Today, Wednesday July 18th, Trion will hold its second RIFT official live stream at 5:30 PM PST/8:30 PM EST. The stream will focus on the aftermath of 1.9, Summerfest, the barbershop, and will feature a detailed look at some of the encounters and adventures in Primeval Feast. More details about Storm Legion may also be revealed! The community team, including Elrar and Dahanese, will also be taking questions straight from the community, live!

The team is asking for players to contribute their questions ahead of time in this thread on the official forums, or via Twitter. Keep reading for the full announcement.

In case you can’t make the live stream, Rift Junkies will be providing coverage, including live stream highlights and screenshots, similar to our coverage of Trion’s first live stream.

Most of us kind of figured Trion wasn’t going to be issuing any sort of rollback over the Conquest spawn camping mess from two weeks ago, but yesterday we finally received word from Trion confirming that assumption:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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There is no rollback planned at this point in time.

I am sorry that people are upset about this. Yes, sometimes we over-reward.
We generally look at each situation in which we do this and have to make the call.

Daglar
Lead Game Designer: Rift

Later on in the thread that this statement was made, he replied with:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Did we want it to happen this way? No, we didn’t want it to happen that way. I wish we’d gotten a fix out sooner – but sadly we didn’t.

At least now we know. And yes, Trion should have gotten a fix out sooner, but at the end of the day– it’s reassuring to see the company acknowledge their mistakes, at least.

Yesterday, ZAM published an interview they had with Kevin Taylor, Trion’s European Product Manager for RIFT. The interview contained some behind-the-scenes information on Storm Legion and RIFT 1.9: Conquest. Sadly, many of the answers were worded in the form of “I can’t really answer that”, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless. Here’s an excerpt:

ZAM: Is Storm Legion going to be purely leveling content, in terms of 50 to 60, or are you going to sneak in some new starter zones, or something for more general 1 to 50 leveling?

Kevin: Things like that are still to be confirmed, but the bulk of the game will almost certainly be 50-plus content. We’ve got quite an extensive 1 to 50, and we’ve added quite a lot, but the bulk of it will be for our high end players. We’ve got a lot of players already at level 50 and we’re adding a lot of content mainly for those guys. But we have to announce some features which will engage the lower level players as well. I’m expecting it to still be popular, and certainly we’ve seen that when we started talking about Storm Legion and did the announcement trailer at E3, we did see a big surge.

I think it shows the amount of support that Trion has for the title. I think there’s a lot of cynicism about MMOs, and I think that when you’re showing confidence, that “hang on guys, not only is there new content, but there’s another expansion coming out with some massive changes as well,” I think that it gives inspiration to say “great, I’m coming back!”

It’s good to see that Trion is indeed thinking about including some pre-50 content for the new areas of Storm Legion.

Here is the full interview.

For all of us who enjoy collecting pets, Summerfest has been an interesting– and hopefully fun– experience. The sheer randomness of attempting to catch the critters that scurry around Telara can be a little frustrating, especially when we don’t know the exact mechanics behind the spawns. Don’t get me wrong– the mechanic itself is a very enjoyable one, but it’s good that Summerfest is going to be an annual holiday, because getting every single pet this time around might be a little difficult. But challenge is good, right?

In my Summerfest guide, I posted a list of the pets, including coordinates for the locations I was aware of during PTS testing. A couple other players did the same. One smart player finally consolidated those lists and plotted the points out on a map, so players who are attempting to farm out the pets can quickly grab a visual of good locations to try.

RIFT’s 1.9 patch came at an interesting time. With the announcement of Storm Legion flying through the MMO community, many gamers who had previously played RIFT or just kept an eye on Trion’s successes were well-aware of the patch. Many even resubbed. Conquest was the huge draw in 1.9, and has caused quite a ruckus– both positively and negatively– in the RIFT community. But what about the patch as a whole? Is it building up on the exciting expansion momentum, or was it, as the saying goes, “a swing… and a miss”?

Now that Conquest is, well, mostly stable, and Trion has spent quite a bit of time fixing the issues players experienced since its release, one important question remains to quite a few players– will we see a rollback from the early farm-fest sessions? Which farm-fest sessions, exactly? The ones during the first two days of Conquest’s release, when some players were able to go from rank 1-50 in a weekend, or gain 15 or more ranks within a couple hours.

This is a tricky situation, obviously, and Trion has been kind of avoiding it so far, but it is a continued issue for many players. Earning PvP ranks in RIFT is intentionally grindy, so when players were able to suddenly rush through them like it was nothing, players knew something wasn’t quite right. But as I said, it’s tricky. The players flying through ranks really did nothing wrong exactly– they simply took advantage of the mechanics in Conquest and the current boosted reward levels.

But then again, isn’t ‘taking advantage’ of game mechanics kind of wrong to begin with? Many players think so, especially when Trion’s intentions for Conquest were obviously miles away from what actually happened during those first couple of days. But are actions taken against the intended mechanics enough for Trion to provide a punishment or rollback? That’s another question entirely.

Trion’s quest to deliver Conquest in all its intended glory is still blazing strong, it seems. Now that the feature is more stable and most of the crashes have stopped, many players are still, for the most part, unhappy– and for good reason. Conquest has had its rewards tweaked multiple times now, but for many players, the matches remain a farm-fest, where Dominion and Oathsworn gang up on Nightfall, and the vast map of Stillmoor narrows in on one base and some very large, lag-filled piles of bodies.

Working as intended? Not really. This much is evident when looking at some of the interviews from pre-1.9. The company has worked off-hours this weekend in order to fix the stability problems, which is definitely appreciated. Not all players and shards are experiencing the woes described above, but for those that are– Trion would do well to offer up a solution or two. And they are currently in the process of that.

Trion is generally quick about providing fixes and feedback that address the concerns of players. We saw that again yesterday, when some important updates to Conquest were made, along with some information about further updates. What did we see, exactly? A trial cooldown reduction along with a Conquest event of sorts this weekend, the disabling of one of the Conquest portals, and some promises for graphic and visual improvements. All good starts.

While testing Conquest on the PTS, Conquest had no cooldown. Yesterday, there was one. A rather large one. Around two hours in most cases. The cooldown isn’t a queue in most cases, but an actual cooldown between Conquest matches. In other words, Conquest is on a schedule that varies. Since only one match can take place per War Group at a time, this cooldown is basically Trion’s way of ensuring a large number of players begin Conquest at the same time, and that the matches are very full. Some good intentions perhaps, but two-hour waits during peak times has many players perplexed and disappointed.

So, why is the wait so long? Daglar posted a series of responses in one forum thread that pretty much explains the intent here. Keep reading to check out his responses and find out what some players are thinking about this cooldown.

From the Official Forums 6:45pm EST 6/27/12:

Known Issues – RIFT 1.9: CONQUEST
Hi all,

Welcome to RIFT 1.9: CONQUEST, it might be our biggest update yet!

Of course – with this many changes and so many of you playing unexpected things can happen but fortunately we try to expect the unexpected

We’ll be tracking the top Known Issues here in this thread, but I caution that this may not be exhaustive – only issues that impact a significant number of players or prevent access to the game will be tracked.

If you don’t see an issue listed here please feel free to post with as much detail as possible so it can be looked into, thanks for your help!

KNOWN ISSUES

- *NEW* Crash to desktop issues in Conquest: Be sure to send us your crash reports when prompted, it’s how we fix these fast!
- Instant Adventures are temporarily disabled, adventures were not working properly. We’ll get it fixed as soon as possible!
- Currently unable to speak in chat channels originating on a different shard from your own.

FIXED

- New PvP Gear was not available on PvP Gear Merchants