Rift - First dynamic event coming

[Kevin]

So Trion has announced that March 30th will start the first worldwide dynamic event in Rift.

You can read http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=25742 for some more details.

This is another one of the "selling points" of the game, the dynamic content. Since I've been kind of leveling all the toons together I don't have anyone bigger than 31 right now and like won't have anything above 35 when this starts, but I want to see how this works, especially for the mid and lower levels so I'll mess around with all of them (and maybe I'll make another little one into the low teens just to have a toon in that range) and let you know.

This is the type of stuff that is supposed to help replace the "Raid or die!" that WoW and many other MMO's have for end game. I've had a few folks ask me to keep reporting on the game so I'll try and let you know.

[Treesh]

And, apparently they're letting friends of subscribers play for free this weekend. I've got a code that can be used up to five times if anyone is interested in taking a little peek. =)

[Kevin]

So far the event has been a bit meh, though some of the dev talk might fix that. Though I've only had about an hour or so last night to mess with it.

The biggest issue is that Rifts spawn based on population. Rifts are showing up in the higher level zones, but they aren't the rifts needed for the quests that event creates. Since the capital cities for the factions, while their own zones, border the lowbie zones, those zones always tend to have more rifts and that is the same with the current event.

The event design shares a bit with opening of the Isle of Quel'Danas (or whatever that BC island that had the Sunwell on it) in that enough people need to do enough of the daily quests to progress things. However the lack of high level rifts for the level capped folks to get those done on means they end up in the lowbie zones trying to get the quests done and the lower level toons are not really able to feel they helped (they can still get the quests done as you don't really need to do more than hit a mob and you can get credit) but it hurts the fun.

It's not sprawling enough to really interfere with "normal" play. I use quotes as different people do different things for average play sessions. That could change as it is supposed to ramp up.

The devs haven't stated a clear plan but it appears they are going to try and just trigger some events in higher level zones based on population and then put out calls so that the higher level players can do that. There are some scripted portions of the event that are already like this as I understand things, so I'm hoping they can just fire off a couple of zones at once so that more level ranges can experience it. It's not too different from a normal invasion so far though. The Rifts are spawning in different spots and some of them do operate differently than standard rifts.

It's been better than the opening of AQ or Sunwell was in WoW, but it hasn't quite been what I expected when advertised either. I'll try to keep folks updated.