When it comes to Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs), choosing a class tends to be one of the most difficult parts of the process. When one chooses a race, one may go by looks, special racial abilities, or even the opinion of the starting area for the character. In other words, most of the choices are less overarching, and while they affect the character in either the short term or superficial ways – like starting area or physical appearance – in terms of gameplay, choosing a class is tremendously difficult by comparison.

Rift Dominator

In Rift – the new MMO – for example, this process is made both a little easier, as well as with an added level of complexity. To be more specific, the game has traditional classes, however those classes may be further defined by specific paths that may be taken, such as the Dominator. The Rift Dominator is a subset of the Mage class which essentially specializes in areas such as crowd control (that helps a group of players control how many active enemies they fight simultaneously), as well as debuffs (which assists a group of players in succeeding over an enemy by weakening the enemy’s abilities in some way).

Meanwhile, the Rift Pyromancer is another subset of the Mage class. The Rift Pyromancer, instead of specializing in crowd control like the Rift Dominator, instead focuses on dealing damage via spells relating to the element of fire. While the Rift Pyromancer does have some crowd control abilities like the Rift Dominator, he gives up some of raw power that the Dominator has in that area of expertise and instead deals a lot more physical damage to opponents.

Rift Pyromancer

This is why the game is so revolutionary when it comes to the class system. It makes things a little easier in that, even when one chooses a class, one is not necessarily stuck in one role for that particular class. They can literally build their character into something that they want to play, even if they get a few levels in and decide they no longer like that particular flavor of the character. Meanwhile, however, it makes class selection a little more complex than traditional systems because there are so many choices down the road to try. In the end, this would leave a lot of ability to replay the game, considering there are so many eyes through which to look at the new world.