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The Daily Grind: What's your favorite boss quote?
Like any good villain, a memorable dungeon boss needs a bit of an introduction, a smidge of pizzazz before he, she or it starts thwomping on your head in a three-stage attack pattern. Usually this comes in the form of a welcome speech: "Hello honored guest (I thus say sarcastically)! Behold my quirky nature! I'm deeply surprised you made it this far, but now you will die!" Because we tend to run boss fights so very often, the dialogue these beasts spout tends to become ingrained into our noggins before long. My current favorite is Battlemaster Atrophinius, the Lord of Autumn from RIFT's Realm of the Fae. Who doesn't like a swaggering drunk who fights you solely because you interrupted his mead time? Because of him, I now use the phrase "frosty fop" in each and every conversation that I have. So what's your favorite boss quote? For a bonus question, do lengthy boss introductions annoy or amuse you? For a final Jeopardy answer, this NPC is renowned for saying "What?! Now you've done it! The bunnies are angry! ANGRY I TELL YOU!" Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Guild Counsel: A guild guide to RIFT
With all of the buzz this week surrounding the launch of RIFT, I thought it would be a good opportunity for The Guild Counsel to take a closer look at guilds in the game. On the surface, with all of the solo content and the public grouping feature around rift invasions, it might not seem that guilds are very important. But at the higher levels, guilds definitely have a purpose, such as prepping for raid content, working on ancient wardstone quests, or coordinating PvP attacks in Warfronts and in the open world. This week, we'll cover the basics of how to form up a guild and then take a closer look at some of the guild tools available to guild leaders.
Enter at Your Own Rift: The "must-see" list for beta five
RIFT 's fifth beta, The Battle of the Ascended, is upon us, and this time around, we see double the number of servers and waves of new players. With launch day just around the corner, there are many who are ready to give this game a serious look. There's a lot in the game that will feel familiar to any veteran MMO player, but there are some features that might cause some sideways glances. Those entering Telara for the first time (and even those who have participated in past beta events) should check out this list of "must-see" goodies during this week's beta!
RIFT beta powow with Scott Hartsman
This is, by any measure, a busy week for RIFT. Fresh off the second beta event, Trion Worlds has dropped the NDA for the game and announced a third beta to take place over the holidays. As the process speeds exponentially faster toward launch, Scott Hartsman and his team have a white-knuckled grip on RIFT for all the bumps, shimmies, dips and hills that such a high-profile title offers. Even with a heaping amount of work on its plate, the team has been willing to share its passion for RIFT with the press and community. During this slight lull between betas two and three, Hartsman sat down with us over the phone to jaw about lessons learned from the beta, why Trion has dropped the NDA, how RIFT's already made history, and when we might be seeing this game on the shelves. Hit the jump and let's do this thing. As Hartsman is fond of saying about the game, "S**t just got real."
Enter the Rift on December 28th with RIFT's third beta event
If you haven't heard of RIFT yet, there's a good chance you qualify as medically dead. Trion Worlds has been releasing an absolute ton of information lately on the upcoming fantasy MMO, from epic trailers and gameplay previews to lore posts. So far, Trion has organised two major closed beta events to get feedback on the game. Both events were a big success, with Trion taking a very positive stance on even the more critical feedback the team's been getting. The third round of RIFT's closed beta events is set to go live at 10 a.m. PST on December 28th and will run until 10 a.m. PST on December 31st. Anyone lucky enough to get into this third event will get to play as a member of the Guardian of the Vigil or Defiant factions. The first 20 levels of play will be available, making feedback from this event of critical importance to the new user experience. Players will be able to explore the Silverwood and Freemarch zones as well as take part in the first ever group dungeon tests in the previously revealed Realm of the Fae and Iron Tomb instances. For a chance to get into this third round or future beta events, head over to the official beta signup page. Stay tuned to Massively as we continue rolling out our post-NDA-drop RIFT coverage today!
Massively's hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara's dynamic content
Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to attend Trion Worlds' Gamer's Day in San Francisco to get some hands-on time with a couple of the company's upcoming titles, including Rift: Planes of Telara. If Rift seems to have come out of nowhere, that might be due both to the acquisition of EverQuest II veteran Scott Hartsman to head the project as executive producer, and to a clever name change meant to reflect the team's shift in development focus. In fact, that shift in development focus is precisely what I was at Trion's studio to test -- I got to check out the Rifts themselves in all their glory, in the context of the greater dynamic content system that the developers are so excited about. Massively's writers have been able to play and report on character creation and the starting areas of Rift several times over the last year or so, including earlier this summer at E3. But until today's embargo lift (coinciding with the reveal at Gamescom), no one had quite seen the fabled planar invasions and takeovers in action. Now we have.
