Trion Worlds announces the launch of RIFT in North America and Australia (since it's Wednesday there already), saying the fantasy-themed MMORPG will launch in pan-European countries on Thursday and in the U.K. on Friday. Word is: "In Rift, the world of Telara is under siege from eight primal forces after the magical ward protecting the planet shatters. Joining either the technomagical Defiant or divinely-appointed Guardians, players assume the role of an Ascended hero brought back from the dead to fight the planar invaders and save Telara. Featuring an innovative class-building system, massive dynamic battles in an ever-changing world, and incredible social gameplay, Rift enters the online gaming arena as the new gold-standard in MMORPGs." The announcement is accompanied by a "This is RIFT" video developer diary where Trion's Scott Hartsman, William Cook, Bill Fisher, Simon Ffinch, Gavin Irby, Aaron Hooten, and Andrew Krausnick team up to explain zone-wide events, the player rewards for participating in these epic battles, and other gameplay elements. The embedded trailer follows.
Acleacius wrote on Mar 1, 2011, 13:00: My question too, are there separate pve servers from pvp and these zone events? E.g. can a pve just play the normal game questing?
The zone events are a huge part of the game, so no they can't be avoided. PvP servers just have open PvP, the events and rifts themselves aren't any different. You can quest, but you aren't meant to only do questing; it's not just a quest grind race to the level cap sort of game. You need to defend those quest towns and hubs from rift invasions or invasions from the other faction's NPC footholds that they will sometimes create.
They scale to the number of players in the zone. I play late at night, and while the servers are still absolutely packed they're manageable regardless of how many are there.
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