'Rift' takes on 'World of 'Warcraft'

(CNN) -- In the world of massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG), "World of Warcraft" is the gold standard with more than 12 million subscribers as of October 2010.
With their most recent expansion release, it seems Blizzard's hold on the market would grow even tighter.
However, another game company is armoring up and entering the MMORPG arena.
And it comes with a dig at the online gaming giant, calling out its fictional home planet in ads: "We're not in Azeroth anymore."
"Rift" (Trion) is set on Telera, a world that apparently is a nexus of sorts for different planes of existence. These other worlds invade Telera through physical rifts and allow monsters to attack important cities and people. As a player, your job is to stop it from happening.
Players get to choose from two factions, Guardians and Defiants. Each has their own races and tactics to employ during the game and both can choose from four classes (warrior, mage, rogue, and cleric).
The two factions aren't necessarily battling each other, but are trying to show which way is the best to save the world.
Skills are built up using "souls," which unlock powers and allow gamers to customize their characters as they match their style of play.
A character can have multiple soul systems so they can change their abilities as needed.
Executive producer Scott Hartsman said the initial idea was not to create a new MMORPG, but to create a new gaming technology that would allow Trion to build games in different ways.
"There were visions for some slightly less-formed ideas for what the game would eventually be," Hartsman said.
"It was all about ... 'Think of all the cool stuff we could build if we had technology that would let us do 500 players in one place, 1,000 players in one place, big events that start up and shut down on their own. A world that is truly alive.' "
Hartsman said the technology had to be created first before they could figure out what to do with it. Trion was looking for something that was social, dynamic and fun that would utilize their design to the fullest.
The ability to track online players' locations and keep tabs on their actions led the team to develop a fantasy MMORPG. Trion CEO Lars Butler said choosing the fantasy genre ultimately was an obvious decision.
"Because of the technology (we built), we wanted to take on the most established online gaming category first," Butler said.
"We felt we had what it takes to substantially address some of the shortcomings that this genre still has."
Trion servers are broken down by function, unlike other games in which servers are devoted to particular locations in the game. For example, they use a set of servers to handle non-player character functions in the world, a different set of servers to handle encounters with "bosses," and another set that handles functions directly involving the players' characters.