GENERAL
* Fixed some Planar Attunement abilities not showing descriptions int ooltips.
* Also fixed a related issue causing tooltips for Mace and Dagger Mastery to have incorrect displayed values, even though correct values were granted.
* Ranger NPCs no longer use Feral Instincts. Bard NPCs no longer cast Anthem of Glory.

The below notes are work-in-progress and are, as always, highly subject to change before reaching live shards. These notes are also in addition to/modifications of the previous 1.9-in-progress set posted here.

* PTS NOTE: Conquest: Your mentor level will be cleared when entering a Conquest map. Characters cannot Mentor while in Conquest.
* PTS NOTE: Conquest: Fixed a bug where you couldn’t loot player corpses.
* PTS NOTE: DPS of PvP Set 5 weapons increased to match PvE counterparts.
* PTS Note: Focus and Hit added to PvP Set weapons toned down compared to amounts of Focus and Hit on comparable tier PvE weapons.
* PTS NOTE: Increased minimum Bolstering to rank 36 for Warfronts.

Another small bit of possible expansion speculation was found yesterday on the official forums, when one curious RIFT player took a look at Trion’s recent trademark entries. Trademark purchases are easily accessible, thanks to the existence of public records, and yep, turns out Trion did recently purchase a trademark: Storm Legion.

The entries For Storm Legion can be found here, here, and here. This trademark could mean a few things, of course, but it’s probably safe to say that Trion intends something pretty major here– something that will see more of the public eye than other RIFT patches. An expansion named ‘RIFT: Storm Legion’? Quite possibly.

Editor’s Note: In the tradition of many other MMORPGs, expansion names are often discovered by trademark registration. However, there are some instances where the trademark leads to the names of books or boardgames.

Whether the trademark has to do with an official expansion or not remains to be seen, but either way, it’s also probably safe to say that the content will have to do with the arrival of Crucia, the addition of the next major raid instance, perhaps a major city, and whatever else Trion has in store for us.

One thing’s for sure– there’s certainly a lot of buzz going around the community regarding these speculative bits. In the community thread where this information was discovered, some RIFT players questioned whether or not Trion would leave the thread open. I think this response pretty much summarizes Trion’s take on all of the speculation:

“Posting this just creates more anticipation hype and buzz. I don’t think they have a problem with that.”

Pretty much. All of the speculation, ideas, and rumors add to the hype we’re seeing. The little hints on the PTS, the PCGamer article, the hints in lore we’ve seen– it all adds to the hype, and makes the experience of waiting just a little more exciting. All we can hope for is that the news, whenever it is finally revealed, actually lives up to the hype. Knowing Trion, it will.

With all of the speculation about a possible RIFT expansion happening sometime this year, one of the most hotly-debated topics within the community is the idea of Trion raising the current level cap. Will they give us another 10 levels of content to plow through, or will they keep lining up content packages for the current endgame? There are definitely key arguments on either side of the fence. Here are a few opinions, straight from this thread, where a large portion of the speculation is currently happening:

“New zones are fun, but seeing all that gear you strove so hard for become useless overnight and superseded by level 51 greens will probably be too much to bear. Went through this a couple of times in other MMOs; as much as I love Rift, I don’t think I can do that again.

They’ll also have to find a way to keep the old content from becoming totally irrelevant. The mentoring feature will keep downlevel zones (somewhat) relevant in case of a level-cap increase. However, no such feature yet exists that would keep the current dungeons and raids from becoming obsolete before a majority of the playerbase ever experiences them.”

This is a very solid reason to be against a level increase cap. Increases often make gear, entire maps, entire cities (Shattrath, anyone?), and entire raids and instance zones obsolete, except when it comes to nostalgia and achievements. Many MMO players like the fact that expansions force an in-game wipe of sorts that knock entire raids out of the ballpark, others don’t. Mentoring may solve this issue somewhat in RIFT, but possibly not, since the reward factors may not line up unless Trion adjusts how rewards scale from older content.

This is a bit of video datamining that actually came out a couple months ago, but since we’ve been hearing about possible RIFT expansion content and all sorts of other speculation goodies lately, we thought we’d highlight it again. In March, G4 took a studio tour over at Trion Worlds, releasing a video that displayed a whiteboard with a barely-visible list of RIFT’s future patch releases and a list of some of the designs they’re currently aiming toward.

Click “continue reading” to find out more!

Last night on the PTS, players discovered a couple hints that seem to point to the addition of a cape slot. After last week’s mysterious delivery to PCGamer, this comes at quite a coincidental time, but RIFT players have been wanting a cape/cloak slot for a while now. It’s one of the few equipment slots Trion hasn’t added to the game yet, and one of the best things about capes is the fact that, well, not only do they make our characters look cool, they also serve as an easily-viewable customizable slot.

Capes add a fair chunk of personality to the appearance of our characters, especially in a game with a great wardrobe system already in place. The addition of capes would also open up the possibility of letting guilds create guild symbols, and making special guild capes for their members. Many MMOs have systems like this in place, and the concept of a similar system seems like it would fit well into RIFT, since the game’s guild system is already very customizable.

Hit us after the break for a full list of videos.

UPDATE 05/25/12: Added Laethys
UPDATE 05/18/12: Added Gorlach and Muglak
UPDATE 05/09/12: Added Ember Conclave

The folks at PCGamer received an interesting package in the mail yesterday. In it were a strange assortment of items that seemed to hint at some details about a RIFT expansion of sorts. Now, we’ve heard a few times now from Trion staff members that we probably won’t need to purchase a separate expansion, but that we will definitely see content warranting an expansion. Free expansion with awesome content? I’m in.

So, what was in the box? I’m just going to leave the link to the article here. Click “continue reading” to see a summary. It’s um, kinda cryptic.

We got a chance to talk to Hal Hanlin and pick his brain about the upcoming addition to Rift: Conquest. We went over the basics of conquest earlier and now we get to ask some of the questions we’ve been wondering about. Conquest is currently on the PTS servers and being tested at specific times, so keep your eyes out on the official forums for updates on when the next round of testing is going to happen.

In the mean time keep reading and find out what Hal Hanlin had to say about RIFT’s new three-way faction war: Conquest.

Conquest, Trion’s new three-faction PvP area, has now seen its second PTS test. Plenty of players popped in to get in on the action, and most walked away fairly impressed. The developers still have to work out a few tweaks in the system, but for the most part, Conquest is shaping up to quite an enjoyable experience. Here’s our overview of some of Conquest’s features, along with some tips for first-time players, and my personal review.

It’s pretty easy to figure out how to maneuver through Conquest the first time you hop in. Players will have to choose one of three factions: Dominion, Oathsworn, and Nightfall. These factions are independent from normal factions. Each Conquest faction has their own starting base on the map, which is an instanced version of Stillmoor. There are no NPCs or mobs in Conquest, but most of the structures and cliffs are still around. In this sense, Conquest takes the shape of an open-world PvP zone, but sadly, remains very instanced. Players will join a queue for Conquest, just like any other warfront.