As Storm Watchers will already know, today is the day that RIFT: Storm Legion arrives on our shores. Trion’s first expansion for their flagship MMO features ten extra levels, two huge new continents to explore and a whole ship-load of new quests, puzzles and stories. We’ll also finally be able to create our own homes, taverns, castles and whatever else we can imagine with Dimensions.  

(Hi-def here)

To celebrate the launch, Trion have also produced a launch trailer. Using a machinima-style approach, the video introduces Queen Miela, the Storm Dragon Crucia and the neutral city of Tempest Bay, along with several of the zones and creatures we’ll encounter.

If you’ve not already seen it, take a look at the Storm Legion Preorder Video and Volan the Colossus for even more movie goodness. You’ll also find more about the expansion in our preview, and a huge resource at your fingertips with our RIFT Wiki!

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer

With RIFT: Storm Legion launching imminently, we were fortunate to grab a seat at Trion’s latest community roundtable. Fiendish Design Director Simon Finch and passionate Lore Lead Nick McDowell took time out in the final days before launch, meeting with members of the RIFT community to talk about the new zones that we’ll explore in the expansion.

The topic itself is as large as the new continents of Dusken and Brevane, covering the new puzzles, the inspirations and development process for the new locations, and how we’ll navigate the new continents. We also talked about some of the unused or greyed out areas in Classic RIFT, the team’s plans for future updates post-launch, and what they’re excited about with player Dimensions. 

If all this leaves you hungry for more Storm Legion details, don’t forget to check out our report on the previous roundtable featuring those key Class changes, along with our own preview of the expansion. You’ll also find a trove of Storm Legion information in our freshly updated RIFT Wiki!

RIFT: Storm Legion is out tomorrow, and you haven't gotten a copy yet? Well, why not? Fortunately, GetGamesGo.com has you covered. The expansion is being sold there for 15% off, clipping the price from $39.99 to $33.99. And with it, you get all the pre-order bonuses too, including the Storm Cape and early access to the Storm Queen dungeon. But remember this is the last day! Tomorrow you lose out on those bonuses.

Also maybe someone can loan that lady there a Storm Cape - she looks awful cold in that outfit. 

Julian "Mirai" Williams

RIFT 1.11 Hotfix #5 - 7:00am PDT 11/2/12 [NA] - 1:00am GMT 3/11/12 [EU]

WORLD EVENT

• Daily: Hold the Line: Fixed scripting to prevent the quest from resetting - and potentially breaking - at the wrong time.

GENERAL

• Two-handed weapons now properly autoattack at their listed DPS.
• Fixed a bug where coin was not getting split with party members who did not tag a mob.
• The discovery log is now placed in the same configurable directory as other logs, instead of in the same directory as the Rift executable.

SOULS

CABALIST

• Reversal of Fortune: No longer applies to abilities that don't directly target you.
• Seeping Death: Now actually restricted to 1 ally at a time.

JUSTICAR

• Mien of Leadership: Fixed the way overhealing generates threat.
• Doctrine of Authority: Now properly tagged as a Single Target ability in the abilities list.

CHAMPION

• Grim Satisfaction: Should now actually work as described.

PARAGON

• Setting Moon: Increased to 25%.

REAVER

• Soul Devour: Text has been corrected to read 100% rather than 50%.
• Grim Lure: Should no longer have a 180millisecond delay on one of its effects.

RIFTBLADE

• Scald: Suppused to be doing damage based on how many Attack Points were used for Icy Burst - however has an issue right now causing it to not be doing enough damage that will be fixed.
• Fixed a bug causing Storm Blade from Blade of the Ascended to deal 3x the damage intended.

VOID KNIGHT

• Residual Absorption: Functionality changed. Now reduces incoming Spell damage after using Spellbreaker.
• Warrior Shields no longer stack with each other aside from Protective Shield, which is intended to stack with other shields.
• Spark: Set this up so it properly shows as not on global cooldown.

Don't look now, but Trion is hosting a good, old-fashioned open beta this weekend for RIFT: Storm Legion. 

And by open beta, they mean *open* beta. Anyone and everyone interested in checking out RIFT this weekend can do so. You don't need to be a current - or former - subscriber! All you need to do is download the RIFT Lite game client and go to town.

Starting today, those who pre-ordered RIFT's upcoming expansion can play the new Exodus of the Storm Queen dungeon. Since Storm Legion comes out on November 13th, that's way ahead of everyone else! This new 5-man dungeon has promised to really set the stage for the whole expansion's overarching story.

RIFT 1.11 Hotfix #4 - 8:00am PDT 10/30/12 [NA] - 2:45am GMT 30/10/12 [EU]

WORLD EVENT

• Instant Adventure: If you AFK in Sanctum and Meridian IAs, you're gonna have a bad time.
• Moved a few spawn locations away from wardstones and fixed boss and mob hit point scaling on the city siege Instant Adventures.
• Sanctum Instant Adventure: Loosen a Few Bolts and Boots on the Ground: More Storm Legion Golems and Troops will now spawn.
• Bankers, Auctioneers, and Calling Trainers should no longer run off and fight to the death during city invasion adventures.
• Fixed queuing issues for city siege adventures.

GENERAL

• PvP: Reduced the effectiveness of Purifier absorbs in PvP - basically, 'they don't last as long under fire'.
• PvP: Fixed an issue blocking Grounded from being applied in Conquest.
• Nerfed the excessive post-1.11 damage of Scarn's breath (Master Mode Darkening Deeps), Arakhurn's Fire Nova (Rise of the Phoenix), and Swarmlord Khargoth's adds (Primeval Feast).
• Infernal Dawn: Maelforge: Magma Torrent will once again NOT critically hit for facemelting damage.
• Instant Adventure: Fixed some adventures not giving Planar Attunement experience to level 50 participants.
• Fixed an issue where scores were not visible on the Crafting leaderboard.
• Updated the lighting in Terminus and Mathosia.

Been drooling over the screenshots and videos heralding Rift: Storm Legion?

Well soon everyone can jump in and try the game for themselves.

Trion Worlds announced today that Rift's first expansion, Storm Legion, will have an open beta event running from November 2, 10 am Pacific to November 7, 8am Pacific.

It started with news of storms to the east. Torrential rain hammered the coastline; wind picked up the sand and etched away at your skin. No-one but the foolish and desperate would dare to sail in such treacherous weather, and yet someone did. A shipwrecked vessel, said to be indescribably alien in design, landed off the coast of Freemarch. Who would captain this craft through such a terrible storm, and why? 

So began my foray into the second beta weekend for Rift: Storm Legion, the first expansion for Trion’s fantasy MMO. Since first hearing about it on the E3 Stream and going eyes-on at Gamescom, I was eager to find out if the team would meet its earlier grand vision. Would the developer create a roaring hurricane, or would it be a storm in a teacup? While it’s important to remember that this is still beta, Trion does seem on-course to deliver a strong update to its flagship game.

Even with the second beta event finished and a third one approaching, the live game refuses to stand still. What started as a simple harvest festival has shifted to an autumnal storm, as Crucia’s minions from the plane of air assault cities across Telara. It is under this dark cloud that Queen Miela Aurentis set sail from the eastern Kingdom of Pelladane, to warn both Guardians and Defiant of the impending Storm Legion threat. 

All North American shards came down shortly after 8am Pacific on October 24, 2012 for 1.11 Hotfix #3. During this downtime a server restructure is also occurring, changing several NA shards into trial-only shards and leaving eight NA shards on higher capacity servers.

The servers of Storm Legion have arrived early! Since the beginning of the year we’ve been making constant advancements in our server technology as we worked to bring all of the shards closer together. Starting with European servers in July, we began our plans to have everyone in each region play on a single wargroup. Now we’re able to start the next leap forward – further focusing on removing the barriers between shards.

The advancements we’ve made this year have effectively doubled the capacity of the individual servers allowing more of you to play together than ever before while reducing the total number of shards we need to support RIFT’s active population.

What this means for you – we can now support all of our North American players on a single wargroup, further reducing queue times for dungeons and PvP while bringing the community even closer together.

This change is currently scheduled to occur this Wednesday, October 24. Here’s what the new mega-wargroup for North America will look like:

• Deepwood
• Faeblight (RP)
• Greybriar
• Laethys (Oceanic)
• Seastone (PvP)
• Shatterbone
• Threesprings
• Wolfsbane

Briarcliff, Byriel, Deepstrike, Gnarlwood, Greenscale, Keenblade, Millrush, and Silkweb will be converted to trial-only shards – everyone currently on these shards will be able to take advantage of the Free Character Transfers to find yourself a new home or meet up with guild mates. You can find full instructions on how to transfer your characters & guilds here: Trion Support Center - Character Transfers

Sub-forums for the new trial shards will be archived for your reference.

With this massive increase in server capacity it will be easier than ever to enjoy RIFT to the fullest. We’ll be ready for anything as you and your friends storm our shores with the release of our first expansion – we can’t wait!

Patch notes are available after the jump.