• The path of Rift and the Podcast
• Guild Banks
• Server Transfers coming soon
• Dungeon Finder tweaking
• Not necessarily the end, just a goodbye
• Haha Rapture

We’d like to thank everyone for all their support. Each and Every person at Trion who helped us make this podcast, every fan who ever was and whoever downloaded and listened. Thank you for being a part of this journey.

Thank you to Typefrag.com for their sponsorship – if you want a quality ventrilo server, look no further. These guys are great.

Thank you to Doghouse Systems for their support – they have amazing systems – head over and take a look.

And thank you to Enjin freaking awesome Rift Guild Hosting for their faith in us and a wonderful partnership. Seriously, check it out.

Thank you Thank you Thank you

Links below the cut, as usual.

Sunday May 8

• Ever have a question about Rift’s Lore? Head over to Rift RP too see if your question has been answered! If not, you can always try submitting your questions for Round 2 of their Lore Q&A!

Tuesday May 10

• TenTonHammer released the 6th installment of their Lure of the Planes series: Air Rifts!

Wednesday May 11

• TenTonHammer released their Sentinel soul overview! Check out one of the most powerful healing souls available!

Thursday May 12

• One day later, TenTonHammer is back with an overview of the Archon soul.

Monday May 16

• Looking for a character transfer? Well, you’ll have to wait a bit longer, but they are working on them according to a post by James “Elrar” Nichols!
• Looking to Craft in Rift? You should check out Rift Craft! They even have a lovely guide to the crafting updates in Patch 1.2!

Wednesday May 18

• Trion and deviantART have teamed up to Create a Colossus! June 19 is the final submission date, so head over to the deviantART website for the official rules and how to enter!

Thursday May 19

• Looking for a few Rift guides? Not sure about Guilds, zone puzzles, or titles? Check out some of the recently updated Featured Guides at ZAM!
• Trion also released their latest class video of The Mage! Damage? Support? Heals? Control? Take your pick, but first check out this video!
• TenTonHammer is at it again with an overview of the Dominator soul! Ever want to turn something into a squirrel? Then check this out!

Friday May 20

• Have a question you need answered? Want to talk to some other people about Rift? Just like hanging out to chat? Head on over to RiftIRC and join us! Every now and then the Devs and Community Team like to pop in – like last week’s Dev Chat with Senior Content Designer Gavin Irby!

Monday May 23

• Finally, our friends over at Rift Craft are introducing the MarketPlace where you can post orders to be filled by other players, or look for work!

I’d like to personally thank all of the Fansites for their hard work and contributions they’ve made. Every week looking through the latest updates has been a blast to see what new content has come out – and if I’ve missed you I truly apologize!
~ shyntyrr

Edit: Podcast 42 is up!

In case you missed our Facebook post and Twitter update, episode 42 of The RIFT will be released next week on Monday May 23. This will be our final Podcast of The RIFT. At this time, there are no plans to take down the website and the Podcasts, so it will remain as an archive [subject to change]. This wasn’t a decision we came to easily, and has been the result after many discussions.

Thank you very much to everyone who has supported and listened to us over the past year. We really appreciate all of the questions, comments, and suggestions you’ve sent in. Special thanks to everyone who has helped us in anyway – there are way too many names for me to write down at this point, and I’d likely forget someone. Every week we’ve tried to bring you what you’ve been looking for, and our final episode shouldn’t be much different. We’ll, except we’re going to go out with a BANG!

Original Facebook post from Sunday:

Tomorrow’s (Monday 16th May) Episode will not air. Instead, we’ll be airing our final episode – Episode 42 on Monday, May 23rd.
It’s not a decision we’ve made lightly. But due to unexpected real life and health issues that have arisen – something has to give.
For everyone who’s supported us for the last year. Thank you. We’ve decided we’re going to go out with a bang.
We’ll talk to you, for the last time, next week.

• Podcast preparation
• Casual to hardcore playstyles
• Soul system adaptability
• Appropriate preparedness of roles for group content
• Fun versus versatility

Make sure to check out Typefrag Ventrilo for your Ventrilo hosting needs and DogHouse Systems if you’re in need of a new gaming rig or laptop. Use RiftPodcast as your promo code for both!

Hope you enjoy the Podcast!

Monday April 25

• Once again, TenTonHammer has overviewed another couple classes: the Pyromancer and the Necromancer!

Tuesday April 26

• Trion released the first of currently 4 additional updates to the PTS 1.2 Patch Notes. If you haven’t seen them yet, check out the stickied threads in the Public Test Shard forums!

Wednesday April 27

• IncGamers sat down with Hal Hanlin to discuss Update 1.2. Checkout some of the Q&A!
• ZAM also sat down with Trion to discuss Update 1.2 with Scott Hartsman. Another great read, and a good overview if you haven’t heard of what’s coming up for the update May 10.

Tuesday May 3

• TenTonHammer released an overview of the Warlock soul and an overview of the Chloromancer!

Wednesday May 4

• Rift Junkies is back with another exclusive interview, this time with Berenger Fish! Check out what RIFT’s Senior Designer has to say about the Greenscale raid and how RIFT has matured since release.

Friday May 6

• Back again with their Lure of the Planes series, this week TenTonHammer features the Earth Rifts and Water Rifts in Telara!
• Scott Hartsman came out again to chat about CS Feedback and RP Server character names. There is some interesting information in the article, including an email to send feedback about GM interactions.

Update: Podcast 41 is now available!

As some of you might have noticed already, there will be no podcast this week. The RIFT: Episode 41 will be released next Monday May 9. I’ve included the original Facebook message as well for those who haven’t seen it yet.

Due to circumstances out of our control (and largely to do with Ari being extremely ill) there will be no podcast on Monday May 2nd. Our next cast, episode 41, will be released on Monday May 9th.

In the mean time, check out some of our recent articles, listen to some of our older podcasts you might have missed, or just go out and play some Rift!

We all wish Ari the best, and hope she’s feeling better really soon!

Fail or Learning Experience?

Let’s face it the event didn’t go to plan, the timing for a start for the Phase Two and Three events was silly, a short period on a Saturday that not everybody could attend – honestly who thought that was a good idea? I get why they thought Saturday afternoon was a good idea but some people who wanted to be there were still at work.

The zone events were laggy both from a network and graphics (I have an amazingly good PC here and I still saw issues) standpoint, the bosses continuously de-spawned in some zones until kills were “luckily” made.

Rewards didn’t drop correctly and some people experienced a failure to get the Achievement for attending the event despite being there (I was witness to this though it wasn’t me personally).

All in all, as Scott admits, not the way the event should have gone.

Pessimist or Optimist?

Some people will read this and think “well that’s not very constructive is it” truth is, it’s not meant to be, these are the plain and simple facts, this is what was witnessed by people attending the event. Constructive or not the truth is the truth, it’s what they do from here that matters. As the post above says they had great ambitions and fantastic ideas of how the event should work –  However, in the real world things seldom work just the way you want, they have learnt from it that’s what matters.

Sure it was frustrating and irritating that it didn’t work out as we hopped but it’s a learning experience, both from the developer’s point of view – What they can actually achieve out of their ambition – From our point of view we know what to expect, what to hope for and what can be achieved.

Life – Don’t talk to me about life.

An MMO is a ever evolving life-consuming bitter sweet experience and only through development time and the end users patients and input will this game be the experience we want and expect it to be.

Don’t go all rage-quit on it yet this game is just out of the blocks and we are yet to see the best of what it can deliver – and let’s face it what it has delivered so far is way above standard for it’s lifespan. Rift has plenty of growth room and plenty of surprises to deliver, strap in.

Day in – Day out.

Trion and Rift continue to shock, amaze, bewilder, astound, live up to and fall short of expectation it is a rollercoaster but all MMO’s are. The thing is the ups and way more often than the downs and Trion have proved here that when they feel they let us down they pay us back in kind.

I myself am glad I jumped on-board and I am very glad I invested in a 6 month sub, I am looking forward to many more World Events, Raids, Dungeons and anything else Trion has to offer – If along the way I have to experience a few “mishaps” then I am at least glad to know that the Team at Trion will be there to fix things.

Rift On!

• Learning from World Event 1
• The Future of World Events
• Dynamic Content Expanded
• 1.2 and Rifts
• Authenticators

Make sure to check out the potential changes up and coming in Patch 1.2

Make sure to check out Typefrag Ventrilo for your Ventrilo hosting needs and DogHouse Systems if you’re in need of a new gaming rig or laptop. Use RiftPodcast as your promo code for both!

Hope you enjoy the Podcast!

We also have our own discussion about a few of the more pertinent points brought up by the 1.2 Patch notes.

We touch on the following:

• Wardrobe slots
• Reduction of Auction House deposit costs
• 5^th Role
• 10 Man Raid content

as well as a couple of the more glaring omissions:

• No more stacking of daily quests
• A glaringly obvious: no Guild bank

Tuesday April 19

• Looking for a localized Korean version of Rift? Look to further! Trion Worlds announced a multi-year agreement with Korean developer and publisher CJ E&M Games to publish a localized version of Rift in Korea!

Wednesday April 20

• The Gaiscioch Social Gaming Community launched their RIFT Maps & Guides! Check it out for an ever-increasing list of coordinates for artifacts, items, creatures and more!
• TenTonHammer is back with Part 3 – Fire Rifts of their Lure of the Planes series!

Thursday April 21

• Amary is back at it again! Awesome PTS Patch Notes for 1.2 have been posted! Remember, these are in testing, so be sure to check them out on the Alpha shard!
• Trion also released some interesting information on Charmer’s Caldera! Check out ZAM for the lore and images!

Friday April 22

• TenTonHammer is at it again with an overview off the Purifier soul and an overview of the Inquisitor soul! Interested in how fire can heal? How about walking the life between life and death? You should check these out!

And then… nothing. No, there isn’t even a quiet before the storm. Literally nothing happens — life continues as it was before, rifts and tears continue to await the ascended, and monsters continue to stalk around, looking for people to kill. Anyone entering the zone would have no idea that an invasion is coming up.

And then, it happens. The sky may change colors, or a ton of tears that instantly transform into rifts may appear. And Rift missed a great chance to be dramatic.

Though it probably would never be high on the to-do list. this needs to change. Imagine the following scenario.

There is no horn. As you’re killing your last Bogling, the game music starts to fade out. Ambient animal noises slowly start to die out, and then there is a momentary auditory lull: there is no music and very little animal created ambiance (there can be the panicked sounds of birds flying away) — only the groaning of trees and grass being pushed against the wind. Even rift music sees a drop in volume as the zone feels a shift in pressure against the ward.

As the noises in Telara fade out, the music of the upcoming invasion grows louder. The first level music (the drums) associated with the plane could slowly fade in, growing louder and louder until the invasion starts. After all, the planar creatures need some music to march into Telara with, don’t they?

But the signs aren’t just auditory. Non-humanoid, in-world monsters randomly lose aggro status (turning yellow-named), one by one, and start wandering around as if confused — all except for those monsters affiliated with the coming invasion, who may be standing still and smiling manically at the sky.

As if the planes are preparing for the assault, and therefore rerouting their strengths to the coming invasion, all rifts currently in the zone start to die out, having the monsters in them weakened (rewards could scale down proportionally, but there is an invasion coming up that could make up for it). If no one is at the rift, it will collapse near the beginning of the lull. This would affect all rifts. Maybe the fire invasion that is coming involved starting out with cutting off the other planes so they don’t interfere.

For the sky changing super zone invasions, the zone could adopt a ambient glow in the color that represents the plane. For all invasions, however, the map starts to become dotted with tears (one for each of the rifts that will appear at the start of the zone invasion). They don’t all open at once — they’ll happen one after another — but eventually, there will be such an impressive number that they can’t all be lured before the invasion begins. Moreover, should a rift from one of these tears somehow reach a timed stage before the invasion begins, the plane shifts efforts to opening a new tear for the invasion.

And then — it happens. A horn finally plays as the sky erupts into red and all the tears open. They don’t open at the same instant, but within seconds, there are no longer any tears in the zone.

That would be the proper way to signify a zone invasion. It would also put a lot more emphasis on sound and music, something that not many people appreciate these days. Don’t like the idea? Discuss below.

Elrar and Abigale join Shyntyrr and Arithion to talk about the prospects of patch 1.2, and the unfolding of the world event.

• Patch 1.2 potential changes
• Guild Bank Soon™
• River of Trash Souls
• World Event
• CSR & Authenticators
• Funny Phishing Emails

With the prospective changes to several souls, the outlook for 1.2 is currently positive. Stay tuned for a lot more information about this looming patch. Hope everyone is enjoying RoS.

Make sure to check out Typefrag Ventrilo for your Ventrilo hosting needs and DogHouse Systems if you’re in need of a new gaming rig or laptop. Use RiftPodcast as your promo code for both!

Due to many requests, we’ve changed the inline player to a pop up window player. Now you can surf the site, as you listen. Let us know what you think.

Hope you enjoy the podcast. Links below the cut

Monday April 11

• Rift Craft has posted some information information on Crafting Augmentations! Even if you’re not a crafter, you’ll want to check this out!

Wednesday April 13

• Trion released a new class trailer – Build Your Class: Rogue! It’s a pretty awesome video, so make sure to watch it!

Thursday April 14

• TenTonHammer posted some overviews of the Warden soul and the Shaman soul. If you’d like to learn a bit more about these souls, you’ll want to check these out!
• Rift Junkies released an interview with the Localization Team! Check out what goes into localizing Rift!
• Scott Hartsman is at it again! This time IndustryGamers interviewed Scott Hartsman about Rift post-launch!

Friday April 15

• Issue 2 of The Plane Facts has been released! Check out some of the Top Stories from around the game!
• Trion released some information on updates to PvP, Souls, Crafting, and more! Check out the Official Forum post for the details.
• TenTonHammer’s back with another Guide to Rift Invasions – Death Rifts!
• Continuing with their latest Dev Blog, ZAM has released their latest installment with Senior Game Designer Berenger Fish outlining the design process behind the River of Souls Raid.

Many thanks to Katabri of Tank Telara for helping out with these notes!

Shyntyrr fills in for Desikis, and today’s guests are: Cindy “Abigale” Bowens and James “Elrar” Nichols.

[1:25] There were links posted to some of the updates for the upcoming 1.2 patch on Friday night. What prompted the update?

Elrar: We wanted to share info. We’ve always said we’ll share when we are ready. We were ready.

[2:20] Is the plan with all these changes to have them ready for 1.2 patch?

Elrar: You’ll know more as we get it pushed to Alpha, but the goal is to have as much of it ready for 1.2 as possible.

[2:40] Is there an ETA on 1.2?

Elrar: Sooner than many think. Pretty quickly.

[2:55] Guild banks? No mention in Friday’s nights post. When? When? WHEN?

Elrar: It’s a new feature, and we would rather it goes in working correctly. We’ll know more as we get the mechanics get ready. It is definitely being worked on.

Cindy: You know how it is, we never want to give a final answer until we know it is absolutely for sure. You’ll first see it on Alpha. Soon™

[4:44] It had been mentioned that Add-ons would be allowed in the future, any more word on that?

Elrar: We are looking at how to allow them without it interfering with the native UI. There’s no ETA, it will be ready when it’s ready.

[5:30] Are there any ideas on implementing an Armoury?

Elrar: It’s still at the “being talked about” phase.

[7:00] World event hit the US servers on Saturday, April 18th, between 1 and 3 PST. It only took 90 minutes or so to complete the entire phase from the attacks to the raid opening. Was it intended to be this brief?

Cindy: No, I don’t think we intended it to go this fast. It was very much a see how this goes, and see what we need to change for next time. Even I was surprised at how short it lasted. With this being our first event we learned a whole lot about how it will work on live servers. It didn’t go perfectly, but it was our first step. The team does their best, and then listens to what the community has to say about the experience.

(Apparently Arithion has a ‘leet computer, she had no lag)

Cindy: One of the bigger issues was the queue times. One of the first priorities is to make sure that doesn’t happen again. It did depend on the server, some servers had several hours wait time, and that is unacceptable and is something we need to fix.

[11:35] The EU servers got a HUGE time jump on the US servers, are there plans to make it so that doesn’t always happen? (10 am PST perfect, btw)

Cindy: We saw complaints both ways. EU had to be test servers, no fair. No fair, US didn’t get the first shot. But this isn’t set in stone.

[13:10] How has the response overall been to the world event?

Cindy: The response has been mixed, and honest. We’ve been pouring through feedback getting information on what went right, what went wrong, and what we need to fix for next time. As for doing this again, as far as I know, we are planning to do it again once we’ve made the adjustments we need to.

[14:05] Yesterday, Scott Hartsman wrote an apology on the forums expressing that the event didn’t quite go down the way they had intended.

Cindy: It’s very important to as transparent and honest as possible. I was really glad that Scott took the time to acknowledge that it didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, and here’s what we are doing to fix it. It makes MY job a heck of a lot easier. The response was overwhelmingly positive to his post.

[15:22] A lot less complaints, has the lessening of the hacker issues helped in this regard?

Cindy: We hired and trained a WHOLE bunch of people. So we have more people on deck to deal with issues, making the queues much shorter. They are really working hard to get things turned around as fast as they can.

Shyntyrr’s first response from them on his issue was within 30 minutes!

[17:35] You have put out both an iPhone authenticator and a Droid. How has the response to this been?

Elrar: Very positive. There were a couple of hiccups when you update your operating system, but we are working on straightening that out. It is not the be all and end all of account security. Account security is always going to be our top priority.

[19:04] One of our guildies got a phishing email that was bizarre. Have you seen those?

Cindy: Those are hilarious. And the phishing emails are annoying.

Elrar: I’m pretty sure Blizzard isn’t trying to buy our accounts! FYI, if you get a key lock email that does NOT HAVE THE CODE and has a link, this is not us. Key lock emails ALWAYS have the code in them.

These are the ONLY sites you should be using to deal with your accounts:
riftgame.com, trionworlds.custhelp.com, trionworlds.com.

For your account information: account.riftgame.com

Barbershop, can you let us know anything about that?

Elrar: We’ve heard the feedback on that. Where it might be at this time, I don’t have any insight at this time.

Cindy: I would bet there’s a reference to it in that famous PowerPoint of Scott’s.

Can you believe we are already paying our first month subs, or in my case 6 months? Time really did get sucked into Rift!

It has been a month filed with many ups and very few downs, although the security issue kind of made up for there being very few downs. Despite it affecting less then 1% of accounts, it has been an issue that has overshadowed a near perfect launch.

So, Trion and Rift’s 1^st month. It’s been an interesting one, let’s see what has happened!

Flawless Victory

A brilliant launch for Trion’s first title proving to the MMO world it can be done! The queues that plagued the day one opening were soon explained and alleviated and the doors were open for the masses to begin rifting their face off.  Masses of new servers rolled out in the first few days alone!

Hacked!

Many players had their accounts hacked due to a huge security loophole that a player, identifying himself as “ManWitDaPlan”, pointed out on the forums. Kudos to Trion though as they were on the phone to him and had the issue resolved and plugged in around 3 hours! I would like to see any other MMO company turn issue resolution around that fast – you know who you are!

Thanks ManWitDaPlan!

Coin Lock.

The first security measure to be implemented by Trion is a huge success, despite the complaining on the Forum. Why is that? This was implemented so people couldn’t be hacked, couldn’t have all their gear and money stolen or have their character deleted. I think a little inconvenience is worth the peace of mind that Coin Lock brings.

It’s also worth asking, why has no other MMO company thought of this before? It’s simple, effective, cheap and brilliant. Sure it doesn’t mean you can never be hacked, but its pretty close. Add in the Authenticator and you are pretty secure!

You’ve been Authenticated.

My absolute favourite thing that has happened this month is the release of the Authenticator. Yet another security measure to add to my account, check! I know it’s only out on Android at the moment but the iOS is in quality assurance and will be available soon [Editor's Note: iOS version has now been released as well!] and I am sure Trion are working on a physical solution too.

My one issue with this is that it doesn’t protect the Account Page too, which is a major oversight in my mind, but I am hoping this is fixed very soon. You hear me Trion? Very soon, pwetty pwease.

Hot Fix or Patched: Why choose? Let’s have them both.

Hot fix after hot fix, and patch after patch is rolled out as Trion’s aggressive stand on listening to its player base rolls over as many fixes, tweaks and changes they can find. It’s hard to miss just how committed Trion is to their customers, to their product and to making it and themselves a massive success.

Subs Grow

Instead of subs falling off, so far that is, the player base has been growing steadily according to Trion. We don’t have numbers of course, and some independent confirmation would be nice, but it’s still encouraging to hear that our game is growing. I have even seen the new people coming in myself on “Blightweald” the EU server I play on.

The real test will, of course, be over the next few days as people have to decide, pay to play or cancel?

Trion’s Rift Team Expands.

Trion invests more in personnel. As the community grows so do the people supporting it, one of whom was introduced soon after joining Trion via our very own podcast. The customer service team, who – lets face it – have taken a battering over the slow responses due to all their time being consumed by hacked accounts, is also in the process of growing. This will please us all as it will mean that we get a faster turn around on in-game issues, we hope!

Nerfed!

The sad yet inevitable nerf bat was brought out to most of the classes, and while I could go on and on about how I am sick of seeing this kind of nerfing, I won’t. I guess, despite promises made, we will just have to accept that Trion is going to nerf the same as all MMO companies, take it like the good individuals we are and QQ all over the forums. (I do not condone nor encourage QQing of any kind!) [Editor's Note: Neither do the rest of us! Constructive criticism is best, but don't assume you have all the answers ]

Allies of the Ascended Weekends

Running from the 1^st April to the 4^th of April the “Allies of the Ascended” allowed thousands of players to share up to 5 Keys with their friends and family giving them access to a free trial weekend, pretty impressive if you ask me. There are MMO’s out there that still haven’t offered free trials and Trion starts it within a month. Impressive!

[Editor's Note: The Allies of the Ascended events are still ongoing, be sure to watch for upcoming events!]

Update 1.1: The Big One!

Less that a month after launch we are blessed with the first content patch, which Trion says will be monthly. This patch brought in the Nerf’s mentioned above, the first world event in which Alsbeth and the Endless Court try to take over the world for Regulos, which has been received with mixed views. The second Raid instance “The River of Souls”, many small fixes and tweaks and of course the much anticipated Guild bank! (Oh wait, no it didn’t!)

Can you believe this? Of all the things not to include in the first major patch, the Guild Bank was really not one they should have left out, what is Trion thinking! So many people want this issue fixed and while they do a stunning job of listening most of the time they are not listening to us on this one. But that’s a topic for my other post!

Is that it?

That’s a lot to have happed to one MMO in one month, and look most of it was good! I can imagine I have missed something too, though I have checked and don’t think I have, someone will tell me I am sure if I have. Thanks for reading and I hoped you all continue to enjoy Rift.