RIFT will be introducing four new souls in its 2.7 Update. The first to get a formal introduction is a Warrior soul: the Liberator. According to an early preview by MMORPG, this is a raid-healing Warrior.

The first new Souls since Storm Legion make landfall in RIFT 2.7, an update with expansion-level features that (among other things) enable characters from each Calling to play every role in the game!

Stay tuned this week and next for previews of each new Soul ahead of their PTS debut, and read on to meet the Liberator, a Warrior making waves across Telara for his arcane rites of … healing?

Trion has announced a fantastic sale on RIFT Patron subscriptions at the Trion Worlds Account Center. You can get an entire year of game perks, items, boosts – plus extra currency and a RIFT Store discount – all for $99.

To see the whole list of benefits, head on over to the RIFT Community Blog!

The party is underway in Shimmersand, Tempest Bay, Meridian and Sanctum as the Carnival of the Ascended makes its rounds once again. This year it has been scaled back to a two week duration (down from a month last year) and the Wheel of Fate warfront has been removed. New companion collection achievements and a new mount has been added, and all our favorite carnival games have returned!

The Carnival of the Ascended runs through March 12, 2014. Check out our updated event guide over on Rifthead!

Tucked into their favorite Dimensions, a new order of artisans forge wonders from the fabric of magic itself. Meanwhile, a dark faction stirs in the planes, drawing the attention of Crucia and pitching all of Telara toward war.

RIFT 2.6 introduces the new Dream Weaver crafting class and an Air Saga storyline following Crucia’s flight from Mathosia to Dusken and beyond. Hunt the Queen of Air after the events of Frozen Tempest and uncover rich rewards (including new bounties and unstable artifact sets) along the way!

Key features include:

On the first day of gaming, Trion gave to me, a good friend questing for free!

As gaming progresses, we move further and further away from the intimate, tightly knit setting that once existed. Even on consoles, split screen is seldom included, and multiplayer games tend to be very impersonal. Until early this year I forgot how much a gaming experience can be improved if you share it with a good friend. 

I've known my friend Callum since we were 8 years old, and we've been gaming together for almost as long. In grade 3 or 4 we played Runescape together, and followed it up with Guild Wars, Warcraft, Battlefield and StarCraft II to name a few. However, over the past year or so our time has been so divided with school and work, that neither of us really had an opportunity to play games together. Despite our lack of time, when we both had an opening in our schedules just before summer, we decided to get together and play some games.

Callum has two computers in his den, and we were deciding what to install before we started. Neither of us had played RIFT seriously before it went free to play, and we decided to give it a shot. The experience I had playing it with him was fantastic. I find it easy to forget how much more fun you have when you are playing with someone you genuinely like. RIFT is a good game, which definitely helped, but even the collect quests and kill quests, which are so often tedious, become funny and entertaining. We played through until level 20, doing a few dungeons and taking our time with the crafting and leveling, stopping to enjoy the scenery and simply have fun.

All across Telara, wreaths, presents and mead have been prepared for the return of Fae Yule!

You'll be able to embrace your inner werewolf in a Very Merry Warfront, tour Telara’s holiday Dimensions, and celebrate with festive zone events, Instant Adventures, rifts, footholds, special gifts and more.

Trion Worlds has decided to spice things up in RIFT this year. In the usually stagnant time between Halloween and Christmas, in which events rarely happen and little content is released, Trion is scaling old content for the level cap players and dialing down the amount of players required for the content. Over the next six weeks, Trion is re-releasing a rescaled existing dungeon or raid each week during the Gifts of the Fae updates.

Trion Worlds has gained over a quarter of a million players for its two games RIFT and Defiance. The company's stellar week was highlighted by the re-release of RIFT as a free-to-play offering on Steam and its participation in the marathon for charity for children known as Extra Life.

RIFT had a particularily exceptional week, gaining its highest single day increase of new users. Trion Worlds also garnered the most fundraising for the Extra Life charity, raising a whopping $63,000 for children's hospitals. The public's reaction to the Extra Life marathon was immense; Defiance's creative lead Trick Dempsey was astounded:

Today, RIFT has launched update 2.5, Song of Dreams, which debuts with the Song of Dreams – an all-new underwater saga. The update also includes a new Level 60 dungeon, Chronicle, or Sliver every week until the annual and awesome Fae Yule! Plunge into additional features including a new Planar Attunement Nexus, improved PvP matchmaking, a new Infinity Gate Dimension, International Shards, and more.

• Song of Dreams – A Mini-Saga that includes underwater gameplay!
• Gifts of the Fae – a new Level-60 version of fan-favorite and reworked Telaran instances every week.
• Iron Pine Peak revamped - the snowy vistas of Mathosia have now been reworked for levels 27-35!
• Infinity Gate Dimension – the latest Dimension is inspired by the Infinity Gate, coupled with new items in expert dungeons.
• Planar Attunement Next – All-new, PVP Tier 3!
• Store Wish Lists – Bookmark your most wanted items!
• International Shards – Bringing the EU gamers together and helping with language barriers

Watch the RIFT: Song of Dreams trailer below, and learn more about Song of Dreams on the RIFT Blog!

RIFT, the free-to-play MMORPG by Trion Worlds, has been enjoying some Halloween content over the past few weeks. To add to the fun, Trion has teased a new patch set to release on November 6th. The game has been receiving substantial, frequent content over the past few years, and RIFT 2.5: Song of Dreams seems like it will be no exception. Back in June, Trion teased an expansion set on the Plane of Water, a realm of madness and dreams, which you can read more about over on Junkies Nation. It seems as though Trion wants to test their design ideas in the latest patch of RIFT.