Return to Telara, Play RIFT for FREE

Previous subscribers! Log in to RIFT between July 25 and 29 for a weekend of unrestricted free access to the entire game, including all your characters. Join Instant Adventures across four new zones, dive into new Mentoring and Leaderboards features, explore the Primeval Feast Sliver (the new 10-man raid), and engage in the groundbreaking PvP warfare of Conquest (Level 50 required).

As always, new players have access to levels 1-20 completely free with RIFT Lite!

Source and more information here: RIFTgame.com – Return to Telara, Play RIFT for FREE

Exposure defeats Laethys, World 11th and Faeblight Shard First

My guild, Exposure on Faeblight and I downed Laethys tonight for World 11th and Faeblight Shard First. After many hours and much recruiting because of various reasons and other raid issues, it has been killed! We are now 7/8, having killed the loot pinata Maelforge Egg’s as well just shortly after killing Laethys.

RIFT 1.9 Hotfix #8 – 7/18/12

This is quite a large hotfix with most of it focusing around Conquest with a lot of changes to it as well that will change how you play Conquest, yet again. I think this is for the good, too.

You can read the rest of the patch notes by clicking read more.

CONQUEST

• The rewards and structure of Conquest have been modified, with the goal of increasing the fun and rewards from the core gameplay of objectives and map wins. Wholesale PvP slaughter can be fun, but there are other activities available in Conquest!
• When an Extractor is taken by a team, it now grants Shards of Conquest to players in range of the Extractor when control flips.
  You can’t just tag an Extractor and leave the area to receive these Shards.
• Shards of Conquest can be combined to create Marks of Conquest.
• The chance of receiving a Mark of Conquest for destroying an Extractor has been slightly increased.
• When an Extractor is taken by a team, it now grants Favor, Prestige, and Experience to characters in the area of the Extractor when control flips.
  You can’t just tag an Extractor and leave the area to receive this bonus!
• Teams are now granted bonus Favor, Prestige, and Experience at the same time that Conquest Power is paid out throughout the match. The value is based on the number of Extractors your team holds.
• Bonus Colossi no longer spawn at the time the map begins – these planar menaces now spawn after a match has run for at least 30 minutes. Colossi hit points scale based on the number of participants in the Conquest match.
• The added capture speed bonus for having multiple characters around an Extractor has been decreased slightly.
• The Planar Foci that spawn in the end phase of Conquest have had their hit points increased.
• The Archlich no longer spawns immediately at the start of the bonus phase. It now spawns only after all Planar Foci are defeated.
• Be warned – the Archlich’s hit points increase depending on the population of enemies in the map during the end phase. It may be beneficial to remove opposing players before the Archlich spawns.
• The Archlich has relocated closer to Zareph’s Return.
• The Archlich awards 5 Marks of Conquest on death.
• The number of Marks of Conquest granted for winning a match has been increased.
• The number of Marks of Conquest granted for losses or ties in Conquest has been reduced.
• Marks of Conquest granted from wins/losses/ties now go into the Rift Loot UI.
• The amount of Favor and Prestige granted for killing players in the open fields of Conquest has been reduced; Experience remains unchanged.
• Players that return Empowered Sourcestone to their resource depots at base now receive Shards of Power, which grant small amounts of bonus Favor. Shards of Power can be received for returning up to 70 Empowered Sourcestone at a time.

CONQUEST QUEUING

• Factions that are full now allow you to queue to join them – and if you’re queued for a full faction, you have the option to leave that queue and select a different one.
  Once you enter a Conquest match, however, you will be committed to the joined faction and cannot leave the map and join as a different one until the match ends.
• Selecting a faction on the Conquest UI now either immediately gives you a Conquest entry invite or put you in the queue, instead of using a second enter-Conquest selection.
• Group leaders now select a faction – either for queue or immediate joining – for their entire group when joining Conquest.

RIFT Official Live Stream 2

Ferrel announced last night on the forums that they will be doing another live stream this Wednesday July 18th, 2012 at 5:30 PST or 7:30CST for a Q&A.

This is your opportunity to have a glimpse into an area of RIFT that perhaps you have not yet seen. You also will have the chance to have James “Elrar” Nichols and Elizabeth “Dahanese” Tobey answer some of your questions.

On this episode Trion will be demoing:

A Recap of 1.9 – Elrar and Dahanese will talk about Summerfest and some of the fun activities there.

• Beat the Heat, summer is here and people all across Telara are taking a break
• The barber/surgeon has seen a lot of customers, perhaps Elrar will be one again

Primeval Feast – Trion takes a dive in this exciting 10 player sliver

• Meet Atrophinius and hear his tale
• Come along on a trip through some of the masterfully scripted encounters within the sliver

There will also be some interesting discussion about what you can look forward to in Storm Legion, RIFT’s first expansion!

All you have to do is show up and tell them what you would like to know. The questions you submit in the forum thread, during the show, and via twitter just might be the ones that are answered.

Submit questions in the thread linked above or via Twitter @RIFTgame #RIFTLS (please use the hashtag or they might miss your question).

Where can you watch the stream? At their Twitch TV page or click read more below for embedded video, http://twitch.tv/trionworlds

My Conquest Review 2

If you have not read my first Conquest review, you should go ahead and read it.

Trion has had a little more time now to take care of the on-going issues and has even managed to fix the spawn camping. While this is great now, the matches are lasting insanely too long for me to enjoy it like I would want. How long are the matches normally lasting? 2 to 4 hours, yes, that long. People are even resorting to asking others to stop capturing points and lose on purpose so that we can earn our Marks of Conquest faster and get in another Conquest match again faster.

You soon then become to realize that Conquest is turning more into PVE and Zerg than it is just PVP and Zerg. Each faction is rolling from extractor to extractor while another faction is behind taking the one you just took or taking them over on the other side. With 12,000 kills to go through, a lot of the matches are barely going past having 3,000 people killed and no where in sight of any of the 3 factions taking over 60% of Stillmoor. They really need to lower the amount of total kills and/or somehow draw more PVP towards one another.

One way that Trion could engage more PVP would be to randomly spawn Collossi throughout the map while also buffing the Collossi’s health some depending on the amount of people in Conquest.

Another way could also be to increase the control rate of some or all of the extractors.

They could also add an area that needs to be controlled after a certain amount of time that would increase rewards or loot of something that all 3 factions could engage against and fight for.

I am sure there is a lot more they could do that I have not mentioned or thought of. I am sure none of these ideas would ever be considered, be it some, similar ideas or all of them. I will do 1 more final review on Conquest in another week or two once Trion seems to get everything tweaked more to their liking and the communities complaining on the forums/feedback.