Like the 'what Rift did right' News topic I wanted to write this post about Trion themselfs, I've not indending on leaving any time soon,  sure the game is a 'standard fantasy mmo'  however I'm stay mainly because Trion have done more things right as a developer then wrong

First off the bad: customer service for some of my guildies has been horrible, one has yet to have a reply at all from the CS team about returning his platimum back from a hack attack, and our guild leader sent one requesting a solution to his name tags dissapearing all the time and yet continuarally gets back 'how to set up an account' as a reply..

However this can be somewhat forgiven because it's a company doing a MMO for the first time in the first money ye olde 'OMG the reports are 1000000/hr' mistakes can happen or reports can get lost plus the fact that Trion have effectivly stammped out loss of items/gold/characters via the coinlock system (for free might I add Blizzard...)- compared to AAA companies like Blizzard NC and SOE that STILL have 'robot GMing' and really have 'sloved' hacks by merly just 'improving' on getting your stuff back quicker only while the farmers STILL keep what they've stolen, Trion have done in a month what the others still struggle with (or profit from).

For the 'OMG THE NERFBAT' issues: http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?140020-Balance-Update-25th-March-2011 basically it's exactally what was to be expected considering Bards/Chloros trivialised raid content by just stacking DPS heals, I mean if a Cleric going main healer in a 5 man 'gets bored' because the dpsers are in fact doing most of his work something is wrong there and at least on the pvp side it's no longer all down to 'how many dps healers' you have, plus like everyone said those were APHA notes and Trion have indeed rolled back the 'nerf' for Sabs, which again shows they aren't as heavy handed as they seemed to be.

It leads onto the fact Trion could have easily not have patched the game at all in the first month and slammed down the nerfbat after players have subbed for the next month or a few months in, much like some of the other devs have done - the fact they've hotfixed and balance patched like mad since release again is a massive thumbs up from me showing they actally WANT the game 'working' asap not when th subs drop off.

There are those that state 'but but 1.1  FORCES us to resub to see if the classes are good and the event is cool' - check the date of the event and then check your renewal, it starts on the 30th and my sub states i don't get charged for my 3 month sub until the monday after, it may be slightly different for you but to me that still gives my a whole FIVE days to look over the 1.1 content 'for free' before I've commited another three months to the game, added to the fact Trion extended the discount offer till the 31st, everyone still has time to opt for the 3/6month offers after looking at the new content... Trion could has easily put the patch out on the 3rd like every other dev would have done but they havn't.

Finally the core 'evolution' for the game and Trion isn't the game itself but the backend (aka server/client side), this game has barely had any server downtime and when they have it's only been 30 mins (if that at times because it's almost stright back up again within 5 mins) not the 'standard' 4-8 hours plus the engine holds up REALLY well I've been on ultra during a Invasion with 2 other raid groups with 30-40 mobs in the area and not one crash and 15fps avg on ultra which compared to certain other games that need 'on mass' gameplay for a first month Trion have done a great job in keeping the servers and client 90% running. This also leads on to the possibility of more world content then instanced seeing as the fact that the reason why some MMOs locked away most of their content in instances due to the fact their engines can't handle a LOT of action in one place at once: EVE with it's fleet battles at one end and the AQ event in WoW are known proof that servers have trouble with the 'on mass' part of MMOs.

Trion have also stated that GMs can also control Rift Events, which personally speaking is a huge bonus to the game as most 'GMs' these days are gloyifed tech support and not the 'game masters' of old whom at a whim spawn events for the playerbase to enjoy, if the 1.1 event is a success perhaps Trion will be more inclined to allow this to happen more oftern leading to more past 'endgame' then grind content. Plus the fact the event's rewards are unique to the event, and the event itself is only happening this one time is a bonus as the more events Trion put into play the more the playerbase will 'care' about joining in as it's kinda been proven before 'seasonal' events only really work the once or twice then they just turn into a grind themselfs which is a huge shame.

The second factor is the looming fear of 'server merges' after the 30 day drop off this is likely to happen due to the fickle nature of gamers this gen: however seeing how easily Trion added the new servers, it seems that the rumored server cap numbers of 750K may in fact be true because I suspect that Trion has a larger server infesment size and have multiple servers spilt from a bigger server ready to flick a switch and return those servers back into one - which if true drastically improves the whole 'wait' between the drop off and the actal merges where servers are left 'barren' and most of the playerbase leave because of that. I beleave Trion forsaw all the overcrowding of servers orginally and did this spilt to allow the playerbase to play and the 'servers' are already waiting to be merged, so really there wasn't any 'new' servers at all just new shards of the server because Trion knew that there would be drop off - something that other devs pretend or refused to achknownlage will happen.

Overall Trion have improved where it counts and where we wanted it to count being more of a game developer first then a business group looking to make a quick cashflow then just letting it dry up while they work on their next project.

23:20: Added a bit more about how world events will play out