The RIFT portion of yesterday’s Trion Friday live stream extravaganza was, unsurprisingly, focused on RIFT’s big move to a free-to-play system beginning on June 12th. Daglar joined Simon and Elrar and explained how some of the systems will work in greater detail as well as updated the RIFT community on some promising changes to the current Patron reward system. The team has been listening to all of our feedback and has made a few changes that, overall, make being a RIFT veteran a little more appealing.

Elrar also showed off the in-game shop in its current state and let Daglar talk a little bit about the different categories of items, the Loyalty tiers, and a whole lot more. To catch a replay of the live stream, you can see it here. Alternatively, keep reading to see our detailed highlights roundup.

Daglar continued addressing a solid portion of player feedback on the forums yesterday. Among his posts, a few were especially interesting. He commented on what we’ll be seeing as far as race and faction change items in the cash shop as well as the future of server transfers and expansion content.

This first quote was regarding the possibility of additional character slots in the item store:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

---

Character slots is on the wish list, but we cannot say for certain if it will make the launch date.

Server transfers will remain free for your normal free weekly transfer. We could potentially in the distant future charge for multiple moves per week, but I don’t really like that idea and I’d rather get us to a better place with cross shard / single shard technology.

Faction and race changes are not linked. If you change yourself to a Bahmi as a guardian, you are still a Guardian. If you are a Kelari and change faction, you are still a Kelari.

Bahmi Guardian? Now that’s an interesting change.

Yesterday, Trion released a screenshot of how the in-game RIFT item shop currently looks, even though it’s still a work in progress. The screenshot tells us a few interesting things, however, and it also lets us preview a few of the items that will be available for purchase when our free-to-play system goes live. Thanks to the currencies and prices on-screen, we’re also able to take a stab at how much things may cost in real-time dollars. A pretty dapper top hat and accompanying outfit are also previewable to the side of the screenshot.

Keep reading to take a peek!

Since this week’s huge bombshell announcement regarding RIFT going free-to-play beginning June 12th, Daglar and the entire Trion RIFT team have been quite diligent in making sure they keep the lines of communication open with the playerbase. Daglar has set a record with the amount of posts he’s made in this official forum thread (hence “Daglar Tracker”) which has been an overall solid source for player feedback.

Keep reading to see a couple of choice quotes that Daglar made yesterday regarding the possibility of additional servers for the F2P transition and thoughts on in-game shop gear, previous raid tiers, and some possible changes we may see to tier mark systems in the future.

GENERAL
* Raid assistants can now invite instead of recommend invite via the unit frame menu, and non-assistants can now recommend invite.
* Fixed an issue causing Hellbugs to do more damage than intended to other NPCs in the Invasive Species rift.
* The Hellbug Monarch from the Invasive Species rift is no longer immune to taunt.
* Fixed the Skywarped Talon mob spawning with no health in the Runecrafting crafting rift.

CALLINGS
WARRIOR
Beastmaster
* Calliope’s Beastmaster Crystal: The 4 piece bonus buff triggered by Messy Wounds now last 30s, up from 15s.
Tempest
* Discharged Defenses: The tooltop for Discharged Defenses has been corrected, it now correctly reads that its buff causes Warrior attacks to ignore some of the target’s armor and resistance.

In lieu of hearing a simple announcement regarding an arrival date for Patch 2.3, we received some other big news yesterday along with that patch date announcement. Yep, RIFT’s going free-to-play on June 12th, which is also when 2.3 will be opening its doors (and Dendrome). Most of us saw the hints of this move coming months ago in between the layoffs at Trion, the addition of the in-game shop, and Scott Hartsman’s departure. Yesterday’s news still came as a surprise to many of us, however, especially given the timing of the news.

Bill “Daglar” Fisher mentioned yesterday that the team had been planning this move for more than a year, but despite the fact that the team pushed one-year subscription plans during the launch of Storm Legion, veteran players were only given one month to absorb the F2P news. Many one-year subscribers are understandably feeling a little let down by this move, especially considering the fact that some are paid up with over 300 days remaining on their accounts.

In an announcement put out in a press release, Rift will go free to play starting June 12, 2013.

PLAY ALL YOU WANT AND PAY WHAT YOU WANT AS RIFT® GOES FREE-TO-PLAY!

Trion Responds to Community Demand;
Trion’s Proven MTX Engine to Power Free-to-Play RIFT

Redwood Shores, CA (May 14, 2013) - RIFT®, the award-winning online game from Trion Worlds, will adopt a free-to-play business model starting June 12, 2013. Players will be able to experience the entire game world; every dungeon, every zone, and every level and get full access to all current and future game updates.

“We have been listening to feedback from our players and watching the continuously developing MMO community, and are now ready to launch RIFT as a premium free-to-play experience,” said Bill Fisher, Creative Director of RIFT. “After taking our time and planning a careful transition; we are very excited to bring an enhanced game experience to everyone, without barriers.”

All players will be able to explore the entire world of Telara for free and will have access to the expanded in-game RIFT Store where a variety of services–mounts, boosts, wardrobe items, and more–will be available for purchase. An optional subscription will still be available that grants a slew of “Patron” benefits and bonuses to maximize the RIFT experience. Trion will celebrate its current and previous subscribers with loyalty and currency rewards for their time spent playing RIFT thus far.

“As a gamer’s game, a super fun and fair experience is of the utmost importance to us,” said Fisher. “Players will have the opportunity to buy customizations and boosts to heighten their play experience; however the best gear in the game will always have to be earned through playing RIFT.”

RIFT free-to-play kicks off with massive content update 2.3, Empyreal Assault, which will open up an unforgettable new zone, world event, chronicle and much more. Empyreal Assault launches on June 12th, 2013 for all Ascended of Telara.

For full details on RIFT F2P visit: www.riftgame.com/free

Does this change your opinion of RIFT? Will this make you stop playing or start again? What does the community think?

In Patch 2.3, one of the many things being added to RIFT is another new personal dimension. This one’s also based off the popularly-requested Moonshade Highlands map and is called Three Springs. Three Springs is a fairly large dimension based on the Three Springs area of the in-game zone, of course, and it comes with a gorgeous bit of interior space. The Assembly House in Three Springs is completely accessible, which will give dimensioneers some pretty cool options.

The key for Three Springs will set you back 300 Plat and can be purchased at the vendor with all the other dimension keys in Tempest Bay. The dimension itself comes with a 1000-item limit. And the best part? Three Springs is currently available on the Player Test Shard for us to check out. Keep reading for our screenshot preview.

RIFT’s Hellbugs– they come in pretty colors, look awesome when they jump, and are currently helping fire rifts see a lot of action. One problem, however. The drop rates on these little and not-so-little guys are very random and a little low for many players’ tastes. The combination of the two makes completing a Hellbug mount/pet collection fairly time consuming. Unless, of course, the RNG gods are on your side so to speak.

RNG, which stands for ‘random number generation’, is the acronym us gamers like to use when our odds of obtaining goodies are purely left to the virtual dice. By now, most of us are familiar with the concept of RNG mount drops in RIFT and remember it from past world events where players were either lucky or, well, weren’t. Trion took a hint from players after Waves of Madness and promptly started offering mount rewards during world events that didn’t require a whole lot of luck. The past few world events mounts have been really easy to nab, in fact.

GENERAL
* The Hellbug companion items Phero, Blurple, and Skitt are now Bind on Account.
* Fixed an issue causing some players to be unable to see Sliver entrances or Twisted Artifacts when using Quantum/Omen Sight after joining an instance on another shard.

CALLINGS
WARRIOR
Riftblade
* Rift Spear: Now an Area of Effect ability, due to this it will be affected by any damage bonuses and penalties to AoE attacks.

CRAFTING
* Grandmaster Artificer Supply Chest no longer drops Unerupted Teeth or Collagen Struts
* Flying fish in Silverwood have been put back underwater. They were not cleared for takeoff.
* Stuffed Mushrooms and Chilled Octopus can now be crafted at the same skill it takes to learn the recipes

USER INTERFACE
* NPC’s (usually raid encounters) killed by an offline player should now drop loot for the group upon their defeat. There may be a short delay before the loot appears if the player remains offline.
* Fixed a bug causing some players to hide the NPC’s in addition to players when enabling “Hide Players” – woops!
* Using /dumpguild command will now only export data visible to a player based on their rank in the guild.