Hosts: Draegan (Jason) DraeganRJ@twitter, Meeo (William) MeeoRJ@twitter, and Ket

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.
Rift Junkies News & Guide Updates
- RIFT 1.2 – Hotfix #3 Notes are up
* http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/05/14/rift-1-2-hotfix-3/
- Community Watch Thursday May 12th
* http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/05/12/community-watch-thursday-may-12th/

Cleric Specs that we talk in general about during the podcast.

Sentinel Purifier

Ket> I chose to put 1 point into Healing Flare instead of Protection of the Ancestors.

Raiding Warden Spec

Melee DPS Spec

MACRO
supressmacrofailures
petattack
petcast Enraged Assault
petcast Satyr Sleep
cast fated Blow
cast Glory of the Chosen
cast Jolt
cast Combined Effort
cast Eruption of Life
cast Lightning Hammer
cast Sanction Heretic
cast Bombard
cast Massive Blow
cast Fervent Strike

Ranged DPS

Justicar/Shaman

This week James ‘Elrar’ Nichols, Amanda ‘Amary’ Fry, Erick ‘Zann’ Adams and Cindy ‘Abigale’ Bowens join Arithion and Desikis to talk about their many different playstyles and the adaptability of the soul system as well as the process of creating the podcast.

Hosts: Draegan (Jason) DraeganRJ@twitter, Meeo (William) MeeoRJ@twitter. Guest Host: Xep, Fires of Heaven (Reclaimer-Defiant)

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.

Greetings Fellow Junkies!

Today’s episode is jam packed full of patch note discussions and some of the latest interview spots. I even let Jason talk about his Bard Articles a bit more but this time in Stereo as Xep shares his opinions on the rogue class and some of the up coming changes. As always we are also looking for comments and suggestions, I track the forums daily for podcast stuff. – Will (Meeo)

On today’s show we touch on some of the following topics:
Last Week On Massively:
Discusses Scott Hartsman on 1.2, 10 Man Dungeons, World PVP (Friday April 22nd) (Source)

Player Test Server: 1.2 Patch Notes ( In Progress ) (Source )

• These where also updated Tuesday night during the recording as well.
• We only cover a the major aspects of the patch notes
• We only talk about Warrior and Rogue changes, way to many patch notes to cover it all.

Questions from a Subscriber

physicsdude of AIE: “Read the nice article about Bards. Would love to hear you guys discussing the viability of support classes as they stand and whether you think they will go the way of the druid in WoW or whether the the support class concept will stick around in Rift.”

Website/Guide Updates:

• Tuesday April 26th: Update to the Warriors Post was posted by Wolfe (Source)
• Also on Tuesday: New Expert Dungeon Guide Deepstrike Mines – (Source)
• Monday April 25th: The Magic Storm: The Warlock Updated (Source)
• Also on Monday April 25th: 2 New Expert Dungeon Guides Abyssal Precipice – (Source)
• Runic Descent – (Source)
• Sunday April 24th: Bard Mechanics Part 2: Design Solutions (Source)

If you have any comments, suggestions, recommendations, post them to the RIFTception Forum! We want to hear from you.

RIFTception Forum

Follow RiftJunkies on Twitter @RiftJunkies

Hosts: Draegan (Jason) DraeganRJ@twitter, Meeo (William) MeeoRJ@twitter

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.
If you have any comments, suggestions, recommendations, post them to the RIFTception Forum! We want to hear from you.

RIFTception Forum

Greetings Fellow Junkies!

We are finally back with our 3rd Episode, again i do appologize for the delay. We have a great episode, had a bit more fun with it, since we are finally getting use to it. Below is a quick list of topics we cover in this episode.

As always i always love you hear from you!!

- Meeo [meeo@riftjunkies.com/Twitter@MeeoRJ]

Host for Show: Draegan (Jason) DraeganRJ@twitter, Meeo (William) MeeoRJ@twitter

Podcast Show Notes:
- Gamebreaker TV The Sanctum (RJ’s own Draegan guest host)
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/04/gamebreakertv-the-sanctum-ep13-guest-host-me/
- Adam Gershowitz On Stuff (Guest starred on RiftPodCast)
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/11/riftpodcast-adam-gershowitz-on-a-lot-of-stuff/
- World Events
- Class Balance
- GM Announcements Hacked
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/09/im-not-a-gm-lol-hacker-plays-with-notification-system/
- Mobile Authenticator
- Daily Quests
- Faction Grind
- RIFT on CNN.com
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/08/rift-appears-on-cnn-com/
- 10 Man Dungeons?
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/07/hmmmm-10-man-dungeons/
- Allies of the Ascended
- People who got hacked
– http://rift.junkiesnation.com/2011/04/01/free-game-time-for-hack-victims/
- RJ Guides and Channel Updates

Follow RiftJunkies on Twitter @RiftJunkies

• Warriors are near where they want them to be dps wise. There are some issues with threat and taunting that they have fixed and are still working on. There are some “edge” situations where they want to look at as far as dps goes but you won’t see any drastic changes.
• Rogues are being looked at now. With Saboteur’s problems that was all the time they devoted to the class for the previous patch. They are looking at them currently and adjust a few things, though they are in the general area of where they need to be. They are definitely looking at Ranged vs. Melee balances as well. Since Sab’s overshadowed all other changes, they will go back and look at dps overall. (Editor’s note: Please don’t nerf us again, and rehaul the Bard Soul! Most boring soul ever.)
• Clerics will be looked at in terms of tuning Inquisitor and Cabalist dps. Some mention was made of healing, but it doesn’t appear to be any major look. The scewed changes to healing from pre-1.1 prevented them from looking at Cleric healing over all.
• Mages looks good right now as well as far as damage goes but they are well aware of Ground of Strength and what it tends to do in PVP situations.

In regards to the healing changes in 1.1, they felt they had to much passive raid healing, i.e. Chloro and Bard heals. They wanted to make raid healing a more of an active strategy.

On World Events: Adam touches on this briefly, but the team is happy with how things are working and they have plans for more events with more stages and more complicated objectives. Sounds like great things are in store for the future.

For the whole Podcast, follow this link to Rift Podcast.com.

Hosts: Draegan (Jason) DraeganRJ@twitter, Meeo (William) MeeoRJ@twitter

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.

If you have any comments, suggestions, recommendations, post them to the RIFTception Forum! We want to hear from you.

RIFTception Forum

Note: This was a very quick podcast for this week, we had to do it very late, so we appologize for the any audio anomalies, as we weren’t hovering over the compressor/mixer during the podcast – Will/Meeo

Summary of Topics:
- Hack Accounts
* ZAM Interview with ManWitDaPlan
* Original Rift Post by ManWitDaPlan
- Our in-game Progress & leveling update
- FoH (Jason’s Guild) Slays Greenscale, quick notes on some of the fights, no secrets given
- Some RJ News Updates

Follow RiftJunkies on Twitter @RiftJunkies

Stay tuned after the dev chat for a tiny glimpse of the Drunken Podcast

The podcast does contain some profanity, so we’ll have to stick a NSFW label on it.

Rift Podcast‘s latest episode has Berenger Fish on to discuss the end game content and we get some new insights on what is coming down the line. What we currently know about the end game is that there will be rifts, raid rifts, expert dungeons and instanced raids. With this podcast we find out what raids will be in at release, what comes after, and all the details about raid size and lockout timers.

It was previously announced that raids came in two sizes, 10 man and 20 man. Today it was announced that the 10 man raids have been taken out and there will only be one raid size: 20. This was a tough decision to make for the dev team. Their reasoning was based on technicalities as far as creating different gear power levels, potentially forcing competitive guilds to do both 10 man and 20 man raids in a single lockout and creating a more streamlined design effort when developing encounters.

There is 10 man content though in the form of Rift Raids, so smaller guilds don’t have to completely be in a mode of despair.

As for how many raids will be in for the game’s release: that answer is one. This raid zone is called Greenscale. This raid instance will contain five boss encounters. Then shortly after release an unannounced raid will be release. The term “shortly after release” was used by Berenger Fish. When the average person is level 50 and geared for raids, both raids should be available for players.

Hammerknell is another raid that is planned and we now know that it will contain “double digit” boss encounters. This raid will be releases soon after the Unknown Raid already mentioned.

As far as progression, both the Unknown Raid and Greenscale will be on the same tier. This means that once you are geared from all Tier 2 Expert Dungeons you should be able to attempt both.

Hammerknell and beyond (yes there is more content in the works!) will contain a second tier of raiding. Berenger Fish talked the work load the development team has on their plate and specifically he mentioned that much of it was already content that is slated for post-release.

Lockout timers were also discussed. Expert 5 Man Dungeons will have a 1 day lockout. “Small Raids” will have a three day lockout and “Large Raids” will have a one week lockout. For now lets assume Greenscale is a “small raid” and Hammerknell is a “large raid” seeing how Hammerknell has at least twice as many boss encounters.

Hard modes were also discussed. There will be no Hard Modes for any of the raids currently but Berenger Fish mentioned that the development team often discusses “if there was a hardmode version, this is what we’d do…”. With that statement, he predicted that there is a 50% chance that Hard Modes will appear later on down the road.

From Massively:

RIFT isn’t perfect, and there’s a lot that might feel all-to-familiar, but the rift invasions and the soul system address the two biggest problems in MMOs today: lack of player interaction and the limitations of the holy trinity in groups. Rifts encourage players to band together, include each other, and fight against a common enemy. The soul system encourages five people, regardless of class, to group up and still have the tools to make progress together. If rift invasions are tuned correctly, and if the soul system realizes its potential, RIFT has a real opportunity to breathe new life into the MMO genre.

Here’s one more from Ten Ton Hammer:

Rift is a graphically stunning game that is filled with both beautiful landscapes and horrific monsters. While graphics don’t always make the game, the look of Rift is excellent and thus far runs smoothly even in a beta setting.

Very few games lately have been able to convey so much in their first 20 levels, but with so much depth and such a quick leveling curve Rift has done an excellent job of immersing me in its world. The combination of so many good elements along with a difficulty level that provides a solid challenge without being oppressively difficult has me wanting to see more and anticipating the next 20 levels and beyond.

And a mid-week podcast from Rift Podcast.com:

Scott Hartsman – Rift’s Studio General Manager, Chief Creative Officer and Executive Producer; Alyvian – forum and irc regular, beta tester and Tranquility Guild Leader and Cindy ‘Abigale’ Bowens – Sr. Community Manager for RIFT join Arithion to talk about the following:

* Beta NDA Lift
* Rift system scaling
* Fullscale Invasion of the masses
* Soul choices overhauled
* More than 51 Soul Points
* Beta 3
* Kelari Roll!

Both Scott Hartsman – Rift’s Studio General Manager, Chief Creative Officer and Executive Producer – and Cameron McNeil – Senior System’s Lead – sat down with Ari while she was at Trion. Though their time was limited they did discuss some of, but not limited to, the following:

* PvP vs PvE Gear
* Soul design and Itemization
* PvP Rankings and Achievements
* Email Login
* Testing Process
* Beta