RIFT: server consolidations, raiding and more

Not in a bad way, in a good way. Trion made our current home a new trial server and offered everyone a chance to move to a new server this week. A trial server is reserved for new players and people taking advantage of the free trial. This is in preparation for the upcoming Storm Legion expansion rush when a flood of new people may be coming back to Rift.

We picked up our guild and did a transfer to Threesprings which is a brand new server Trion just opened. Combine this with Defiant and Guardians now loving each other as well as cross server LFG Q's and you have the makings of a good robust community.

Now that I have reached 50 I have attended a couple of raids in Hammerknell and run all sorts of Expert Dungeons (aka Heroics as you WoW pleebs might know them). I have since switched from a two dagger assassination spec to a Saboteur spec and am doing quite a bit of damage. I use the dagger stealth spec when questing for the most part but I also want to look into Rogue tanking.

I also took advantage of the new wardrobe/costume slots to not look like a peasant. I used a combo of plate, chain and cloth to make myself look more evil and suitable to the level 50 crowd:

The server announcement was as follows:

Hail Ascended, 

The servers of Storm Legion have arrived early! Since the beginning of the year we’ve been making constant advancements in our server technology as we worked to bring all of the shards closer together. Starting with European servers in July, we began our plans to have everyone in each region play on a single wargroup. Now we’re able to start the next leap forward – further focusing on removing the barriers between shards.  

The advancements we’ve made this year have effectively doubled the capacity of the individual servers allowing more of you to play together than ever before while reducing the total number of shards we need to support RIFT’s active population. 

What this means for you – we can now support all of our North American players on a single wargroup, further reducing queue times for dungeons and PvP while bringing the community even closer together.

This change is currently scheduled to occur this Wednesday, October 24. Here’s what the new mega-wargroup for North America will look like:

Deepwood
Faeblight (RP)
Greybriar
Laethys (Oceanic)
Seastone (PvP)
Shatterbone
Threesprings
Wolfsbane 

Briarcliff, Byriel, Deepstrike, Gnarlwood, Greenscale, Keenblade, Millrush, and Silkweb will be converted to trial-only shards – everyone currently on these shards will be able to take advantage of the Free Character Transfers to find yourself a new home or meet up with guild mates.  

With this massive increase in server capacity it will be easier than ever to enjoy RIFT to the fullest. We’ll be ready for anything as you and your friends storm our shores with the release of our first expansion – we can’t wait!