Rift Articles

[Morreion]

Enter at Your Own Rift: 'Role' play (Massively)

So let's take a quick run-through of how roles work, how you get more of them, and how they can greatly enhance your gaming experience -- both solo and in groups.

Rift: An MMO success story (Eurogamer) Interview with Scott Hartsman

Eurogamer: How many people are playing Rift?

Scott Hartsman: Lots and lots and lots. We haven't announced any numbers yet but you can tell from the number of servers we've had to launch that clearly the number is far greater than we expected.

We were expecting to go out the door with 40 servers and we would have considered that a win. But then, when the game went on sale, the number of people went up. We reacted as well as we could - we opened a couple-dozen more servers to the point where we had 99 by launch day.

And things are still humming along and some still have queues and others don't. We now seem to have matched the amount of capacity that we needed.

Massively Exclusive: Simon Ffinch on RIFT's game update

With the launch of Update 1.1, war will arrive in Telara. Alsbeth the Discordant has taken control of the Soulstream and has been selecting the strongest and most formidable souls to serve under Regulos. Those not selected are sent to Telara through a massive invasion of death rifts. If they are not stopped, Telara will be overrun by Alsbeth's army and the Endless Court.

RIFT updates River of Souls world event (Massively)

The biggest change is that the game is now spawning event-related rifts at a much-increased rate, to the relief of frustrated players looking for a good death rift and finding none. The update also encourages players to stay in level-appropriate zones by not counting closed rifts for the player if the player is far above that zone's level.

RIFT integrates video capture and uploading to YouTube (Massively)

According to our very own Beau, who loves nothing more than to upload lots of video, RIFT's movie feature is extremely simple to use. All you'll need to do is to connect your YouTube account from inside your RIFT account settings, much like you currently do with Twitter. From there, hitting CTRL-Y will start the recording, and pressing CTRL-Y a second time will stop it. The video is encoded automatically, and a small button will appear in the corner of your screen when your video is ready to upload. Just click the button and off to YouTube it goes!

Rift: 28 Days Later (IGN)
How to waste 4,750 years in a single month.

Check out this great graphic with lots of cool stats on Rift's first month!

The MMORPG.com Review of Rift
Today marks the official review of Trion Worlds' Rift. MMORPG.com Lead Writer Bill Murphy takes on one of the year's most keenly anticipated titles. Does Rift live up to the expectations of its fans? Find out in Bill's review.

Final score: 8.7 (great)

Pros
Ascended Soul system
Beautiful sounds & visuals
Highly polished
Massive rift invasions
Open grouping

Cons
Bland crafting
Only two leveling paths
PvP imbalance
Same old questing
Tedious solo play

Rift beyond 1.1, “the game will shift in ways that even we cannot predict” (PC Gamer)

PC Gamer: Are there plans to add more raids and raid bosses in future?

Hal Hanlin: Oh, my, if you only knew. As I said earlier, our platform lets us add things to the world at an unprecedented rate. We are adding bosses and raids over time, but we are also innovating new gameplay systems and content delivery methods that we will roll out as well. Scott [Hartsman, executive producer] and Russ have the whole design team on this and we are hiring more!

RIFT bringing out a new authentication service today - but not yet (Massively)

Authenticators are one of the most popular forms of account security around, giving players an extra layer of defense against hackers and keyloggers. RIFT has been dealing steadily with account security issues since launch, so the upcoming authenticator service is no surprise to players. Using a digital authenticator service, players will very soon be able to use their Android mobile devices for authentication services -- but carefully note the "soon," as the service isn't yet ready for prime time.

Slash Commands (Rift) (ZAM Rift Wiki)

A useful list of commands.

[url=
rift.zam.com/story.html?story=25882]GameBreaker: Sanctum #13 and New Dungeon Guide (ZAM)[/url]

GameBreaker.TV has a major focus on Rift this week! In episode 13 of The Sanctum, the hosts are joined by Jason Dodge of Rift Junkies to discuss the River of Souls world event, Update 1.1 and more.

A 47-minute video podcast and a 5-minute Realm of the Fae dungeon guide video are at the link.

[Morreion]

"This is a screenshot of my character Hark from the RIFT server Reclaimer. I took it while at the Lake of Solace and facing toward the high-level zone of Shimmersand. As you can tell, it was quite lonely!"

'Rift' takes on 'World of 'Warcraft' (CNN)

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.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Evaluating events (Massively)

If there's one color that sums up my RIFT experience lately, it's purple. Purple loot, purple dye for my armor, and of course, the purple glow of a death rift on the horizon. One month after launch, players are faced with the decision of whether to subscribe and continue the pursuit of purple or leave Telara's struggles to another Ascended.

Rift: River of Souls v1.1 Impressions (MMORPG.com)
Rift developers deployed the River of Souls update shortly after Bill Murphy's review of the game was posted. The v1.1 patch was slated to bring much needed balance changes and new dynamic content to the game. Bill Murphy has a few thoughts to share about the River of Souls update. Suzie Ford also adds her perspective. Check it out and then let us know what you think of Rift v1.1.

RIFT world event fizzles, Trion reevaluates approach (Massively)

"We're already taking what we've learned over the last week and today into account as we work on the next set of world events, and will be designing them such that full-server-population flashmobs aren't quite as likely to occur -- both for fun factor and performance," Hartsman said. "Equally importantly for the future, we'll be ensuring there are more phases that each last longer, and a more clear progression, to maximize everyone's chance of participating."

An exclusive look at RIFT's Update 1.2 and beyond with Scott Hartsman (Massively)

Another huge addition with this update is an appearance system. Now players who are dissatisfied with how their characters look can slot good-looking cosmetic and armor pieces into outfit sets that will override their current armor. As a result, Hartsman said that we should see a rise in the amount of cosmetic gear seen in the game. The team is working on creating cosmetic theme sets for zones; for instance, Iron Pine Peak could have a snow ninja set while Shimmersand might feature a desert warrior outfit.

RIFT Impressions: Loving and Hating That New MMO Smell (Wolfshead Online)

Probably my biggest misgiving about RIFT is that the developers have created yet another safe MMO world with few consequences. When I play RIFT I feel almost nothing. Gone are the days when I used to feel a sense of danger and terror when venturing out into the wilderness of a virtual world. Gone are the days when you had tight-knit communities were players actually needed each other to survive yet alone advance.

With nothing to lose because of dumbed-down death penalties and easy solo gameplay there is almost no potential for emotional investment or social cooperation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. As humans we are far more motivated by potential loss than potential gain. Today’s new breed of MMO designers have failed to understand basic human psychology and how to leverage it to create a compelling and visceral virtual world experience. Perhaps they are just afraid to scare away the new MMO demographic made possible by Blizzard.

Enter at Your Own Rift: The little things (Massively)


8. Waypoints

The map is nice, and the quest location indicators are nice, but the ability to make your own waypoints? Perfection. These work just fine when you're on your own -- say, if you want to make a note about the location of a rift you're chasing -- but have added utility in groups as an alternative method of communication. Instead of shouting in group or raid chat that we need to go HERE or THERE, the leader can just right-click on the map and set the waypoint for everyone. Splendid.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Looking for groups (Massively)

If you've never fiddled with WoW's Dungeon Finder or a similar system, I'll briefly explain how it works (the rest of the class may move on to the next section). Basically, once you have some time to do a dungeon run, you click to open up a special interface. In it, you select the dungeon you wish to run (or hey, all of them), the level of difficulty, and what role you want to play. For World of Warcraft, the roles were (1) tank, (1) healer and (3) damage-dealers. RIFT is changing this up by also adding a support role into the mix (such as Bard or Archon).

Rift gets free trial, Ascend-a-Friend program (Shack News)

Even better for current players is the new Ascend-a-Friend program, which gives in-game benefits. Each friend that agrees to sign on for a subscription will net you an in-game reward. The first friend you get will grant you an adorable, loyal canine companion. The second will get you a fashionable hat. The third and final reward is a flaming steed that matches the speed of your fastest horse.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Off the beaten path (Massively)

Probably the most obvious incentive that Trion Worlds uses to ween players of road-walking is the abundance of free goodies in the world. When I first started playing RIFT back in the beta, I decided to poke around as much as possible to see whether the game would reward my nosiness. Lo and behold, not 10 minutes into the game, I found a weapons cache for the looting tucked behind a building where most players didn't even bother to check.

RIFT team updates RP server naming policy (Massively)

Hartsman says that the team's goal with naming rules is to "apply sanity and reason, as best as we can, to this inherently subjective topic that's as much about opinions as it is about facts." In light of this, the rules that will be imposed are fairly standard for the genre -- no partial or complete sentences (sorry, Ipwnyouhard!), no pop-culture references, no leetspeak, and no titles that are "obviously out of place in Telara" -- but even so, it's great to see them explicitly spelled out so players know what to expect. Hopefully this will lead to a more enjoyable roleplaying experience for anyone on RIFT's RP servers.

Rift: The WoW Replacement?
Brand new MMORPG.com writer, Melinda Haren tackles one of the biggest elephants in the MMO room: Rift vs WoW. Before lighting the torches and honing the pitchforks, know that Melinda is an avid WoW player who went into Rift with a lot of skepticism. See what she discovered and then beat the drums of war in the comment section.

Activision Blizzard: RIFT players will come back to WoW (Massively)

"We knew that this year was going to be a year where we faced new competitors; this isn't the first time, though, that we've had strong competitors enter the MMO market. What we have seen in the past is we tend to see our players leave for some period of time, try out the new MMOs, and then a good percentage of them historically have come back to World of Warcraft. So far, I haven't seen anything to indicate this will be different."

RIFT's Spoils of War update deploys (Massively)

It's a heady day for RIFTers as Trion Worlds has released the game's second major update. Titled Spoils of War, patch 1.2 includes several exciting additions to the game, most notably a Looking for Group tool, a cosmetic appearance system, and 10-man raid Slivers. The LFG interface will also offer daily dungeon quests with increased rewards as incentives to boost instance runs.

[Morreion]

RIFT's first State of the Game address floods players with news of the future (Massively)

...Another cool concept is the idea of solo and small-group instances which will fall under the label "The Chronicles of Telara." These will help players get a quick instance fix if the queue for regular instances is too long, but even more than that, Chronicles instances are designed to give players a much better feel for the game's major characters and stories. Epic settings, places you normally wouldn't get to see, fighting alongside and against key characters are all aspects of these instances.

Summer Update: RIFT Into the Future! (Rift Forums)

Following the release of the Ascend-a-Friend program, the Free Trial, and other programs, we've been watching how your invited friends and all the other new folks have been reacting to the game - Where they do well, where they get blocked, and so on - Both in feedback and gameplay data.

As you've likely seen in recent updates, we've been responding to the places they've gotten stuck or frustrated, to make sure that their experience into RIFT is even better for them than it was when all of us started playing the game. Instead of holding on to these fixes for a bigger update in the future, we've been working on getting them out in the regular hotfix schedule.

As a result, here are a few of the overall quality-of-life improvements that are either already live or in progress:

* Tuning zone flows, density, and respawns through key areas in the world beginning with Freemarch and Silverwood, all the way through Iron Pine Peak, to improve fun, preserve challenge, and reduce needless frustration.
* In an upcoming update, we'll be significantly improving the clarity of how new souls are granted to make this key aspect of the game a lot more smooth when people join up. (We've all seen or answered the questions in global chat - And I'm sure many of us have had to explain Roles vs. Souls to a confused friend or two also.)
* We evaluated (and removed) the Exposed mechanic.
* Ensuring that more people get to participate in the unique fun that is RIFT's invasions, zone events, and their colossi.
* Even further improving zone event bosses' ability to provide the appropriate challenge for a much wider range of zone populations -- larger and smaller.
* Many of our zone event Colossi are balanced well, but a handful have special abilities that aren't clear enough, or could come up with near instant-death combos. Those are all being updated.
* We’ve also been targeting frequently-feedbacked areas for visual upgrades. Overall quality is high, but the appearance and diversity could benefit from improvement (Scarwood Reach - We're looking at you here.)
* An improved default swimming camera is already live, and there’s a little less swimming required right off the bat.
* Crafting and other non-combat activities such as Artifacts are a frequent place that we hear feedback as well. We've made some improvements here, and have even more in the plans for the coming months.
* We'll be removing the "mystery failures" around the system of crafting Augmentation. We see that many people do use the Augmentation system a lot, but the act of gambling the augment itself induces quite a bit of rage when it doesn't work out. We'll be keeping the good parts of the system while removing the rage. (Either you'll be skilled enough to use the augment, or not.)
* Also around crafting, look for more high-end, powerful recipes to make their debut in a coming update.
* Taking non-combat activities even further is the idea of secondary skills for all. We're also big fans of adding to the "worldiness" of the world, and new skills definitely enhance that. We'll be evaluating people's thoughts for these as we firm up our plans here over the coming months.

[Morreion]

Enter at Your Own Rift: A six-month retrospective (Massively)

Whether you're a fan of RIFT or not, the amount of new content and features that have been added is impressive. And overall, the additions have gone pretty smoothly. Trion seemed to do itself a big favor by launching a game that didn't need a lot of patching or revamping, and the devs are managing to keep that momentum and stay ahead of the eight ball so far.

Rift Column: Counting on Success
It has been nearly six months since the official launch of Trion's inaugural MMO, Rift. In the intervening months, people have been arguing about whether or not Rift is a success. In today's Riding the Rift column, MMORPG.com Associate Editor Suzie Ford takes a look at exactly that and offers a few thoughts about the issue. Check out Suzie's Tripping the Rift column and then add a few of your ideas in the comments below.

Few can argue that Trion developers aren’t involved in their community. Devs not only listen to what’s being said, they actually implement a lot of the ideas that Rift fans have come up with. Do they get to everything? Of course they don’t. But they do listen and they do respond, something precious few development teams can say. And that familiarity with the concerns and ideas from the players breeds good will in most cases...

We don’t know all the facts and can only speculate as to Rift’s financial success. But other factors, including content creation, developer interaction and at least two million accounts in just under six months lead one to believe that Rift is decidedly successful. Most MMOs released thus far this year can’t come anywhere near those numbers. But the twin elephants in the room are those highly-anticipated titles coming in the next six to eight months. The real question is whether or not Rift devs can rise to the challenge and hold on to their players. Good money says they’re ready, willing and able.

Grudge match: RIFT faction rivalry heating up for one-year anniversary (Massively)

Trion said that it's already deep into the planning stages of heating up the conflict between the game's two sides, which is planned for next spring. The current Fae Yule festival is meant to be a quiet moment before everything explodes; a peace that is soon to be shattered.

Design Director Hal Hanlin puts a date on the upcoming Factionopalypse: "We're planning to drive a wedge between the factions for the game's one-year anniversary." This puts the date of the event in early March 2012.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Are rifts in danger of collapsing? (Massively)

Let's look at a few of the key issues that Trion needs to address (and quickly). The first is that MMO players, as a whole, do not do activities for fun's sake if a better reward for equal effort lies elsewhere...The second issue is that players are pretty capable in seeing through the charade to the underlying mechanics. The whole concept of rifts is that Telara is in danger, the world is in a constant state of being invaded, and we're the only ones who can push these elemental forces back to their planes. The problem is that we know there's no immediate -- or even long-term -- danger associated with them... Finally, RIFT has to avoid the pitfall that WAR fell into, which was the extreme repetition of identical setups...

Enter at Your Own Rift: The casual revolution in RIFT (Massively)

Rifts are fun and easy to get into, and when lots of people are participating in them, they're really cool. But if mundane dailies give a better, faster, and easier reward, many players will choose that instead. With the increased importance of gathering inscribed, invasions and zone events seem to have regained some popularity, particularly at the high levels, and since drop rates go up as more participate, it becomes even more attractive. And even my little minigame of racing for the holiday shinies has its rewards -- I got a Spotted Festive Fae Yule Vaiyuu on only my eighth or ninth shiny, and later on I got the rare Satyr Snowman. RIFT has some nice features that could be part of an "MMO Casual Revolution." It's a trend that seems to be appearing in other MMO titles as well, and hopefully it leads to the industry redefining itself -- and giving players more flexibility in choosing how to play (and how long to play) games.

Trion teases Rift expansion pack plans, possible content (Eurogamer)

WhenRift launched in March this year, Hartsman said Trion had a content plan "that took us out multiple years".

"The process for us in general is, very simply, to look at what our users are saying and what's going on on the servers - and we figure out what to do next relatively rapidly from there," Hartsman shared.

"We started out, right off the bat, with a plan that took us out multiple years. And we revise it every couple of weeks.

"We started out with a fairly loose blueprint and went, 'OK, until we get better info, this is the path we're on. Revisit it a month later.'"

[Morreion]

What's been going on with Rift the last year and a half? It just went F2P!









RIFT revenues reached $100 million in 2011, Trion secures new funding (Massively)

CEO Lars Buttler told Reuters that the company is still considering an initial public stock offering, and it has also secured an additional $85 million in funding as it readies RIFT for the South Korean and Chinese gaming markets later this year. Trion is also developing an MMO shooter called Defiance and an MMORTS known as End of Nations.

Trion plans RIFT's 2012 attack strategy (Massively)

Hartsman also opened up about Trion's plans for 2012, starting with the Return to Telara free play weekend that's currently active. The team is preparing to unveil plans about major improvements to the PvP system, including ways to lower PvP wait time, improve the PvP soul system, increase rewards, and perhaps have a form of open-world PvP that isn't limited to factional combat.

'RIFT Lite' announced, makes first 20 levels free to all [Updated] (Massively)

In the press release, RIFT Executive Producer Scott Hartsman, who told fans last November that Trion had "absolutely no plans whatsoever" to turn RIFT F2P, stated that his company believes "a Lite edition with no time limit is the best way for players to see what an amazing experience RIFT continues to be."

RIFT in China: 'Biggest game deal ever' for a Western MMO (Massively)

How big is RIFT? Big enough to attract one of China's heavyweight MMO houses, apparently. Trion has announced a partnership with publishing giant Shanda that will bring RIFT to the Chinese gaming market, and CEO Lars Buttler tells Gamasutra that expanding the game's global reach is only the beginning.

Enter at Your Own Rift: A RIFT wedding primer (Massively)

The instance itself is nicely done. We're Guardians, so our wedding was on top of Hammerknell, with the mists of Moonshade as a nice backdrop. For Defiants, the wedding is held in an instance of Orphiel's Spire. When you first zone in, you might want to speak to the Spousal Assistants before you bring in friends because the two who are getting married need to designate themselves as "Spouse of the Sun" and "Spouse of the Moon," which helps them avoid the possibility of someone else mistakenly flagging himself for the wedding. It's up to you on who is who, and if someone does accidentally flag himself, he'd need to have the Spousal Assistant remove the flag before the ceremony.

From there, you can invite up to 200 guests to the event, although it's first-come first-serve if you overbook. You can also kick out those who end up becoming troublemakers. My husband and I didn't have any guests, but that's OK because when we reached the Dwarf to begin the ceremony, a crowd of NPC guests appeared to witness the event.

RIFT players set record for most in-game weddings in one day (Massively)

We're not certain what the previous record was if there was one at all, but RIFT players managed to set the bar with a staggering 21,879 marriages performed between noon on February 14th and noon on February 15th.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Looking back at RIFT's first year (Massively)

If you took a few months off and returned to the game, it would take you a bit to recognize things. In this first year, there were five new raids, two master mode dungeons, a new warfront, and the enormous overland zone, Ember Isle, which also contains a group dungeon. In addition, features like instant adventures and crafting and PvP rifts add new ways to play in the original zones.

Enter at Your Own Rift: Handy tips for fishing and survival in Telara (Massively)

Once your line is in the water, you'll need a little patience and a little focus because you have to react to your line just as you would with a real fishing pole. In last week's column, there were a few comments about whether fishing actually requires you to have an active role in bringing the fish in, and that is in fact the case. After a bit, you'll hear a splash and see your pole jerk, along with a chat message of "reel it in!" When that happens, you can either click your pole on the hotbar or click the water (you'll see a fish icon when it's time to click). That allows you to reel in the fish, but sometimes it takes two or three reel-ins before you bag your catch, so you need to stay with it and keep watching your line and pole. And generally, the rarer fish put up a longer struggle and require more clicks.

Enter at Your Own Rift: A guide for new and returning RIFT players (Massively)

There are now many new ways to customize your character in RIFT. The addition of the wardrobe slot, as well as vanity clothing from vendors, faction, and rift zone events, gives players a chance to put together the perfect outfit (you can see the nifty robe from the Shimmersand zone event in the header image). With the next update, players will also be able to change their appearance at the barber shop. Many new mounts have been added to the game as well, and each world event seems to feature yet another new one, so chances are we'll see even more variety down the road. Non-combat skills like fishing and survival let players switch gears from the daily dose of combat. And who could forget the wedding instance, complete with cake, fancy outfits, and rings?

Why I Play: RIFT (Massively)

The soul system, for example, is an extremely potent experience. Instead of being forced down a handful of paths in the game, you have three trees to choose from, and how you use them is entirely up to you as you find synergies between trees, figure out how skills interact with one another, and specialize in any tree you want. You can level two different characters of the same race and class and have two entirely different experiences in terms of play because there are just so many different ways to specialize and play. You can even have tweaks on the same core specialization: A Druid could be a melee-happy character with a pet, or you could focus on casting spells and hanging back while your pet does the grunt work.

Rift: Storm Legion Review (Ten Ton Hammer)

RIFT has been quietly chugging away since its initial launch, a proud standard-bearer of subscription-based gaming. Their first official expansion, Storm Legion, has just launched with loads of new content. Storm Legion adds a level increase, two new continents that triple the size of the current game world, player housing, and more. Will Storm Legion excite RIFT players and expand the game? Ten Ton Hammer ventured into the world of Telara to find out.

Conclusion

Storm Legion doubles down (triples, actually) on the RIFT experience by adding a ton of new content to RIFT, and current and returning players should rejoice.Trion Worlds' handling of player housing is also superlative. Although there's not much about this expansion to entice new players into the game, it does offer a big incentive for returning players to renew their subscriptions. If you like RIFT, you'll enjoy Storm Legion. And even if you haven't given the game a whirl yet, there's a lot to love in this solid, polished title. If you're still unconvinced, you can try levels 1-20 out for free with RIFT Lite.

Overall: 90/100: Great

Enter at Your Own Rift: Goodbye Scott, hello 2.2 (Massively)

It's largely because of Hartsman that RIFT developed the way it did and why it shares common blood with EverQuest II (just look at the two games' features list some day... it's uncanny). And so his loss is not just mourned among the fans, but a fount of worry over where the game will go from here.

Welcome Back (v3) -- a guide to what's changed. (Rift)

Welcome back!

People leave MMOs. Sometimes they come back. Since people who come back always want to know what's changed, I've decided to maintain a post that covers the key changes. This is mostly personal opinion. I'm mostly ignoring soul and calling balance issues and tweaks, with a few rare exceptions; suffice it to say that balancing is ongoing, and you should always assume that you need to review your builds.

There are a number of new porticulums, especially in very early starting areas. If you haven't been to them in a while, it may be worth running around and picking these up.

I'm mostly ignoring bug fixes. So basically... This is at most maybe 5% of the changes made. But it's the changes that really stuck out as being big changes that would affect what you can do in the game.

How to use this post: If you remember the patch during which you last played, skip ahead to that heading. If you just remember about when you last played, use the handy cheat sheet to look up what patch it was.

RIFT is now completely free for everyone (Massively)

The game that once denounced free-to-play has gone free-to-play. Trion Worlds' RIFT can now be enjoyed with "no trials, no tricks, and no traps" for anyone who wants to explore the game.

"The aim is to keep free and paid players on the same level - this is not pay-to-win," said Creative Director Bill Fisher. "Players will see key differences between RIFT and other MMOs that have adopted free-to-play: we don't restrict content, and we don't offer pay-to-win items."

[Regolyth]

I was reading about this yesterday. Rift has some nice stuff for older players returning to the F2P version. You get to keep your character slots, vault space, etc. It's a pretty good deal if you've played before.