I’m incredibly excited to announce RIFT’s third full-featured expansion: Starfall Prophecy!
Since our last expansion, the team has been working hard on the next big thing for RIFT. We’re excited to finally be able to talk about how we plan to continue the story of Telara, and the Ascended’s battle against Planar forces.
The result of all this hard work is Starfall Prophecy, where the Acended will continue the fight against Ankhet, who just happens to be hell-bent on obliterating Telara. Originating far beyond the Cosmos, this Tenebrean construct of monolithic proportions has burned its way through countless worlds and torn huge swathes of the Planes of Fire and Life loose from their primal realms. The Ascended must stop the denizens of these planar domains from destroying Telara before they can ever hope to battle the tower of Ahnket itself!
You won’t just battle through the regions surrounding the tower; the time is ripe to take the war beyond Telara and the Plane of Water into the other invading Planes. To make this possible, we take our Instant Adventure system to a whole new level, with Planar Assault Adventures. Groups of Ascended will be able to band together instantly and launch powerful, coordinated attacks on the invaders’ own staging grounds.
With Starfall Prophecy, heroes of Telara will be able to reach level 70, opening up entirely new ways to expand character abilities. Collect powerful Planar Fragments to customize gear, enjoy a whole new Active Upgrade system that rewards you for completing heroic feats and challenges, and collect Eternal Items of immense power. In other words, take all measures necessary to challenge the fate before you!
It wouldn’t be RIFT without new and exciting ways to customize how you play. As such, Starfall Prophecy brings with it the addition of Legendary Powers. Offering options for each Soul, these Legendary Powers dramatically alter the way existing abilities work. It gives you a whole new layer of customization for your character!
To power all these awesome new additions to RIFT, we’ve also dedicated a lot of effort to technical improvements over the last year. Starting with true Multicore support which we launched earlier this year, our efforts continue on with the upcoming 64 bit Alpha, which we’re targeting for lateSummer. We’re committed to ensuring RIFT continues to gain in both performance and stability for an even better playing experience. We’re continuing to work on these massive improvements to RIFT’s core technology, while at the same time working closely with our partners at leading tech companies to find even more ways to improve RIFT for you.
Even after Starfall Prophecy launches, there’ll be plenty more to come in live updates, as we release additional expansion content. Our first major update after launch will include a brand new outdoor region, the Tenebrean Schism, full of dynamic content for level 70s to enjoy. As well as a brand new level 70 raid. In a continued effort to make more of RIFTs content accessible to all players, we’ll also be introducing “LFR” – Looking for Raid. More to come about that in the future!
We’ve got even more plans for Starfall Prophecy that we’ll share as the time draws closer.
Let’s talk about how you can get Starfall Prophecy. In our many discussions of the best way to make new expansion-scale releases available, our goal is always to strke a balance between supporting the cost of expansion creation and making sure people can participate on an even playing field, while maintaining the robust content in the truly massive world that RIFT offers freely to all.
Based heavily on your feedback from our most recent expansion releases, we’ll sell Starfall Prophecy as a simple premium expansion purchase, instead of dividing it into individual unlocks like equipment slots or the ability to equip expansion loot. We hear you!
We’re happy to announce that preorders for Starfall Prophecy are now available! As a thank you to those who choose to preorder you’ll unlock the title “Starlord” or “Starlady” and have the opportunity to earn our newest mount, Opie the Artifact Squirrel, as well as earning several other exciting rewards by logging in throughout the summer and collecting daily Prophecy Tokens. Seek out Maguk in Tempest Bay to find out what all is available!
You can see more details on the expansion for yourself at: http://www.starfallprophecy.com
Thank you all for your continued support of RIFT from Beta through our fifth anniversary, and for sharing in this amazing journey together. RIFT is far more than just a game; it’s a bond that we all share and experience together. We couldn’t pick a better group of people to experience it with.
Chris “Archonix” Junior
RIFT Game Director