This past weekend with the Beta 4 event we were introduced to the Warfronts system in Rift.  Warfronts are essentially PvP Battlegrounds that are broken up into 10 level groupings, meaning there’s a Warfront for levels 10-19, 20-29, etc.  Many other games have implemented these kinds of systems, so there’s nothing ground-breaking with this in Rift, but like most other things in the game they do it well and add a little extra to the system.

I’m not going to claim to be an expert on the system as I only ran through a couple of them, both times horribly under leveled as I was only level 12 in both cases.  I ran one on my Ranger (a ranged DPS class) and the other on my Paladin (tank class) and while the experience was different on both I really enjoyed the system.  My ranger certainly did better statistically, but I can certainly see that a Paladin could be very useful and fun in that environment as well.  The other aspect I enjoyed was that even though I was quite weak compared to others I was able to contribute and feel successful.

In order to join one of these battles, you open up the Warfront panel (defaults to K) and queue up to join a battle.  Wait times varied, but at most it took me a couple of minutes to hop in and get going.  Once in, you battle the other side in group combat for control of a relic inside the zone.  The relic does constant damage to the one holding it and also leaves a burnt out trail such that you can hunt down the holder much easier.  In addition to the relic, there’s your standard go kill other players method as well.  I explain and show much of this in the video below:

So far, I’m enjoying my time in Rift, but I’m not sure we’ve really seen enough to know how things will work out 2-3 months down the road.  They have a lot of very cool systems in place and a lot of polish, but hopefully over the next couple of beta events we’ll get to see more of the various tricks up their sleeves.