The Future of Trion

Scott Hartsman, former Creative Director, has returned to Trion as CEO after taking a brief period to... well, I'm not sure what he was doing. Now that he's back, maybe…

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The Newbie Experience

Today I was thinking about the newbie experience in MMOs.  There's something special about those early levels.  It's like developers front load everything great all at once so that players…

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Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 3

In this last look at my tour of Rift: Storm Legion, I want to outline some of the details I gleaned about the world, souls, and overall Rift experience from Community Manager James “Elrar” Nichols.

Changes to the World

Rift: Storm Legion Tempest Bay
Tempest Bay finally brings that real capital city feel to Rift.

Storm Legion adds two new continents and a new capital city.  According to James, each of the new continents are bigger than the original game world.  That means the new areas roughly triple the size of the world. There are two starting locations — one on each continent — and a different experience can be found playing through each of the continents.  Brevane is all about discovering what is going on, figuring out the mystery, and exploring.  Dusken throws the player into the middle of a war.  James emphasized that players can find a unique experience on each of the continents, allowing for additional playthroughs without repeating content.

Quest Hubs are story-driven locations.  The team wants to get away from having a player go to a camp and pick up a ton of kill quests.  Now the kill quests are available in a slightly more organic way.  If a bear is slain it can offer a quest to kill more bears.  You can then turn that quest in to an NPC.  I was reminded of the “bears bears bears” Paul Barnett line back from the WAR hype days.   So like I said, quest hubs are for the story aspects whether for you personally or for the zone.

Read more after the break for my impressions of Rift: Storm Legion. (more…)

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Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 2

In Part 2 of my Rift: Storm Legion hands-on Tour I want to focus on Raids and PvE content.  Storm Legion will launch with 1 20-man raid, 1 10-man raid, 7 new dungeons, and after their first big patch a second 20-man will be added.  Listening to James explain Trion’s approach to content in Storm Legion, I got the distinct impression that Trion really wants to come out of the gate strong.  Their story is important to them.

Regulos and Crucia are some nasty villains.  Regulos, The Dragon of Extinction, The Destructor, and a slue of other titles, is planning his comeback.  His presence (Plane of Death stuff) is clearly visible in some of the new zones.  Crucia, leader of the Storm Legion, Dragon Goddess, and lover of oddly-attractive succubi-harpy-things, is of course center stage during the entire expansion.  These bosses are so big and important to the story of Rift that the only fitting way to emphasize their strength is through raiding.

Rift doesn’t do a whole lot to change the concept of raiding for themeparks.  These will feature tiered loot progression, be instanced, and be very familiar to veterans of contemporary MMO raiding.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is a good thing or not.

I took a ton of screenshots.  Perhaps too many.   Instead of a wall of text, I’m going to give you a picture tour and briefly talk about each image.  Any images I do not include can be found at the bottom in the embedded gallery.   Is it still appropriate to give a 56k warning?

Since I was shown many of the new raid bosses, including the current final encounter for the expansion, I was asked not to reveal any strategies.  Here’s a hint though: Having an invulnerable insta-kill-wielding CM with you helps.

Storm Legion Crucia Returns

Read on for more after the break.

(more…)

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Rift: Storm Legion Tour Part 1

Rift: Storm Legion launches November 13, 2012I had the opportunity to take a private tour of the upcoming Rift: Storm Legion expansion with Community Manager James “Elrar” Nichols.  As many of you know, I played Rift when it first launched back in March of 2011.  I played for a few months, got a couple characters almost to the max level, but didn’t continue playing because I felt like something was missing — I wasn’t hooked by anything in particular.  After this awesome tour, I’m able to see many of those ‘hooks’ making their way into Rift when Storm Legion launches November 13, 2012.

During the tour I was introduced to the story and shown the dungeon that would lead up to the new content.  I was shown the Dimension system (player housing), and also the major end-game raid zones.  Elrar also took me to several of the new zones, explained to me how the content would progress during the expansion, and provided me insights into Trion’s thoughts of Rift’s end-game and its future. I was also granted a max level character for the duration of the beta test currently underway.  So as you can tell, there’s a lot for me to share. I’m going to give you guys my honest opinion of what I saw and fill you in with as many details as I can. Be sure to check back for the full look at my tour through Rift: Storm Legion.

Read more after the break for Part 1: Dimensions! (more…)

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MMO Reboots

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately: Should MMO's reboot more often?  When I say reboot, I'm talking about the same type of reset we see when a…

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