Out of all the "Perks subscribers" are getting the Guild Bonus Experience, is the only one that I don't agree with.
Don't get me wrong I am a member of a level 5 Guild, I just don't think that it is fair to the Guilds that have busted their collective asses to get the higher ranks.
But as I said this is just my opinion and we all know about those.
ZAM Gets Details on Rift's Half-Birthday Party
Players will get all sorts of perks during Rift's Half-Birthday Celebration from August 25 to September 1. We talked with Executive Producer Scott Hartsman to find out more!
Why Host a Half-Birthday Party?
Hartsman said the celebration started as a grassroots movement among the developers. “The idea of throwing a half-birthday came to us in the middle of convention season,” he said. “What can we give back to players? What kind of party would we want to play?”
"We wanted to blow the doors out and say 'here's everything and then some,' ” he continued. “We're playing the same game you are, and this is the kind of stuff we think is fun. We're trying to entertain everybody.”
As for how often Trion plans to host such events, he said it's all about “what makes sense” and how well this party is received by the players. “We honestly don't know the scope of what will happen in the future,” he said. “More activity is good for everybody. There's really no downside.”
'Err on the Side of the Subscriber'
Hartsman was also excited to announce that the party will give Trion the opportunity to add some new permanent technology to Rift that will give subscribers priority for staying in the game when they go AFK. He explained that paid players already jump the queue more quickly than trial members, and this new feature is an extension of that concept.
“When it comes down to population contestedness on paying servers, we're adding new ways to err on the side of the subscriber,” Hartsman said.
The State of the Game
Hartsman said that the population of the game is “still growing for sure.” He said this was due to both the development and publishing teams being unafraid to try new things. “We still think of ourselves as a startup,” he said. “We get to do crazy things, like different sales and incentives.”
He said Trion tends to think of itself as an aggressive company and is constantly trying to think of ways to get more people into Rift. “We try not to be limited by how MMO companies did things 5-10 years ago,” he said.
As for the State of the Game address Hartsman made last month, he said all of those initiatives are still going strong. He said the post-50 planar attunement advancement is “shaping up very nicely,” as are the Instant Adventures. Trion currently has three or four Chronicles of Telara instances in development right now, and some of them are “pretty close to being ready to ship.”
Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff, editor-in-chief
