“What Ever Happend To…?” by TehFrank

TehFrank has posted a “What Ever Happened To…?” post on the Rift Forums showing some of the things that never made it into RIFT (but were available in the data files, some still on Live).

You can check out his thread with all the information here.

A few highlights:

• The Shadowlands zone‘s assets were eventually turned into River of Souls. Of the 61 quests that was part of Shadowlands, some were placed into the starter zones for each faction. [Shadowlands Video]
• Port Scion was initially a full zone with a ‘port’ area and a city area. There were 16 quests. Now though we get to see a small district called Battle for Port Scion (a Warfront) and in 3.0 we will be seeing a flooded version.
• There were Iron Circle and Scion Cartel faction quests.
• The Perithor and Mistral Territories Zones were either split up into what is now partly Steppes of Infinity or abandoned.
• Some old Planetouched Wilds file names: Highland Shores, Fae Bridge, Grove of Heroes, Mount Crucible, Drowned City, The Maze, Valley of Ice, Unnamed Scene, Toron Graveyard, Cathedral of Unity, Sun Orb, Ferrous Hills, Metallic Canyons, Fae Pillar, Infinity Steps, Devasation Thicket, Trial Grounds
• Two Races – The Ziri and Dragonian, that never made it.
• Unused Tradeskills: Planar Crafting (part of Planetouched Wilds), Bowyer, Heavy Weaponsmith, Treasure Hunting and Trapping. Trapping was changed into the Summerfest pets that you catch during Summerfest.
• Unused Recipes and Pets: An Enchanted Empyrean Bag (30-slot Bag); Strange Rate; Air Bunny; Air Rat; Tartagon 03; Fancy Pet Chow.

Dev MikeD also mentioned the following:

• Cliffside Vale was the first zone being worked on during 2007 and early 2008 with kobolds, mercenaries, gargoyles, undead and dragonians. They moved onto Freemarch applying what they had learned from their time experimenting with Cliffside Vale.
• Port Scion docks and interior areas were nearly finished but don’t exist in the game world. They instead used the resources to make new areas. The assets were mainly put into Sanctum and Meridian.
• If Trion ever goes back to Mathosia to add stuff to the continent, the Cliffside Vale/Planetouched Wilds area is a perfect spot to add new stuff.

[Source: MikeD]

Also some interesting images:

Smith’s Haven before getting overrun by the Plane of Death

Planetouched Wilds

Planetouched Wilds map during Patch 1.5. It is located to the East of Droughtlands and if you check your world map you may still be able to see it – but it is no longer used. Instead, Planetouched Wilds’ assets were used in Steppes of Infinity and Kingdom of Pelladane.

Early Storm Legion Map

Early look at the Storm Legion Map. Lots of dev paint and the areas were less distinguished. It also seems as though they may have planned to have a long bridge in-between Brevane and Dusken.

Early Dendrome

The early version of the Dendrome during the Storm Legion beta. It looks very different from what it looks like now. At some point they seem to have changed it from an area that seemed to be free of the Architects’ destruction (as in Ashora) into its present form where the dominant Architect Hive exists in the north portion of the zone.

Old Tempest Bay

Here’s the old version of Tempest Bay. If you look at it, it’s got various bridges, skywalks and multiple ramps. It looks like it was meant to be an area with multiple levels  to it. It certainly makes the Haunted Terminal more prominent and foreboding in the background (whereas in its current form the Haunted Terminal is kind of ignored outside of certain Air Saga quests and the A Hero Rises Chronicle).

Unused Recipes and Pets/Mount

There was a Recipe: Enchanted Empyrean Bag that gives 30-slots (as opposed to the current Empyrean Bag that gives 28-slots). Also a Strange Rat with fire-based skin, an Air Rat with air-based skin and an Air Bunny with…well…water-based skin. There was also a Tartagon 03 mount as well as a Fancy Pet Chow. The Fancy Pet Chow is probably a companion pet-version of the mount-based upgrade items for stuff like the Ash Strider, Mossy Tartagon and Magma Walker mounts.

Would be great if Trion would introduce that Enchanted Empyrean Bag recipe into the game!

Thanks to TehFrank for putting all this together. You can check out further full-size images, youtube videos and other interesting tidbits in his thread, “What Ever Happend To…?” on the Rift Forums.