• 4 Unique Characters - Choose from 4 different characters with their own unique abilities and storyline
• PvP - Area, guild battle, tournament system and more!
• Dungeons and Raiding - Party up with your friends and explore various dungeons and raids
• Crafting & Forging System - Craft and forge your gear to strengthen them
• My Room - Customize your own personal room, decorate and store items
• Controller Support - Optimized to work with any PC gamepad

So, what's in Rift's future, one might ask, or not ask? The game's first update for one thing. That will take place today at 8AM PST, or Friday at 2AM UTC if you're Euro. The update does feature some new content, and a lot of tweaks and fixes. So here are some of the specifics on what you can expect to see from this update:

• Raid rifts!
• Improvements to Rift, Invasion, and Foothold experience gains
• See more quests at once in the tracker if you choose
• Better item stack management
• PvE end-game difficulty better suited to the power of real end-game characters
• Pie. Added that one in on my own. Pie may or may not be included.

Some other improvements that Trion Worlds is working toward:

• Mages. Yes, we’re both listening to you and paying attention to the post-launch gameplay data on our servers. While a well-played mage does do extremely well, and mages are very well represented in the overall number of active characters, there are issues with competitiveness in some low and mid level ranges and certain combinations of souls, due largely to mages’ overall fragility and cast times.
• Mail Spam. Chat spam protection has been going really well on the whole, which, predictably, pushed spammers into mail. We’ll be putting more protection in place there soon.
• Event Contribution. This system is being reworked to be more in line with the idea of events being massively social occurrences, and the focus on abilities themselves will be going away entirely.
• Anti-Hacker Protection. As a very high priority, we’re working on new and interesting ways to help you make sure your account is protected from password phishing and keyloggers. In the short time since head start, we’ve already banned a couple thousand spammers, hackers, farmers, and thieves. We’ll continue improving our detection and ability to take action on them well into the future.
• Dismount and Exposed. Expect some changes here as well.

My passion for MMOs has led me straight to their doorstep. Starting Monday, I'll be working for an MMO company, keeping watch over their forums and making sure trolls aren't fed. Not exactly a glamorous job I know, but it's got potential.

When I first got assigned to VE, quite a few people were alarmed and apprehensive. What? Two women editors on the site, what is the world coming to? Quite honestly, to me it was just another assignment. I have been around the IGN community sites for years so to me it was no big deal. What surprised me was that I bonded with the readers here more than I did anywhere else. Although harshly critical, just like the internet audience is wont to be, it's a smarter and more mature crowd than usual, and a close-knit one at that.

In short, I will miss you guys!