You Face not Malchezaar Alone…

.. but the legions I command. I haven’t met good old Prince Malchezaar in a long while, but I can still remember hearing him say that phrase over and over again when we were learning Karazhan way back in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Yesterday, I encountered a sudden and quite unexpected flashback to that time in RIFT. It seems that ye ol’ prince has made the move to the new, shiny MMO as well.

Last night I ran the “The Fall of Lantern Hook” instance in RIFT for the first time, bringing along my trusty group of friends. (Four people from my WoW times who are willing to employ the same casual pace I am, slowly leveling through instances and often under manning them when one of us can’t come along.) The instance itself consists of a rather straightforward series of fights concluding in the encounter with the final boss Emberlord Ereetu on the roof of the tower you have been fighting in.

Encountering a humanoid, demon-looking noble on the roof of a tower made us somewhat suspicious already? And doesn’t “Emberlord Ereetu” have a familiar ring to it? Maybe it is connected to a certain Eredar lord of the Burning Legion?

Well, we started the fight, not knowing what to expect and joking about infernals dropping from the sky in a minute. Lo and behold, they did. Sure, they didn’t look like the infernals in WoW but rather like large red crystals. They were, however,  the same stationary enemies with a pulsing area of effect damage ability around them that would slowly fill up the space of the fighting area.

Just like in WoW, I (the tank) would slowly kite the boss around the platform to make sure people could stand safely away from the infernals (err, shards) and the melee had to watch out for various hazardous effects.

Obviously this fight isn’t exactly like the Malchezaar fight in Karazhan, but it clearly is either a copy or an homage. I can’t yet decide which one. Is this a tribute to better times in World of Warcraft? Is this lazy content design? Is it simply the recognition and re-use of a good mechanic?