Here is a video from Adam Gershowitz via G4. In the video he goes through a Life Rift Raid and then the first raid in the game, Greenscale’s Blight, where we get to see two boss encounters. He mentions that there will be five rifts raids at release and one instanced raid. Then in the first 30-60 days after release we will get to see more instances.

Rift Podcast‘s latest episode has Berenger Fish on to discuss the end game content and we get some new insights on what is coming down the line. What we currently know about the end game is that there will be rifts, raid rifts, expert dungeons and instanced raids. With this podcast we find out what raids will be in at release, what comes after, and all the details about raid size and lockout timers.

It was previously announced that raids came in two sizes, 10 man and 20 man. Today it was announced that the 10 man raids have been taken out and there will only be one raid size: 20. This was a tough decision to make for the dev team. Their reasoning was based on technicalities as far as creating different gear power levels, potentially forcing competitive guilds to do both 10 man and 20 man raids in a single lockout and creating a more streamlined design effort when developing encounters.

Today, Arithion of Riftpodcast.com posted a recorded interview she had with Berender Fish, Adam Heteny, and Billy Shaughnessy of the Instance and Raid team. The interview detailed what we as players should expect from instances and more importantly, what to expect for the end game and how progression works. We already know that we should expect dungeons and their expert versions, and we have also been told that raids do exist, but what we don’t know is how they work together. What we’ve learned is that there is a steady character progression, i.e. gearing up, that all characters will go through.

This week on Rift Podcast…

Hal Hanlin is our guest today. He is Rift’s Design Producer and tells us a bit about himself, and what he likes to play. He also goes over a lot of things directly Rift related and gives us some clarification on a few, and some new tidbits on others. Some of the content he covers includes:

* Soul system and its diversity
* Soul acquirement
* Rifts and all their forms
* Rewards from Rifts
* Endgame from Day 1
* Adding content after launch

Kilrathi logged into IRC tonight (8:15pm EST) and gave us a quick description of a few things he found out tonight. He stopped in briefly and didn’t have time to go into any details. He will follow up with pictures and a write-up later tonight.

Things we picked up tonight:
-Two new Mage Callings, Chloromancer (healing mage) and the Storm Caller (ice damage).
-There will be World Raid Bosses.
-There will be two Raid Zones at release. Hammerknell and Greanscale’s Blight.
-Raids will go through tiered progression.
-There will be PVP flags (saw this one coming on PVE servers).
-There will be Guild Perk buffs.
-There is an “AA” like system that gives buffs to resistances that you can slot in and out.
-Token system, or badge system like WOW.
-There are softcaps on stats.

Transcript after the break.