The RIFT

The Rift: Episode 22

[02:51] What can you tell us about the Beta, from your perspective?

• It was really exciting.
• They started at about 10am Friday morning, letting in small numbers of people at a time.
• There weren’t really many errors. The patcher did have some issues, which were fixed shortly.
• They are taking feedback and making fixes/changes as fast as they can.
• The overall mood in-game was that people were enjoying themselves.

[05:31] On Saturday night, the developers started introducing Invasions.

• The Rifts/Invasions adjust to the number of active players in the area.
• Towns were being invaded; people had to fight through them to finish their quests.
• You can run around and complete your quests or just run around and try to fend off the Rifts and Invasions!
• Invasions will destroy Quest Hubs, so sometimes you will have to take back that area to continue your quests.

[07:53] Has all of the feedback you received been positive, or has there been negative feedback as well?

• There is always negative feedback.
• Some people feel that this isn’t the game for them. This game won’t be for everyone.
• The majority of people that have followed the game and thought this was a game for them were generally pleased.
• Of course, there were a number of things that need to be fixed, suggestions to make things better, etc.
• There were some people who wanted specific things to change to fit their ideal game, instead of Trion’s.
• As an example, people who want RIFT to mimic Everquest 1. There are a number of similarities, but this will not be EQ1.
• This game isn’t meant to reinvent the wheel. It has taken some things from the past, and tried to add some fun and exciting features.

[10:49] How is the Team feeling? Are they feeling positive? Are they hard at working making changes?

• Both. They are very happy about the job they did.
• On Friday night Scott Hartsman sent out an email to the team about how happy he was on how the Beta went.
• There was hardly any downtime and issues were handled quite well.
• Some of the Team even came in with sleeping bags, knowing they weren’t going home that weekend!

[12:23] How do you think peoples’ computers were holding up in regards to the specifications posted earlier?

• She isn’t particularly up-to-date on the specifics.
• In general, there were a few people who had the graphics quite high and running well, and some people who had a lot of issues with low Frames Per Second (FPS).

[13:28] How was the Customer Service system working?

• The bug report/customer issues/etc service ran pretty smoothly.
• There were Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) available all weekend.
• The CSRs were keeping up with the emails and petitions, and many were handled very quickly.
• They still don’t have a full Customer Service team yet.

[14:46] Can you clarify information on the VIP passes?

• If you have a VIP pass, you will be in every event in the future.
• Trion and other websites will continue to be handed out throughout the Beta.
• There was a large number of regular, non-VIP codes added to Beta as well.

[16:28] So the team is taking everything they’ve learned from this Beta event and applying it so that the next events will be better?

• Absolutely. The next Beta (Guardian side) will gather a lot of good information for their starting area.
• By the time that both sides are available (Beta Event 3), most things should be running very smoothly.

[17:26] When will RIFT be releasing?

• Still Soon(tm)!

[18:01] How was the overall response in regards to the amounts of invites sent out to the people playing?

• It seemed that way to Abigale.
• Every server there was packed.
• From what she saw, the servers seemed almost filled to capacity.

[22:03] What ice cream are you going to sit down and eat?

• Ben & Jerry’s Mudslide ice cream!