For many of us, it was around this time one year ago that we first heard about RIFT, eagerly dived into beta, then started our adventures across Telara. For others, their adventures would begin later, but would be no less exciting than ours. We’ve all had some pretty crazy adventures by now, and it’s hard to believe that RIFT has been out an entire year. But yet, here we are, celebrating alongside the folks at Trion– who, might I add, have some reasons to celebrate.

RIFT started off the show with a smooth launch and a flood of players who hungered for that MMO experience with more to offer. Do you remember the first few days spent leveling in Silverwood and Freemarch? The roar of an epic zone event taking place, the rush of people as they made their way across the map to slay a huge beast, and the cheers sounding out across every chat channel as it was defeated? I think most of us do, and it’s safe to say that for many of us, that memory will always be among our favorite MMO moments.

With RIFT’s one-year anniversary approaching, we’ve been hearing a lot about the celebration planned for the occasion. Patch 1.7 and the marriage addition were forerunners to the actual anniversary, and the in-game world event, called Carnival of the Ascended, is out currently on the Public Test Shard (PTS) for player testing. The event takes a turn from most of the past RIFT events, thankfully, is six phases long, and offers some pretty nifty rewards.

Before digging into an actual review of the event as it stands currently, let me preface this article by saying that many of RIFT’s world events have been disappointing to some players, as described in a past article. The themes for some of them have been awesome, and some of the rewards were cool, but the creativity in them has been lacking. I may be a harsh judge of world events, to be fair, but I know I haven’t been the only player unhappy with RIFT’s world events because of Trion’s official response regarding them.

RIFT Junkies just hit 80,000 members last night just as we have passed our one year anniversary. When we started one year ago, we could not have dreamed of creating such a large community so quickly.

We want to thank all of you out there for your continued support as well as Trion for making an awesome game! Special thanks to the Trion’s Community Management staff: Cindy ‘Abigale’ Bowens, Erick ‘Zann’ Adams and James ‘Elrar’ Nichols for all their cooperation and support as well.

Here’s to another year and the big 100,000th user. We know you’re out there. Make sure you register for free loot as well!

If you haven’t thought about it yet, sign up to become a Premium Junkie! Become part of a special community with benefits and read Rift Junkies everyday without ads!

We also run on your donations, if you would like to support us please donate with the link at the top of the page!