RIFT, Landmark and WildStar all received patches today. Here's a breakdown on what's going down in these three games. RIFT got some nice upgrades to Patron Pass holders, Landmark pretty much got a whole lot of neat additions, and WildStar made a few adjustments that leaves me surprised that all of the forum rage from it isn't mentioning face slaps yet. For no reason whatsoever, here is a screen cap of Vendolyn looking like a Farrah Fawcett ripoff dancing in her white trash spaceship yard:

RIFT

A huge portion of today's RIFT update was given to the Patron Pass. If you're not following RIFT, then you might not know what a Patron Pass is. Here's now it works: while RIFT is now free to play, and anyone going this route can obtain about anything in game in a longer amount of time, people can also elect to pay a monthly fee that comes with extra perks. It looks like Trion is beefing up the pass with additional goods in order to be more attractive to anyone who is debating on which option to go.

There is a new passive buff that increases favor, experience, notoriety, prestige and token values by 40%, which replaces the old patron buffs. A second passive is also granted, replacing the Patron Mount Boost. The new version, Mounted Command, gives patrons a 10% boost to speed, a 25% reduction in cast time to mount, and a 5% decrease in the chance to become dismounted. The new buff Marvelous Luck increases the chance to get more Marvelous loot from Supply Crates. Patron Focus, another passive buff, gives a 10 second cast time reduction to Call of the Ascended, as well as a 15 minute cool down reduction for Archaic Tablet, Charged Mirror, Consuming Flame, Petrified Rune, Renewing Seed, and Soul Crystal. A new ability, Patron Fast Pass, has been added in, which allows remote access to the Porticulum every 30 minutes. All passive abilities are now viewable from the patron ability tab.

Landmark

In light of yesterday's OOPS! With the domain ownership of sonyonline.net expiring, some are experiencing issues connecting to SOE properties still. I'd include a screencap of Vendolyn doing something dumb here, but I'm one of the afflicted, it seems. Felgon, Landmark's associate producer, went ahead and posted Landmark's patch notes to the game's subreddit in a kind gesture for anyone still locked out of the official sites while DNS settles itself. Probably the coolest feature from today's patch is the fact that water is now a building material. I guess I need to get back to redoing my caverns, since I can now put in a proper hot tub. Also, there is a moving secret door bookcase added in on the props, which now gives me all sorts of mad scientist ideas.

Actually, most of the new props with today's patch are really neat sounding. Maybe I need an escape tunnel? The sliding shag rug is perfect for that. Also added in are new Marketplace updates that include a lot of new bundles, multi-screenshot support that allows for up to four pictures for your templates (this also allows for multiple screenshots for Player Studio and Competitions), and a small number of bug fixes. I think I need to allot some of my limited game time to get back into Landmark now!

WildStar

Esper and Stalker received a minor fix from abilities not being implemented correctly from yesterday's patch. PvP's gear score for queuing now includes gear in the buyback list. There isn't confirmation from Carbine as to exactly what this means, but it appears that some people were gaining the system by selling all of their PvP gear, getting into a match at a lower gear score, and then buying back all of their gear to LOLROFLCOPTERPWNNEWBS to the face. Sorry bros, you'll need to find a new hobby. While researching this line item from the patch notes and wading through the changes to welfare epics no longer raining down from the space-heavens, I did manage to find a pretty amazing post. Thanks, Tiger'Fox. I love raginess, I love typing in all caps (CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL, Y'ALL) and I can't wait to run around stating “UMADBRO? BRONZALLUNEED!!!!!” Although that would mean I'd have to leave my housing plot, and WildStar is kind of where I let my “ew, outside” feelings go wild.

So, yeah, WildStar got some good ol' forum raging today. It balances nicely with yesterday's warm and fuzzy patch reception. Basically, running Gold Medals pretty much got a nerf and blues are now the common drops from Adventure bosses. Now that people won't be running around laughing about their welfare epics, they'll actually have to work on them. Two major changes to note here, is that gold has a better multiplier, but all levels have a chance for purple drops, however, gold level Adventures no longer rain down epics for people who wanted to endlessly grind them for epic level gear.