RIFT Official Live Stream 2 – Highlights

Yesterday was RIFT’s second official live stream. For those that missed it, the replay can be viewed on Trion World’s TwitchTV page. It was hosted by Community Manager James “Elrar” Nichols and Director of Community Elizabeth “Dahanese” Tobey. Elrar showed off some of the encounters in Primeval Feast, and the two answered some questions from the community.

A few tasty, minor bits of Storm Legion information were discovered, with the promise of plenty more information unveils in the future. Elrar seems to be making use of the popular MMO developer “Soon™” these days, which is pretty understandable given Trion’s current position. The team’s definitely on the cusp of revealing a flood of expansion information, but isn’t quite there yet. Soon™. We hope!

Here are the highlights of the live stream, including some screenshots of Elrar’s character looking, well, goofy:

The live stream started out in Primeval Feast, where Elrar and a small team of PTS raiders showed off a few of the encounters. For those who haven’t adventured into Primeval Feast yet, the place is pretty interesting, and takes some mechanics for a spin. The 10-man raid begins with a Fae-illusion stealth mission and some puzzles. Elrar showed us the stealth mission and portions of the boss fights, using his GM superpowers to blast through mobs.

Droughtlands looks pretty awesome in Primeval Feast, and some of the boss fights have interesting phases, including a fair amount of cute critter transformations. On the Atrophinius fight, Elrar danced for us (shown to the right), and as he ran toward the next area, he spent a good five minutes, at least, lost in a hedge maze as a super-fast kitty cat (shown to the left). It was pretty amusing.

While this all was entertaining, we didn’t actually hear any new information until after all this, which by that time, there was only 10 minutes left of the live stream. Thankfully, players asked a few good questions that Elrar was actually able to answer. Here’s what we found out:

• Patch 1.10 will be the last major update before Storm Legion. We’ll hear more about it in the coming weeks, as well as more expansion info.
• So what’s coming in Patch 1.10? All we know so far is that Trion is working towards making it easier for Defiants and Guardians to play together. We’re not sure what this means exactly, but whatever it is– we’ll see it in 1.10. Some sort of cross-faction grouping, perhaps?
• The Trion team will be at Eurogamer Expo, gamescom, and PAX Prime. More details about this will come.
• We’ll be seeing some new barbershop hairstyles in Storm Legion.
• For Storm Legion, we’ll definitely be seeing new soul points as we level. The exact amount isn’t quite known yet.
• During the next live stream, Trion will be debuting the new Storm Legion Mage soul! This should be in a week or two.
• The team’s currently in the process of updating all current souls, improving them, and creating additional synergy between them and the new souls.
• Planar Attunement will be returning in Storm Legion. Trion is still deciding on how exactly it will work, but it is definitely continuing.
• Yes, RIFT players will be given a chance to beta test. As for when beta is coming? Soon™, but not really soon. The ability to opt into beta will appear on our accounts at some point.
• Trion is hoping to do some live stream events on the live shards at some point (so far, they’ve both been on the PTS).
• Next week, on July 26th and 27th, there will be a special Conquest event where we’ll be able to play against Trion’s team. Elrar lovingly referred to it as a “Kill the Devs” event. We’ll be able to queue up in our wargroups, and portions of the event will be live streamed.
• Also on July 26th and 27th, there will be a special AMA (Ask Me Anything) event on Reddit. The entire Trion community team will be around to answer lots of questions from the community. More information on this Reddit AMA can be found in this forum thread.

The debut of the new Mage soul sounds exciting, and I imagine we’ll be able to snag some juicy info at the Reddit AMA, as well.