Introducing: Rift Prime !

[Slipmat]

A few months ago we first started to hear whispers of Rift 'challenge' servers with different rule sets from the main game, today we have a taste of what's coming in 2018 with a brief Dev's Blog of some of the things to expect for the coming months.

Rift Prime:

It seems Rift Prime will be a return to old skool Rift with a subscription based, fresh start server with no lockboxes, a vastly reduced Store, dynamic zone scaling so no matter where you are, you scale to the zone, all Dungeons dropping loot scaled to your real level so running Realm of the Fae scaled to level 15 will give you level 70 loot etc.

In the Spring of 2018, we will launch a new server, RIFT Prime. We’ve paid a lot of attention in discussions with all of you and within the broader gaming community regarding business models in the MMO and games industry as a whole.

We have the opportunity to experiment with this fresh RIFT server using an oft-requested subscription model and progressively unlocked content. Our goal for RIFT Prime is to provide the experience that many of you have requested: no lockboxes, a significantly reduced store with more of the current store-based items obtained through gameplay (or removed entirely) – plus the excitement of sequential progression through RIFT’s content with monthly milestones and achievements.

We plan to present RIFT at its roots as much as is possible to do, and look forward to sharing details over the coming weeks. The PRIME server will progress at a faster pace than the original launch and will eventually come to an end in spectacular fashion.

As a small teaser of what’s to come, dynamically matching characters to their current zone’s level, dungeons dropping loot specific to your character’s true level, caps on the number of professions available to a single character, and participation awards that carry over to your characters on existing servers.

Many upcoming live content changes that apply to existing servers will also apply to the new PRIME server, assuming they’re not restricted by progression locks. We look forward to exploring all of these features and more with you in blogs and livestreams to come.

PvP players also got thrown a bone with News of a new Warfront, some servers getting tech to have them in an 'open World' PvP state:

Another area that we have heard a lot of feedback on is PvP. We are happy to say that some time after RIFT Prime is released, we’ll start talking about our next warfront! This will include a new game mode taking place in a completely new area with a new look.

We are also currently testing new gameplay tech that would allow us to make some radical changes, such as servers that are in wide-open PvP status, meaning anyone and everyone is fair game, with the exception of guild members (sorry, extreme griefers)

(We promise not to do this on existing PvE servers.

Full Source: http://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/2.../2018-rift-on/

The Live Stream tonight at 19:30 GMT will have more details and a Q&A discussion

https://www.twitch.tv/trionworlds

**Edit:** I could swear i had these links added when i posted, must be losing it.

[Eleccybubb]

This sounds really meh at best. I mean if it's a progression server that means it will eventually progress to NMT/Starfall yes? And well that's when the exodus began.

The loot thing is silly. Why should you get max level loot from running a lower level instance for starters? Now I mean if the lower instanced had a max level version it would make sense but loot should not scale up on an instance like Realm of the Fae which was easy as hell at launch.

Plus it means diddly squat if this server has a reduced store. The others still have the borderline P2A/P2W mechanics.

And a sub model? Welp good luck with that I guess.... Literally the only thing that sounds "old skool" about it so far. I can't say I agree with them going a sub route for it when they already milk players through a bloated cash shop on the other servers.

Now onto Rift in general.

New Warfront is pointless. PvP balance is non existent and balance in general is. So nice to see they are focusing on the important things...... oh wait.

Is PvE seriously just going to be another fucking Intrepid upscale for raiding? I get it's less work but it was bad enough the T1 raid was ROTP upscaled.

Seems like they are just going to put too much focus onto this "prime" server and let the other ones go to hell from my quick skim of the producers letter.

All in all I don't believe they know what the playerbase wants anymore. And that they just assume at this point. The content they announced for the live servers seems really weak. And these "prime" servers seem like a quick cash grab from subs.

[Puupi]

Is this prime server thing going to be some temporary event/season kind of thing or a fresh server that will stay open indefinitely?

[Eleccybubb]

Is this prime server thing going to be some temporary event/season kind of thing or a fresh server that will stay open indefinitely?

Better question is...

Are there really that many people willing to even pay a sub for Rift anymore? Even if it is a slightly better version.

Judging by the lack of content shown for the main servers and the fact this has a sub it seems that they are focusing on this and trying to milk some more money.

[Puupi]

Better question is...

Are there really that many people willing to even pay a sub for Rift anymore? Even if it is a slightly better version.

I would pay for a polished rehash of vanillaish RIFT on a fresh server with tons of people.

I loved RIFT back in the day. I think it is the best MMO that brought up all the new features that WoW has today - like dynamic world and scaling. RIFT class design is also so great. When I played RIFT, sadly all my WoW friends were so hooked on WoW they didn't want to touch RIFT. Now they probably would test it out.

A vanilla RIFT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> classic WoW any day of the week.

[Eleccybubb]

I would pay for a polished rehash of vanillaish RIFT on a fresh server with tons of people.

I loved RIFT back in the day. I think it is the best MMO that brought up all the new features that WoW has today - like dynamic world and scaling. RIFT class design is also so great. When I played RIFT, sadly all my WoW friends were so hooked on WoW they didn't want to touch RIFT. Now they probably would test it out.

And now that begs another question.

Can the current team really polish it up?

And if it progresses to NMT/Starfall people will just lose interest as they have with the main game.

[Moxal]

I would pay for a polished rehash of vanillaish RIFT on a fresh server with tons of people.

I loved RIFT back in the day. I think it is the best MMO that brought up all the new features that WoW has today - like dynamic world and scaling. RIFT class design is also so great. When I played RIFT, sadly all my WoW friends were so hooked on WoW they didn't want to touch RIFT. Now they probably would test it out.

A vanilla RIFT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> classic WoW any day of the week.

Me too, I would totally go for this.

[Eleccybubb]

Me too, I would totally go for this.

Oh yeah I would to.

If it's progressive though I would stop at NMT/Starfall.

So to be honest it's only worth the sub up to a certain point.

[Aeula]

Now I’m interested.

Vanilla was when RIFT was at its best.

[Keltas]

It seems nice enough to be worth trying, assuming they can actually keep their cash shop garbage away from it.

But I'm not getting my hopes up. Archeage promised the same thing and ended up dead with p2w everywhere too.

[xenogear3]

Copy Cat !

It sees WoW classic server.
Now me too !

[Slipmat]

Copy Cat !

It sees WoW classic server.
Now me too !

Except they announced Challenge Servers months ago last year and will have it up and running in the next two months

A lot of the Rift Devs cut their teeth on Everquest so i'm guessing it's based on the EQ style of progression servers mixed in with what they know about ArcheAge.

I'm hoping they'll stop around Update 1.7 or so, just after they added Ember Isle and we had the Wave of Madness World Events for opening Hammerknell, we'll soon see i guess.

Somebody must be running the numbers and saw an opening or got enough metrics to see it as viable?

One thing we can talk about is that we do not expect RIFT Prime to draw away all currently active players. In fact, the audience we are looking at are the lapsed players who want to go back to the days of the subscription model and Chocolate RIFT (never vanilla).

Based on our experience with the ArcheAge Fresh Start servers, the large majority of RIFT Prime players will be former players. A minority of people will play both services, or convert from one to the other. This is not guesswork, this is based on what we KNOW from AA and other games that many of us have worked on.

The initial investment of time and resources is significant, but the entire team is very excited about it. Once the new service is up and running, all content will be developed for both, at the same time. More revenue = more content.

We have heard a rising tide of feedback from people who want a return to the subscription model, where everything is included in the price of admission. We are answering it with the RIFT Prime endeavor. Players will finally be able to choose for themselves between the subscription and F2P models

Source: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ml#post5335753

[Super Kami Dende]

I'd legitimately play it. I was in the Top Briarcliff Guardian Guild on release, got a bunch of Shard firsts and had an absolute blast of a time for the first 6-8 Months of RIFT. Much of RIFT's problems came in the First Expansion and just compounded from there.

Unlike my utter disdain for Vanilla WoW and Classic servers for it, RIFT's start is a clear better version of what it became.

[shimcham]

so far sounds like alot of nothing. i;ve had enough reshashed content not gonna pay to play an entire expansion i already did. (plus what made it great was also the pop, which i doubt will be 15 percent of what it was. subs were 1 mill+ current pop is like 5k total)

new warfront? how about you fix the fact that some classes are completely broken in pvp and doing way more damage than others, or more healing than others. pvp is literally a rogue/war/prim playground. mages clerics need not apply. if that wasnt bad enough noncaster get to wear PVE gear in pvp. yup nothing wrong with wars rogues prim being able to have extra stats.


zero mention of the fragment systems or any updates. this has literally killed alts. if u dont have huge amounts of plats to spend then its a waste to try to have an alt. even with a plat nerf its still a huge currency sink. zero work done about the rng.

heres brasse on balance pve balance

"I'll be honest - not sure how one manages class balance in a game with over 4,000 soul combinations, but the team is always looking at data, numbers and feedback. =)Brasse"

so yeah apparently if u arent playing rogue or prim in pve then screw you for not picking those classes. its no longer bring the player its now bring the class. yeah im gonna pay money to underperform regardless of skill level just because im not playing something different. as always its nice to see brasse being dismissive and snarky(a bannable offence on the forums) about a major issue which has been a talking point through out this entire expansion.

its not like there are only a few viable raid specs for all classes which are the current meta that need to be adressed. nope in her mind its always every spec that any rando could ever make.


its not like class balance wasnt done in in vanilla and sl. which brings another point they couldnt even handle updating old dungeons to the new area because the game literally launched with 3 new dungeons and people were asking for more. but that wasnt possible. so now somehow they are gonna take on the original expansion?

[Eleccybubb]

I'd legitimately play it. I was in the Top Briarcliff Guardian Guild on release, got a bunch of Shard firsts and had an absolute blast of a time for the first 6-8 Months of RIFT. Much of RIFT's problems came in the First Expansion and just compounded from there.

Unlike my utter disdain for Vanilla WoW and Classic servers for it, RIFT's start is a clear better version of what it became.

Just bear in mind this is modern Trion working on it though.

I have a feeling they will somehow mess up releasing a progressive version of the game today.

- - - Updated - - -

so far sounds like alot of nothing. i;ve had enough reshashed content not gonna pay to play an entire expansion i already did. (plus what made it great was also the pop, which i doubt will be 15 percent of what it was. subs were 1 mill+ current pop is like 5k total)

new warfront? how about you fix the fact that some classes are completely broken in pvp and doing way more damage than others, or more healing than others. pvp is literally a rogue/war/prim playground. mages clerics need not apply. if that wasnt bad enough noncaster get to wear PVE gear in pvp. yup nothing wrong with wars rogues prim being able to have extra stats.


zero mention of the fragment systems or any updates. this has literally killed alts. if u dont have huge amounts of plats to spend then its a waste to try to have an alt. even with a plat nerf its still a huge currency sink. zero work done about the rng.

heres brasse on balance pve balance

"I'll be honest - not sure how one manages class balance in a game with over 4,000 soul combinations, but the team is always looking at data, numbers and feedback. =)Brasse"

so yeah apparently if u arent playing rogue or prim in pve then screw you for not picking those classes. its no longer bring the player its now bring the class. yeah im gonna pay money to underperform regardless of skill level just because im not playing something different. as always its nice to see brasse being dismissive and snarky(a bannable offence on the forums) about a major issue which has been a talking point through out this entire expansion.

its not like there are only a few viable raid specs for all classes which are the current meta that need to be adressed. nope in her mind its always every spec that any rando could ever make.


its not like class balance wasnt done in in vanilla and sl. which brings another point they couldnt even handle updating old dungeons to the new area because the game literally launched with 3 new dungeons and people were asking for more. but that wasnt possible. so now somehow they are gonna take on the original expansion?

The progression server itself sounds fine on paper.

But 1 new Warfront, what seems to be an Intrepid raid and excuses for not balancing classes?

You can tell that it was either do "prime" or focus on the main game just by the lack of content that was announced.

I just want to know where they got the "willing to pay a sub" from.

[Super Kami Dende]

Just bear in mind this is modern Trion working on it though.

I have a feeling they will somehow mess up releasing a progressive version of the game today.

I'm well aware of Trions shortcomings, I likely wouldn't go into it blind and would at least give it a month or so of others playing to gauge interest.

[Projectmars]

Copy Cat !

It sees WoW classic server.
Now me too !

Nah, we don't know most of the details about Classic WoW, other than it exists. No idea if it will progress into TBC or whatever yet.

This seems more like a take on EQ's Classic servers, as it sounds pretty similar to how they run. Ain't anything wrong with that though. It seems like a bit of old school MMO nostalgia has been around for awhile (MXO reboot when?) and people have indicated an interest in this, so it seems logical.

[azurrei]

Modern day Trion SUCKS and they will never get another dime from me, ever. I loved Vanilla RIFT, even SL was decent - but Trion has fallen further and further down the sewage drain since RIFT went F2P.

AA Fresh Start Servers - I need to say no more...

[Lathais]

Honestly, this has me very interested. Will definitely be keeping an eye on this and will likely sub for at least a month or two of this to see how it works out. I'm not expecting it to be anything great, but like a saying from the Aiel in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, "If you expect the worst, the only surprises will be pleasant." So I am fully expecting these prime servers to either never make it live or be a complete flop. I'll still check it out though.

When/if they do make it live, perhaps we should try to get together an MMO-C Raiding guild? I know some of us tried to do that back in the day, but due to being split between EU and US and most of us already having developed characters on different servers, it's didn't really work. Perhaps if we plan it ahead of time though, it will. I no longer have the time nor the will to run a guild, but perhaps someone can start a new thread and see if there would be enough interest. If someone does, hit me up, I'll certainly join.

- - - Updated - - -

Modern day Trion SUCKS and they will never get another dime from me, ever. I loved Vanilla RIFT, even SL was decent - but Trion has fallen further and further down the sewage drain since RIFT went F2P.

AA Fresh Start Servers - I need to say no more...

What I am hoping is that they will see these servers be more popular than their "main" servers and perhaps have another shift in design philosophy which brings things back to the way they were before they shifted to this crap philosophy. Notice I say hope, I don't expect it. I expect these servers to never even release or flop as soon as they do. However, I will give them money for a couple months sub if they make it live to see how it works out and show that I support the no lockbox sub model over F2P.

It's about the best way we can vote with our wallets because if you just continue to not give them anything, it doesn't show that you actually like not having lockboxes and do like having a sub. Voting with your wallet works both ways, it's not just not buying or supporting things you don't like. It is also buying and supporting the things you do like. Trion has always put a ton of stock in metrics. If the metrics show that these servers are more popular, that's likely what they will focus on. If we don't vote with our wallets to support this, the metrics will show it as a failure and they will continue with the way they are doing things.

Of course, we could all go and support it and still see them focusing on the cash shop and lockboxes anyway. They may determine they are less popular and then start slowly adding in lockboxes and whatnot as well. Who knows. We won't, unless we play. So, I likely will support this endeavor by re-subbing, for a couple months just to see how things go. If it's just not fun, of course I'll quit.

[Selah]

Huh, I'd say the most interesting thing is Amary. Trion has proven to be distrustful, so I maintain the attitude that when I see these changes and they're done correctly I'll believe it. Until then, I'll just be playing WoW.