MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller recently managed to corner Rift Design Producer Hal Hanlin to talk about the forthcoming v1.3 Rift patch. The pair covered topics from Hammerknell to the Waves of Madness live events and more. Keep reading!

What impact will Waves of Madness have on the game world for players?

In addition to the world-spanning events, the zone invasions, swarms of Water- and Death-themed colossi, the weather will be changing. Make sure to upgrade every beacon you see because when the flood comes, you will want as much help as you can get.

Read more of Garrett Fuller's Rift: Patch 1.3 Interview with Hal Hanlin.

Awesome!! Looking forward to this Update and more coming and expansions.

With * New armoru apperances. Do they mean a remake of all the mid-low ugly armors too?

I like this game but I have to wait, easy to burn out on this one (waiting for new starter zones, deeper crafting, tons more content aka different movement paths, way higher level cap, etc).  Too bad it's center staged on endgame, still a great game for the most part.

Been subbed to this game for about a month now since leaving WOW and I must say i'm really loving it.  Keep up the good work Trion.  I love the Lore behind this game, and please don't be afraid to expand on it more with more books please.  Yes I am someone that actually reads all those books found in game. 

Awesome.

I like the soul system but beyond that the game is cut and paste and uninspired. It gets boring and old very fast with single path leveling and paint by numbers hub system.

Rift is the definition of mmo themepark clone. It's gimiks cannot hide this enough sadly and misses it's chance to set itself apart from the bloated mmo market. Interesting lore and a unique twist to characters falls short to blatent cloning of traditional mechanics.

I truly had hoped it would be different but Trion with all it's great efforts lacked enough vision to pull off a truly great game.

Back to what the article was intended for, discussion on the update...

I played in the betas and while I did enjoy the game I knew I would have to wait for more content. I hope Trion keeps pumping out large patches like this and listens to their respected subscribers. 

I may actually sub soon!

This is one of the few games I've played where the mages are out-DPS'd by rogues. And the very things that mages do well are being nerfed in the 1.3 patch.  It will be interesting to see how long mages continue to play or if the rogues get another rise in population.

Trion continues to impress. I read (somewhere) that there will also be a new level 50 zone soon, so they are adding to the landmass as well as adding raids.

If they keep this up then I can see them attracting even more players. In comparison to WoW or LOTRO they are fast, really fast, in adding content and keeping the world fresh with world-sacle events.

I agree that the endgame of leveling alts isn't fantastically attractive because you'll typically do the same quests and be in the same zones. The trick there I think is to find an archetype and combat style that is radically different to that of your main.

Reactions to Rift from players seems polarised. Which is fine. We know that many here are fed up with the genre being samey. This means they label every MMO a clone unless it is an indie FFA PvP game. I'm not sure what to say to these people anymore, except maybe to stop the endless whining and get on with something else in life?

LOVE IT!!!

   The Devs are listening to the Players?, should be gettn easier and easier with less and less players, this new patch should add a good 2 weeks of fun  play, so few players on my server this morning, searched through 4 zones for Artifacts, seen one other player in 2 hours.

Originally posted by Tamanous

I like the soul system but beyond that the game is cut and paste and uninspired. It gets boring and old very fast with single path leveling and paint by numbers hub system.

Rift is the definition of mmo themepark clone. It's gimiks cannot hide this enough sadly and misses it's chance to set itself apart from the bloated mmo market. Interesting lore and a unique twist to characters falls short to blatent cloning of traditional mechanics.

I truly had hoped it would be different but Trion with all it's great efforts lacked enough vision to pull off a truly great game.

 

I have to agree.  It's fun for a couple of months and the soul system is generally very good.  However, nerfed dungeon content and high end rift events that never seem to work quite right make the level cap a lot less fun than the leveling process.  Basically, the game has become just anohter clone and that's really a shame for a game that had done a lto fo things right at launch.

Second, I get that Trion has created a lot of lore, but it doesn't translate in game.  There's no emotional connection created between the player and generally well designed game world.  Many players that I met didn't even know the basics about who the villains were.  Honestly, I didn't catch a lot of the story either and I cleared every zone of quests except Shimmer and Moon.  In the end, that's what really makes Rift just another clone.  It's the lack of any sort of emotional connection to the villains/main npcs in game.

I'm on a low pop shard... after two guilds imploded and the elitists in a couple of others, I just stated a guild for my wife and I.. 

No stress.. but also no chance of doing most of the endgame content.  The last thing I want is another cool instance that I will never see.

If they want to keep me around they will have to spend more time on content that can be played rather than hardcore raiding.  I'm sure that the devs are all hardcore raiders and well done.. but what about the rest of us.  I doubt that the raiders make up even 20 percent of the players.. how about some love for the rest of us.

Sadly, the PvP aspect seems to always take a back seat.

Getting more dragons to kill doesn't do it for me I'm afraid.

What I would really like to see is some importance and resources placed into revamping the 'Open World PvP'.

The snippets I've seen for 1.4 only scratch the surface and Trion doesn't have much time left before other stronger PvP titles hit the shelves. 

I didn't read every word of this interview, but what I saw looking something like this:

"another raid, and an event leading up to that"

I am sure there are loads of people that find that interesting.

Personally, I can't imagine anything less likely to inspire me to resub.

I can't  wait for an MMO that creates a large living world again. It would be great if GW2 offered that.

Originally posted by HurricanePip

 There's no emotional connection created between the player and generally well designed game world.  Many players that I met didn't even know the basics about who the villains were.  Honestly, I didn't catch a lot of the story either and I cleared every zone of quests except Shimmer and Moon.  In the end, that's what really makes Rift just another clone.  It's the lack of any sort of emotional connection to the villains/main npcs in game.

I have to agree. I think it was the sense that everything was too crowded, too fast, with a gazillion different people asking you to kill 5 anonymous whotsits.

Factions that zoomed by in a couple of hours - very little reason to make any connection with any of them.

Fast leveling was a major part of the problem.

People respond 'but slower leveling would be boring'. To which the answer is: only if the content itself is boring! Do you conclude 'Witcher 2 is boring, because it takes too long to get to end game'? No. Because the journey is the fun.

In Rift, the game is pitched and balanced in such a way that it became a race to a cut n paste end game.

I think the designers' fear of any meaningful world pvp was another major problem... With no random diversionary skirmishes to keep you in a place, the zones became mere waypoints in a rush to level cap, rather than interesting places in themselves.

There are also very few "Wow!" moments. The main city gives a brief wow... and the first couple of times you see a rift, yes. But after that the zones, while fine, create very little sense of epic engagement.

Most of the world NPCs just sit around waiting for their turn to be easily killed. They aren't affecting your character's life in any way. Your interaction with, say, the vampire lord is incredibly brief.  NPC: there's some vampire lord in a town. go kill five zombies, pick up the thingie, then kill the lord. Character: OK. /kills five zombies, picks up the thingie, goes to kill the lord.  Lord stands around in one place, swings his sword a bit, then dies.

This is meant to create a sense of involvement?

Take that titan thing you free earlier on... very boring.

You should have seen that sucka march into the main town, levelling buildings and sending players flying. No chance. He just bumbles about a bit.

Even the zone bosses do nothing much. They don't destroy anything. There is no penalty for dying to them. When you kill them, you overcome no roadblock to your personal journey.

With very little sense of real adventure in this world, its not surprising it is devoid of emotional appeal.

Originally posted by darthlopez

Been subbed to this game for about a month now since leaving WOW and I must say i'm really loving it.  Keep up the good work Trion.  I love the Lore behind this game, and please don't be afraid to expand on it more with more books please.  Yes I am someone that actually reads all those books found in game. 

 

I have also left wow for 2 months and will definitively return. As I see it now, there is wow and there is Rift. Nothing else. Ok, few ... for very short breaks.

But I'm for now again to wow mainly for one incredible annoyance in Rift: invasions and spawn points that happen at QUEST HUBS! Sometimes had time at evening few hours to play .. but happened all my alts were at that point! I simply could not play. For hours and hours could just wander there around or try to solo or 3 solo which was of course impossible (having i.e. 1000hp and that damn stone i.e. 130.000). Never enough players enough to destroy forces with silly big power compared to players suited to be at that level. At the end of such week I simply had enough of this frustration and quit. But I admit leveled my guardians to same level (around 35) without this problem in areas for guardians. Created defiant on other server ... and disaster. Not sure if server or just faction problem.

Originally posted by jacklo

Sadly, the PvP aspect seems to always take a back seat.

Getting more dragons to kill doesn't do it for me I'm afraid.

What I would really like to see is some importance and resources placed into revamping the 'Open World PvP'.

The snippets I've seen for 1.4 only scratch the surface and Trion doesn't have much time left before other stronger PvP titles hit the shelves. 

Agree absolutely.