This week we review all of 1.5 and bring you an interview with Cameron McNeil a Sr. Systems Designer for RIFT where we talk all the ins and outs of Planar Attunement!

Host: Jason
Co-Host: Kythik

RIFTception - The Official Podcast of Rift Junkies

We got a chance to hang out with Simon Ffinch and Hal Hanlin in the Trion Booth break room as we discussed PAX, patch 1.5 and everything RIFT for quite a bit of time. Please excuse James “Elrar” Nichols for walking across the camera.

RIFTception - The Official Podcast of Rift Junkies

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.

Gaming Illustrated recently interviewed Will Cook, the dynamic content lead developer, to talk about patch 1.3 that is releasing today.

GI: Will, you’re talking exactly about one of the strengths of the games in my opinion. Can you talk a bit about content and what it really means to get good content updates, such as these events and how they’re evolving as the game is now approaching 1.3?

WC: Well the great thing about what we’re doing with world events is I suppose there are two goals that I always try to have. The first one is that anybody should be able to participate in the world event whether you’re level one or level fifty. We want to make sure that in every single phase there’s something for you to do and rewards for you to earn. The other cool thing we’re doing with world events is how we’re updating our library of dynamic content. A lot of the content built into these world events will exist in a slightly different form after the world event ends. We want the stories to make sense but the world event is in a sense telling a live story that everyone’s participating in and when it’s done, that’s the moment that you will remember forever but it’s not going to repeat itself. However, a lot of the individual story elements are still there because as more and more players join the game we want to make sure that they can experience the full story of Telara as well.

For more on dynamic content and Will’s role in creating it, keep reading the at Gaming Illustrated. We also get a confirmation that the World Event is 6 week long.

RIFTception - The Official Podcast of Rift Junkies

Hosts: Jason Dodge (Draegan) and Xep from Fires of Heaven

Direct Download: click here.
iTunes: click here.

This week we got got an exclusive interview with James Nichols, a/k/a/ Elrar, and Billy Shaughnessy, a member of the Raid Dev Team that had their hands on Hammerknell from beginning to end, and talked about Hammerknell and the direction of raiding overall. We get some great behind the scenes stories about Greenscale and River of Souls and talked about Akylios’ twitter account.

Talking points:

• Hammerknell Lore
• Design Process and Timetable
• Lessons learned from GSB and ROS
• World Event Time Table, Hammerknell released a few weeks after patch day.
• Addons and Raiding
• Inside Hammerknell: Visuals and Structural Design
• Raid Progression Philosophy and Hammerknell Progression

Also Jason and Xep discuss everything discussed in the interview as well as some of things coming in patch 1.3. If you like raiding and are excited about Hammerknell, this is a podcast you don’t want to miss.

Over the weekend, Gamefront.com posted an interview with Scott Hartsman discussing server transfers, world events and more, read this snippet and follow the link below for the whole interview.

GF: The LFG tool seems to be working really well so far since you added it in 1.2. Are there more changes coming to it, and if so, what changes can players look forward to?

SH: We actually have the ability to look at all of the dungeon queues across all of the servers in real-time through an interface, which is sweet. You probably noticed that we launched it and immediately made some tweaks to it. There are also a couple of tweaks coded that haven’t rolled out yet. One of them is changing how we calculate if you are eligible for a given tier of dungeons. We’re redoing a lot of the logic around that to make it a lot more clear to players. The interface around it is going to be about a million times more clear than it is right now. Also, we’re working on another fix that lets players reconfirm the role they want to play when their group joins the queue. There’s still a little confusion around that unless you’ve been using the toll for a while.

It’s basically smaller tweaks targeted at usability at this point. The other thing we’re keeping an eye on right now is this: Experts and higher level dungeons are zipping along great on most worlds, but the experience for those leveling up isn’t as good. Because of our free trial and Ascend-a-Friend, there are a ton of people leveling up. But even though there are a ton of people out there using the LFG tool to register for dungeons as they level up, the timing isn’t lining up for those folks to have a good experience. So, we’re trying to find the best solution to get those people together to use the system.

For the full interview visit Gamefront.com.

It’s a Q&A with the QA Team. As Rift Junkies dives into finding out everything there is to know about the behind the scenes work at Trion, we managed to ask Josh York a few questions on how life is in quality assurance.

Hello sir, can you introduce yourself to our readers?

Howdy, I’m Josh York. I’m part of the in-house QA team at Trion here in Redwood City. I’m also an Apprentice Designer under Mr. Gershowitz. I’ve been at Trion for about a year now!

Massively has recently gotten a chance to talk with Scott Hartsman on patch 1.2 and beyond. Here are few choice quotes that we think showcase which direction Trion is taking RIFT.

First we find that 1.2 is coming, potentially, May 4th.

On Looking for Group Tools

One of the biggest improvements with the update is the addition of a Looking for Group tool. This was something everyone wanted, Hartsman said, but the team refused to rush it out the door in poor shape. It does what you would probably expect: Players can queue up for an instance by role (the system recognizes which builds you have and offers options for tank, healer, support and DPS) and then wait as the tool assembles the group for a cooperative adventure. Once a group is formed, the system thenn throws them into the maelstrom automatically. The LFG tool isn’t just for dungeons, either; it’s designed to help players get together for world quest content like epic or arena quests.

The LFG tool will come in handy in conjunction with 1.2′s improved daily dungeon system. Trion’s tweaking the daily dungeon quests so that you can either do one per day or let them pile up so you can knock out a bunch at once. Hartsman said that this caters to the “weekend warriors” who want all of the special rewards of daily dungeons but can only make time for them once a week. The game will store up to seven daily dungeon quests for you at a time.

Emphasis is Rift Junkies above. Great news for those that can’t get on every day to do a dungoen. This aids casual and hardcore players alike.

In Rift Junkies’ trip to Trion Studios back in February we got a chance to meet the localization team. These are a group of people that take every word that you see in RIFT and translate it into different languages the game is played in around the world. You might think that the job is as simple as translating words, but that is only a small portion of it. We got a chance to follow up and ask the great people on the localization team what they do, and how they do it. So if your interested in how it’s done, keep reading and take a peak behind the curtain.

Name: Brian Clarke
Alias: Earth-O-Matic
Position/Title: Lead Environment Artist
Job Description: Creating large world spaces, vistas, and layout; basically sculpting mountains and natural world creation. The stuff you play in. It’s super fly.

How did you end up at Trion and how long have you worked there?

I came off the launch of Warhammer and a very talented friend of mine by the name of Will Cook had told me about a job he had just landed at Trion and that they were looking for more artists. I actually applied to Trion in San Diego but due to some confusion I wound up interviewing in San Francisco and it has been glorious ever since. I’ve been working here at Trion for a little over two years now.