What We’d Like to See From Rift’s Next Expansion

"Silverwoods" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by HiP 1

More than five years since it was originally launched, Rift continues to be popular with a huge number of gamers. Indeed, according to recent research by analytics firm SuperData, it remains within the top 15 highest grossing pay-to-play MMO games in the world.

Last year’s well-received expansion Starfall Prophecy breathed some new life into the world created by developers Trion Worlds, giving gamers five new zones to explore and a host of other challenges to get stuck into. However, the release of the next chapter in Starfall Prophecy, Forged in Flame, has made us think about whether there are new ways for Trion to develop the world of Rift and perhaps even attract more players to it.

With gaming technology evolving at a rapid rate, there could be a few matters for the developers to consider as they continue to create new content for Rift.

"Renau at level 25" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by Mellicious

New ways to pay
Subscription fee requirements for Rift ended in 2013 and the game took on the now widely recognised free-to-play format, which means players can purchase items and unlock new content through in-game purchases.

However, rather than just offering these options in traditional currency, should the game now start allowing people to use alternative means to pay such as bitcoin? While it originally launched in 2009, bitcoin is currently big news and recently reached record values. There are more and more instances of people being paid in the currency, and sites like VegasCasino.io are even offering gamers the chance to gamble with it in casino and sports betting games.

If Trion Worlds wants Rift to be ahead of the curve, it could do a lot worse than introduce bitcoin and other alternative payment options to the game.

An augmented experience
Pokémon Go was undoubtedly the biggest gaming success story of last year, with research suggesting it was downloaded more than 75 million times globally within days of its launch.

The game was, of course, a showcase for the huge potential offered to gaming by augmented reality technology, a concept which allows digital content and imagery to be added to real-world settings. With Pokémon Go leading the way, more games and apps are expected to embrace the huge potential of AR to create new, innovative and exciting experiences for the general public.
It would be fascinating to see what Trion Worlds could do with the technology to create exciting new features on Rift.

A whole new reality

"G4C14 Awards Showcase: SoundSelf" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by Games for Change

Of course, the flipside to AR would be Trion Worlds using virtual reality to create a fully immersive experience which transports players deep into the world of Telara.

Improvements in the technology mean that VR is back with a real bang, with sales of headsets expected to grow 800 percent by 2021. Furthermore, a host of games based on major properties are being released, including content based on Ghostbusters and the upcoming Alien Covenant film.
Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see how Rift could be adapted into virtual reality – whether by developing exciting and immersive landscapes or even allowing you to see the action from your character’s point of view?

Host of options
The ideas above are just a few of the range of options that we think could be considered for Rift and fans will be able to come up with many more, too.


While the popularity of Rift shows no signs of abating just yet, there remains a huge opportunity for Trion Worlds to take advantage of recent innovations and push this much-loved MMO gaming experience to a whole new level.

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4.1 DIMENSION COMPENDIUM

The ever-fiesty Feendish lays out all the 4.1 Dimension items for us!



Dimensioneers are dizzy from sorting out all the incredible items coming with in 4.1 Forged in Flame!

Our sincere thanks to the incredible Feendish@Greybriar for taking the time and effort to gather all of the glorious Dimension items into one handy reference – it would have taken this Dwarf a month of Sundays to do. I raise my glass to the Feen!

The image above shows all the banners you can now obtain. Below, the new Dimension, Fortress of the Apocalypse. But hey, don’t let me keep you, head on over to the Dimension Touring Company and feast your eyes on all the great information!

~Brasse

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PRODUCER’S LETTER

RIFT celebrates 6 Years! Archonix sets down his heavy load of final 4.1 launch tasks to share some thoughts and ideas with us all…

It has been an amazing 6 years, and it’s clear that RIFT is here for the long-term.
I personally love RIFT, both playing it and working on it, and am proud to work with a bunch of like-minded developers and supportive staff in all departments here at Trion. Thank you so much for your support over the years. All the feedback, encouragement, ideas and criticism have been invaluable and I want you to keep it coming.

Some Serious Wins

This past year has seen some significant success for us all. As well as the frequent small updates provided, we focused heavily on tech upgrades to improve the game into the future. This was no small undertaking.

We introduced multi-threading and 64-bit to the client, and although it may not have a direct impact right now for all players, it finally provided our team with 64-bit tools. Every RIFT Dev is incredibly excited about this, because it makes us faster. The data sets were getting so big that we were having significant issues, all of which have now gone away. This is truly HUGE for us. Our productivity will increase, and that can only be good news for you and RIFT as well.

While we recognize that the amount of end game content was lacking for 4.0, we also feel that Starfall Prophecy offered something for every play style, served within some of the most beautiful content we have produced. It remains a large and gorgeous canvas for additional content in the future.

Meeting Challenges Head On

This last month has been incredibly challenging for the RIFT team. We have all been working very hard to address what we ourselves and many players saw as some shortcomings of 4.0.
We heard you, we agree, and we are pouring heart and soul into improvements.
Several issues beyond our control have conspired to try and thwart our efforts. Without derailing this letter too much, I’ll mention just a few.

We encountered a catastrophic hardware failure of our version control server that required a full backup of the entire depot. This consists of multiple terabytes of data and the process took days to recover, during which we were unable to add any new code, art, design. We were dead in the water while we waited.
Prior to that, the team (and much of Trion) suffered through rounds of a particularly serious flu in January and February that took normally stalwart people down for three or four days each, making tasks requiring team coordination particularly hard to progress.
Finally, moving the entire office was a massive undertaking, and we are still working out some of the kinks of wiring, power and rebuilding the new space.
It was a challenging situation to say the least, and made it very difficult to progress as fast as we wanted to.

We’re not looking for sympathy here, we just want to be very open with all of you. It sucked.

The upside of being unable to work for several days at a time is that it provided opportunities for some of the dev team to hop on the servers and interact with you all. This was a lot of fun for all involved, and you can expect more of this in the future.

We have an incredibly passionate and dedicated team of people on RIFT. Many of them have been on the team since before launch and still take great pride in making RIFT as great as it can be. Do we always get it right? Of course not, but it is not due to lack of effort, skill or love for RIFT. Experimentation drives innovation, and we adjust as needed. When we make missteps all we can do is review feedback and take action to improve things going forward.

We want to thank all those who offer constructive feedback on a regular basis – you help us out daily, and more than you can ever know.

For those who offer snark, rude comments and trolling, that helps no one, and certainly does nothing to move the world of Telara forward. Please consider your approach when posting – imagine that you are sitting right across from us when you start your conversation, one human speaking to another. I can’t imagine anyone making cruel, cutting comments to folks like Vladd, Keyens or DeadSimon in person – please remember we are all real people. We all care about the game as much as you do.

Even the most passionate, critical post on our forums shows us that you care – just be courteous or the Dwarf will get you.

There are untold thousands of players to every one Dev, so it’s hard to engage in direct, one-on-one conversations, but we can accomplish so much through good feedback and useful suggestions. Let us continue to work together to make RIFT the best it can be!

The Future of Telara

• Now, on to the future of RIFT, as that is what really counts, right?
• Just around the corner is 4.1 and the introduction of Eternal Weapons. These come with an involved and long quest line to upgrade them to something truly epic for each calling.
• A Planar Crafting Revamp that will lead to Best in Slot Helms and Ranged Weapons.
• The 10-Man Raid “Tartaric Depths” will go live (also using the recent Looking for Raid feature).
• New weekly quests are in the works.
• Carnival follows right on the heels of that, as we celebrate an amazing 6 years of RIFT.
• Next up, we have already started on update 4.2 (yeah, I know, great name, isn’t it? We’ll get a cooler title soon).
• This will usher in a new level 70 zone! Looking back again for a moment, this has been something we have done with all our our major releases. We followed up our initial release with Ember Isle. Storm Legion was followed by The Dendrome; Nightmare Tide by Tyrants Throne and Plane Touched Wilds.
• The new zone for Starfall Prophecy is Vostigar Peaks. As with the previous zone followups, this is a high end zone designed for max level players. There is even an elite area for level 70 group content. The lead image in this blog post is from this new zone!
• On top of that, 4.2 will offer new daily and weekly quests with awesome rewards.
• A full new quest line is in development, with much of the content replayable for max level players.
• New zone events and at least two new Instant Adventure lines are on deck.
• New Raid Rifts, Chronicles and the final installment of Primalist souls are also included.…in short a ton of stuff is coming for max level players in SFP. We heard you loud and clear!

There will be far more detail about both of these updates as we get closer to their release, as well as others we have in the pipeline. Watch for blog posts and livestreams as we develop this new content!

Looking Even Further Forward

So file the following under crazy experiments and absolutely no promises. We’re letting you know what we’re considering. I am so excited about it I’ve just got to spill the beans, probably to the chagrin of our Marketing folks, who are now rolling their eyes. Remember, this is all subject to change!

One of the threads that pops up pretty regularly in our forums runs along the lines of, “I remember when RIFT was actually a challenge, and wasn’t that cool.” Funny thing is, we have been feeling nostalgic too, so we started playing around with the logistics of a “Hard Mode” server. We set one up internally, and guess what? It is a heck of a lot of fun! Damn, that Jakub hits hard! OW!

We were not sure exactly how long this experience would remain fun, though. Would this be something that players would pursue for a long time or would it become boring once the novelty and nostalgia wore off?

Then someone suggested that perhaps this sort of server should be a limited time thing. That is, after a set period of time, it would be replaced with something different. The lights came on for everyone and the ideas came thick and fast: some crazy, some cool, some doable, some we only wish we could implement!
For instance, after Hard Mode, maybe next time you are buffed off the charts on an easy mode server, enabling you to take on some of the content you never even got a chance to see the first time through.

After much discussion, the concept of special rule set servers called “RIFT Challenges” was born.

Now, as I said, this is still very much in the experimental stages and we have no idea in what form, if any, this will eventually be taken LIVE, but the initial idea is that you play on the challenge server to reach a specific goal, which then awards you something truly awesome for your main live server character. Amazing new armor, weapons, new *cough* race *cough*… there are many details yet to be worked out and again, NO promises. No dates. This is a HUGE project that may or may not work.

We are anxious to hear your thoughts on it! In fact, we have an official feedback thread on it for you!
State of the Game Summary

All in all, it is an exciting time here for the RIFT team. We have finally all moved in to our awesome new offices and people are energized to try out some of these “out of the box” ideas.

Rest assured, aside from the crazy-town special ruleset ideas above, we have long term plans past 4.2 for our current servers too.
The idea is to revitalize those servers, not replace them, so stay tuned for future updates as we solidify the plans. Remember though, nothing is solid until the formal content announcements are made.
THANK You, Ascended!

So please, keep playing, keep posting, keep caring.
I look forward to playing alongside you for many years to come.
~Archonix

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MARCH CELEBRATION BONUSES 3/24-3/27

It’s always a mob scene when we hold a Celebration Bonus weekend, and we LOVE it! Log in this weekend for a 50% boost to your fun!



We’re counting down to the release of 4.1 and everyone is getting antsy! Need a few levels? Want to level up your Guild? Spring into action during this bonus weekend.

Starting at 2:00 PM PST on Friday, March 24th, and continuing to 2:00 PM PST on Monday, March 27th:

• 50% guild xp bonus
• 50% xp from kills bonus
• 50% prestige from PvP kills bonus
• 50% plaques/marks bonus chance
• 50% favor bonus
• 50% planarite bonus
• 50% planar attunement experience bonus
• 50% zone event currency bonus

See you in Telera!

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Asha Visits Atlas Reactor!

Asha Catari, hero of the Defiants, is making her mark in Atlas Reactor!

We Telarans all know and love Asha, and her unique look will soon be available in our strategic, turn-based action game, Atlas Reactor. Asha’s fighting style closely matches that of the character Atlas Reactor Asana, and we are thrilled with the result of this collaboration! Atlas Reactor is free-to-play and may appeal to PvP fans of RIFT. Give it a try today! www.atlasreactor.com

Now if we can only get PuP into RIFT somehow…



THE STORY OF ASHA CATARI

For those who may yet be unfamiliar with Asha, we have some lore to share from our archives.

The Catari family has a long and illustrious history of producing the finest mages of Telara. At the peak of the ancient Eth Empire, the city-state of Catari was ruled by the family’s ancient ancestors.

Asha is the youngest Catari daughter. Her older sister, Auram Catari, was ever the shining star of Quicksilver College, and Asha struggled to distinguish herself, more often than not simply getting herself into trouble with her restlessness and rebelliousness.

Asha was as gifted as her sister, but, frustrated by the weight of expectations and slow pace of progress, rebelled against the curriculum of the college. She and Alsbeth the Discordant (then known as Alsbeth Rothmann) both experimented with dark warlock magic. Alsbeth turned Asha in, resulting in her expulsion from the College.
Angry but undaunted, Asha joined the Dragonslayer Covenant, an ancient order devoted to preserving the knowledge of the Blood Storm Wars and to prevent the return of Regulos. She became their most adept magical warrior, chasing down cult cells.
In the course of her efforts, she found proof that the Endless Court had made a deal with Aedraxis Mathos. She was then sent by Orphiel Farwind to warn the forces of Zareph Mathos.

She stayed on to fight with their forces as a part of a strike force sent to seek out the source of Aedraxis’s dark power. They failed to find it in time, and when the Shade was unleashed. Asha was among the many destroyed by its dark power.

But her story did not end with her death. Beyond the veil, Regulos drew her spirit from the Soulstream to stand before him. The Destroyer offered her his great power if she would become his general on Telara. She hotly refused, preferring death to evil servitude. Regulos resolved to destroy her, searing her spirit by igniting the very energy with which he had embroidered it as a taste of the power he offered her. She writhed and screamed in immeasurable pain, but before he could crush her utterly, her spirit was suddenly pulled away, leaving him howling in rage.

She awoke, gasping for breath, within a machine in Freemarch, shocked and confused, but alive. Orphiel Farwind, once her tutor in the Court of Mathos, stood beside her, looking at her with an expression of triumph. He explained that he had used the technology of the ancient Eth to return her to life, and that she was merely the first of the warriors he planned to return as what would become the Ascended.

Orphiel soon realized that Asha was not at all the same young woman whom he had known at the Court of Mathos. Physically, she had changed, covered in glyphs of power that flared up on her skin, but all Defiants could sense that she had changed in other ways as well, and many now found her presence strange and uncomfortable.

Asha continued to distinguish herself, leading the Defiants to many great victories against both the agents of The Blood Storm and their enemies in the Guardians. Now that the two factions have found common ground once more, her leadership has grown to lead the combined Telaran forces against planar threats.

Even among the Defiants, she is considered aloof and unapproachable, but widely revered. Few have her confidence, but none would dare question her ability to lead. She walks with planar energy in her gait, and an intense passion of purpose that stirs others to action.

Many Ascended have joined the battle since then, and lend their strength and skill to this common cause, the protection of Telara… but she will always be the first, the strange one, the marked soul.

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RIFT @SESHASTREAM MARCH 10, 3:30 PM PST

We are at PAX EAST this week, but never fear, @Seshatar and friends will stream RIFT for us!



We are heading to PAX East and would love to see you there! While the Dwarf is away, the players will play! Join everyone’s favorite EuroStreamer, @Seshatar, on this hosted livestream.

He has invited along some special guests:

• Kiwi from the official Rift Discord server
• Misterwibble from riftpictures.com
• Clowd from The Ghar Station blog

Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper SeshaStream without Kira to serve as channel mod & good mood lady, so of COURSE she’ll be here!

What on earth (or Telara) will they be talking about?

This fearsome group will level fresh Defiant characters on NA Faeblight – make a character there before the stream to take part!

They will also sling some trivia questions around in chat, and host a discussion about the Creator Program, upcoming 4.1 content and more!

Make sure you log in to take part, so that you will qualify for the stream giveaways as well: three Void Drakes and a bunch of Trion PAX Code cards, which include the Community Tuskar and an item from every one of our other games! As an added bonus, we’ll throw in three Plushie PuPs (yes, we’ll mail them anywhere) for Seshatar to give away. Yeah, we know PuP is from Atlas Reactor, but he is SO cute, we want to encourage RIFT Dev to put him in as a companion pet – you know you want one!

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PAX East, March 10-12!

Join us at PAX East for great games, deep conversation with Devs and maybe a little swag!



We are all packed up and ready to roll in to Boston this week for PAX East, the coolest game in town. If you’ve ever wondered what Vladd and Keyens are like in real life, this is your big chance to meet them and hang out in person!

We’re in Hall A, Booth #11055 – just look for the giant Trove voxel dragon above the booth!

The Exhibit Hall is open from are 10 AM – 6 PM on Friday, Saturday & Sunday. After hours, you may just run into some Trion folks hanging out for beer and conversation – don’t be shy, join us then too – word has it that Brasse may even buy you a drink!



We’ll have Devs and Community on site for Atlas Reactor, Trove, ArcheAge and Rift!

• RIFT: Vladd & Keyens, with a side order of Brasse!
• ArcheAge: Celestrata & Quillodon, your resident experts on salt and mayhem.
• Trove: Avarem, Twixler, Junebug & DopeSheet – they’ll be playing Trove on the XBox and PS4!
• Atlas Reactor: Muzzy, Redhawk & Bliza all go full HAM with support from Mobi.
• Trion Creators: Streamers, YouTubers, Fan Sites and bloggers… come and meet Mobi, even if you’re not in the program yet!

DA SWAG:

We’re proud to offer a high-quality poster for each game, as well as Trove sunglasses in limited quantities for our voxel juggernaut’s biggest fans.

Make sure pick up the Trion game code card, good for a really terrific item in every one of our games! (Yes, you CAN take one for a friend!)

• ArcheAge: Candy-fueled Fastropod Snail Mount
• Atlas Reactor: Rask’s Citadel Purple Skin
• Defiance: Dodge Challenger Vehicle: Furious Fuchsia
• Devilian: Misteye Siamese Cat Pet
• RIFT: 6th Anniversary Parade Tuskar Elephant Mount
• Trove: Flying Carpet Mount

But wait… how can you get your hands on that glorious plush PuP? We’re glad you asked! It ain’t easy, but he’s totally worth it:

• Take a picture with PuP – we have the plushies and a ten foot tall PuP at the booth.
• Tweet your pic @AtlasReactor on Twitter
• Show your tweet to a Trion staff member at the booth
• Win a PvP or 5 Star Bot Match
• ADOPT A PUP PLUSHIE!

These little guys are available in VERY limited quantities, and when they’re gone, they’re GONE!

See you there!

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Stacking Warfront, Chronicle & Dungeon Charges For ALL!

Greetings, Ascended! We are happy to announce that ALL players will be able to stack charges again.

It’s been just over one year since our big update to Patron rewards. Since then, we’ve been keeping an eye on not just the in-game activities of players, but also your sentiments and feedback, both here on the forums and elsewhere.

After extensive review, we’ve decided to bring back a classic feature by popular request:
After tomorrow’s update, ALL players will once more be able to store up to 7 charges of Warfront, Dungeon and Chronicle bonuses!

Thank you all for providing detailed feedback on this topic; we are very thankful for such a devoted player-base. You can discuss this topic further on the official thread: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-discussions/general-discussion/493323-update-non-patrons-can-once-again-stack-warfront-dungeon-chronicle-bonuses.html

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RIFT ARTSTREAM – Fri, Mar 3, 3:30 PM PST

RIFT has a unique art style that earns praise throughout the MMOG industry. Meet some of our incredibly talented artists!

This week, we explore the creative process that brings Telara to life. Some of our artists will present a series of “work in progress” images and discuss how we get from an idea to realization, along with the challenges of the process.

Interested in game art? Want to know more about the design choices the art team makes? Please post your questions to this thread and we will pull them early Friday morning!

Side note: we will also give away the first round of our brand new 6th Anniversary Tuskar Mount – remember that all of our Creator Program members have them as well, so check your favorite streamer or fansite now!

Host: Brasse

Artists with mad skillz: Stephen, Justin and Zach.



RIFT LIVESTREAM
http://twitch.tv/trionworlds

Friday, Mar. 3, 2017, 3:30 PM PST

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SPRING FEVER MOUNT SALE & BONUS WEEKEND!

Time to spring into action with our fantastic rare mount sale and bonus weekend!



Spring makes us all a little crazy, and Archonix is caught up in the fever – he has just authorized a sale to celebrate it all!
This insane sale runs only from 5 PM PST on Wednesday, February 22nd through 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, February 26th – do NOT miss it!

All premium store mounts will be offered for 25% off the credit price! Yep, a full quarter off to allow you to fill your stable with all the mounts you’re missing.

Even more exciting, every 12 hours a previously released lock box mount will be available for direct purchase! There are four lock box mounts in total, each available for two 12 hour periods during the sale – you’ll want to set your alarm to log on for each rare ride!

⦁ 2/23: White Squirrelicorn: 12am – 12pm PST
⦁ 2/23: Arclight Lifter: 12pm – 12am PST
⦁ 2/24: Lovely Budgie: 12am – 12pm PST
⦁ 2/24: Obsidian Ki Rin: 12pm – 12am PST
⦁ 2/25: Arclight Lifter: 12am – 12pm PST
⦁ 2/25: White Squirrelicorn: 12pm – 12am PST
⦁ 2/26: Obsidian Ki Rin: 12am – 12pm PST
⦁ 2/26: Lovely Budgie: 12pm – 12am PST



But wait… there’s MORE!
We are running Spring Celebration Bonuses for the duration of the mount sale!
⦁ Double Experience/PA Exp
⦁ Double Guild XP
⦁ Double Prestige
⦁ Double Favor

Time to rearrange your weekend plans and order in pizza – you are not going to want to miss a minute of this event!

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