RIFT news tidbits for 1st January 2016. Happy New Year!
- RIFT 3.5: Winter’s Wrath. Patch Notes and additional information.
- Guide: Fae Yule 2015 World Event. The Fae Yule world event is on-going! Check out a comprehensive guide to all the quests, achievements, minions and currency info here!
General
- Happy New Year! Happy New Year to all the Ascended out there! Hope you had an awesome 2015 and look forward to more from RIFT in the new year!
- According to a previous livestream, the next hotfix should be 6th Jan 2016.
- Archonix should have a ‘letter’ ready for some time this month. [Likely the annual State of the Game Address letter].
- Stuff to possibly look forward to in 2016 includes a Tier 3 10-man raid, the Mind of Madness Instant Adventure and four more Primalist souls. There’s also Cleric Shaman changes up on PTS and Dead Simon is working on a ‘Simon’s Playground’ – potentially some sort of ‘Puzzle Chronicle’. You can read up on what we know about in terms of new content/changes here, although Archonix’s Letter might (hopefully) reveal more.
- Fae Yule Ending. Just a reminder that Fae Yule ends at 3:30PM Server Time (NA: PST; EU: GMT) on Thursday, 7th January 2015! The Faelight Sparkles Returns quest will also likely end either on the 6th or 7th Jan. Be sure to get all your questing, achieve-hunting and Fae Yule item purchases done before then! [Guide].
- Mind of Madness Kill Vid: Apotheosys. Oria Xu has posted up Apotheosys’ kill video for Lady Justice. Check it out here! You can also view other kill videos and guides in the latest raid here.
Apotheosys Disbands & Goodbye Message
One of (if not the) top raiding guilds in RIFT has disbanded as of today: Apotheosys. We will miss all the videos and contributions they’ve made to the game – in their countless hours of testing raid content so we don’t have to, and especially with Oria Xu‘s fantastic raid video guides. As part of their goodbyes, Apotheosys left a parting message and explanation of why they have left.
The Message
Guild lead Yobiraion has posted a long news post explaining why Apotheosys has left RIFT, how they feel about the game as well as some of the interactions between them, Trion and Trion devs. You can read it in full here. Oria Xu has also posted a video summarizing the overall feeling Apotheosys has for the game and the devs that you can view here. It’s an interesting behind-the-scenes look at Trion’s interactions with a top raiding guild that does extensive raid testing for the game that most of us would never otherwise be privy to.
Do note that the vast majority of RIFT players will not experience the same frustrations that a top raiding guild would encounter as bugs are sometimes fixed before the average player makes it to a boss encounter, and most players will not have much interactions with the devs. However, I also think it is important that players are kept informed of issues concerning the game and hopefully Apotheosys’ post/video will provide the necessary shake-up that Trion may need to re-invigorate confidence in the game as far as raiding is concerned and – hopefully – to review some of their past decisions and current decision-making processes.
Some Controversy
There’s been some controversy with the response by both players and Trion to Apotheosys’ message. Players have been posting Oria Xu’s video in-game and on the forums, and bans have been meted out.
CM Ocho has responded to claims of unfair banning in a reddit post you can read here. In short, it seems due to the content of Oria’s video (linking some disliked WW2 figures to Trion staff), forum bans have been meted out – but these do not result in in-game bans. For those who were banned in-game, it wasn’t for linking the video, but for “other msbehaviour that went along with posting links to the video” [I’d assume for those who also linked WW2 figures to Trion staff in-game].
It does, however, sound as though some players were unfairly banned in-game – perhaps from a GM that was overstepping his/her bounds. CM Ocho seems to be communicating with some of the players that have been unfairly banned. [r]
The Take Away
So what does all this mean? Is RIFT dead? No, far from it. However, there’s clearly problems with communication, decision-making and the direction or focus of the game.
Hopefully Apotheosys’ post gives you some insight into the interactions between the top end of raiding and Trion; and let us hope that Trion takes this invaluable feedback and addresses the issues it exposes – perhaps with Archonix’s State of the Game Letter slated some time this month.
All the best to Apotheosys in their future endeavors!
Other News Tidbits
Other Trion or MMORPG-related news that may not be directly related to RIFT.
- Valve Responds to Steam Issues. For those who missed it, over the Xmas holidays Steam ran into caching issues that allowed users to view the account information of other users at random. Valve has since posted up an explanation of what exactly happened (target of DoS attack; caching backup that borked) that you can read up on here.
Community Content
Below is a list of content created recently by the RIFT community!
- Rift Community Discord 5th Year Celebration! [Contests]. Reminder that Kiwi’s Discord events are on-going! There’s FIVE EVENTS taking place in January with a variety of prizes including 30-day Patron, REX and Arclight Rider Mounts to celebrate the upcoming 5th year of RIFT and to promote RIFT’s Discord chat channel! Details to enter each contest can be found here.
- Rift-Wardrobe December Winners [Contest]. Rift-Wardrobe held their final December Wardrobe Wednesday livestream on 30th Dec 2015 revealing the winners of the Wardrobe Contest with Tarken Lifter mount prizes! Congratulations to: ‘That-Callweddi-Wardrobe’ and ‘the-white/blue-snow-queen-Wardrobe’ for Wardrobe winners, and the ‘Praying-with-pink-clouds-in-background’ for Scene winner (no names so just describing). You can see past grand prize winners here! Be sure to submit your entries into January’s theme-free Wardrobe contest!
- RiftGrate Giveaway Winners [Contests]. Congratulations to the following players for winning the Happy Holiday’s REX or Forum 30-day Patron Pass giveaways held on 31st Dec 2015. Your prizes should be in your in-game mail!
- REX Winners:
- xBlazee@Brutwacht
- Epaphus@Hailol
- Fandral@Hailol
- 30-day Patron Pass Winner:
- Yeuo@Faeblight
- REX Winners:
- Club Spin Move [Dimension]. Feendish over at The Dimension Touring Company has taken a tour of Manos@Wolfsbane’s “Club Spin Wave” to kick off the new year! Check out a preview of this amazing dimension here!
- 2015: The Year in Dimensions [Dimensions]. Feendish over at The Dimension Touring Company has posted up an overview of some of the amazing dimensions that have popped up over the past year and a look at the dimension contests that were held in 2015. Check it out here!
Missed out on some news? Check out the full list of RIFT News Tidbits here or the PTS/Live Comparison Page for a summary of upcoming changes. Patch Notes, PTS Updates, Datamining and Livestream Summaries are also available.
If you’re interested in the latest RIFT contests or upcoming events, check out RiftGrate’s ‘Upcoming RIFT Events‘ page and calendar.
New to RIFT? Get your Free RIFT Starter Pack (‘Ally of the Ascended’) with a 16-slot bag, vfx rune, cloak and unique title “The Chosen” by entering code: HH3LZXZ7W77QMQJMJQQQ in the Apply Code page!
RiftGrate 
Apotheosys vs The Fireы Of Heaven
0 vs 1
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I was unfairly banned for posting the link in a private chat channel. I have even been banned from the rift forums over this issue, read more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Rift/comments/3z5kn0/jegodin_farewell_banned/
I want to thank you for helping bring this to the attention of a wider audience especially since just mentioning it has put numerous people in Trion’s crosshairs.
Jego, sorry to see you leave man. Oria’s video was pure insults and hate spreading and it really sucks some people got caught up into the spreading of it and got punished. People that support the message should be spreading the Apoth website post instead of the hate video. It is two completely different things. Let me know what game you end up going to. I play many so I might be able to tag up with you.
@Grim – The video is linked in the website post, so there’s not much difference, is there?
@ Jonus – Why is this guild drama stuff even on this website…
If you think this is just simply “guild drama” you’re quite mistaken. When the #1 raiding guild in Rift decides as a group to leave the game because of actions Trion has taken it’s not a minor event.
You also seem to not realize the negative effects the entire playerbase will feel as a result of their leaving. They were one of the only guilds capable of providing both detailed testing feedback on raids(and also class changes), the skill to ensure the raids were properly tuned, and the will to actually DO the testing, free of charge.They were basically the only guild that wrote raid guides, their members wrote class guides and had significant input on guides written by others. The list goes on and on.
Furthermore their departure prompted major discussions on a variety of matters from the excessive moderation by Trion, their disregard for player feedback(such as the feedback given by almost EVERY player who tested MoM and BEGGED Trion not to release it in it’s current state),rushed and buggy content, increasing grind, poor marketing decisions etc.
In an effort to not overly dramatize further I oversimplified. True, it’s not ‘just’ guild drama.
I have seen the video, and you (or should I say the guild) have (has) done what also is resonating across all forums: the legitimate points they had, have been made moot by the childish attitude and the horrible choice that was made in portraying the company and certain people.
I’m not going to start another discussion here. I don’t know the whole issue, the guild most certainly isn’t painting any ‘clear’ picture of what really happened in any of their posts and most of us never will ‘know’ anything close to ‘the truth’, whatever part of which stories taken together that may be. Will this have a downside? Definitely, for many.
My comment was aimed at Jonus, who is running an otherwise excellent, informative and great site about a game many care about, not anybody else. It wasn’t meant to stir any more pots.
All that remains is wishing you all the best for the new year. May it be a good one for all.
There’s definitely guild drama, but they make a lot of pertinent points and exposes a side of the game’s player-dev interactions that not many people are privy to. Oria’s video should not be the main focus, but as Grim mentioned, you should definitely read Yobi’s post. In the end RiftGrate’s main purpose is to provide news and information about the game, whether positive or negative – and Yobi’s post (with video evidence from Oria’s video) provides revealing information about some of the practices and decisions of Trion with regards to raiding and gear. As mentioned, the hope is that now that it’s out in the open, Trion will actually take a look at their past decisions and change things for the better.
@Jo – Yes, Khortish linked the video too which I thought was completely counter-productive to the message the guild departure was trying to point out. I even addressed my disappointment to Khortish in a conversation with him. A news site can report the news but they need to hold back certain things. Take for instance if some site is talking about a lewd act that a celebrity did, they don’t have to link the video of it. Spreading a hate-filled video was not something I expected to see here. Trion is well aware of what is going on without causing hate towards them. It just hurts the game that I love.
The post referenced in the article is no long valid and returns:
“Hello, I am a java script test analytics page “
Seems to still work for me. Maybe their site was overloaded for a brief window.