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One Shots: Parking the Enterprise
Another week, another gorgeous Star Trek Online screenshot from reader Mark. Mark sent us in this picture of the Enterprise looking for a parking spot around Deep Space Nine, perhaps endlessly circling the lot while the husband's waiting for someone close to the door to pull out and the wife is arguing that they should just park a little further away and hoof it in with EVA suits. Fun fact: This was just one of dozens of screenshots that Mark sent in February 2013 when we put out the Great One Shots Call for more pictures. A less-fun fact: We're starting to run out of community-submitted screenshots to share with you, and our well might be dry by the end of January. Remember, it's you who keeps One Shots alive!
Massively's winter holidays MMO roundup
The holidays are here! That means the hustle and bustle of the season is in full swing, with gifts to get, treats to taste, deals to nab, and plenty of festivities to partake in -- and that's just in the MMOverse! Yes folks, there's a plethora of holiday celebrations out there -- so many, in fact, that it can be hard to keep track of them all, let alone participate to them! If you're trying to catch everything in your favorite games, we're here to help. We've got a round up of the various winter celebrations across the gaming sphere all bundled together right here for you. If something catches your eye, hop in and join in the festivities!
RIFT celebrates Fae Yule with festivities
It's holiday time in Telara, and that means the Fae are back to their old tricks of hiding, stealing, and re-hiding gifts during RIFT's Fae Yule celebration. Will players find all the gifts stolen from the dragon cults that are scattered across the zone? If so, they can collect and complete six different artifact sets! This year's celebration also includes a Very Merry Warfront, tours of Telara's holiday Dimensions, and plenty of special festive zone events, Instant Adventures, rifts, footholds, special gifts, and more. Even raid bosses are in a giving mood during the season, occasionally dropping an extra loot chest for adventurers. Get a peek of the wintry wonders in the trailer below. Fae Yule lasts until January 9, 2014. [Update: Fae Yule has been extended a week until the 9th, and store items will be available for purchase through the 15th. Thanks to Potaco for the tip!] [Source: Trion press release]
Here's how RIFT's weather works
Have you ever wondered about the weather systems in RIFT, and more specifically in Trion's much-loved dimension system? If you answered yes, senior systems designer and meta-dimensioneer Lisa "Faratha" Boleyn has a blog post for you. Boleyn explains how RIFT's weather is determined by where your character is standing, and consequently how this presented a problem when coupled with the fact that the game's raindrops and snowflakes "neither have nor respond to collision" due to performance considerations. The solution for dimensional weather, then, is something called weather-blockers, which will be "brought live as craftable items" in RIFT's 2.6 update. Click through the links below to read further details.
One Shots: The storm has passed
"Here is a picture from my days playing Warhammer Online," reader John submitted. "It will be missed." You know what, John? It really will be. Heaven knows it's been kicked around enough in the larger MMO community, but people doing that oh-so-conveniently forget the great times that were had. In a sea of fantasy games, it's still hard to find Witch Hunters battling mutated madmen or suicidal punk Dwarves getting swallowed by a giant squig. Except for here, of course. So take in that lightning and be kind to those who will go through the grieving process this month when WAR is shuttered. Do it for me, will ya? The Gipper. And as you're doing that, also check out our other player screenshots from this past week!
Massively's exclusive sneak peek of RIFT 2.6: Dreamweaving, Fae Yule, and the state of the game
While we're descending into the insanity and fun of the holiday season, Trion Worlds is looking ahead to 2014 and its road to RIFT's 3.0. We hopped on the phone with RIFT's team earlier today for a sneak peek (sneak listen?) of the game's 2.6 content update and how it will tie into the expansion later next year. RIFT 2.6 -- there is no official title as of yet -- is a ways out still. Trion is targeting early February for its release, primarily because so many employees are taking time off for the holidays to be with friends and family. That said, 2.6 should arrive on the public test server in January, and the devs promise that it will be well worth the wait. So what's coming with 2.6? Dreams, crafts, and conclusions, my friends! Let's dig into it.
RIFT shows off its customer service department
What's it like working a day in customer service? Most of you probably don't have to speculate, since the odds of you having worked retail at some point hover right around almost certainty. But have you worked customer service for a game before? If you have, then you probably don't have any need to look at RIFT's new post about the perils of working in the game's CS team. If you haven't, maybe you'd like to know a bit more about the people you're cursing about as you try to get your character bugs resolved. Aside from showing off some anecdotes and company-wide teamwork for the team, the post also contains the helpful reminder for players of every games that things which seem to be exploits are probably better off reported rather than, well, exploited. If you want a peek behind the curtain to see how the service team operates within games in general and RIFT in particular, take a look at the full article.
Trion Worlds overhauls RIFT's Iron Pine Peak
Mid-level RIFT players have a new place to adventure after the game's 2.5 update; Iron Pine Peak has been completely redesigned. According to Trion Worlds, the zone has been rebuilt from the ground up with the challenges inside being tweaked to accommodate players from levels 27-35 instead of 40-48. The questing content has been reworked, with main story arcs being marked more clearly and providing greater rewards. Additionally, kill quests have been converted to Carnage quests and paths through each set of quests have been streamlined to reduce repetition. Trion explained that the zone's level requirements were reduced so that RIFT players would encounter the Storm Legion storyline earlier in their RIFT careers, and so that give mid-level players more freedom in how and where they level. Trion originally planned to rework Iron Pine Peak before RIFT's initial launch but put the plan on the backburner due to the risk of changing so many things so close to release.
RIFT's single most engaged in activity is artifact harvesting
Trion data guru Barish Orhon is the author of the latest RIFT-centric dev blog. The piece touches on Trion's propensity for collecting game-related data and using it to improve the player experience. Topics include data collection systems as well as insight into the firm's daily activity report. Said report tells Trion "how a game is doing day-to-day, week-to-week, but it also breaks down every in-game activity by user." The post also provides a couple of interesting case studies as well as the answer to what is RIFT's single most engaged in activity (harvesting artifacts).
One Shots: Sleep-deprived corgis
Extra Life, a fundraising marathon by gamers to help sick kids, recently concluded, and several MMOs featured events to support the effort. Reader Paul was part of one of these events in RIFT, although it quickly took a turn for the surreal. "This picture is from the corgi run that took place in the last hour of Trion's event," he wrote. "Basically we were all turned into corgis (and occasionally sheep too), and we took a mini-tour around the world of Telara. Sadly my computer was not able to render everyone there, and many more people were present than my picture shows. I enjoyed myself a lot during all 25 hours and would recommend that people don't hesitate to take part in next years." Now it's sleepy-time for Paul, but that doesn't mean that you can't stay up a few extra minutes to see what lies behind the curtain of secrecy in this week's column!
The Daily Grind: What MMO systems or content revamps would you like to see?
MMO revamps are a thing this week, what with RIFT retooling its Deepstrike Mines dungeon and DC Universe Online augmenting its pre-30 leveling curve with additional quests and various NPC/AI tweaks. That got me to thinking about what other pieces of MMO content or systems I'd like to see reworked. There's Age of Conan's long-in-development crafting revamp, of course, and I'm also keen to see Lord of the Rings Online's housing after Turbine's done blowing it up and putting it back together. What about you, Massively readers? What MMO revamps would you like to see? 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!
RIFT's Deepstrike Mines dungeon revamped for level 60
RIFT is returning to Deepstrike, according to Trion's latest blog post. The devs have revamped the dungeon for level 60, in large part due to the mass influx of F2P players who leveled right on by some of the classic game's dungeon crawls. Deepstrike Mines was the winner of a player vote to see which classic dungeon would receive the upgrade treatment, and senior game designer Andy Kirton has plenty to say on said revamp's particulars.
Trion hints at 3.0 in RIFT state of the game letter
RIFT game director Bill "Daglar" Fisher has released a new state-of-the-game post that you'll find front-and-center on the fantasy title's website. The letter contains some very general insights into Trion's development methodology ("keep listening, keep adjusting, keep delivering") as well as a bit of a tease for the game's 3.0 update. RIFT players may in fact be getting some new goodies before the game's next expansion. "Why wait for an expansion pack to release a new crafting profession," Daglar asks. "Why wait to introduce new souls for each of the callings? Why wait to start introducing the story of 3.0?" There are no concrete details as of now, but Fisher says to expect more "as time goes on."
Former EVE Online GM talks abusive players
"Game companies are not the Political Correctness Police," says Elizabeth Wyand, "and cannot be expected to adjust every player's rotten attitude." Wyand, a former GM for EVE Online, recently posted an interesting blog that discusses problematic players and the responses to their behavior -- one that exposes a fundamental misconception players have about the GMs who enforce the rules. Wyand's main point, though perhaps a bit too easy to misconstrue, is that being a jerk in most games is not against the rules. There is a big difference between threatening someone's life and hurting someone's feelings when it comes to enforcing chat violations or actioning players, and those who choose to offer up personal information about themselves must be aware that certain unsavory individuals will be happy to use it as a weapon at the first available opportunity. The full post is worth a read and includes some real-life examples of complaints Wyand received while manning CCP's support desk. It's worth noting, of course, that every game company has its own set of rules when it comes to harassment; what brings down the banhammer in RIFT might not even be a blip on the radar of a World of Warcraft GM.
Trion: Non-combat features 'provided a needed dose of RPG' in RIFT
RIFT's dimension system is one of the genre's better player housing implementations, and Trion has authored a dev blog designed to give players a peek behind the curtain on its development. It all started with the enthusiastic player response to the game's wedding features. "People didn't just show up; we saw a genuine spike in subscriptions. It was clear that we'd provided a needed dose of RPG in our MMORPG," the blog explains. Housing was the next logical step for non-combat content. Click through the links below to read about various development challenges and how Trion solved them.
One Shots: A flock of Beholders
Did anyone else watch that absolutely horrid Dungeons & Dragons movie from 2000 starring one of the more annoying Wayans? Just about the only redeeming part of that film was seeing a brief glimpse of a Beholder. I mean, there are few things more D&Dish than Beholders, unless you're going to pull a gelatinous cube out on me. Reader Don sent in today's featured screenshot that has not just one Beholder but a flock of them. "Here is a shot of me in the Delirium drinking contest on my new DDO Shadar-kai," he writes, "featuring the one and only Pumpkin Beholder from Xoriat." Pumpkin Beholder: Next Halloween, he comes for you! We've got this and plenty of other great eyecandy for you as you gorge on the leftovers from Halloween, so check 'em out in this week's One Shots.
RIFT sees a player surge thanks to Steam
The near-ubiquity of Steam as a distribution platform can certainly drive players to your game. A little less than a week after RIFT launched on Steam, Trion Worlds is reporting that RIFT and Defiance have seen a combined influx of 250,000 new players, beating out the numbers reported both for the launch of Storm Legion and RIFT's free-to-play conversion. It's the largest influx of players the game has ever seen since its original launch, for that matter: Trion says it made for the "highest single day gain in new users" since the game first opened its doors. What does that mean for the long run? That's the eternal question. RIFT launched its most recent major patch yesterday, but whether or not it will encourage players new to the game to subscribe or buy things in the cash shop is up for debate. Regardless, it's a good sign of health for the game as a whole, so congratulations are in order to the RIFT team on the number bump. [Source: Trion Worlds press release]
RIFT launches update 2.5, Song of Dreams
A major patch is always a good thing for a game. And Song of Dreams, or RIFT patch 2.5 for the more numerically inclined in the audience, qualifies as a major patch any way you slice it. It starts off with a mini-saga sending players under the seas at the Ember Isle, forcing players to take part in new underwater combat to learn the mystery of why various expeditions are disappearing. Still, there's a lot more in this patch. The level requirements on Iron Pine Peak have been relaxed, spreading the zone from level 27 to 35 for a wider band of adventurers. New Planar Attunement Nexuses are available for players with plenty of points and a decided lack of places to spend them. And this is all just the start of the patch's content, which will be slowly expanded over the course of the next month. Take a look at some screenshots below, or click past the break to watch the patch trailer.
RIFT's Song of Dreams coming November 6
The award for the day's shortest news post goes to... Trion! The firm says that the Song of Dreams update for its RIFT fantasy MMO will hit your PC on November 6th. It also says that more info about "upcoming dungeons, chronicles, slivers" and more is forthcoming.
RIFT merges away English EU servers, then adds another one
. Remember when RIFT merged servers recently? You might not have noticed, but it also eliminated the last server in the EU region flagged as for roleplaying. The players protested and tried to save that bastion of roleplaying, but the decision was made and the axe fell. So it was that the game's new server list was created, and everyone could rest easily knowing that this group of servers was a stable configuration. And then another English server was added to the mix. According to Trion Worlds the addition of the new server will help to reduce lag and stabilize the cluster in response to increased demand on the servers. Many fans are quite upset that the game removed the last roleplaying server and then simply opened a new one, although it's unclear whether or not the population on that server would have matched the population expected on the new non-roleplaying server. [Thanks to noit'snot for the tip!]
