Sorry Rift Junkies, but I’ve been away visiting the beautiful city of Quebec and I have some things to catch up on. Let’s get everyone caught up on the details. As I’ve posted already, we got a reveal on the new Pyromancer soul. On Friday Telara Central got back into the swing of things with a new IRC Dev Chat with Berenger Fish, Adam Hetenyi and Billy Shaughnessy. After reading that make sure you check out the new Curse hands on preview including a Q&A with Scott Hartsman. It looks like it was a busy weekend for Rift: Planes of Telara.

After reading the Ten Ton Hammer preview we got to know that a new class exists, the Pyromancer. Though long rumored to exist since E3, it is finally official. Keep reading for a background and other details about Rift’s latest new soul.

Ethec, over at TenTonHammer got few hours to check out Rift: Planes of Telara. Along for the ride was Trion’s Chief Creative Officer for Rift, Scott “Gallenite” Hartsman to guide him through the first few levels of the game and also shared some bits of info that hinted on how Rift is different from the other MMOs out there…

Yesterday we learned that dwarves were going to be the third race of the Guardians in Rift: Planes of Telara. Today Massively put out a new dev diary detailing the history of the Dwarves. They are, as always, a hearty race that have been the builders and crafters of Telara since the Crafter God, Bahralt, forged Telara.

If you’re starved for people’s observations after getting their hands on Rift: Planes of Telara, then you might want to take a quick look at The Escapist. The author, John Funk, got the chance to play a Night Blade while wandering around the Shadowlands.

After playing it for a few hours last week, I can say that my initial observations were right on the money. It’s immediately accessible for anyone who has spent a good amount of time in World of Warcraft or any other modern MMOG. I didn’t know a thing about the Nightblade character I created – one of Rift’s Rogue subclasses – but found it easy to grok the concept right away.

Read the rest of the hands on review and find out more about John’s adventure closing a Death Rift.

MMORPG.com released an article previewing character creation today from their experiences at Trion’s Gamerday Event in San Fransisco. At the event they revealed the third race for each the Defiant and the Guardians.

Finally the first way to get into BETA, outside of traveling to a Con has come! Head over to the official forums and fill out the application that has been posted by Abigale.

There will be many ways to get your hands on a beta pass. You will hear about a lot of that as things move forward. They will be given away as prizes and incentives through several avenues. So stay tuned to the newsletter, our Facebook page and the forums to keep up to date on that.

As we need more people for testing, we will pull people from different pools to meet our needs. One of those pools will be forum members.

Head over to the forum and make your post. Good luck.

I just want to put out an announcement that Rift Junkies is now an Official Fansite. The Rift Junkie team would like to thank Abigale, Rift: Planes of Telara’s awesome Community Manager, for all her help and cooperation. We’ll have some awesome things for you in the future and it will all be with the aid and assistance of Cindy “Abigale” Bowen.