RIFT MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

One of E3's greatest strengths is also its most glaring weakness. While every developer worth their salt is represented, and most with completely amazing booths, the amount of media is tenfold that and we all want face time. Of course, being gamers first, we want as much access to shiny new stuff as anyone – so when Trion invited us over to catch a glimpse of the upcoming 1.3 content patch we were all over it.

Known officially as Waves of Madness, the new content patch opens tentatively on June 22nd with a fancy world event that will guide players to unlocking the secrets of the ancient fortress known as Hammerknell. Like the former content patch, River of Souls, the end result of the world event will be a new 20 player raid in the aforementioned fortress. Just like the prior world events players will have a special quest UI element automatically added and can begin participating immediately in the first of 4 phases. Unlike the prior event, this one seems a bit more stable and evolved with players in all level ranges able to make meaningful contributions.

The struggle in Waves of Madness is even more epic, and hectic, than prior world events as the players will be battling not one but two planes – as they battle each other (at least on PvP servers). It seems the Dwarven sanctum of Hamerknell has attracted the attention not only of the residents of Telara, but also the denizens of the planes of both Water and Death, with the former having a more vested interest as one of their powerful dragons is trapped inside.

We were treated to one of the more climactic moments of the event as Jornaru, a rather nasty boss, attacked the world and then retreated into the dungeon – challenging us to follow if we dared. Through the magic of GM-esque powers we formed our own one toon wrecking crew and took up arms against him. Inside Hamerknell we found a ton of bosses, in fact we were advised this is now the largest raid in the game. Featuring multiple wings and gated content, bosses will have to be vanquished in a particular order and they all must be knocked out before gaining access to the final boss, the dreaded water dragon Akylios, which may be the largest boss we have ever seen in an MMOG.

In addition to the exciting new content, the update also features a host of calling and soul improvements, bug fixes, tweaks and a couple of new features that have highly anticipated. One of the more innovative features coming to Rift is a free (yes free!) server transfer that will be accessible in-game and have a one week cooldown. As our gracious host informed us during the walkthough; “We want people to have fun and play together, they shouldn't have to pay 14.95 to do that” Also making it under the wire for inclusion is the Guild Bank feature that will allow players to store and share items with each other – artifact junkies rejoice! Sadly the addon API didn't make it into this round of updates, but it should be in place in time for the next patch.

We would like to thank the folks at Trion for taking the time to show us this massive new raid zone and break down the major points of the patch. Check out the new patch trailer as well as some awesome screenshots below:

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