Thanks to a community "white hat," the RIFT account security exploit (that had nothing to do with ZAM) has been squashed. Read our exclusive interview here!

ZAM: Does this change your outlook about Trion or RIFT at all?

ManWitDaPlan: I have to admit, I was becoming increasingly concerned that the game was broken to the point of being "unsafe" to play. By "unsafe," I mean that there was the very real possibility that my account could be wrecked at any time with no warning, so it would be a waste of time to level up if I would end up standing naked and penniless next to a mailbox the next time I logged in. So as I was posting my "eureka, found it!" post, I was hoping to be impressed by the response - if I wasn't, I was already planning to pull my subscription!

The response was insane. I wasn't contacted by some support flunky with no authority to do anything but read from a script, I was on the phone with the development team lead. I sent the technical details and got a call back within minutes. Left work to head home, and by the time I got home the server team lead was calling. Before I finished eating dinner the exploit was fixed, some extra features were improved, and all of Telara was cursing my name for making them go hunt down an unlock code in their email.

If you're not the top dog you have to fight the top dog to take his title. If you ARE the top dog that title is yours to LOSE. If Trion can keep doing what they're doing when it comes to gamer-centric behavior and a willingness to risk annoying users during Friday night gaming in order to push through emergency patches that make everyone's characters safer, and if they can overcome the weaknesses this whole mess has exposed (such as having their support team overwhelmed), the top dog had better be working on his bite 'cause there's a new challenger to the throne.

ZAM: What do you think the future of the game is?

ManWitDaPlan: Since Blizzard set the world on fire with World of Warcraft, everything MMO-related since then has been compared to WoW and everyone asks whether each newly emergent MMO is the "WoW killer." Rift stands the best chance of dethroning WoW that I've seen of any contender to date, and not strictly because the game brings something new/special to the table. After all, Rift is derivative of all that went before it, just as WoW was, and as Ultima Online was of MUDs/MOOs, etc. all the way back to the first games writen for computers.

A key, and often overlooked, part of the equation is how the game is run, how the GMs interact with the players, how involved the developers are with the playerbase, and whether the game's producer fosters a real sense of community for and with their customers. After all, a game is only as good as its developers make it and its players play it. Trion is striving to do right on all counts, and that puts pressure on the whole MMO world to do it better, whatever "it" might happen to be.

I think this will ultimately mean a positive outlook for Rift, for Trion, and for MMOs as both entertainment medium and creative artform. The sky isn't even the limit; there's a lot of potential out there just waiting to be tapped. Everybody wins.

ZAM: Is there anything else you’d like to say about this whole experience?

ManWitDaPlan: It's been unusual to say the least, but thus far it's been a fun ride. Even though this is definitely not a normal set of circumstances, if Rift offers this much excitement - so much it spills over into meatworld - I might have to play it for a while longer just to see what happens next.