We wish Dimension Addicts a very happy fifth anniversary! Let’s get to know Kitasia and how she came to create one of the most amazing resource sites for folks who are… well… Dimension Addicts!
If you’ve ever thought about building out your dream home in RIFT, you’ll know that there is an incredible array of items – many thousands, in fact! Entering your empty Dimension for the first time may also be daunting. It’s tempting to just drop all your Dim items in a pile, but you can do so much more!
Where to start? Where can you get the bits and bobs to make YOUR perfect, personal zone? Most of all, HOW can you learn to build the epic works of art you’ve seen online in RIFT? Kitasia and her site,
RIFTDimensionAddicts.com are here to help!
Hi there! Tell us a little bit about the person behind Kitasia, and how she came to play RIFT.
I am just a plain ordinary mom. Nothing special. I like to make crafts. I am really, really bad at it, but that does not stop me. You know the “ugly birthday card” kid? When you were in grade school and someone had a birthday, the whole class made them a card. There was always the one kid, who for the life of them couldn’t make a nice card – that was me – I am the ugly birthday card kid. I have lots of imagination. I can visualize so many beautiful things, but in real life, they just turn out to be the ugly birthday card. That doesn’t stop me!
My husband and I played open beta for many games; we enjoyed seeing what was up and coming. Naturally, when a new game called RIFT offered open beta, we tried it. The rifts, the invasions – I couldn’t believe how amazingly interactive the world was. You didn’t know what was going on – it was chaos and so much fun. When it was over, I was sad. I wanted to play more, unlike any beta we tried before. RIFT came with a one month sub so my husband bought it for me. After that 30 days, I asked if we could afford just one more month of Rift and the other game we had played for years. Just a few days into that month I told him we needed to let our friends know we were leaving our other game. I was hooked, and knew I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I don’t remember my first character. We were up waiting for servers to come up for the first time. We didn’t go get food or anything because we were so excited. They came up we played for about 15 min before we realized we were starving. So we ran to get food. We came back, logged in and my character was standing there in her undies. I had been hacked. I couldn’t kill anything with my fists, so I put in a CS ticket, and made a new toon… ~Kitasia~
Did you start out as an adventurer in RIFT? When did you discover your deep love of Dimensions? Did you ever end up getting to max level after you were distracted by your new hobby?Definitely an adventurer. I loved questing and I am a total quest reader.
We heard the new expansion Storm Legion was going to have player housing I was like WOOT! I love having a house. When the expansion opened on the Public Test Server I discovered I could move items exactly how I liked, not simply placing things in a house. I almost fell out of my chair! I made this giant mushroom staircase with a cute little deck on top. When Storm Legion went live, I was either building or earning reputation points for items; we had very few items to chose from at that time and many were found on reputation vendors. Grinding rep has the natural consequences of leveling you, so I always seem to get max level very easily.
What drove you to the insanity of starting up the Dimension Addicts site?Many years back, I was sick with a fever of 105 for almost two weeks. When I didn’t die, which was amazing in itself, I very quickly discovered many things were not “right” anymore. I couldn’t control my emotions. I ended up having super high empathy, I couldn’t do simple math, my memory was completely messed up and I got confused easily.
The worst part of all was that I could no longer understand what I was trying to look for on a website if it had the wrong colors, was too cluttered, or had articles jumbled everywhere. In turn, my illness made other things pop – I see things much differently now. It is like everything had a beauty intensified. With colors and smells, I could see things anew. Looking at rings on a tree stump, for example, I could see the glimmer in the wood that I never noticed previously.
Dimension items were easy for me to look at and find other uses for, beyond the obvious. I could visualize so much to be made out of the simplest items. With Dimensions, I found something I could do that I could make as beautiful as the world around me for the first time. Then came the “Joys of Dimensions” contest by Trion. You could win these beautiful
Prize Blooming Faer Cages. I wanted them soooo badly that it hurt inside thinking I couldn’t get them. At that time, you could only have one dimension per character, so I ripped my dimension apart and started over ~Sweethearts~@deepwood was born. When the contest was over I didn’t know I had won anything. I started tearing down parts of my dim to make a bathroom in it, when up pops Elrar to let me know I had won the grand prize. I got my CAGES – I was jumping for joy. I was also informed I had won a computer… which took a while to sink in.
I grew up with the internet being very laggy. I didn’t know it was not normal to stutter through a game. I was playing Rift at 1 frame every 1 to 3 seconds. I was here when I was there. That was normal to me and I thought everyone played that way. When I received that computer, my tech jumped 15 years in one go. I could move dim items quickly and accurately. I had to build another dimension.
Because of my memory issues, I needed to use sites to tell me where items were, and what they were. Unfortunately, I was unable to understand the sites and ended crying out of frustration. Our friend Courdilla suggested that I make my own database so I could control the colors and how the items are listed. I laughed. I thought he was being funny and trying to make me feel better. I knew that making a database was impossible because I didn’t know the first thing about it. My husband and Courdilla said they could put the hard stuff together for me and I just needed to add the items. They said that was actually the hard part because it was time intensive.
At that time a group of us had been calling each other “dimension addicts” and someone made the chat channel in game a few days before, so I said let us call it RiftDimensionAddicts for fun. At this point, it was just going to be my personal space. So I made colors that worked for me and played at making a banner. It was just something fun to decorate and set up. I started adding images and learned simple Photoshop. I was learning new stuff, with help of many sticky notes. There were sticky notes everywhere. So many that my husband found a program called Sticky Notes just so I could keep them digital and off the floor. I was having so much fun. When it was done, it looked nice, so Courd suggested I share it with people. It was ok, even though we had 2 dim item sites already; it was something I could share with my friends.
Little did I know how many items would be added in the future, how many times the prices would change, or that the item names themselves would change.
How long do you spend on the site? Do you get any support from Trion staff on info and upcoming items?Making the initial site took about a week or two. The updates however – some take longer to add than it took to make the site itself! Some updates we’ve had consisted of double what we had in the beginning. So I spend countless hours finding and adding each item. In the beginning, I had to find EVERY item in the game on my own to add it.
My first help from Trion was Morgana. I was so scared to ask her, but I needed help with getting a guild high enough to get some images of the guild dims. My stomach was turning and I was shaking scared, but I did it, and survived! Then Morticus opened communication channels to the dimensioneers. This helped so much – we were amazed by him and his help. Then in comes Tacitus, who just threw the doors wide open with “Here I am what do you need? I’m here to answer any question you may have, to fix anything I can, and be here for all you dimensionerds.” Tacitus has been invaluable to all of us. He takes extra care to help me find or understand where something can be found so I can add it. Brasse is always there with her support and kindness anytime I need her, too. I can not even begin to describe how grateful I am to everyone on the staff who takes the time to answer my questions and needs.
Are you among the first to submit Dimension bugs? Are you part of a group of likeminded Dim folks?I do spend a lot of time on the PTS looking for dim bugs. Sometimes I don’t realize its a bug and just say something. I am always there the second I know the PTS has been updated with dim items.
I love being part of the dimensionaddicts channel in game. It is somewhere that all us dimensionerds can get together and get help and be help for others. Anyone can join it and chat with us.
How can other players help keep Dimension Addicts going?Be sure to send me an email through the “contact us” button if you see any wrong information. I misspell, miss items, prices change, names change. I cant catch it all!
Also, we added a donate button to the front page. Because the database is so extensive we have to use a paid hosting service. Most sites offset this by adding advertisements to their pages. With the nature of why the site was created that won’t work. If you can’t donate its ok, don’t feel bad!
I would just like to say Thank You to everyone over the last 5 years with your support and kindness. Here’s to 5 more and beyond!
What is your one piece of advice for all RIFT players?Always remember:
