During one of the latest Public Test Shard (PTS) updates, testers found themselves downloading a rather large chunk of data. A few of those curious testers did a little clever file digging, and discovered that among the usual game files, some new in-game images were added, including what look like 15 new loading screen images and 15 small map thumbnail pictures (the ones that show up when mousing over points of interest on the map). And yep, we’re talking Storm Legion here. Pretty nifty find, eh?

Keep reading to take a peek. Special thanks to Sonoko on the official RIFT forums, who made this discovery and shared it with the rest of the PTS testers!

During E3 last week, a staff member over at MMORPG.com got to preview a demo of Storm Legion. From the sounds of it, most of the material previewed was the same demo we were shown live last Thursday, but a few new names popped up within the article, and like the good, uh, source of frequent speculation I am, I thought I’d share my findings!

“It was an exciting demo with Trion VP of Development, Russ Brown showing me various areas. Crucia is gathering her Storm Legion and building a power plane system in the cradle of the lost civilization and the environment and architecture have a techy look with whirring gears and sparks of lightning, gear motifs, relics of long non-functioning clockwork systems run by magic are found in the landscape. I got a glimpse of the Golem Foundry as well, a level 54 play area. A few names were tossed out as we bounced around in game. A giant beating “heart” in the Imperium Core which was an eerie mix of plant and animal elements, an area named Ashora, teasers of fighting the last two dragons in the world, Regulos and Crucia, but we finally came to the heart of the demo, the golem boss.”

The golem boss is none other than our buddy, who we saw stomping around, smashing things, and being, well, ping-ponged by QA testers catapulting through the air. The architecture sounds absolutely amazing.

What’d we find out here? A couple of things: Golem Factory is a level 54 area, so we’ll be seeing it as we level, that cool-looking plant thing is actually Imperium Core, and hey, another name– Ashora, complete with… teasers of fighting dragons? Not sure what that all means, but it’s definitely interesting. It’s also interesting to read different opinions and impressions on the content that has been unveiled so far. One thing’s for certain– Trion has showed off some impressive stuff!

Among the speculation occurring over the new Storm Legion souls, it seems there is a rumor about “fluff” souls being added instead of full souls. That is, souls that aren’t entirely unique, and feature passive or social abilities instead of new combat abilities and playstyles. Rumors tend to be pretty wild when it comes to MMO expansions, but Trion’s team put this one to rest before it could even begin to truly take flight.

This weekend, Daglar posted in one of the new soul speculation threads and answered a few questions players had. Keep reading to find out what those answers were.

Trion’s live coverage at E3 is a few hours away, but yesterday, one of Gamebreaker TV’s reviewers got a sneak peek at some of the goodies Storm Legion has in store for us. They released a video last night. Take a look at the link below:

Gary Gannon Discusses The Rift: Storm Legion Demonstration At E3

This sneak peek will presumably be what we’ll be seeing for ourselves in a bit. Here are some highlights of Gamebreaker TV’s interview:

Gary called RIFT’s presentation the “coolest MMO presentation seen at E3 so far”. It definitely sounds awesome! We can’t wait to see it for ourselves, on RIFT’s livestream over on their Facebook page. The livestream will take place on Thursday June 7th at 12 PM PST. Check out all the details here!

With one expansion headed our way, RIFT players are beginning to question the future of the game, and wonder about possible future creatures, landscapes, features, souls, dynamic content, and oh, yeah– mounts. More than a couple MMOs have flying mounts now, and it seems like most people are either strongly for flying mounts, or strongly against them. Sure, travel becomes easier with a flying mount, and it’s often fun to just soar around the sky, but the game world seems to shrink beneath the wings of flying mounts, and along with the size of the world, so does a large portion of its liveliness.

So, how about flying mounts in RIFT? Here is the on-going thread on the community forums where this question was raised. We know Storm Legion probably won’t see the addition of flying mounts, but what about a couple expansions down the road? RIFT’s world may be way too small for flying mounts right now, but in the future, this may not be the case. Is RIFT a good MMO for taming our own dragons in?