Members of the Trion Worlds team traveled to PAX East to host a party and celebrate the game's launch with fans. We got the chance to talk with Rift's executive producer about a variety of topics.

When I walked into the main entrance of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center to begin my PAX East adventure, the first thing I saw was a huge banner hanging from the ceiling with the now famous phrase, “We're not in Azeroth anymore.” Despite not having a booth, Rift definitely had a presence at the convention.

Trion Worlds hosted a party on Friday night to mingle with fans, and I had the opportunity to speak with Trion Worlds CCO and Rift Executive Producer Scott Hartsman the next day about a wide variety of topics, ranging from account security and server transfers to future updates and balancing souls. Check out what he had to say after the jump!

ZAM: You came to PAX East this year to host a party, but you decided not to have a booth. Why not?

Scott Hartsman: We were doing this thing last week: launching a game (laughs). We kind of decided that was going to be a little important, but we still wanted to come out and say hi and have a party. A party is something we can plan with one or two people, where a booth involves big operational things. Our ops team was working double time on just getting the game out the door and the developers were working double time on making sure the game was actually functioning when it got out the door. We didn't want to interrupt the flow of launching the game to do a show. Coming out and saying hi was good enough.

ZAM: A bunch of fans attended the party. What was it like to interact with fans after launch?

Hartsman: This is the first time since we've been doing large-scale betas that we've been able to come out and have real interactions since the game launched. It's been remarkably positive. I had a couple of things pointed out to me, but they were things that we already have on the list to be fixed, which is good. It was nice that the tenor was more about “what cool thing is coming next” and almost no “when are you going to fix this?” That was incredibly low compared to any other game I've worked on or heard about. A lot of it was, “I'm having a lot of fun. When's the next big stuff coming?”

ZAM: Speaking of what's coming out next, you recently launched update 1.01. How often can players expect major patches?

Hartsman: Right now it depends all on what goes into them and where in the story we are. For the update we just did, it opened some more raid content and raid rifts, and was really just a bunch of usability tweaks and balance tweaks. The game is live and everybody is bringing their A game, so now it's time for us to get into live team mode. Things like that we can do as quickly as once every week or two. Larger updates that include full new content and areas and system, depending on the scope, will be every 4-8 weeks.

ZAM: You said you didn't get many complaints about fixes at the party. Are there any bugs in the game now that are on your personal priority list to fix?

Hartsman: In terms of bugs, not really. The big priorities for us right now are the speed with which the game came under attack from hackers and thieves and credit card fraudsters and all of that. We knew it was going to happen the instant we launched, but it came with more volume than we expected. As a matter of fact, it came with so much volume that had our ops teams not planned for it the right way and expected this amount of it, it would have taken out a smaller company. It was effectively the same thing as being denial of service attacked. The attacks were coming that fast. We reacted pretty well.

With the attacks also came the spam. We reacted by tuning up the spam filter than had been collecting data all through beta and getting that turned on within the first few days of Head Start, which cut down on spam a lot. When you block game spam, people move to mail spam, so the mail spam filter is being updated right now.

Also, the other thing is people who have used the same log in credentials for our game as they have for other games and been hacked in other games, those hackers still have their credentials. A lot of the time we'll see people getting their stuff hacked that way. We're actually going to a more secure log in system where if you log in from a place other than your current computer, we will be economy locking your character. We're calling it a coin lock where you can play the game, you can gain stuff and loot things, but you can't sell or destroy anything you own or mail off your coin. That's the first thing they do. They log into your account, sell of your junk and mail all the coin. If you log in from someplace other than where we know you've logged in as you, you're going to get an e-mail with a one-time password that you're going to use to unlock your character. It's just another layer of protection that's going out pretty soon. There are a couple other plans in the works as well.

ZAM: That sounds incredibly interesting. Do you have any thoughts on players who jump computers a lot? Will they have to input that password every time?

Hartsman: The nice thing about this is it shouldn't take any longer or be any harder than using any existing pin-code type of thing. The pin is coming instantly to your e-mail instead. I'm not too worried about the delay. But yeah, over time we'll be able to whitelist all of your existing computers. But right now we really just want to make sure to get something out there that's going to help some of these people who are compromised from other games and don't even realize it.

ZAM: Do you have plans to implement an authenticator?

Hartsman: Yeah, it's in progress right now.

ZAM: Will it be physical, downloadable or both?

Hartsman: Right now we're looking mostly at apps for phone downloads and text messages. You can register a cell phone and have the code texted to you.

ZAM: Cool, so players who don't have smartphones can still have access to it.

Hartsman: Exactly. The goal is to make sure it works on any phone. If you can receive a text message or receive an e-mail, you can use it.

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