In Part One of our interview, we chat with Scott Hartsman, Creative Director of Trion, to get the scoop on PvP and PvE in Rift, as well as what makes Rift a "social" MMO and why Rift will be so unique as an MMO

ZAM: In a different vein, you've often mentioned that you wanted Rift to be a true "social" MMO. What do you mean by this, and how do you intend to do this?

Scott Hartsman: Think of other MMORPGs you've played in the past. You wander around, you level up, you mind your own business and then, suddenly, you see a cool thing. Let's say, for example, that this "cool thing" is a monster, and it drops something that you want. I would imagine that you would want that "cool thing" to be all yours; as in, if you see another person coming along, you would tell them to leave you alone with your discovery.

What we want to do is change that mindset so that you want to see more people show up, and we've done this by simply making it so that the more people that show up… the better off you are! For example, take the most common event that we've demonstrated thus far, the Rifts themselves. If you see a Rift open, you might say, "I'm going to go kick that invasion's ass," and then you'll decide to work your way through by yourself. You'll still get a good reward for it, but if more people show up to fight, all of you will get better loot because you're all doing it together. The fact is, more people equal more rewards and higher quality results. That's really the philosophy that we're trying to bring to a lot of things. We're trying to get away from that "it's mine, so you can't have it" mindset.

In the end, we want our MMO to be a social experience and we've realized that it's not that people don't want to be social, it's just because they don't want to be inconvenienced.

ZAM: How do you plan to deal with "griefing" (intentionally ruining or preventing others from enjoying the game) in Rift? For example, if a few players decide that they want to be the only ones at a Rift, and if some new guy comes wandering along to participate, the group just decides that they won't participate any more until the new player leaves.

Scott Hartsman: Well, six guys being difficult isn't really a "big deal," because there are thousands more that can help. These rifts are supposed to be massive, and we have events of all sizes. At the end of the day, it comes down to who chooses to go there, rather than hard limiting the numbers that can be there. The idea we have here is that once you have a full server population, chances are, you'll get those large numbers and you'll definitely have more people helping than not.

ZAM: What other social features do you have planned for Rift? What about housing?

Scott Hartsman: We have a pretty robust Guild system in the works. One thing we haven't talked much about is people getting together to build their guild up and build a structure (in the metaphorical sense) that provides you and all of your friends benefits. Once again, we've come back to that idea of everybody contributing to the effort of benefiting themselves and their friends.

We don't want to go with geographical housing, but there needs to be things that people can build on and that they can be proud to build. If we add in tangible benefits as well, then that's just another reason to do so.

ZAM: What about the economy as a social feature? While most games, these days, just use crafting as another form of self-sufficient player progression (ie, World of Warcraft), there have been other MMOs, like Final Fantasy XI, that have employed crafting as a whole new sphere of player interaction. In this way, because it usually took an incredible amount of time, money and effort to become a master of your craft, social communities could spring up around the pursuit of mastering these crafts. As well, players would also need to seek out other crafters in order to lock down suppliers, or to get items crafted that the player wouldn't be able to make themselves. Will Rift pursue crafting in this same way?

Scott Hartsman: I would say that our game supports both kinds of crafting. We let you choose between those crafting and gathering professions and, on your character, we let you pick three of the total of all of them. You can definitely choose to make yourself an uber-specialist in one thing and to become self-sufficient in that one thing, but it's obvious that the more you branch out, the more you'll have to rely on other people.

You see, with the way MMO gaming has evolved, we are, once again, dealing with the concept of convenient socializing and inconvenient socializing. Players just like to deal with the auction house (rather than contacting specialized crafting suppliers) because it's so convenient.

As a final point, if you go too far in the direction of ultra-difficult crafting masteries, you end up isolating more people than you're appealing to. Lots of people make the assumption that an MMORPG developed by a new company will be grindy, but we are very much not doing that. We are very sensitive to the idea that there needs to be something interesting to do. A large amount of time spent on something does not always equate to a certain level of difficulty; a large amount of time spent just means a large amount of time spent.

And that covers the first half of our phone interview with Scott Hartsman! Be sure to check in tomorrow, as we'll be covering the real meat and potatoes of Rift: the 'soul' class system and player growth!

Read part two of our interview over here!