Szophie Explores: Choosing your Faction

Hour 1: After choosing your first shard, you will be asked to choose a faction.  For the purposes of this post, I will be addressing the faction choice from the pre-Free-to-Play position.*

Rift has two factions.  Players can choose between playing as Defiant or Guardian. Each side has their own lore and story lines.  There is no good or bad faction.  Each have their lights and darks.

Guardians and Defiants have a separate quest experience.  Many quests thought the game are available to only one side.  Though they visit the same zones, each side witnesses a different chain of events.  Guardians may focus on the death cults while Defiants focus on the life cults.  They are, however, all part of the greater, overarching story.  Factions are not exclusive;  Players interested in seeing all aspects of the lore are encouraged to create a character on each side of the factional divide.

Additionally, players of all factions can group together for larger content, trade and sell among eachother, even guild together.  Your primary motives for choosing your faction should therefor be for the lore, the races, and the gameplay available to each..*   If you are playing on an PVP-RP shard, consider your character creation.  In planning your character the motivations of each faction and the racial choices for each faction will be important considerations. (more on RP in Hour 5)

Guardians are the chosen of the gods.  Brought back from death to save the world from the corruption of the dragons, each Guardian has a great destiny to become a celestial hero.

The Guardian races are traditionally High Elves, Mathosian and Dwarves.  Guardians are transplanted in time and space.  They are heroes of the Shade Wars who have been returned by the Vigil to prevent the Defiants from using sourcestone, a substance they covet as blessed, to power their machines.

Defiants have taken fate into their own hands, turning away from the Vigil to pursue their own plan.  They harness the power of the planes to fuel magical technologies for the defense of Telara.

The Defiant races are traditionally Kelari, Eth, and Bahmi.  Defiants are also transplanted in time and space, coming back in time from the end of Telara.  They return to prevent the Guardians from destroying the technology that could prevent the destruction they have witnessed.




For the purposes of this blog, I have chosen to role a Defiant.  There are many different blogs and youtube channels that focus on the Guardians if you would like to see their side.  I will include information on both, but it will be focused through my Defiant.  I have very few Defiant characters (2 out of my 10 including Szophie), so my lore and story background is mostly Guardian.  I hope this balance (greater background vs-detailed study) will come in handy.

* With the introduction of Free to Play, many of the classical factional differences have been dissolved.  Soon it will be possible for players to play their preferred race on the opposite faction, giving them access to previously unavailable content and items. When this option becomes available players should be encouraged to choose their race first - for visual appeal -, and their faction second - for story content.