Rift

It looks like the Gamigo purge from two weeks ago isn't seemingly over, as it's been learned Gamigo has laid off an "unspecified" amount of RIFT developers, though stresses that the MMO is continuing.

The Rift Season 3 Battle Pass is live now. Here's the scoop.

A creative contest is underway in RIFT to kick off Valentines Day celebrations.

The latest Rift patch notes provide some minor fixes for some good old fashion bug squashing.

Fae Yule returns to Rift in the latest patch, along with tweaks to several classes.

MMORPG.com has been given special gift keys for Rift that will give players the Racing Snail in game mount! Get your free key now!

A community manager for Rift has assured the community that development for the game has not stopped.

RIFT patch notes outline several changes and fixes coming to the MMO, including fixes to Cleric abilities, PvP, and more.

The Rift forum has a new post from the gamigo development team that lays out their plans for content releases going forward. In the past, the letter begins, players have had to wait up to two years for a large expansion. Going forward, however, the goal is for more incremental content releases. This includes dungeons, raids, quests and levels coming to players more quickly. This also means that class balancing, callings, souls, abilities and items will also roll out over time.

Feeling a bit short in the Loyalty department in Rift? If so, today's public test shard event will net you 100,000 for your participation. The event is as a result of the test environment's migration to Google's cloud service and devs would like a hand "testing basic server functionality for a couple of hours". The testing opportunity begins at 2:00 pm Pacific / 5:00 pm Eastern.

The Rift forums have been updated with the patch notes from today's update that includes the new Battle Pass Season 1 where players can "progress through 30 levels to claim rewards". Free players can take part in four daily missions and three random weekly missions to progress through the Battle Pass reward ranks. Patrons can participate in six daily missions and three random weekly missions to earn rewards.

A couple of weeks ago, the Rift team posted a cryptic Twitter message asking players what they'd like to see in the battle pass, all without any information about what that actually might be. Today, the Rift site has been updated with the first information about what the battle pass is. It includes 30 levels in season one that are accomplished by completing daily and weekly quests. Players can earn rewards for free, by purchasing the Premium pack for $10 or being a Patron.

Rift is celebrating its 8th birthday with the annual Carnival of the Ascended celebration. Players will find a number of carnival games and special items that include mounts, essences, costumes, pets, consumables and titles that can be purchased with special currency earned during the event. In addition, the Enclave of Ahnket expert dungeon has made its arrival in today's 4.8 update.

The Rift Twitter has a mysterious new post saying that "The Battle Pass is coming soon!" However, there is no further information about what exactly that means for the game, though the tweet goes on to ask what players "wish to see". Respondents in the Twitter thread are rather snarkily responding that, with more information, they might have a few suggestions.

The Rift site has been updated with a note from the Gamigo team to announce to the community that Rift Prime will be closing down on March 31st. No explanation is given for the closure. You may remember that Rift Prime is, or was, a progression server that started with "vanilla" and would gradually unlock content over time. Character transfers will be completed by April 7th.