[Off Topic]: 2017 Producer's Letter!

    Well, I just read Rift's producer's letter for this year, and I gotta say, even if it was just comfort words and an apology, followed by some stuff to sidetrack us, I can definitely say, it definitely worked on me lol! I'm sooooo dreadfully excited to see what's coming up next! I can't wait to get Rae to that point, omg! So much awesome. I'm looking forward to the epic questlines involved in the new Eternal Items next patch (4.1) as well as all the new and cool stuff coming with 4.2! Finally weekly quests, new raid rifts, new IA's, and a whole buttload of other stuff!!! So much information was given, my mind is still reeling. I know that the devs have a pretty tough, and often thankless job, especially among us players. I think gamers are very critical and quick to offer snarky, hurtful comments where not needed, simply because we are spoiled, entitled nerds who are used to just having everything we want at our fingertips. And we are very passionate individuals. When it comes to the games we love and cherish, we can get pretty hot and bothered about things that don't go our way. For that, I have to say I'm sorry Trion! I've read plenty of cutting remarks on the forums, that do nothing but insult without offering basis for their hurtful comments, as well as evidence or solid proof of why they have been so wronged. Sometimes we get stuck in a certain mindset and our stubborn selves don't want to expand out of it, or admit that we were out of line. Of course, on the other end of that spectrum, after reading many posts on the forums about the state of SFP and the end game content, and then witnessing it for myself, I have to say that there was definitely quite a few things lacking in this new expac, which makes me sad, because I want everyone to enjoy Rift, so that they continue to support it, so that I personally can make sure Rift will be around for me to play for years to come! Because I love Rift just as much as I love WoW and I would be devastated if I ever learned they were shutting down servers, or that the population was so low they were unable to support actual, updated content on a regular basis.

     So I'm happy to see this letter finally going up, because people have been crying for the producer's letter since the beginning of January. I just find it funny how enraged everyone was that the producer's letter took so long, because I myself keep every single email that Rift has ever sent me, and I have an email from last year proclaiming that 2016's producer's letter was ready to read, and that was in the middle of February. So they aren't too far off their mark by having this one in the middle of March. Cool your jets, peeps. It's just a letter!

     Things mentioned in the letter that we can look forward to!

• Eternal Weapons in 4.1 with a long and involved questline
• Changes to Planar Crafting, with new BiS items!
• Tartaric Depths-10 man raid
• New Weekly quests
• 6th Anniversary Carnival
• Vostigar Peaks- New lvl 70 zone with new content, and even hardmode group content!
• New Daily quests
• New Full questline, with replayable content
• New Zone events, new IA's
• New Raid Rifts and Chronicles
• New souls for the Primalist

    Another, truly epic sounding thing that Archonix mentioned in his letter was something called "Rift Challenges". Which he mentioned several times could not even happen, and there were no promises on it, but it seemed they had this brilliant idea to create a new, temporary, ever changing server, separate from the live servers, where you can go on and participate in special, hard mode, or challenge mode activities, which would then impact your live server status! It sounds truly awesome, right?! There's a lot of potential there for brand new items, quests, mounts. ANNNNNNNNNND the most important thing that he mentioned about this was a tiny little, innocently placed comment mentioning that one of the rewards could be......drum roll please......a new race. Yes, you heard it, a NEW RACE. OMG! We've had the same 6 races on Telara since the beginning of time, and it would sooooooooooo beyond amazing, if we could have a new race(s) introduced! Even though I know it wasn't a sure thing, or promised, or whatever, but already my mind is going through potential races that could be playable. Seriously, a truly awesome idea I would throw all my money at! Please Trion, please make this happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want new races so badly!!!!!!!!!!!! Some draconic would be neat! Or serpentlike. Or something with horns!!!!!!! Or wings....or claws....Ugh omg! There are so many potential ideas when the world we play in has such possibility for new races. With the mix of the Planes, and the exotic creatures that come from them, we could have all manner of creatures to befriend and have join our faction! HNNNNNNG this needs to be a thing. I will donate to it so it happens!!!

     Well anyway, that's my rant on the producer's letter. Very much on the hype train for Patch 4.1 and 4.2, as well as this new hint at Rift Challenges!

     Here's a link to the letter, for anyone curious and wanting to read the entire thing for themselves! Enjoy! 2017 Producer's Letter

[Off Topic]: Fortress Seiges!

     So they've finally put an actual official announcement on the Fortress Siege release, even though it's out a few  times since it was first introduced a couple of weeks ago. I say a few times because it had serious problems when it first went live. For one thing, it repeatedly crashed clients for lots of players because of lag and other server issues from the sheer number of players rushing to the area, all excited and eager to do this event. I can't really blame them, seeing as how this is the first interesting and major introduction for lvl 70 players to actually DO in the expac. Unless you count Tok's Proving Grounds...which a lot of end game raiders don't even consider part of end content.

     Actually, there isn't much end game to the end game this expac. Starfall is a bit...lacking in the "things to do" department when it comes to raiding and dungeons after you've reached lvl cap. Usually in these types of games, you'd go on to doing dungeons, rifts, slivers, etc so you can gain better gear, skill up, that sort of thing. Not so in Starfall, sadly, which is causing a ton of frustration for players right now. Maybe if I had a lvl 70 character I could assess this for myself and potentially cry as well, but right now my little Rae and Kara are still not at end game, so I don't have anything to worry about personally. But what were we actually talking about? Oh right, Fortress Siege!

     This Fortress Siege is called "Cracking Xarth's Skull" and is located in Xarth Mire. The objective is to overcome a series of stages, all of them a "siege" type battle. There's a wall you need to destroy, endless enemies to destroy, 5 bosses to take down, and canons to protect and charge up. I do believe there's....4 stages total? I think? Apparently there's a few kinks and problems so far with the Siege event though. The timer is way too short for any player to complete successfully, leaving most events an utter failure, and the rewards for completing the event are rather lackluster, leaving players uninterested in even attempting to complete it. The only reason anyone seems willing to put effort into such an impossibly difficult event is that at the end if the Ascended are successful, it opens up a new 1 boss raid, the first raid to introduce LFR. For those who don't know, LFR means Looking For Raid. I'm most familiar with it because of Warcraft, who has had LFR for...a very long time now. At least 5 years. Was it a good decision? Not necessarily, in both Warcraft and Rift. Speaking from my experience in WoW, LFR has brought a new generation of players who expect easy content and easy high end epic loots. Because LFR picks players from the large amount of playerbase based on hard stats, you have no way of knowing if the people you are teamed up with are even advanced enough in skill to handle a raid, or raid mechanics. And sometimes, sadly, you get the jerks who deliberately join an LFR raid just to screw it up because their bored or trolling or something. And then there's the afk types who just want their loot and join the LFR and then sit at their keyboard either doing nothing or just auto attacking the boss to make it look like their doing something when they're really scrolling through facebook on another screen or watching a movie instead.

     Of course I can also see the good side of LFR. It helps less skilled players see content that they would otherwise never see, because the LFR level of the raid is lower than say the normal version or expert version. It also eases players who are first time raiders into the raiding scene more gently, instead of shoving them face first into a chaotic, intense, anxiety-ridden regular raid where even a second of inattention gets your entire team killed. At which point, you would get insulted and removed from the group. That kind of puts a damper on your dreams of being a raider, right? Especially if your guild is small, casual, or not into raiding or you join the game or the end game scene later and never got a chance to gear up with everyone else.
     This method though, relies on the fact that you DO have more than one difficulty level for the raid, like say LFR, normal, expert. That way the more skilled and high end raiders who will burn through the LFR in record time, still have something else to while away their time on, as well as help the less skilled players advance after confidently completing LFR and feeling like they can try something harder. That's the point of LFR after all. To help the lesser skilled become better so they can advance on to harder modes of the dungeon. Sadly, Trion seems to have...well I have no idea actually what happened this expac and it makes me sad that so many players are so upset! I love Trion, they are my second favorite game company after Blizzard and I've been part of the Rift community since 2011. I've never seen any release of content that was so lacking on content ever in Rift. Starfall Prophecy was just so bare of anything relating to end game. Maybe they didn't expect players to level so fast? Or to get so frustrated at lack of raids so fast? I think this has something to do with how they are dumbing down content and making it easier for the less skilled players. Even the regular 5-man dungeons in Rift in SFP are so easy and silly that no one is taking them seriously. Both regular and expert mode are so easy that it's not even worth writing guides about apparently, since if you're really skilled you can run in there with a friend or two and do it yourself without any strategy or a full 5-man team. This makes me sad as well....

    Wow I'm actually kind of mortified that I turned a post about Fortress Sieges into a semi-rant about Starfall Prophecy. I'm sorry! I didn't mean to sound like the various threads all over the forums, but I guess when you are as passionate about something as I am about Rift, when something goes wrong you tend to have some pretty strong feelings about it either way. I just wish that something could be done to fix the depressing mess that is end game. I would like to see:

1. More difficult dungeons
2. Fortress Siege timer being extended a little bit
3. Better rewards and achievements for completing Fortress Siege
4. Three difficulty levels to dungeons instead of just 2
5. More raids, although I hear Tartaric Depths is coming in March, but we need more!
6. Better crafting recipes and recipes for higher end gear to give crafting something useful
7. Get rid of the karma system, it doesn't help anyone
8. Fixes and patches for all the bugs and issues with end game content
9. Don't remove something simply because it has a bug or a problem, please fix it instead! We enjoy your hard work and like doing it if it works correctly!
10. Fix the randomness of Planar Fragments. Today I got a mage frag on my rogue and a rogue frag on my mage.
11. Where the hell is the Valentine's Day (Mariel-Taun Festival)???? Did you remove it?? WHY!!???!!?!?!?! I loved that event!!!!!!!!!

     Okay that's enough for now. All I can say is, I hope that Fortress Sieges prove enough to keep players occupied until March 1st when Tartaric Depths comes out. And I hope all the kinks and bugs also get ironed out pretty quick because nothing is more depressing than having nothing to do because the only thing to do is so glitchy that it's impossible to succeed at.

     Let me know what you think about Fortress Sieges, just comment below if you wish! I look forward to doing the Sieges myself and investigating the 1-boss raid hehe.

Update: Yes, they did remove the Mariel-Taun festival event! That makes me very sad. I was looking forward to the event and having fun and getting some cool achievs, but alas, that's a no go. They did put some new Valentine's Day items in the rift store though, but what use are they if there's no reason to wear them?? If we don't have a festival to celebrate for, there's no use getting all dressed up in themed costume armor. Although I did guiltily buy it anyway, as well as the Self Love Bug, which is hilarious and I love how it makes adorable little pink hearts float out of me. But I hate that the mounts are locked behind a lock box RNG. It's so frustrating cause I'd love the Love Buggy mount but no way am I trying my luck with it. :( Oh well. Ok that's my update on that, ciao!

[Off Topic]: Patch 3.5, Winter's Wrath, and the Dark Pantheon, Oh My!

    Omg, lots of new and exciting things coming with patch 3.5 and I can hardly wait to play it tonight after work!! It launches December 9th, which is today woot!!!! Here's a look at what all is being introduced/changed in 3.5 "Winter's Wrath":

• Affinity-A Patron benefit thing apparently, which is fine by me cause I've been subscribed to Rift since it's launch in....uh....2010 was it? And I've kept subscribed to the year long sub even after the game went F2P (which I still don't agree with but whatevs). Apparently, Affinity means you collect Patron points just by logging into the game on a Patron account. For each day that you log in, you gain 5 Affinity points, plus you get an extra 3 points bonus as you play throughout the day. I'm assuming this is for playing for 3+ hours straight or something. Or for logging in multiple times? You can redeem your points for neat things on the Rift store, like mounts for any of your characters (which I take to mean that they are BoA, awesome!) or end game loot stuff! A huge bonus and a definite incentive for peeps to subscribe to Rift. I like this idea! UPDATE: The Affinity items are NOT BoA items sadly, and if you want the mounts on multiple characters, you need to keep saving up affinity until you have enough for each character to buy their own. Which makes me sad because I really want Bolt and Volt on all my mains! :(
• PvP- New and improved rewards for participating in pvp skirmishes. I'm not a big pvp'er, but I've been known to try my hand at it from time to time. I'll say this: I prefer Rift pvp to WoW pvp any day of the week! It just seems so much more....meaningful. Ya, that's the word I want. There is also a new tier of pvp gear available for end game for players who do hardcore pvp! You can earn this new tier of pvp armor, called Warmonger's Armor, by upgrading your Frenetic armor pieces (no idea what those are, as I haven't even got a char to end game yet LOL). There are also all new epic quality weapons, Warmonger Weapons on the Rift Store for pvp currency (Favor) and are also upgradeable. I actually really like the upgrade option that Rift introduced. It makes me feel proud to work toward upgrading my armor for better stats rather then just throwing it away at the first opportunity for something better! Apparently the Warmonger weapons give a chance a special effect in combat that could potentially turn the tide of battle. Sounds exciting! :)
• Ascended Troves- Trion is giving all of us Ascended a lovely gift basket and it's pretty darn awesome!!! Even non patron's get one! :) Starting at lvl 10, you can pick up your gift basket in the Rift store. It's full of gear you can use, mounts, pets, reward currency, dimension items, etc! For every 10 lvls, you'll be able to open up the Trove and gather more epic loots! The Troves work kind of like a nesting doll, where each one is wrapped inside the layer of the one before it. Like peeling an onion. If you aren't quite at the lvl where you can open your trove yet, just keep it in your bag or bank until you ding, then open it and reap the benefits!
• Fae Yule-Once again it's Christmas time in the real world, which means that the citizens of Telara will be celebrating the world renowned Fae Yule holiday! I love Fae Yule of all the holidays! The holiday spirit, excitement, and magic just gets me every time! Fae Yule will be added to the game On Dec 10th and go until Jan 6th, which thankfully gives me plenty of time to do stuff for it since I find myself working quite a lot lately to make up for my trip to LA for BlizzCon! There are bunch of new things to do for Fae Yule this year!
• Instant Adventure-Fae Yule Style!-Greatfather Frost and Atrophinius(was wondering when he would pop up again...) have set out to make Fae Yule the best one yet and restore order to the holiday, but they seemed to have consumed a bit too much mead(no surprise there) and are having trouble completing the work. Queue up for IA in Iron Pine Peaks to help restore Fae Yule to it's rightful holiday state. Somebody's gotta do it!
• Minions-All new holiday missions for your minions! I've only just familiar with the whole minion thing, so I'm kind of on the fence about this. They are fun and all, but I'm not really sure on their point in the game, other then random amusement for bored end game players. And in case you weren't able to do Fae Yule 2014's minion missions, they are going to be available again this year (which is good cause I didn't do them!) and you can also buy the minion card from last year: Rudy, from the Rift Store this year.
• Sparkle Quest- I'm not really sure what that even means...but the Rift sites says that you can earn bran new end game gear and rewards from the newest raid (Mind of Madness) by doing Expert Dungeons, winning Random Warfronts, looting the chest in Conquest, participate in experience-giving Zone Events, or by doing assorted daily and weekly quests. But it seems that last year's Faelight Sparkles will magically dissolve out of your currency window so they are no longer valid for this year. So if you saved them up from last year, too bad so sad, gotta work from scratch like everyone else! Once you earn enough currency from doing these tasks, you can buy some awesome end game gear, either for dps, healer, or tank.
• Fae Yule Quests and Zone Events-Earn currency, dimension items, pets, mounts, armor, and more this holiday by doing all the quests that were available last year! Like sledding down the slope in Iron Pine Peaks, dreaming up gifts in the Plane of Water, or performing tasks for the npc's in your capital city!
• Dormant Fae Yule Gifts-For the duration of Fae Yule this year, the final lvl 65 boss on Expert dungeon mode will drop a Dormant Fae Yule Gift. If you hang onto these mystery packages for 12 days, they will...uh...hatch?...and you can open them for a piece of gear from the first tier of raids in the Nightmare Tide expac! Hang on to them, upgrade them, and equip them and this armor would be just as good as those that drop from the raids!
• Achievements and Rewards- All new and old achievements, new pets, mounts, rewards, interactive items to liven up your group. The star at the top of this year's Yule tree is a set of necklaces that will make any Ascended blush(lol curious what that is...) The necklace costs 2k+ snowflakes or dark icicles, or you can buy it with credit. It's worth the equivalent of the first set of raid tier in Nightmare Tide, but you can also upgrade it to tier 2 very easily.
• Rift Store Purchasable Items- On the store itself, purchasable with credits, are a bunch of new holiday themed items, like animated backpacks, a "Midnight Mink" mount, Faeblight Sparkle weapon skins, and a couple of cute portrait badges to complete your festive holiday look!

Well, that's a lot of stuff to take in eh? I'm so excited for Fae Yule tomorrow! Once I've had a chance to log in tonight and tomorrow, I'll update this post with specifics about the actual Fae Yule event and other goodies like Affinity! I can't wait for work to be over with already, and I haven't even started my shift yet haha!

Other things happening in the wonderful world of Rift right now!! Like a behind the lore look at the Dark Pantheon bosses in the Mind of Madness finale!! Here's some info!
        "You've tested your mettle beyond the edge of space and time, through the twisting synapse forest of the Unknown, topping the perverse Pillars of Justice and conquering Envy in the Heart of Darkness. These are all gateways to the true horrors concealed within the Mind of Madness!" That quote is taken directly from Rift's website, here Mind of Maddness Dark Pantheon! Read it, really cool stuff! :)
The new bosses are Lady Justice, The Enigma, Dark Genesis, and Arisen Arak! Sooooooo cool, I wish I was end game and geared just so I can check this place out and explore it all! And of course get all the cool achievements and gear and things.

• Lady Justice: The Goddess of Reason and judgement. She's apparently supposed to bring order to the chaos of existence caused by the Enigma. That should mean she's the good guy right? Well, she's trapped inside the vessel and its warped her sense of right and wrong and her ability to think straight, so obviously she's going to think we are the enemy and need to be destroyed, so she's the first boss.
• Enigma: Well, since Enigma means puzzle, or something that can't be solved, that's exactly what he is. He's the delver of secrets, and arises from chaos. he's driven in a perpetual quest to figure out the mysteries of everything. He's not evil or good by any means, but he sees such a big picture that he doesn't really care about all the "petty" fighting going on around him, and of course that means he thinks Ascended are beneath him. His lack of regard for what he considers lesser beings, leads to us all getting squished unless we can defeat him first! Rawr!
• Dark Genesis: He's like the opposite of Lady Justice. He's located at the Monolith of Ruin and relishes in all things chaos and dark. He plots to bring destruction to Telara. I'm not sure what he has against our world personally, but he's gotta go down. We need to go there and kill him and put an end to his dark dreams of power.
• Arisen Arak: So, Arak has found out his true origin, and is now able to harness the powers of the other bosses to transform himself into an all powerful uber being, called an Onir, which is apparently divine in origin. He's also immortal. Oh boy. As long as the others remain imprisoned and sleeping, their dreams and nightmares return him to life, no matter how often you smash his face in. Just his existing shatters reality, tearing through space and time and bringing the eternal Nexus into the cosmos of Telara. The good thing is, he can only take control of one of the others' powers at a time, and if your fast, you can align yourself with a deity before Arak destroys them.

     So, pretty cool eh? I would love so very much to delve into Mind of Madness and check it all out, and take screenshots and get achievements and all kinds of really fun things for my beloved characters! I shall have to be patient however, and wait for the right time! It's just so hard to see all this neat stuff and not want to dive into it blade first!

Off Topic Comment: I did an amazing good Samaritan thing today that I'm really proud of! A good friend of mine, who has 3 children and lives down the street, has fallen on really tough times. Her kids are all really young (oldest is 7) and she can't afford to get them Christmas presents or anything for this year, so I took her shopping today and got a whole bunch of things for the kids, as well as a neat hoodie for the dad, and even something for herself to put under the tree!! I did all of this, with no strings attached, and no obligations for her to do anything for me in return. I'm just incredibly happy that I was able to make someone else's holiday a little brighter! I also invited them all over to my house for Christmas dinner if they have no where else to go. :) What have any of you done lately, in game or out, that you're proud of? Happy Holidays!
   
            ~Dark out!