Rift looking to be the social, outgoing type
It seems as though one of the holy grails of MMORPG development is to encourage players to be social and group up without forcing them to do so like back in the olden days of yore. Rift's creative director, Scott Hartsman, thinks the dev team's found the key to this problem: "We want our MMO to be a social experience and we've realized that it's not that people don't want to be social, it's just because they don't want to be inconvenienced."
In an interview with ZAM, Hartsman details how Rift: Planes of Telara is hoping to change the minds of players about teaming up for the game's signature instances. While a character can solo through them just fine, the more players that enter a rift equals greater amounts of experience and loot for everyone. Rifts will adjust both loot and difficulty based on the number of players involved, and Trion Worlds expects that this will go a long way to combating antisocial behavior that MMOs have encouraged.
Guilds are another facet of socialization on which Trion plans to focus. "One thing we haven't talked much about is people getting together to build their guild up and build a structure (in the metaphorical sense) that provides you and all of your friends benefits," Hartsman said. You can read the full interview, including details on PvP, at ZAM.
