Rift One-Year Anniversary Developer Diary Video and Interview

Trion Worlds' Rift just completed its first year of service at the beginning of this month, and that's prompted the release of a nearly five-minute celebratory developer diary video and a new interview with producer Scott Hartsman over at ZAM. First, the video:


And a snip from the interview:
Can you tell us a bit about how Rift's celebrating the anniversary in-game? What will we be seeing in the future?

(Each side has a goal to accomplish. This stage's server goal is about crafting and gathering; later on there will be a stage about PvP, and then other stages with other goals. It's the first time we're doing individual goals as well as having overarching server-based goals with global rewards. We also have these literal carnival games; goofy things like the carnival horse race where you jump on the pad on the ground that represents your horse or the stampeding balloon pop, where you're in a pen with 20 or 30 other people jumping up and down on balloons. Again, a lot of it touches on the idea of having things to do in the game with other players besides killing stuff. But if players still want to stab things, we've introduced a pick-up group for raids that looks back at old bosses in Telara's past. This is one of our most unique patches yet!

We have things that we'll be launching short term and long term. One of the medium term goals that we've been working on internally for a number of months is even larger and more epic-scaled PvP options. Another big one. we've been working on prototypes of some new types of crafting in the game because, again, we are about more than just stab! There are some other good winners, but I think those are all I'm going to allude to right now. That is pretty meaty, though, isn't it? If anybody hasn't taken a look at Rift in a little while, I strongly recommend they do so during this event, because it is not just great adventurous fun, it's also hilarious fun. And we would like to invite everyone to come take a look!)