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

The anticipation level for Rift is reaching a fevered pitch as we move ever closer to launch day. The folks at Trion Worlds haven’t seen their own families in weeks as they work around the clock to put the final touches on the game. Luckily for us we have been able to keep our exclusive interview series rolling and this week we hit a home run with another chat with the game’s Creative Director and company C.O.O: Scott Hartsman – this time focusing on the social aspects of Rift.

 As always, if you have any questions you wish us to ask Trion Worlds in future interviews, please post them in our official Rift forum.

---

Ten Ton Hammer:  How important is social interaction outside of the combat environment and is there anything that makes Rift unique in this aspect?

Scott Hartsman: Let me address that in a general way first: different kinds of social interactions, whether it’s the shallowest level of “I am playing in a live world by myself and simply enjoying that there are other people around” to the real time synchronous you and twenty-something other people kicking ass and taking names, I think in general is why we make these games. To me it’s why we make these games. 

Is there anything particularly important or cool in Rift? Absolutely.  The uniqueness of the social interactions in Rift has been ramping up directly with the amount of shared world invasion and event content we have released.  The bigger the events get the more social the game has become. It starts with a small event that three people band together to overcome and get that feeling of accomplishment and follows through all the way to its logical conclusion of 450-500 people doing the same in a gigantic event. Our particular implementation of a public group and raid system, and a group merging system that is sort of a halfway point between the two extremes of solo and raid that I mentioned earlier.

It’s like the difference between a Facebook friend and a friend you have known since third grade:  you get to meet up for these social touch points and do something cool then go about your business and maybe join up again later. It has been really cool to watch it all happen and see these relationships form.

Ten Ton Hammer: It definitely seems that the social aspect is important, would you consider Rift a group/raid based game or more suited to soloers?

Scott Hartsman: It’s supposed to appeal to both groups of people and soloers, but where we are really unique is that gray area in between the two that really nobody has done a whole lot with.  Bluntly, there aren’t a whole lot of games that have done much with that gray area at all. I think there is an entire array of different socialization options between that solitary player and the hardcore group that only socializes within their own guild. There is this entire concept of banding together, conveniently, for temporary or ongoing event content and that’s where we are trying to differentiate.  If you want to be Joe solo-guy you can play any MMO, if you want to be Joe raid-guy you can play any MMO, but if you want to be part of a shifting social landscape – well, then maybe you should play Rift.

Ten Ton Hammer:  Are there any mechanics in place to make guild membership meaningful in relation to character development?

Scott Hartsman: Yes.  It was important for us to make guilds something more than a chat channel and an implicit friends list.  There are a couple of core concepts that are very important to us: first is that you feel like you are a part of building something up together.  Even in the very first builds, where no players had even touched the game, we had mechanics for guild leveling and guild quests implemented.  These are things that solo players can run around and contribute to or others that are built around warfronts, dungeons, and raiding.  So no matter what type of guild you are, you can pick up these quests and do them weekly to advance your guild. A small guild of soloists that never raid or PvP, you can level a guild. If you are a bunch of PvP folks, you can level a guild. If you’re a bunch of hardcore raiders, you can level a guild. That was something we wanted to make sure and have built in from the start.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can you describe the functionality of the in-game chat channels, how customizable are they and can we chat across realms?

Scott Hartsman:  We do have custom chat channels; you can create your own channels and moderate them at will. They are per server right now, and some of that more advanced functionality has been something that we know can be easily upgraded over time as we have been more focused on the features that make Rift unique as opposed to some of the more general utility functions.

Extending them to be cross-server is something we would like to do in the future, but since we only had a certain amount of time before launch we wanted to focus on the things that make Rift Rift.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is my friends list server locked?

Scott Hartsman: Yes, in MMOs friends lists and chat are tied to the same kind of service. When we implement cross server chat in the future then cross server friends lists would come with it. That being said, we do have the basics for cross server chat already in game – but it’s currently just in the warfront group since our warfront groups are cross server.

Ten Ton Hammer: Does my friends list follow me from character to character?

Scott Hartsman: That is a really excellent question, because I am not 100% sure of the answer. We have several things that we allow you to import from character to character and I am not sure if friends/ignore lists have been added to that yet or not. It has been a dynamic feature that we keep adding more and more to, so it’s hard to say from day to day what is available and it will definitely grow some more before launch.  I am pretty pleased that I can import all of my UI and all of my macros and hotkeys!

Ten Ton Hammer: Do the games emotes add any racially specific flavor?

Scott Hartsman: Any of the animated emotes are implicitly different because animations exist per race, there are a few that are shared but most are racially specific. I have a list on my desk right now of emotes and audio that are slated to be added to the game later, but I don’t want to give too much away until its actually in the game.

Ten Ton Hammer: Any plans for social network integration like Facebook feeds or RSS feeds for in game achievements etc.?

Scott Hartsman:  We have spent a lot of time thinking about that and we have done some dorking around with it, and again I don’t want to promise too much, but you should expect to see the first bits of it out before Beta 7.  We have a gigantic list of things we would like to integrate with, both for people broadcasting their events out of the world as well as people being able to keep tabs on what’s going on in the world.  The list is so long we are looking at it stretches into the planning for the next year or two.

We want to thank Scott and everyone at Trion that has been gracious enough to sit down with us for these interviews, especially as they get closer to launch and the work load increases.  Things are looking very promising for Rift and we can’t wait to see what the next round of beta has in store for us. If you are a premium member be sure to sign up for your beta key, and if you aren't, what are you waiting for? Memberships are 50% off this month so sign up now!