Rift: Planes of Telara Interview
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games.on.net: Plonker asks: (Elemental invasions from the opening of rifts is a huge part of the game; to the extent the title of the game is called RIFT. Do you think this idea has the longevity to sustain players' interest long term?)
Scott: I think it does, yes, because the system itself lets us create new types of content that nobody else has in their game. Our initial plans were to take it as far as doing zone-wide events, and then that was going to be our launch content. Then we realised we could do colossus events, which are smaller than a whole zone events, as well as adding ancient wardstones, and there's even another couple of dynamic content that we're making right now. So don't think of it as (is a rift going to keep people happy forever), think of it as (is the concept of entirely new kinds of content going to keep people interested?) To me that's really cool. Lots of people look at an MMO and they go (Oh! There is overland. That is where the exclamation mark farms are. Oh! That is a dungeon. That is where the groups go.) And that right there is very binary. We're trying to mix it up on purpose and see what new kinds of experiences we can make in this system.
games.on.net: He continues with: (There's not much information out there in regards to raid content currently and it's something that is not currently accessible within the beta. There's no doubting that raiding is a huge attraction to one particularly successful MMO on the market currently. Do you see RIFT's end-game being strongly raid focused?)
Scott: At the high end, they will definitely be able to do expert and hard mode raids. We definitely see high-end people enjoying the (on-demand) raid content that we have. How this works is that we have our expert rifts, which are rifts where you can craft a lure and lure out a particular encounter, and suddenly you're taking part in an extended expert mode encounter in the overland for cash and prizes. And then also there's raid rifts, where again you craft out the lure, and summon yourself down a raid to play. So for us it's really about trying to find new, cool ways to make a raid system.
