Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff sat down with Rift's executive producer to get some details on the game's next major update, which includes a Looking for Group tool and much more.

ZAM: Switching gears a bit, the wardrobe feature sounds cool. Will you basically be able to save outfits and then swap them on the fly with the push of a button?

Hartsman: That's exactly it, yeah. We built in lots of wardrobe sets into your character window. You get one right off the bat and then you can unlock more later on. One of the things we're looking to add in future updates is more reward sets and more cosmetic stuff. We've heard a lot of comments, and we agree with them, that people want to look like some NPCs.

ZAM: So you mean cosmetic items that are focused on appearance rather than stats?

Hartsman: Exactly. For example, the way the system works is if you're a warrior who can wear plate, if you're putting on armor you have to wear plate. We don't want warriors to be able to wear everything in the game while mages are just stuck in cloth. But in the wardrobe slot we have items marked as costume items or warbdrobe items, and anyone can equip those. Like the snow guard look from Iron Pine Peak and the desert bandit look from Shimmersand; there are all kinds of cool outfits we can make.

We've got all these unique hats in the game right now. One of my favorites is the Team Fortress hat that we did with those guys. We're all such Team Fortress 2 fans, which is how that came around. I would love to be able to wear that thing, but I can't because I can't put it in my gear slot. All of the hats and non-stat items will be switching over to become costume items in the update.

ZAM: You're adding your fifth role slot in this update. Can we expect more roles to be added in the future, or is this a specific instance?

Hartsman: It's something we wanted to ease into. Adding new capacity like that, depending on the number of people who take us up on it, does add new overhead and add new storage. We just wanted to add one and see how many people use and see if it would make sense to offer more in the future. It's definitely something we're looking at with an open mind.

We were expecting people would generally use a role to mean, “this is my healing role. This is my DPS role.” But the thing that really surprised us with the class system is that people will use multiple builds for the same role. We're seeing people use entire role slots just for minor tweaks. It's fun!

ZAM: The Update 1.2 test notes have a section devoted to slivers. Can you give us some more details on this feature?

Hartsman: The short version is that it allows us to officially support 10-man raid content. That's the big draw. Think of it almost like an overland kind of instancing. You go to a place in the world, you see a portal between here and another reality, you go into the portal and you're in the same spot you're in, but it's all different.

ZAM: So kind of like an open world instance? You're in the same location, just instanced?

Hartsman: Right, with new creatures and encounters. It's a private raid instance for you and your raid. Fictionally, it's supposed to be an alternate reality or alternate timeline. For example, maybe stuff has gone bad and you need to set things right. Or maybe you need to go knock somebody over before their reality starts pushing in on Telara.

I'm totally just using this as an example, but one of things I think would be incredibly cool is if I'm a Defiant guy and in this alternate reality, Meridian has crumbled and has been taken over by the Plane of Death. Wouldn't it be cool to have to raid through Meridian to set things right?

ZAM: Definitely! So you can basically just do whatever you want lore-wise with these slivers.

Hartsman: Exactly. We can do all kinds of great stuff. It's a way to tell some of these offshoot stories or really creative ideas that wouldn't fit in the main storyline. It's a piece of tech we've been working on for a little while now. The fact that we get to use it to support 10-man raiders makes me very happy.

ZAM: Can you tell me a little bit about the Gilded Sanctum raid that's coming in 1.2 with the sliver system?

Hartsman: The entire theme of this update is all based around Laethys, who is one of the dragons of the Plane of Earth. The Golden Maw is the cult faction surrounding Laethys. This entire update is themed around Laethys and the Golden Maw in general. Having an area where Laethys' forces have actually taken over Shimmersand seemed like a great fit, and it just all came together at the right time.

ZAM: Two new Ascended powers will help players look for these slivers. Do you have any plans to use these powers in any other way?

Hartsman: Absolutely. We're thinking about doing it for a couple different things. Artifacts inside of instances, possibly separate artifacts. Definitely as we start adding new types of content, we are absolutely looking to integrate some of the new abilities that we're going to be adding. We're actually looking at adding new Ascended powers in general to get more gameplay value out of the artifact game and the land control game.

ZAM: So could players someday get a power that will help them find artifacts throughout the world?

Hartsman: This isn't something we're doing right now, but speaking of future potential, I do think we have some pretty compelling gameplay going on with our artifacts, and I think there's some thing we can do to make it even more fun and a bit more of a game. I think there's some potential there for some future add-ons.

ZAM: So there are also some new zone events coming in Update 1.2, such as tower defense and escort events. What can you tell me about them?

Hartsman: One of the things we've always been talking about is introducing new types of gameplay and events. Right now we have our colossus events, which are most common. Then we have our epic scale zone events. And now in 1.2 we have some new types of zone events with new types of gameplay.

For one of them, the Guardians and Defiant both build their respective colossus and have them fight it out. There's another one in Iron Pine which is all about defending the bulwarks. It's more of a defense one than a “go charge around and clean up all the rifts” kind of thing. Then there's the Shimmersand caravan escort, because we know everybody loves escort quests. We played it internally quite a bit and we liked it. We thought it would be interesting to throw in the mix and see what people think about it.

We are also adding resource-themed rifts because they're all about crafting resources, and then players started calling them crafting rifts. So we said, “fine, they're crafting rifts.” Whenever players name something first, it's the one that sticks. It's a way for us to give out more crafting rewards and crafting progression tokens.

ZAM: You have a Recruit-a-Friend feature coming up that gives rewards. What are the perks of this feature?

Hartsman: I like Recruit-a-Friend because it gives me something for something I was going to do anyway. Recruit-a-Friend is one of those kinds of systems that every game should have. You're doing something that is awesome for players and awesome for developers. With our Recruit-a-Friend you're able to get three different rewards for three different sets of friends, including Courage, a faithful hound that is adorable beyond belief. You can go all the way up to a mount. Once you've recruited somebody and you guys are BFFs, you can summon each other anywhere in the world.

Players will also get keys to give to friends that give them seven days of access, which is how they can kick everything off. If they decide to purchase the game after their trial ends, that's when rewards are given out.

ZAM: How long does the summoning last? Will it be permanent or for a period of time?

Hartsman: Forever! That's what the third “F” means in BFF! (laughs) It's all about helping people play with other people. I don't see why we'd want to put a limit on that. I'm pretty sure you can't do it every 20 seconds though.

ZAM: You've been doing a bunch of free trial weekends. Do you ever plan on making a constant free trial that anyone can try out at any time?

Hartsman: At some point in the future we will absolutely do that. For us, it's all been about the speed with which programs can be developed and launched in a way in which everything works. I wouldn't want us to rush it and have it not work.

ZAM: Is there anything else you wanted to mention about Update 1.2?

Hartsman: We will be aiming to have Facebook and possibly Tumblr status integration and update integration in the game by Update 1.2. It's currently on track, but you can never be 100% certain until it's up on the test server. But we're really confident this is going to make it. Every month or two we try to add another thing to integrate. First it was Twitter and then it was YouTube. Facebook is the natural next step.

We also have some improved rewards planned. We are upgrading the loot you get for plaques of achievement. We've also worked to make PvP more rewarding as well through better favor payouts, better prestige payouts, better dailies and higher quality gear. We weren't in love with the amount of upgrade that a lot of these items felt like, so we wanted to improve them. If you have one already, it will just get upgraded when the new stats go out.

ZAM: Your team is really leading the path with social integration.

Hartsman: I think a lot of the social toys can be kind of cool as long as you give it to people in a way that they also think it's cool. There's a lot of social trickery and social mechanics that work on Facebook and on social games that are not MMO audience kinds of things. For us, we want to give you a tool that you can choose to use or not.

YouTube was real work. I want to say two engineers worked on it full-time for probably a month, and then another engineer worked on the UI for it for two to three weeks. It was a lot of work, and that's why you tend not to see it in MMOs.

ZAM: Thanks so much for your time!

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff, Editor-in-Chief