Now that Storm Legion’s been out for a while and the holidays have come to an end, many members of the RIFT community are becoming a little concerned. Why’s that? Because of Trion’s lack of recent community interaction and support. Botting has been a problem on and off in the game for a while, especially since the addition of fishing, but it has never been as rampant as it is now. Fishing bots are helping inflate the in-game economy on many shards, and AFK leveling has also been an issue in the expansion. Trion has yet to say much about either.

Many players are also concerned about Trion’s general lack of recent community support when it comes to player harassment and in-game chat and name moderation. There has been an influx of new and returning players in RIFT since Storm Legion, and many of the chat channels across multiple shards are becoming a little hostile. The official forums have also been fairly quiet as of late. Between Trion’s recent flux of layoffs and the winter holidays, a bit of silence is to be expected, but how much silence is too much, exactly?

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.

A few days ago, there was a guildmate asking for a dps for Rise of the Phoenix in a pickup group setting. During this particular group, myself, not having the most experience in this place, had a little analysis time on what was said and especially how it was said.

The inspiration came from a few messages that people said during this pug and particularly how they said it. When I look around my server I sometimes see room for improvement on people’s social behaviour. I think this is very important, especially on tight-knit shards.

Personally, I think one of Rifts main selling points is its shard community. For me, I dwell on a relatively populated shard, so the who-knows-who is somewhat less intimate. I can only imagine that some of the other servers are much closer.

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.

It’s hard to ignore the commotion Star Wars: The Old Republic has been making as it stampedes around the MMO scene. Sure, it’s big. The game’s bound to make some noise. Mix the massive Star Wars franchise with the extremely solid reputation BioWare has and SWTOR is the result. Hello, huge gorilla in the room. With the game due out within the week, many gamers are questioning the future of their favorite current MMOs– including RIFT.

RIFT has had a tremendously successful run so far. Fans have seen a huge array of new content since the game’s release, and Trion has been extremely receptive about figuring out what the fans really want and delivering just that. The future of RIFT looks bright, and will continue to look that way as long as Trion keeps up the good work. RIFT’s not going anywhere.

There’s also the fact that MMOs are more popular than ever right now. It doesn’t matter how many games there are and how popular they might be. There’s always someone looking for that special something that other games just aren’t offering. RIFT has a lot of special somethings, because RIFT has a lot to offer. I’ll say it again– RIFT isn’t going anywhere. Let’s take a look at some of RIFT’s best features to find out why.

In almost every single MMORPG since Ultima Online people always want to build communities and be a part of them. Long time veterans pine for the days of Everquest where you knew everyone and you had reputations. Every game since then has had communities of different sizes but sometimes they can be hard to find. Since Everquest, the internet has exploded and the popularity of online gaming has exploded and this can sometimes bury those great communities and RIFT is no different. However, you won’t have to look much further because we found a great place to call home, and it’s called Faeblight.

Last Wednesday, Trion began the new Talk of Telara series, which focuses on highlighting content created by none other than Rift’s amazingly talented community. The first installment features contests, community creations, guides, and shard-specific events and projects, all of which have been created by passionate gamers with a will to express themselves.

Of course, Trion is certainly not the first company to showcase the creations of its game’s playerbase, but, nevertheless, by putting this wide variety of player-generated content into convenient installments every other week, Trion is really encouraging Rift’s community to express their love for their hobby. Both Trion and the Rift community deserve praise for this series: Trion for making the effort to show that the community is important and giving everyone the chance to see just how passionate players can be about their pastime. The community for creating some really great content, further solidifying the community’s foundation, and, most importantly, not being afraid to embrace what they love.

With Rift’s upcoming 1.2 patch, the game will be seeing a whole lot of new and exciting features. From a cursory glance, it would appear that Trion has really taken into consideration what Rift’s playerbase has had to say. This is not to say that every change being implemented with 1.2 is being welcomed with open arms or that everything players have wanted is going to be added, but the game is, without doubt, continuing to evolve, arguably for the better, despite a few holes that still need to be properly addressed.

This article will take a brief look at some of the major highlights that will soon be arriving in a nicely wrapped 1.2 package and summarize the community’s general reactions to these highlights. Class balance changes, however, will not be addressed, as it is impossible to look at balance in an objective and purposeful way. Additionally, class balance is in a perpetual state of flux, so looking at the features that will soon become permanent fixtures of Rift’s landscape is a more appropriate route to take.

Rift Junkies is currently looking for some volunteer writers for the following positions:

• Community Beat Writer – This position requires someone who is on the pulse of the RIFT community. Someone who knows the latest trends, memes, jokes and great stories circulating in the Community at large. Think Entertainment Weekly or the Gossip Column in your local newspaper. We would like to start a weekly column around this idea.
• Expert Rogue Calling Writer – We’re looking for someone who is an expert with the Rogue Calling that can write guides, columns and editorials on everything Rogue. For some examples see our other calling writers in our Guide section. We would like to start a weekly column around this idea.

If you are interested or require more information please send all questions and inquiries to Draegan@RiftJunkies.com.

As most people are likely aware, the addition of a Dungeon Finder tool to Rift has become quite the hot topic among the community. Those opposed to such an implementation typically cite their former experience with a similar tool and extrapolate that experience into the Rift community which, indeed, leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth. On the other side of the coin, those in favor of a Dungeon Finer argue that the implementation would alleviate the frustration that many players are suffering when trying to put together groups, which would ultimately benefit the game far more than damage it.