The RIFT

[00:39] Congratulations to Zephirius for winning the Random VIP Beta Contest!

[01:53] Cindy “Abigale” Bowens comes back to chat about her experiences in Alpha, the recent contentions on the Official Forums, and the upcoming Trion Gamer Day.

[02:18] Abigale talks about the revamped starting areas.

• Playing solo mostly, enjoyed it.
• Can solo throughout the game, but it’s a challenge.
• Have to watch out for roaming mobs, Rifts, Rift Invasions.
• Starting area is no longer “Kill 6 bugs” and contains a lot of interesting Lore.
• Lore is not forced.
• Starting areas is a tutorial, but doesn’t feel like one.

[04:36] Arithion asks how players are introduced to the Soul system in Rift.

• Players will be introduced to many elements of gameplay right away.
• Both starting areas have different interesting lore to introduce players to the game.

[06:05] Abigale tells us a few more stories about her experiences in Alpha.

• She’s replaying the starting areas again.
• Currently having MMO Multiple Personality Disorder, always switching between casters and melee.

[07:53] Arithion questions Abigale about the current state of Alpha testing.

• They are getting tons of feedback and are trying to address the feedback as it comes in.
• Reports are being reacted and responded to quickly. She has seen bugs fixed and in the patch notes within a week.

[09:01] Abigale clarifies the Alpha vs. Beta discussions on the forums.

• They have added quite a few people from the forums, including some guilds.
• Trion chooses people based on the feedback people give, what people have contributed to the community, friends and family, previous testers known to the developers.
• No special “formula” for guilds, they bring in demographics that they might need to test with (for example, if they need to test PVP, they will look for a PVP guild).
• They will continue pulling in players and guilds as needed to test different areas – crafting, PVP, raiding, etc.
• There is a good scope of players in Alpha right now: hardcore, casual, crafters, collection hunters, PVP, lore, etc.
• Lots of crafting feedback, we might get to hear about it Soon(tm)!
• The Beta Thread and the Beta Weekends are for stress testing. The main purpose for Beta is to get the game tested.
• The Alpha is the 24/7 testing ground for feedback, bugs, balance issues, and to get ready for Beta.
• Alpha is to test the crap out of the game; Beta is for focus testing of specific things.
• Beta is partly a marketing ploy and is good for hyping up the game, but is a strong component for focus testing specific areas as needed by the devs.
• There will be many, many other ways for everyone to get VIP Beta Passes before the Beta Weekends happen.
• A lot of the information released has been told as they go along.
• They need a lot of people for the Beta weekend stress testing.
• The Beta weekends are still an invite-only Beta, not an open Beta. You will need a key/pass/invite to get into an event.
• Maybe they will start giving out more than one code a day on Facebook/Twitter/Official Forums.

[19:11] Abigale gives us a bit of information regarding issues with the forums.

• Forum membership has almost doubled in 3-4 weeks, it isn’t the same place as it was a few months ago.
• They’ve had to change things around on the forums, increased moderation.
• There were some misunderstandings on why threads are closed.
• It is perfectly okay to disagree with something they’re doing, to have a negative opinion, and to state a negative opinion. But they are going to have a very clear line about where bashing starts. If you want to tell them you hate the game, the system, they’re all stupid.. that’s fine. When someone starts making remarks about or against the company, any Trion employee, or another forum member – that’s crossing the line.
• Abigale hopes to never have to ban anyone again, but if people start going on about how stupid the team is, how inept, unprofessional, purposely deceitful she doesn’t take it personally but will be protective of Trion.
• Many of the threads that are being locked are usually rehashing other, active threads on the topic.

[26:28] When is Beta coming?

• Soon(tm)! One of these days we’ll get it..

[26:41] There will be PVP based servers and some PVE servers, but not all servers will be PVP based.

[28:23] Abigale explains what the Trion Gamer Day is all about.

• This is usually something done for journalists: bringing in someone from some of the larger press sites (Like MMORPG.com). Another one will be taking place in November.
• They can play the game a bit, talk to the devs, and then they can go back and post about the infromation they gathered.
• Trion has decided to include some members of the community.
• They have decided to do this by asking for nominations from the community and eventually contacting people to see who can make it.
• Participants will be able to go to the studio, play the game, and talk to the devs.
• Since they cannot bring everyone into the studio, they are looking at renting out a venue at night and inviting the public to hang out, have some drinks, play some pool, and relax a bit.
• There is a Poll up so they can get an accurate number of attendees.