There have been some changes to the Notoriety mark system that was initially previewed on the PTS as part of the changes coming in RIFT 2.3. Among the initial changes, the largest one includes the addition of a new rank called Venerated for Torvan/Lycini reputations. MikeD detailed the most recent changes in a forum post yesterday.

The forums will be offline for a few hours this morning for pre-patch maintenance, but here is what was said yesterday regarding the latest changes:

Originally posted by MikeD (Source)

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Just wanted to update you on where things currently stand:

• Any Torvan/Lycini Commendations you currently possess at the start of 2.3 will grant notoriety through Venerated. The change on PTS that made them cap at Glorified will be reverted. If you want a head-start on Venerated, buy these before 2.3 and hold onto them.
• At the start of 2.3, Nerina Uluan will cease selling Commendations. Instead, she will offer a daily quest that exchanges 10 Marks of Notoriety for an auto-consume item that grants 1000 notoriety with one of the five Storm Legion factions. These grant notoriety through Venerated as well.
• Notoriety-granting items for the new 2.3 factions will not be offered by Nerina until a later date. In the same manner as currency vouchers, we’d like to evaluate the situation on Live for a period of time before we add more sources of notoriety.

I know many are not pleased with these changes, and I regret that our most dedicated players are often the ones who are impacted when these kinds of issues are addressed. However, reaching Venerated so soon (immediately in some cases) after 2.3 launches was a problem that needed fixing.

When Trion first announced the special bonus players will receive when RIFT 2.3 debuts on live shards for purchasing Credits on the PTS in order to help the team test the store and its goods, we were told the bonus would be between 50% and 100%. Last Friday, Daglar had an exact figure for the community– and that figure’s fairly impressive. All purchases made in the PTS Item Store will grant players with a full Credit refund this Wednesday as well as an additional 100% bonus. This means that for any Credits spent, you’ll receive double that amount in return to spend on our live shards. That’s a pretty nice incentive.

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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We’ve just got some extra help from our platform team, and we are clearing up the ambiguity here. We have a way now to give exactly double the number of spent credits back when we go live.

The reason it was vague before is we could not guarantee exact amounts – now we can.

Remember, this is for SPENT credits folks!

As Daglar mentions, make sure to not only purchase the Credits, but to spend them on the PTS in order to be eligible to receive this bonus. Any Credits that are unspent will remain on your account, but will not receive a bonus.

Later in the day, Elrar also reminded players that the Player Test Shard will be locked and brought offline at around 10 AM PST Tuesday, June 11th in order for RIFT 2.3 patch preparations. If you’re looking to take advantage of this bonus, make sure to do so before that time.

Just in case you’ve been wondering if we’ll see some type of PvP dailies in the near future that once again encourage a bit of open-world gameplay and accompanying bloodshed, Daglar shared his thoughts on world PvP in the current state of RIFT and why it probably isn’t the best route for future PvP plans according to the developers– at least for the time being.

This reply was made to a question regarding the possible return of PvP open-world daily quests:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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So yea, this would take roughly a week to two weeks to author and make function, then testing time, and reward time on top of that. It isn’t an unreasonable request – just not something that can get worked on today.

Now the downside – PvP is more balanced with bolstering in mind – which is only available in Warfronts. World PvP is a really problematic issue – there is no balance, it is the wild west.

While on the surface world PvP appeals to a lot of people, typically it dies off — we’ve seen that die off over time — long before we introduced cross server functionality which some called the deathknell of RIFT’s PvP servers. Ganking and guild fights are fun for a while, and then once one side gets dominant, everyone picks up and leaves. I’ve been part of alliances in games that have literally killed entire servers and made lots of people in those games unsub.

To be really blunt, we just don’t have a good ruleset for open world PvP in RIFT – it is not our strength. Without making an entirely different game, I think we’d have a real hard time making a good ruleset for PvP within the confines of what is RIFT (and doesn’t add specific requirements/values for people not on PvP servers to move there). You can’t have instances, you can’t have safe areas – you need a big wild west sandbox to play in — and even then it really depends on the balance of power being hyper-dynamic to keep the community engaged instead of quitting.

I hope to never again make an MMO with a two faction system

That’s not to say we won’t try to improve things – but it’s going to be a real challenge folks.

The whole “wild west” analogy definitely seems appropriate. What do you PvPers feel? Are his thoughts on the mark with this one?

In a recent Trion live stream, Daglar mentioned a bonus that Patrons will be getting every week after the switch to free-to-play by simply logging into RIFT. Details were revealed about this weekly bonus earlier today, along with the details about a new daily bonus that both Patrons and non-Patrons will be able to earn. The daily bonus varies slightly between Patrons and non-Patrons. Here’s the announcement:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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As you know, I don’t like to advertise things before they are in full swing and nearing completion. As of today, it looks like one of our additional benefits is in that state.

We are offering a daily login bonus to both patrons and non patrons. And a weekly login bonus for Patrons only.

This bonus is claimed on the home screen and contains a variety of goodies. IMPORTANT: This is only claimable on one character per day or week as appropriate – so choose wisely. The chest is also bind on Account so you can trade it between different characters on the account!

Daily Bonus – Non Patron
100% chance at a random artifact. The maximum rarity of the artifact is based on your loyalty level. There is a low chance at receiving a premium item from our boosts and services section or bonus currency. The chances scale based on your loyalty level.

Daily Bonus – Patron
Same as above except that the chances are higher at premium items, and you have a chance to get additional items that give you bonus loyalty. The values for currency awarded are also higher.

Weekly Bonus – Patron Only
100% chance at an artifact. 100% chance to receive a chest key. Higher chance and value of weekly bonus currency or premium items. And more chances at bonus loyalty.

Daglar also mentioned later in the thread that the bonuses were tied to the game’s actual data center, which means that these bonuses can only be earned once per day/week even if a player has multiple accounts and characters across different shards.

If you’ve been checking out Dendrome on the Public Test Shard (PTS), Trion will be holding a special Stronghold test later today (4 PM PST) that will be a stress test as well as the perfect chance to check out both level 60 and 62 Strongholds in a raid-type environment. Strongholds are one of the new forms of dynamic content that will be debuting in RIFT 2.3 and are similar to onslaughts and hunt rifts, but designed with group play in mind. Here’s the announcement and all the details:

Originally posted by MikeD (Source)

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Time: Wednesday June 5th at 4PM (PST)

We’d like to do some stress testing of strongholds in the Dendrome before 2.3 goes live and would appreciate any time you can spare to help us out.

Meet on PTS at the above time and we’ll get a raid going. We’ll probably start with a level 60 stronghold to test scaling with a large group, and then we’ll tackle some level 62 strongholds.

Feel free to respond to this thread with your feedback and bug reports, and thanks in advance for your time!

Daglar is continuing to keep the lines of communication open with members of the RIFT community by commenting on a large number of forum posts that include player suggestions for the future of RIFT‘s free-to-play Item Store. Here’s a selection of his posts from yesterday that we found the most interesting.

First of all, yes, it seems we’re finally getting a raise to the current Planarite cap. The good news is that the raise won’t be tied to the Item Store whatsoever:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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I’m not gonna charge you for a cap increase on planarite. I just asked Chris to update it to 200k.

In one last hurrah before RIFT‘s big conversion to free-to-play on June 12th, Elrar announced yesterday on the forums that until June 12th, RIFT will be free-to-play for everyone who owns the game. This is a continuation of last weekend’s event designed to give previous players of RIFT a chance to check out the expansion and the current state of the game.

Originally posted by Elrar (Source)

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Since you asked so nicely, I guess we could!

Consider it done. RIFT is now FREE to Play for all owners – everyone else can enjoy RIFT Free-to-Play when it launches with RIFT 2.3: Empyreal Assault next week, June 12!

Similar to last weekend, returning players will have access to all Storm Legion content except for the four new souls.

GENERAL
* Guild Banks have been re-enabled

ZONES
Iron Pine Peaks
*Quest: Emmisary to the Icewatch – Should now work much more reliably!
Steppes of Infinity
* Quest: Releasing the Flames – Infused Storm Crystals will now respawn separately from the Cloudburst Mystics. In addition the Embodied Living Flames will now kill the Cloudburst Mystics at a faster rate.
Seratos
* Instant Adventure: Logical Conclusion – Dead Researchers & Research Papers can now be found in greater abundance.

Players on Seastone should be pretty happy about one fix that just went through for RIFT 2.3: Empyreal Assault:

Originally posted by Pithos (Source)

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When cross shard visiting went active with the release of PA Tier 3, one of the limitations in place was that regardless of the ruleset where you were visiting, your character still always followed the rules of his or her home shard.

One of our engineers just finished a change for 2.3 today that many of you will be excited about: All players will now follow the PVP rules of the shard they are visiting, not the shard they came from. Players visiting Seastone now will find themselves PVP flagged partaking in the same dangerous experience as if they had transferred there, and players on Seastone who wish to visit other shards should now be able to join cross faction raids without being kicked out of the group once they arrive in the instance.

We should have this available on PTS for testing with the Alpha (PVE) and Omega (PVP) shards early next week. Please let us know if you find any problems or exploits with this new system.

During yesterday’s RIFT live stream, the Trion team answered a whole bunch of questions from the community and Elrar showed off a few of the Loyalty rewards we’ll be seeing when RIFT goes free-to-play beginning June 12th. Thanks to the F2P Item Store making its debut on the PTS yesterday evening, players are able to test out the goods themselves by purchasing Credits ahead of time and figuring out which wardrobe items, dimension items, mounts, and other goodies are on their must-have lists. The best part, of course, is the fact that purchasing Credits now gives players a bonus on their returned Credits when the system goes live.

Besides the new mounts obtainable when unlocking Loyalty tiers and the Ice Strider reward mount, there are quite a few new mounts in the Item Store labeled “Premium” mounts as well as an alternate version of one (previewed above). There are also Premium pets! We have a preview for you today of those mounts and pets and of the new items Elrar showed off during yesterday’s live stream. As always, we’ll be sharing a few new bits of information revealed in the live stream as well.