MMORPG.com had a chance to sit with Scott Hartsman and get a few questions answered. They talk about class balance, dynamic content, and payment models for MMORPG’s in general. No new information has been spilled in this interview, but we get another looking into the mind of Hartsman’s design philosophies.

Here’s a preview:

MMORPG.com: Rift’s class system to me seems to be the game’s most exciting invention. But it also seems like an absolute nightmare from a balance and design perspective. Care to shed a little light on how the team’s approaching class-balance in terms of PvP, and even more so in terms of making sure each class feels distinct?

Scott Hartsman: When you look at the raw numbers, it’s pretty common for people to think that balance must be a nightmare, but in a lot of ways, it hasn’t been any worse so far than previous games I’ve worked on. Getting into specifics of “Well, first we make sure that healing is appropriate in PvP, then see how that applies to PvE,” and so on, because you’d have a 1000 page treatise.

That said, let me talk about it at the highest level.

It’s hard work, no doubt, but we were able to start on it far earlier than any product I’ve worked on in the past. By the time this game launches, there will have been well over a year of pure iteration and improvement.

On top of that, we have more people working on souls and callings than other games I’ve worked on (Instead of “The Class Balance Guy,” we have “The Class Team”), and their combined experience stretches across more than their fair share of MMOs, whether we’re talking EQ, EQ2, WoW, DAoC, WAR, and more.

It’s real work, with real problems, but it’s doable work, with fun solutions.

Posted on Wednesday on the Official Forums, Abigale tells us about her time and questions with Art Director Darren Pattenden. We see some new screenshots and other art assets. Here’s a sneak peak.

Many of you have asked me when we would start doing our Lunch with a Dev feature again. You all know everyone has been really busy around here. But I finally managed to catch up with our Art Director Darren Pattenden to ask him some of your questions! I really enjoyed this interview. I don’t know Darren well and I wanted to hear the answers to many of your questions myself!

I started with the questions I ask everyone at these lunch interviews.

How did you get into the game industry?

Darren: I have been a games player since Space Invaders. I was working as a commercial illustrator and becoming increasingly interested in 3D graphics after seeing some early Pixar work. When Quake came out in the early nineties I started to teach myself 3D modeling when I realized that people were modding the game. So I started out making plug in player models for Quake. I was doing it as a hobby for a while and continued to release models for Quake 2 and Quake 3 until I realized I wanted to do it for a living.

I applied at Bullfrog and got a job as a 3D modeler. I worked on Dungeon Keeper 2 as a character artist and a few other Bullfrog games. I then worked on a number of titles at EA UK.

The buzz is building up and the Rift-PR staff is at full go. With beta right around the corner (it has to be really soon right?) we are seeing more and more articles and impressions of Rift popping up. Today we have two media pieces done by Eurogamer. The first is a hand-on impression of the game. Nothing new or exciting for the veteran Rift fan, but it’s always nice to see someone’s impression of the latest internal build.

Eurogamer hands on:

Among the dispiriting number of titles released to face Goliath, stand their own ground and give something back to an audience craving innovation rather than re-iteration, Rift is a refreshingly complete game offering enough new experiences to make it worthy of close attention. In the battle of the heavyweights, Trion’s first venture into MMOs may turn out to be the sucker-punch nobody saw coming.

Name: Russell Cahalan
Alias: Handle
Position: Lead Animator

What was your first MMOG? What was your favorite?

World of Warcraft was the first MMO that I played obsessively. That was probably my favorite MMO besides Rift!

How did you get involved with making games?

I started working at Electronic Arts in 2000. I worked on a variety of James Bond games that they developed.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve done so far in the creation of Rift: Planes of Telara?

People seem to really like the human female dual wielding stance with the weapon held in reverse, but my favorite stuff has been the emotes that I did recently. /rude

The third part of the TenTon Hammer Q&A with Adam Gershowitz is now up for everyone to read. This week they go over roles, builds and the soul system.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can you briefly describe the Ascended class soul system to us?

Adam Gershowitz: The class system in Rift is known as the “soul attunement system.” The player is an Ascended soul. They’ve come back from death, and as such, they have a number of special powers. The strongest power is soul attunement. What soul attunement does is that it allows them to attune their own soul with the souls of others throughout Telara’s past, present, and future. Each one of these individual souls represents a unique class. Where other class systems allow you to be a rogue or a shaman or a slayer or a bard from life to death, in Rift, you choose to take one of four callings: warriors, clerics, mages, or rogues. Then you mix and match the variety of different souls in different ways. For example, each one of these souls have their own full feature to it; it has their own soul tree that gives players a number of options to allow them to customize that specific soul, unlocking a number of passive and active abilities. Then you can mix and match those souls together to form different roles. Because each soul has kind of a specific purpose, you can build out a variety of different roles per calling. For example, even though you’re only a cleric, while you can build out a healer role, you could also build out very easily a DPS role or a support role or a more defensive role.

TenTon Hammer has posted their next Q&A session with Lead Dynamic Content Developer, Will Cook. This time they talk all about rifts and invasions.

Here is a little tease:

Ten Ton Hammer: Since you have a lot of control from a development standpoint on the appearance of rifts, are low population times entered into these equations, such as the wee hours of the morning?

William Cook: It’s probably the primary consideration of a lot of the activity coordinators. But yes, we are measuring player activity. We have our dynamic coordinators to modify the frequency of dynamic content accordingly.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can a player play through the game without ever encountering a rift or joining a rift battle?

William Cook: I say that they would have a pretty hard time getting through the game without encountering a rift or an invasion. Whether or not they join in a battle is completely up to them. Rifts are such compelling story targets and they offer their own sorts of rewards, so every player is going to have a serious reason to jump in and help in the fight.

TenTon Hammer recently posted a Q&A where readers submitted questions and Scott Hartsman of Rift: Planes of Telara, answers. Much like other recent articles, this one is for the neophyte Rift Fan.

Ten Ton Hammer: Does the map of your world extend eastward into the islands? (Submitted by Khalathwyr)

Scott Hartsman: Aha! The launch world, in fact, is as it is right now, meaning that the map that you see is the world that we are launching with. It is that and a goodly number of interiors, instances, and dungeons.

Ten Ton Hammer: So when it comes to the islands, is that a hint that there’s going to be boats for travel and perhaps even player boats? (Submitted by Khalathwyr)

Scott Hartsman: Right now, the world does not extend out that way. The mainland is the launch content.

Follow this link to read the rest.

Check out ZAM’s latest interview Morgan Lockheart, Rift’s Lead of the Defiant Lore team, as the discuss the one of Rift’s races; the Kelari.

ZAM: To start things off, please give us a little background information on the Kelari. Who are they, and how did they get to be so different from their cousins, the High Elves?

Morgan: The Kelari broke from the High Elves more than a thousand years ago. Since that time, they have been physically altered by their close interactions with spirits and raw elemental power found within the jungles of the Kelari archipelago.

As a society, they were different from the start. The elves that would eventually break off to become the Kelari were all considered deviants of High Elven society. They represented those who wished to break from the sacred duty of the elves, which was to serve as the protectors of the forests of their patron god, Tavril. They operated in secret cabals, sects that sought power from sources other than Tavril, until they finally broke off following a bloody civil war.

Where the High Elves are calm, meditative and harmonious, the Kelari are impassioned, ambitious and unpredictable, willing to take power where they can find it.

Another interview with Russ Brown, and this time from Realm. A great interview for the neophyte, for those who’ve been paying attention no new information is revealed.

Matt Martin of Gameindustry.biz got a chance to sit down and interview Lars Buttler, CEO of Trion, to discuss their business strategy with Rift: Planes of Telara in regards to market trends and business models.

Q: So the first title – due in 2011 – is Rift: Planes of Telara, which you’re positioning as a step-up in fantasy MMOs, something that can take on World of Warcraft. That’s a big target…

Lars Buttler: Rift: Planes of Telara is developed by our studio in Redmond City, where we are next door to Electronic Arts and we hand picked super development talent from EA, from NCsoft, from Sony, taking the best of the online gaming world and the best of the traditional videogaming world. We think that Rift is the first fully dynamic, massively multi-player role-playing game with incredible quality graphics.

Since World of Warcraft launched nobody has produced a game with high-quality production values and ground-breaking innovation, not just a clone. So many people have made the claim over time that games should be dynamic and come alive, but we do it.