In the Free2Play fantasy MMO Rift, we are eagerly approaching the next expansion. However, before that, the old, mad gods have set the pre-patch. It has been live since this week.
Patch 2.8, “Awakening Madness,” addresses the issues many players had with the auction house. Additionally, it makes extensive changes to the Pyromancer soul and now allows curious players to recognize where their neighbor’s top-tier armor or sparkling weapon comes from: The origin of items can now be identified.
A new quest line prepares the heroes of Rift for what awaits them with the next expansion (if one can even prepare anyone for madness). In addition to the new quest line, there will also be a fresh dungeon where players will confront a mysterious cult. Of course, the dungeon comes with challenges and items.
However, an undocumented change at the auction house is causing a stir: They apparently switched from a fixed discount of 5% to a scaling amount, which is causing fans to cry out. Rift intends to address this issue but ultimately aims to remove gold from the game through the auction house (a so-called gold sink) and also reduce the number of unnecessary fun auctions.
