possible
fourth zone being added later at the grey area on the bottom right.
Image from Riftgrate.

As long as I'm on firm ground I'll be fine, the problem is swimming. The Ember Isle quests that went live some weeks ago weren't the most funny thing I've done ingame. Maybe water mounts will make moving around underwater less cumbersome, but anyway Trion assured us that only about 10% of the new content will be like that.

Now, I don't know about you, but I really like snowy areas, Iron Pine Peak was small and with too many mountains and Ardent Domain just didn't feel right but Tarken Glacier - the name of the northern zone of the new xpac - seems flatter and bigger and the new continent as a whole kinda looks likes like WoW's Northrend which was my favorite region.

Professions

We will be given more 75 levels and I'm already guessing it will be a pain to max them - mostly the gathering ones - and not only because there will be a lot of people gathering stuff for crafted gear but also because Trion always makes you do the last 30+ levels of gathering on "yellows" and that sucks.

There will be more 75 profession levels with a lot of new recipes to learn...
and spend loads of platinum on. Image from Riftgrate.

So now the max level will be 450 where you'll be a Savant. It might not be the most badass name ever but what you wanted for a 2 meter tall male Bahmi that spends his time dyeing dresses and knitting backpacks?

Conclusion

So what I'll be doing on Rift starting tomorrow is getting my main to level 65 while also uncovering every zone and upgrading professions. Then it's my alt and his profs. This might take a while but I plan to enjoy every moment of it. After that is the usual deal: stack hit, experts, a couple raids with the guild and of course achievement hunting.

See you ingame,
Jimmie@Gelidra.