Trion updated their Storm Legion expansion page yesterday with some lore information on Crucia and the Infinity Gate. This information is actually the same reveals we saw yesterday from MMORPG.com and Massively, but it’s nice to see the lore and images on the official expansion page.

One tidbit in particular stands out as interesting, on the Infinity Gate lore page:

“The Ascended must secure the Infinity Gate and the Nexus Key if they hope to rid Telara of the dragons, or explore the planes themselves…”

Trion has previously given us hints about providing Ascendants with a way to explore the planes, and a new expansion’s the perfect time to showcase an adventure of that magnitude. Perhaps the planes will hold our future post-expansion content? The rumored Hunt Rifts might also be connected somehow. The sky’s the limit! Let the speculation begin.

Trion Studios conducted their question and answer session on Reddit today with Scott Hartsman taking the stage. The Executive Producer took part in a RIFT AMAA, which stands for “Ask Me Almost Anything”. This meant that, unfortunately, some questions remained unanswerable, especially most pertaining to Storm Legion and patch 1.10. Still, some interesting questions did get answered, and similar to yesterday’s AUAA session with Trion’s Community Team, we received a rare glimpse into the work place where Telara comes to life.

The entire AMAA session can be found on Reddit, but for a distilled version with only the questions and answers, keep reading. Note: it’s still quite a long read, though I’ll do my best to cut out some of the unneeded fluff.

This week, Trion’s hosting a two-day AUAA (Ask Us (Almost) Anything) Reddit chat. Yesterday was day one of the chat, and Trion’s community team members– James ‘Elrar’ Nichols, James ‘Walsingham’ Weeks, and Amanda ‘Amary’ Fry answered a whole bunch of questions. The entire Reddit chat can be found here, but in case you want the short version, here it is, with only the direct questions and answers. That said, it’s still quite a long read, and you can definitely tell the team had fun with some answers!

Not all questions asked were given answers, unfortunately, but there’s still one more day of questions and answers to come. Today, Scott Hartsman is supposed to be among the team members answering questions from the community, so it’s possible that we’ll see answers to some of the more design and developer-focused questions then.

Last night, RIFT’s community team announced a brand new project– an official RIFT live stream! The team plans on using the live stream to show off bits of projects currently in development and answer questions the community may have. The first live stream will take place this Wednesday, June 20th, at 3:30 PM PST/10:30 PM GMT on RIFT’s Facebook page and on TwitchTV. The team plans on answering some of the questions that RIFT players are currently asking in this thread.

Make sure and check it out! For more information, please see this thread, or continue reading.

Originally posted by Gersh (Source)

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Afternoon everyone,

Obviously the announcement of RIFT’s first expansion Storm Legion has generated a lot of excitement and of course a ton of questions. We tried to answer many of these during the live stream today, but of course we couldn’t get to them all. As a result we wanted to get a short FAQ out to everyone about what to expect for classes in the expansion.

Please keep in mind this isn’t an exhaustive post of everything we plan on doing but rather a quick high level overview. As we get closer to release we’ll be sharing more detailed information on changes with everyone. That being said we’re still very early in the development process and definitely want to spend some time with our BETA testers refining the changes before we announce them all.

Now on to the Q/A!

RIFT’s community blog has posted the Q&A session with Adam Gershowitz at Gamescom. A myriad of questions were asked and our favorite was about the Bard. (Editor’s note: I really wish I could see Adam’s face when he said that.) We also find out that 1.5 will be going live at the end of September.

Q: What is your overall impression of Hammerknell and fixing the bugs that came with it?

A: We tested Hammerknell very heavily; we had 100s of people running through and testing these encounters. When we rolled it out to the public, and even more were running it, we found issues as is to expect when so many are playing. That said, Hammerknell worked well for us. Yes there are bugs but we fix them almost daily. When they get reported to us we turn around and fix them right away. Players so far have been excited about the speed of fixes and the dungeon itself.

More question and answer sessions are coming out today as different sites wrap up their time from the recent community events. ZAM gives us their own Q&A session with several different developers including Scott Hartsman. Here are a few teasers.

ZAM: How long is the day and night cycle in the game?

Hartsman: Seven hours. We intentionally don’t have day and night quests. One of the things we’re in the process of doing right now is deciding exactly how much of that seven hours is day and how much of it is night. Right now the way our world is set up, the day period and the night period are even. We’re skewing it a little more toward daylight hours and more dawn and dusk hours and a little less pure night, because pure night in MMOs tends to be too dark to be fun.

Here is one answer that was very interesting.

ZAM: What are your plans for the transportation and teleportation system? Will there be faster travel options after launch?

Brown: You’ll have things like teleportation, fast mounts, buffs and guild summoning at launch. You’ll have tons of ways to get around. That being said, we’re a fully modeled world. There’s no reason we couldn’t possibly do flying.

Just want to point out here that there will be an ability to summon your guild to you. Great news here.

In TenTon Hammer’s sixth Q&A session, readers got a chance to submit questions to Drew Clowery, Game System Designer, about anything regarding gear. We don’t learn anything specific but apparently there isn’t anything new in Rift regarding gear. There will be different types of rarity, better gear comes from more difficult content and all the typical loot rules etc. will be in at launch.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there armor sets and bonuses?

Drew Clowery: This is something that I, personally, really want. But that doesn’t mean it will get in right away. We’re not planning on having armor set bonuses at launch, but we will be paying close attention to the community feedback during beta and beyond.

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you have an idea of how many armor sets are available?

Drew Clowery: I have a pretty good idea! I work with those guys regularly. (laughs) We have 48 different models, and then each model has a number of texture variants. Those texture variants can dramatically alter the way the model looks. There are 48 underlying models where the physical geometry looks like this, and then a large of texture variants which changes the look of the whole item. We have quite a few.

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.

TenTon Hammer has released another Q&A, this time on lore.

In this fifth exclusive interview with Trion Worlds, Ten Ton Hammer delves into the lore behind Rift: Planes of Telara. To get the inside information on how the world of Telara was shaped and molded, we talked to Lindsay Morgan Lockhart, Defiant Lore Lead, and Nicholas Taylor McDowell, Guardian Lore Lead. A great deal of the lore of Rift: Planes of Telara was discussed, including factions, dragons, the Ascended, and the dangers facing the citizens of Telara. If you have any questions you wish answered in a future interview, please post them in our official Rift forum.