Pretty excited for 1.3. I don't think my guild will be able to hop right into Hammerknell though. Have yet to kill Herald and Alsbeth, but I guess it all depends on gear requirements. Can't wait till we see some upcoming patch notes :D
Looks awesome! I really really hope they took more from GSB than RoS when it came to making Hammerknell. By that I mean I don't want the trash to be set up like how it is in RoS, but rather GSB. 3-4 minor trash pulls and you're on to your next boss. With 10 bosses in the raid that better be the case cause I'm pretty sure TRION got a lot of negative feedback with how RoS was set up in terms of trash pulls.
Can't wait for this :D. If server transfers go well, then maybe my guild will be able to raid more often as well. A 10 boss raid seems like it will take the majority of guilds more than a 4 hour session or so to clear once its on 'farm' status.
People can say what they want about Rift(I don't play it) but they're not stupid by waiting to drop their patch a day or so after 4.2 comes out for WoW.
That looks a hell of a lot more interesting to me than lolfirelands.
You can be geared ready for firelands without stepping a foot in any 4.0 content in WoW, I quit RIFT about 3 months ago so maybe things are different now but you had to be mostly T2 geared to pull your weight in GSB and probably the same with RoS, Hammerknell is T2 content so I expect you'll need to be in mostly tiered armor GSB/RoS gear to do well in Hammerknell.
So people like me who quit RIFT early on in the game will not have a chance getting into a guild that have cleared GSB/RoS and will be active throughout Hammerknell, unlike WoW where most people can join a guild and be in firelands the night it's live.
Don't get me wrong, I am not moaning about that, infact I wish WoW was like that, like it used to be...you went to one tier of content, cleared it and moved on to the other instead of buying pieces from the AH and skipping bosses entirely. But I won't get into that here.
It'll take more than an amazing raid instance to get people playing RIFT again I think although I do not doubt it will attract some raiders who have the luxury of being a friend/member of a decent raiding guild.
I loved the game when I played it and I would love to be able to play but one raid instance isn't enough I am afraid, even if it is visually beautiful and huge.
After logging onto the alpha shard in Rift, it looks like Trion has already anticipated that and is taking steps to make sure it isn't like that. If you look at the Raid T1 gear you buy with glyphed pieces, you'll find that they now cost a new kind of currency which the tooltip says you gain from Expert dungeons and Raid dungeons. So basically, they're making it so everyone is able to get the gear the used to be GSB/RoS gear without having to do those dungeons. It also doesn't look like it costs many tokens.
We'll have to wait and see how exactly they handle this transition, but it appears as though your concern is being addressed.
Thats cool, I didn't mean to sound like I was ranting how content transitions are a little harsh, it was kinda refreshing but I see how they needed to make an exception this time and this will most likely attract some people that quit awhile ago and have fell out of the loop.
The problem for me though is my server had next to no player base when I quit, it only had one active raiding guild and it sucked shit, so unless this brings a huge influx of player base then I doubt it'll make much difference for people that quit ages ago and weren't apart of the raiding scene. I can imagine how exciting this is for you guys that have been clearing content for awhile though, I know I would be Hammerknell looks amazing.
My understanding is that the tool tip on the PTS is incorrect in that you still have to do GSB/RoS to get tokens for T1 raid gear at a decent pace. They eliminated the glyphed items from bosses and replaced them with those badges/tokens. According to a GM, you'll only get like 1 or 2 badges per daily expert dungeon and 5 per boss in GSB/RoS. So technically you can gear up if you can't do the raid content but it'll take forever since pieces are still 50/80/100 per piece.
Also hopefully the population issue handles itself with the new free transfers. I know Keenblade is medium and i'd like to see lots more people.
Btw the gear vendor is up for T2 raid gear and they're ridiculous.
Your links are hosted in a place that I don't have access to. But I got my cleric in the raid tier 2 gear, it's... pretty awesome... Also, I'm guessing this will end up getting patched... >.>
And yeah, I think the dead servers will be resolved with the free server transfers that will also be coming out with 1.3. And I know my guild will be looking for some cross-server apps too, so if you were raid-ready and need a guild you could try applying if interested.
Warrior armor aesthetically looks like ass, almost like you're fucking Genbu standing up on his hind legs. Then again, I never did like the look of a lot of the game's plate armors. :/