We sat down with Executive Producer Scott Hartsman to find out more about Rift's first worldwide dynamic event, which will add a new raid zone to the game.

ZAM: The raid zone will remain in the game, but the actual event is a one-time deal, right?

Hartsman: Exactly. Part of the great thing about the system is that we'll be able to reuse a lot of the mechanics for them over and over again. So if it turns out that a particular set of event mechanics is really popular, we can put them into a different part of the story and maintain that cool gameplay value, which is nice.

ZAM: Another big part of this event is items. The announcement mentioned hundreds of items, such as a Spectral Horse and a transmogrifying disguise. Can you talk more about the items players will be able to obtain?

Hartsman: Since this is wrapped into a general major update for us, the first major update, there is just the general content addition to the game that we do all the time in addition to the event-specific stuff. The reason we wanted to call out the fact that there are a ton of items in addition to the special ones is our game tracks discoveries; who discovers what and who's the first to see something. Even if you weren't the bleeding edge on launch day and weren't one of the first to 50, it's cool because there are still ways to get discoveries. We're going to keep introducing stuff all the way up and down the level range. It's a fun little surprise when you get the notification that you were the first to find something. “Really? Sweet! I'm level 20 and I discovered something!” That's pretty neat.

The cosmetic items either drop from events or you can get tokens to buy them. Even later on in the game, my suspicion is they would become ultra rares so you won't fully miss out on them. If you really want a great chance at them, being there for the event is clearly the best way to do it.

ZAM: Are there any items you're really excited to get in the game?

Hartsman: Honestly, the Spectral Horse. Give me a mount that isn't our collector's edition turtle and I'm a happy guy (laughs). Not to rip on it because it was a blast, but we were moderately shocked by the uptake of the collector's edition. At the time we designed that turtle with the size that it was, our assumption was, “Oh yeah, like one out of every 20 people will be on it. It will be neat!” You've seen what's actually happened in the game; it's a little more frequent than that (laughs).

ZAM: I have the turtle, so I can't complain (laughs).

Hartsman: Yeah, me too!

ZAM: How often do you expect to add such massive world dynamic events to the game?

Hartsman: It depends where we are in the story, honestly. In general, for any given community the optimal update cycle is kind of different. For us, based on what we took away in beta, it seems that this audience is pretty good with a relatively good clip, which is great because that's what our architecture lets us do. We're about four weeks out from launch by the time the first one is showing up. Then later on we're looking in the four- to eight-week range for general larger scale updates, whether they're new content or new features or a mix of both.

A lot of the focus depends on how well the event is received, to put it bluntly. If players don't like it, chances are we'd either redirect it or try to come up with a different presentation or different gameplay that people did enjoy. Having the ability to get real telemetry back from the servers as to what people are playing and liking helps a lot.

I think we have proven a few times by now that if something needs adjusting for it to be more fun, we're not afraid to say, “that's fine, we'll take a 30-degree change to the left and make it even better.”

ZAM: You actually just tested the event on the alpha server. How did that go?

Hartsman: Pretty well, pretty well. Our internal tests went stellar and then our test in front of users had all of the typical issues you might expect with testing things in front of a real load. Things have been progressing. Yes, we're running into speed bumps, but we're not running into anything that's making us panic right now.

ZAM: With all this talk of worldwide events, are you still considering implementing holiday events or do they not fit into the Rift universe?

Hartsman: It's kind of interesting. I'm a personal fan of them because to me it's less of whether or not they fit into the universe of the game itself and it's more about what's on players' minds and what they're feeling as they log into the game. We come down on the side of wanting to include things like that in the future, just because it's another way for the game to make a connection with people. It's another way for people to have fun when they're already thinking about a time of year or a holiday. I'm sure we will find ways for the citizens of Telara to have been celebrating all kinds of wonderful things that happen to coincide with what players are thinking and feeling already.

ZAM: Is there anything you wanted to mention about the world event?

Hartsman: I'm really looking forward to seeing if people enjoy it and to hearing their feedback. This is going to be our first big world event at this scale, and I've mentioned in the past that there were going to be new types of dynamic content in the future, and honestly this is one of those new types. Like anything else, we expect there will be opinions on it and to us, it's more about making sure that we are reacting smartly and improving as best as we can once people see it.

Darryl Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief