Hey, everyone! Thanks a lot for being patient with us this week on the VIP invites for those who preordered. We’ve been making sure to get people covered almost as quickly as they can ask for help, and you’ve gone above and beyond in your compliments to the folks doing the helping.

In fact, I can’t think of another time I’ve ever seen this level of concentrated compliments aimed at a CS group. Thanks for posting and mailing them in – You guys rock. We’re working with all of our sales partners to smooth this flow out for the rest of the preorder period, and should have some good news to share here in the next day or two.

On the development side: In the short week since returning from the holidays, a lot of our focus has been on launching presales, a store, and an entire ordering and billing framework. While making sure that the Warfronts, new zones, and events were going to be ready for beta.

I’m going to be extra honest about this one: Stressing Warfronts is going to make for a very interesting day tomorrow. It may go perfectly, or there may be issues due to the massive crush that our instancing system is about to take for the first time ever.

Either way, we’re here for the entirety of the event, and we’ll be reacting as quickly as we can to anything that comes up.

Even with all of that going on, we still did manage to hit up a few things that were on people’s minds. Apologies if this is more of a bullet list and less of a well-written piece of prose. It’s been a hell of a week around here.

IN FOR BETA 4: (like you haven’t seen the patch notes already)

* Ten, count them, TEN hotbars you can turn on and map hotkeys to and move around anywhere you want.

* Huge polish pass on the Raid frames – These got their first workout in the big events, and with Warfronts they’re even more important.

* More polish on the Reactives UI.

* More polish on pet naming.

ON THE HORIZON:

* PvP Autoflagging Toggle – With our unique world and event style, and with good reason, people really want to be able to be protected from autoflagging in the chaos. We agree – That’ll make for better gameplay.

* Target Nearest Friendly, Target Nearest Enemy, and a better Next Enemy cycle. Yes, we should add those.

* Rogues: We hear you. The pacing forced by energy regen and cooldown interaction isn’t getting the fun gameplay result we were aiming for. This isn’t something we could rush out in a day, but we’re on it. Needs to be fun and feel right first and foremost. That’s the goal. We should have something you’ll be able to call much better for Beta 5.

* When you’re in an Event (whether it’s a Zone Event, an Invasion, or a Rift, or so on), you actually don’t need to be grouped to get credit, loot, and experience for completing stages or the event itself. That said, people still want to be able to group and raid up more easily, and many have even requested automatically. We’ve been thinking about this for a while internally, and we’ve decided that we have to take on trying to get something that’s solid, fun, and helpful in place here.

* Rift Vessels, Zone Currencies, Sourcestone Currencies, Wardstone upgrades, and other Ascended Powers – This whole system isn’t coming off as cleanly as it should. We’re going to be putting some effort into making this look and play a lot more like the cohesive system it is behind the hood. People only care about a feature when a game can present it cleanly, and we’re going to step up on this.

* Story and notable character development: It’s all well and good to have a bunch of great lore written down here on the team, but it doesn’t count at all unless it’s presented in a way that it makes it across. I’ve mentioned this in one forum post, but story polish is to designers the same way that optimization is to engineers. It’s an ongoing process, and one that we’re going to be making constant improvements on from now until launch. Some will be subtle tweaks where areas just feel more memorable, others will be a bit more drastic.

Thanks, and we’ll see you in Telara,

- The entire team at Trion, including the engineers and operators who brought you the store, the awesome support folks who’ve been answering your help requests, and some people on a game team, too.

Beta Update #1: 1/7/11
GENERAL GAMEPLAY
* Soul Acquisition quests that were not progressing have been fixed.
* Fixed a bug with Soul Points when changing roles while an ability is queued.

WARFRONTS
* Warfront experience is ‘more better’.

FREEMARCH
* Tweaked Freemarch zone-wide events for playability.

GLOAMWOOD
* A Woman Scorned: If you left after defeating the Hag, but without completing the quest, you can now return to the area and speak with the Messenger as long as the event is not in progress.

SILVERWOOD
* Fixed a rogue Rift that was attacking Silver Coast with level 50 Planars.
* Tweaked Silverwood zone-wide events for playability.

CLIENT/INSTALLER
* Client crash fixes related to client startup, and to resizing.
* Fixed a rare bug with the uninstaller to prevent bad things from happening. The next time you start up the patcher, it may ask for Administrator privileges on your computer if it doesn’t have them already. This is normal and expected!

Once again, lots of changes this event. Primary purpose being to test out the new War Fronts. If you had not heard, they added another bonus War Front for the weekend for those 20+. Here are the notes in full

Known Issues
* It is possible for participants in a zone event to receive completion rewards even if they are not the ‘home faction’ of the event.
* Good news! More action bars to turn on! Bad news: All ability button layouts had to be be reset across all roles.

Featured
* Now Available for Play: Stonefield and Gloamwood, including new Full-zone scale events and zone bosses, colossi and other invaders!
* New Beta Level Cap: 27!
* WARFRONTS NOW AVAILABLE: Black Garden for level 10 and above, The Codex for level 20 and up!
* NEW DUNGEONS AVAILABLE: Darkening Deeps, Deepstrike Mines
* Major revamp to raid frames to make them cleaner and more usable – Just in time for WARFRONTS!
* A full next-ability queue option has been implemented! See below under COMBAT for more details on Ability Queue settings.
* You may now enable up to 10 secondary bars on the UI (6 bottom, 4 side).
* New soul quests are now available in Meridian, Sanctum, and Quicksilver College.
* Queue for Warfronts by pressing ‘K’ or selecting the Warfronts button in the lower left menu.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY
* The inventory ‘global cooldown’ has been removed. You should see much faster response time when opening/closing bags.
* Changing a pet’s name should always cause their nameplate to update.
* Removed the ‘rename’ option from companion pets’ menus.
* If you are standing next to a repeatable quest giver at the nightly reset time, the NPC will properly update their available quest(s)/icons.
* Increased the max number of items in your general ‘collectibles’ list to allow room for all souls, books, and mounts one may encounter in game.
* Shortened nighttime darkness by about 50%, and extended sunrise and sunset accordingly. Time is special in Telara.
* Profanity filtering is now more aggressive. Including Pet and Guild names. You do not need to stress test this.
* BETA 4 TEST ITEMS: The Freemarch-Silverwood teleport items have been removed. In their place are new Stonefield-Gloamwood teleport items on Stonefield and Gloamwood Planar Goods merchants. These items will only work if you have already bound your soul somewhere.

GUILDS
* Several guild perks have become passive enhancements, once purchased they are permanent: Enduring Banner, High Visibility, Lucky Penny, Shrewd Negotiator, Earthly Ties.
* Guild Perk – Efficient Consumption: Now a passive enhancement, values lowered to 5/10% to support this change.
* Guild Perk – Favored Student: Now a passive enhancement, values lowered to 5% to support this change.
* All perks with 1 minute durations have been extended to 5 minutes.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Zone event rewards are no longer handed out via quest turn-in. They are now handed out via the event loot bag found in your UI.
* Zone events now only reward participants in the event. This isn’t scaled like gold/silver/bronze – you either receive the reward, or do not.
* Wardstones in quest hubs and Invasion forces spawned through flares are now PvP flagged and attackable by the opposing faction. Defeating these will award a small amount of favor.
* The Unbound (previously shown as “Untethered”) effect on Invaders who succeed in placing a foothold no longer deals damage to them over time. Any Invader with this effect will now despawn after 5 minutes if not engaged.
* Added a version of the Unbound effect for Guardian and Defiant Invasions, called Battleworn.
* Various fixes and updates to the events in Silverwood and Freemarch, due to popular demand!
* When near a zone boundary during an Invasion in the nearby zone, you can sometimes see the impact bleed into the sky overhead, across the zone line. Like a warning. You’re next. Unless you go take them out first!
* Invasion commanders who are not magic users will now animate when summoning footholds.
* Fixed collision on Guardian and Defiant wardstones, so it should no longer be possible to get stuck in them when they are upgraded.
* The buff from fully upgraded Defiant wardstones – Asha’s Inspiration – now has visual effects while the aura is active.
* (Did you even know that you can upgrade your faction’s wardstones? We’re working on ways of making this whole system much clearer in the future.)
* Guardian Invasions wear less blinding equipment.

GROUPING
* Using the F-key party member selection buttons (F1-F5) will now let you select the target’s pet if pressed twice.
* Party chat bubbles no longer appear if your party member is in a different instance.
* Major revamp to raid frames to make them cleaner and more usable!

(UN)DEATH
* On a PvE server, if you resurrect at a resurrection NPC and your PvP flag can be removed, it will be immediately dropped. This does not apply when in Warfronts, when you have PvP flag set to Always On, or are on a PvP server.
* When you respawn at a graveyard and are under Soul Exhaustion, you will get a 15 second Peace of the Grave buff. Durin this time you will not aggro hostile mobs, to allow you to escape Invasions in progress.
* When resurrecting underwater, you will have a full breath bar.

COMBAT
* A next-ability queue has been implemented! You can turn it on under Settings – Interface – Misc, by changing the Ability Queue dropdown menu.
* Short: Default half-second soft queue before the global cooldown ends. Abilities used within this period will go off right after the cooldown ends.
* Full: The next ability used after a global cooldown begins will be queued to trigger as soon as possible. A blue ‘selection’ effect plays on the hotkey for the queued ability.
* None: No queue (short or full) turned on; ability must be self-triggered after the end of the cooldown period to use.
* Damage type should show in the combat log again.
* Increased ranges of most combat abilities and effects – in general, healing, buffing, and damage should feel less restrictive and more natural.
* Scrolling Combat Text now displays blocked damage amounts on-screen.
* The pet attack command now respects the owner’s ‘cast on target of target’ setting.
* Debuffs now have colored borders if they are a curse (purple), disease (yellow), or poison (green).

STEALTH
* You can now click on the next/previous action bar buttons on the main action bar while stealthed.
* The main bar stealth timer no longer disappears if you close a window with ESC.
* The main action bar now remembers which bar you were viewing when you stealthed, and returns you to that bar upon exit.
* You can now switch to the Stealth hotbar by using keyboard shortcuts while stealthed. Renamed the Action Bar KeyBind to “Action Bar Page 1/Rogue Stealth Bar” to reflect this change.

SOULS
* New soul quests are now available in Meridian, Sanctum, and Quicksilver College.
* Clerics: Increased most Cleric heals, buffs, and auras to a range of 35 meters.
* Clerics: Increased most Cleric ranged attacks to have a range of 30 meters.
* Mages: Increased range on targeted offensive spells to 30 meters, targeted beneficial spells to 35 meters, and the max radius of mage buff auras set to 35 meters.
* Warriors: Ranges have been increased slightly for all Warrior Buffs and Auras.
* Mana Regen is displayed in character sheet and mana bar rollover tooltips for Cleric and Mage classes.
* Total mana regen is displayed in the tooltip rollover for the mana bar.
* The character sheet Wisdom tooltip reports the mana regen bonus that your current wisdom gives you (independent of base regeneration).

ARCHON
* Power Drain: Added a max duration so this cannot get ‘stuck’ permanently on a character.

ASSASSIN
* Elusiveness: Now usable only while in stealth.

BARD
* Cleaned up the looping music from interrupted Bard abilities.
* Coda of Restoration: Healing now increases with the ability Triumphant Spirit.
* The range of all damage attacks has increased from 15m to 20m.
* The radius of all Motifs, Anthems, and Fanfares has been increased to 35m.
* Invigorated Soul: Now heals up to 10 party/raid members within 35m.

BLADEDANCER
* Weapon Barrage, Dancing Steel: Now automatically turn on auto-attack when used.
* Untangle is now off of global cooldown.
* Improved Quick Strike: Renamed to Blade and Fury. Your Quick Strike and Precision Strike increase the damage of your next Keen strike by 5-10%.
* An additional 25% damage bonus from Attack Power has been added to Quick Strike and Precision Strike. The damage of these abilities has been reduced accordingly.

DOMINATOR
* Arresting Presence, Reflective Presence, and Draining Presence can now be cast on any target.

DRUID
* Satyr pet portraits now display Energy.

ELEMENTALIST
* Updated icons for Summon Lesser Air Elemental and Summon Greater Air Elemental.

INQUISITOR
* Armor of Awakening: Now works as described.

MARKSMAN
* The range of all ranged attacks has increased from 25m to 30m.

NIGHTBLADE
* Two Nightblades using Smoldering Blades debuff on the same target will not consume one another’s stack.
* Unstable State, Heat Retention: Now increases the damage from Primal Death.
* Fiery Spike: Can now be trained past rank 5.

PALADIN
* Light’s Decree: Should not trigger on AoE abilities.

RANGER
* Rain of Arrows: Fixed a bug so that it no longer skips the last interval of the damage channel.
* Pin Down: Now requires the target’s location to be within the player’s line of sight.
* Escape Artist: Now off of the global cooldown.
* New texture for Greater Razorbeast.
* New texture for Greater Dire Wolf.
* The range of all ranged attacks has increased from 25m to 30m.

REAVER
* Sinister Bindings: No longer puts a debuff on the target.

RIFTBLADE
* Blade spells now have a single effect.
- Storm Blade inflicts a DoT on the target when attacks critically hit. Deals 100% of the damage done.
- Planar Blade refreshes Riftwalk and Rift Summon on critical hits with ability attacks.
- Blade of Elemental Affinity returns a percentage of damage done as health on critical hits with ability attacks.
* Elemental Efficiency: Renamed Elemental Touch. Gives a chance to deal Air damage on Ability attacks, based on how much damage was dealt.
* Rift Affinity has become Elemental Blade, which enhances damage done by Elemental Touch.
* Elemental Flux: Now provides Blade spells a gain of 3-15% chance to trigger their effects on normal hits.
* Elemental Caress: Now reduces the threat of all damaging attacks, not just Elemental ones.
* Fiery Burst: Now a 6 second DoT effect instead of instant damage. Damage has been updated to support the new duration.
* Surging Energy: Reduces the power cost of the next attack point generator used after a critical hit by 25/50%.
* Elemental Fury: Has become Rift Fury, which increases the critical hit damage of all non-physical effects.
* Blade of Elemental Affinity and Planar Blade: Switched places! Planar Blade is now a branch ability unlocked at 26 points, and Blade of Elemental Affinity is a 44 point root unlock.
* Earth Burst: Has its cooldown lowered to 15 seconds from 45.
* Elemental Resistance: Renamed Static Shock, which has a chance of dealing damage to your enemy when you muss, are parried, or dodged.

RIFTSTALKER
* Rift Disturbance: No longer stacks with other Attack Power and Spell Power debuffs.
* Rift Prison: Now checks for line of sight.
* Instigate: Requires you to face the target.
* Memory Capture: Now an instant cast.

SABOTEUR
* Annihilation Bomb: Can no longer miss or be blocked, parried, or dodged.
* Demolition Specialist: New functionality – your Annihilation Bomb can now detonate all Blast Charges and Spike Charges on the primary target. Damage caused affects 1-2 additional enemies within 7 meters of the primary target.
* Improved Blast Charge: Now… works. Ignores 50% of target’s armor.
* Combat Survival: Now works against all root effects.
* The range of all Charges and Bombs hasincreased from 15m to 20m.

STORMCALLER
* Elextrocute: Fixed an issue with this ability’s interaction with Target-of-Target. It will now correctly knock back the *enemy*, not the friendly target. Oops!

VINDICATOR [PvP]
* Berserker Defense: Now triggers only for PvP combat.

WARDEN
* Crushing Wave: Increased knockback distance.

WARLORD
* Aspect of the Elements: Now gives 25 resistance.
* Aspect of the Fallen Hero: Now gives 30 endurance at max rank.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

IRON TOMB
* Reduced the frequency of Caer Ashstone’s voiceover.

REALM OF THE FAE
* Aggro behavior of Atrophinius’ minions changed slightly. They will join the fight at separate times, but can be deliberately aggroed at any time after the fight begins.

NEW ZONE INFO

GLOAMWOOD
* The planes of Fire and Death have descended upon Gloamwood, as if the residents didn’t have enough problems already.
* Darkening Deeps, intended for a level range around 22-23, is available off of Gloamwood. Venture into the heart of the Goblin city and investigate the mysterious disappearances from Gloamwood Pines.

STONEFIELD
* The threat of the Earth and Death planes looms large over Stonefield.
* Deepstrike Mines, intended for a level range around 25-26, is available off of Stonefield. Corrupted by the Endless Court, the Mine’s denizens foul the very land of Stonefield, and it must be scourged if the honest folk of Granite Falls are to survive.

ZONE UPDATES

FREEMARCH
* The Defiants have set up an additional wardstone at their camp near Scarred Mire.
* The stables in Kelari Refuge now display examples of all mounts offered for sale.

MATHOSIA
* Increased level of Ardenburgh Horrors to level 3.

MERIDIAN
* Shriage Qutugh has returned to Meridian to supply all of your guild quest needs.
* New race-specific quests have been added in Meridian. Except Kelari, they can find theirs in Kelari Refuge. Where the Kelari hang out.

SANCTUM
* Bumped the journal level of Soul quests so they show visible icons to a wider range of player levels.
* Mounts in Sanctum now look, and are named, like the purchased Mount items.

SILVERWOOD
* Mount merchants have been added to Argent Glade, with appropriately named mounts nearby.
* Vision of Danger: Players who abandon this quest no longer see Shyla repeat her first dialogue.
* ‘Fixed’ students who were not getting slaughtered by Invasions. The Planes spread equal-opportunity death around here!
* Added more potential footholds, and a Guardian wardstone at the quest hub in southwestern Overwatch Keep.
* Changed the Guardian wardstone in North Argent Glade back to level 15.
* Added a new Soul Healer to Argent Glade, next to the tavern.
* Moved location of the Guardian Wardstone at Rudi’s Wagon so that it sits further from the respawn point.
* You will now stop gaining Quicksilver Scholars notoriety after Honored.
* Kongeegon is now untargetable while he is being healed.

TERMINUS
* Shyla the Fallen and Alsbeth the Discordant are now immune to knockbacks, fears, and stuns.

PVP/WARFRONTS
* Toggling PVP will no longer break you out of stealth.
* The Black Garden and The Codex are available for queuing.

ITEMS
* Fixed a number of armor graphics that were non-dyeable. The full list of impacted items is not very patch-note friendly, so go experiment!
* Updated the vendor prices and availability of items on Rare Planar Goods merchants in Silverwood, Freemarch, Gloamwood, and Stonefield.
* Tin Longsword: Changed appearance of this item.
* Using scrolls should no longer place you in combat.
* The ability to purchase Champion’s Emblems for Sourcestone has been removed.

CRAFTING
* Added random supply bag rewards to daily quests for Runecrafting and Apothecary.
* Apothecary: Fixed an issue where training automatically taught basic potions instead of lesser potions.
* Tin Lariat recipe no longer uses Ancient Dragonbone.
* Artificers now supply Animal Glue.
* Added use animations to Salvage and Runebreak abilities.
* Fixed general issues with misplaced harvest nodes and respawn rates.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO
* Visual effects optimizations! Yeah!
* Fixed an issue where you occasionally entered character creation with a broken hair slider.
* Queued instant abilities now play visual effects properly when triggered.
* You may now preview weapons and shields in the dressing room with ctrl-click.
* Using potions while swimming no longer results in your character kneeling underwater.
* A handful of creatures (such as Satyr pets for Druids) that weren’t animated in portraits now have those animations.

COMMANDS AND MACROS
* /macro opens… the Macro window.
* Trinkets have gotten some usability tweaks. Right clicking them will equip/unequip as usual. Shift-right clicking will use the trinket.
* Adding a trinket to your ability bar and then clicking the icon eill equip it if not already equipped, and attempt to use it if already equipped.
* The /use command now works with items in your Collections (ex: /use Swift Horse Bridle)
UI/SETTINGS
* You may now enable up to 10 secondary bars on the UI (6 bottom, 4 side). The secondary bars can have their orientation changed at any time by right clicking them while in Edit Layout mode.
* Changed the Achievements display options back to allow you to either view faction-appropriate available Achievements for your current character, or toggle “View all Characters” which will show completed and available Achievements for all characters, even if they are of the opposing faction.
* Achievements window now handles sequential achievements – it displays the one you are currently on in the sequence and hides further achievements in the chain.
* Improved the experience bar with regards to Rested Experience: If the amount you have spills into the next level, the marker will not disappear, and instead stay pinned to the end of the bar until you leevl.
* You now get a tooltip when you mouseover the experience bar which describes the UI element, and also states whether you are currently gaining normal (100%) or rested (200%) experience.
* Fixed some stats on the character sheet not showing in green even though they were under a buff increase.
* The maximum name length for a Role is now 20 characters.
* Fixed a bug where some NPC interaction windows would stay up after the NPC went away for whatever reason. Making a selection would crash the client.
* If you are viewing the quest accept window and it closes because it has become unavailable for some reason (such as an escort quest being taken), the proper error message for ‘Quest unavailable at this time’ is shown.
* Quest Accept window is now ordered by long quest description, short description, then offered rewards.
* We now clean up the quest tracking for zone events if they go away for whatever reason (crash, end, are lost).
* In the Quest log, the Abandon button is now disabled for area quests, and the Share button will be disabled for area quests and any others not intended to be shared among party members (such as guild quests).
* Invitations to join an instance (dungeon or warfront) will disappear once you enter that instance.
* Target-of-Target portrait now acts like any other portrait – showing buffs, cast bars, and awesomeness.
* Reactive Ability UI: Now display even if they are on cooldown (with cooldown animation). Also display the appropriate keybind if you have it mapped to your action bar.
* While on the Browse tab of the Auction House, you can right click an item in your bags to search for that item.
* The Auction House can now be sorted by Item Name.
* You can now enable and customize the color of timestamps in each chat tab.
* The ‘tooltip anchor’ can be moved in the layout editor. This relocates anchored tooltips, such as hotkey mouseovers, that typically appear in the lower right of the screen.
* Screen resolution changes should be persistently persistent.
* Custom global UI scale should now persist when changing resolution/alt-tabbing/going from windowed to non windowed mode or vice-versa.
* Bags will update scale, and function correctly, if they happen to be visible while setting the global UI scale.
* The latency/FPS tooltip should stop randomly disappearing.

CLIENT
* A whole new round of client performance improvements.
* Fixed some more issues causing framerate to degrade over time.

Got a quick update on the Rift PvP weekend beta event for you – we’re adding another warfront map into the mix, and it’s going to be epic. In addition to the already-announced Black Garden map, the Codex warfront is available for play during the three-day long event. Official description is below.

Tomorrow’s event kicks off 10 AM PST with the mayhem lasting until 10 AM PST on Monday, Jan. 10.

This also includes:

The conflict between the Guardians and Defiants has reached the boiling point as the two player factions finally meet on the battlefield in the biggest and most brutal Rift™ beta event yet … Warfronts! From 10 AM PST on Friday, January 7 to 10 AM PST on Monday, January 10, the Black Garden warfront map is scheduled to be available for play, giving beta participants their first taste of the epic Player-versus-Player gameplay of Trion Worlds’ upcoming MMORPG. In addition to all playable content released during the first three beta events, Warfronts includes a raised level cap to 27, the zones of Gloamwood and Stonefield, and two new dungeons to explore: Darkening Deeps and Deepstrike Mines.

After just a few days since Beta 3 wrapped up, Beta 4 gets scheduled, for this Friday! We finally get to test out Warfronts and the level cap is raised to 25.

Warfronts!
Friday, Jan. 7, 2011 at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT) through 10:00 AM PST (18:00 GMT) on Monday, Jan. 10, 2011
Levels 1-25

As conflict grows increasingly brutal, the Warfronts of Telara call for champions to take arms and stain the earth with enemy blood. Will you join the Guardians and follow the will of the Vigil to salvation, or fight as a Defiant to usher in an age of techno-magical dominance?

Play to win! Participate in any Warfront and you could be eligible to win an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card! Terms and conditions apply, click here for details.