Seems an interesting interview with Scott Hartsman is in the April edition of "Game Informer" magazine, yes, those things printed on paper
Since there's no version online, just going to sum up the better points made
** When asked if the subscription base was larger now than before TOR, his reply was simply "Yes". **
** When asked about level locking creating Twinks, and what Trion thought of it, he replied that they are watching the situation and he doesn't feel it is a big problem atm. Not many folks doing it, and the gear in Rift isn't designed to make someone hugely overpowered at that level. However, if it did become a big problem then the way Rift's system is designed, they could split the brackets up by gear like they do 50 rank brackets **
** When asked about server population and possible mergers. The rest was basically "servers look pretty healthy right now"
and possibly alluding to cross faction gameplay? "I think some of the places that we can do better are communication across all players and letting all players play with other players, which are two of our big research projects over the next year.
In our perfect world, if I am a dude who is playing Rift and you are a dude who is playing Rift, we should be able to find a way to play together." **
**When asked why Rift didn't go Free to Play, he said that Rift is doing pretty well on its current system and basically they are happy where it's at. **