Introduction to the Devs

[Faelor]

So many devs, so little time!

Nice to see you all on board.

[Halvon]

Hello all, I'm Larry Boles, Content Developer and I work on the rifts themselves primarily and have had no small part in the first zones you will find yourself starting in!

I've formerly worked on Warhammer Online where I did PQ's, monster lairs, and seasonal events. I also did a lot of non-development work with Dark Age of Camelot & Ultima Online.

We are working hard to make the rifts system to be a truly unique experience that has never been seen in an MMO before and I can't wait to hear your feedback on them!

[Liziana]

Hello all, I'm Larry Boles, Content Developer and I work on the rifts themselves primarily and have had no small part in the first zones you will find yourself starting in!

I've formerly worked on Warhammer Online where I did PQ's, monster lairs, and seasonal events. I also did a lot of non-development work with Dark Age of Camelot & Ultima Online.

We are working hard to make the rifts system to be a truly unique experience that has never been seen in an MMO before and I can't wait to hear your feedback on them!

Woah...and hi...you're either up really late, or up really early, either way .....get some sleep....we know how fantastic and absorbing Rift must be, but we must strive to keep our Devs bright and perky!

[Paradosi]

Woah...and hi...you're either up really late, or up really early, either way .....get some sleep....we know how fantastic and absorbing Rift must be, but we must strive to keep our Devs bright and perky!

I disagree, we need beta! The devs can run on rice crispies and coffee, its an optimal food diet.

[MacDeath]

I disagree, we need beta! The devs can run on rice crispies and coffee, its an optimal food diet.

BETA! BETA!! BETA!!! Does the beta dance...
BTW, it's great to see you here Larry.

[Lothair]

Awesome~

My names Christopher Junior, and I'm one of the many systems drones currently slaving away at crafting some wicked abilities, saucy items and all around general goodness. Oh yah...and also working on ways to allow you to pwn your fellow Telarans...

I want to know more! welcome...

[Osho]

Hello, All-

You may have noticed some posts by a few devs lately. There were even a couple posted today in the MMO age thread. But they are kind of buried.

So I thought I would make it easier on them and you. Let's use this thread for some of the devs to introduce themselves to you.

Please give a warm welcome to all of our devs who have found the time to stop by.

I guess I'll step up first...!

I've already said hello to some of you over on the lore forums, but to everyone else I haven't met, hi there!

My name is Morgan and together with Nick (captaincursor), we make up your lore team. I champion the Defiants. Nick champions the Guardians. Everything that's not related to the factions we just sort of duke it out over (and sometimes actually collaborate peacefully on).

I may have seen some of you over at Vanguard, where I was a designer on the diplomacy team and general lore for the game, or at Everquest 2 where I was a general world content designer and did lore as well. While at SOE, I also contributed to Freerealms and Legends of Norrath.

Let me tell you though, as much as I have loved everywhere that I have been, working on Rift has been a particular delight. This is a world class team, and we have a lot of treats in store for you guys (as evidenced by the fact I've been up past my bedtime playing the game three nights in a row now). I'm so glad you're here to share with us in the process of launching this new and exciting world.

Much <3 for this amazing community!

Hi everyone, I'm the senior development support specialist at Trion Worlds. Our group supports game demos, trade shows, play test feedback, processing others feedback, and a variety of other random bits of work that need doing.

Before coming to Trion I was the beta test administrator for Atari, and some of you may know me from those forums as BTA. It's a pleasure to meet you all, it's going to be a fun ride!

Also, I promise to not nerf anyone unless they ask nicely

Hey all,

My name is Andrew and I'm a game designer working on the systems that help make the rifts in Rift do their rifty thing.

I previously worked on Vanguard (known there as 'Avarem') where I designed and implemented some of the progression content before moving on to drive the design for our eventual endgame, including Ancient Port Warehouse and the systems which supported it.

After that I took a break from MMOs and designed a number of systems (including the 'Dynamic Combat Mission' system) for the FPS Section 8 before moving back here to the west coast and back to MMOs to work on Rift.

Right now many of the things I'm working on are still under wraps, but I look forward to being more active here in the community and interacting directly with you all as we start talking more about what's cool under the hood with regards to this whole 'rifts opening all over Telara' thing.

Good day, all! I have posted a couple of times, but I'll introduce myself here. I am the Design Producer for Rift. Part of my day is spent working with the Pod Leads and upper management to make sure that the Design teams' schedules encompass all of the work that is needed, but does so in a humane way. Another big chunk of the day is spent monitoring the details of the design implementation and (on my best days) preventing log-jams before they occur.

(If you are familiar with the live-theater position called "Stage Manager." then you know exactly what I do. It's a great job because I get to see how it all fits together, including the non-design components at they are created. I came over to Production shipping after several games as a Designer, so I still get to participate in the design, as well.)

At night I play our game. Really important side note: This is not mandatory. It's fun! I have cancelled my other MMO accounts because I was just not spending enough time there.

With what time is left, I come up with tremendously bad analogies. Just ask any of the Designers. I've coined some real stinkers.

maRaider

Hi folks, I’m the Development Director for engineering on Rift, which means I manage the technical development of the game, and occasionally still find time to do a little bit of programming myself. I got my start playing and creating content for some MUDs during college. I’ve been more a fan of strategy games like Sid Meier’s, but I did find time to get desperately hooked on WoW in 2006-2007, about the same time Trion got started.

My real start in gaming was waaaaaay back on the Atari 800, creating my own games in BASIC and saving them to that awesome cassette tape drive. I was a huge fan of the Infocom text adventures, and wrote my own text parser and adventure game, full of inside jokes funny to no one but me and a few friends. That game completely filled the Atari’s 48K of RAM. Error 2: Insufficient memory, game over.

In college I had some success with a Macintosh tetris clone (Tetris Max) that was very popular for several years. Later I got involved in making “edutainment” software (remember that?), before joining Electronic Arts and leading development of the Tiger Woods Golf franchise. I joined up with Trion back when it was just a few guys in a temp office space with a quick-and-dirty demo, and it’s been amazing to experience the growth since then.

In my “other life” I’m an electronics hacker interested in CPU design. A few years ago I built a custom designed, hand-made CPU called “Big Mess o’ Wires” that was an internet favorite for a week in 2009. I was in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/homebrewed-cpu/), and had a great time meeting and speaking with all sorts of incredibly interesting people before my 15 minutes of fame ran out.

It’s great to meet everyone here. I’m looking forward to the launch of Rift!

Awesome³.
Impressive³

[Osho]

Hello all,

I am the Lead Animator on Rift. It’s been my great fortune to be able work with an awesome collection of animators on this project, and we’ve been working hard to bring you the best player, creature, and rift animations possible. As for myself, I have a background in console games, and after playing MMOs for several years, I could not pass up the opportunity to try to contribute to the development of this game for Trion (all the way back in 2006).

I think I can speak for the animation team to say that we are excited that you all are starting to get glimpses of what we are working on, and we can’t wait for you to see all of the game in motion =)

Hi Warp,

I’m here, and can answer most programming or other technical questions you have. Rift’s lead engineer and a couple of others have also signed on to participate, but I don’t think they’ve posted yet. They let us out of the locked room three times a day for feeding and bathroom breaks.

I'll choose to ignore the first part of that statement!

My name is Adam Hetenyi, and I've been with Trion for almost 2 years now. My first MMO project was Vanguard, and after that I worked on a few EQ1 expansions before coming here.

I'm part of the instances/dungeons team and spend most of my time making abilities and scripting boss encounters. I cannot wait until Beta, since one of my favorite things to do as a designer is to tune instances by running them with groups of players.

I did the introduction in the lore thread, but this seems to be a party in many rooms, so I'll do it again.

I'm Nick, the lore lead for the Guardians. Of which I'll be sharing no more details of so as not to disrupt the carefully constructed announcement that marketing has planned for them. (sorry)

Before I came here I worked on console games for a number of years, on titles as diverse as Magic the Gathering to America's Army. When I moved from doing interface design to game design I ran a Neverwinter Nights persistent world mod to teach myself the ins and outs of game design. That was where I discovered that my favorite type of game design was when I was "live on stage".

In my previous career I was a web designer back in the nascent days of the internet explosion. I worked for Wired, Lucasfilm, and a variety of others to experiment with what the web could be used for. In my student days I studied theater. I was especially interested in the blending of emerging technology and theater. Like I did an experimental play where parts of it took place inside a MUD. So working on Rift has been great, I've been able to blend together many of the interests I've been pursuing my entire life.

One's MMO history seems to be popular on this board. I started in UO where I hunted thieves until I realized it was much more fun to be a thief than to catch one. Then I worked on the Neverwinter Mod for five years running it while playing a villainous mind bending wizard. I missed the Asheron's Call and DAOC generation of MMOs, but got sucked into the WoW for a few years all while trying out the various other MMOs that came across the landscape (COH, GW, WAR. Conan, Star Trek, EVE, etc..) In general though I will play the class that is overpowered. It shows my great skill (in picking that class).

My goal is to switch a number of you heathens over to the Guardians. I've already switched a number of the developers over that had chose the Defiant shirt at our internal unveil event. So I'm saving all the anti-Guardian posts for posterity.

My name is Scott and I’m a Technical Art Director here at Trion. Basically I figure out how to make things work and handle a lot of the under-the-hood systems part way between engineering, art and design. Also if it's glowing or on fire then there's a good chance I had something to do with it.
Hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk about some of the great stuff we're working on and some of the technical aspects of Rift, but I really want to say thanks for being part of our community. It’s been really energizing to see you all showing interest and passion for this game we’ve been working on for so long.
Just knowing you all are waiting to play this game makes it much more exciting and worthwhile.

Hi Everyone!

My name's Alice, and I'm one of the few UI Artists here. Yes, we do exist! We have a great team here that's dedicated to UI, and putting a lot of love and care into it.
I have to say that this is the biggest game development projects I have worked on. I've been with Trion for almost 3 years now and I'm thrilled to see how far we have come and the response from all of you. I'd just like to say that it's so awesome to see everyone excited about Rift:POT. This makes us even more motivated and excited about this project.

Lastly, it's nice to meet you all. And I look forward to Launch! ^_^

Hey Guys,
My name is Peter and I am the Lead Engineer on Rift. I'm responsible for keeping tabs on the technical side of the game. Luckily, we have a really strong engineering team which makes my job a lot easier.

Currently, I'm working with AndrewK on a feature that I hope you guys will find pretty exciting (when we show it off).

Steve and I can answer any technical questions about Rift (and if we can't we can forward them to people who can).

Hi everybody!

Chiming in a bit late but I’m Brian. I’m one of the lead environment artists on Rift. A team of artists and I create the natural world of the game. Basically sculpting mountains, making rivers, placing trees and building towns. I work closely with design and lore to make sure that the world I build is fun to play in and helps tell a story in addition to being attractive and compelling landscapes.

I ensure that the end quality of the world is what we are looking for for the game and something that the player would enjoy. I also design the layouts of the games’ dungeons and raids as well as handle some sky and lighting. In addition to this, I am also in charge of the artistic look of all rifts and how the look ties in with game play.

I’m Buddy the lead gameplay engineer. My job is to work closely with pmju and SteveChamerbin (among many others) to ensure the game is stable, reliable and most importantly fun!

Previously I worked at EA where I worked on various games: 007: Everything or Nothing, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, 007: From Russia with Love and Spore to name a few…

Glad to see so many people excited for our game!

Greetings Community!

My name is Billy Shaughnessy and I'm a designer on the dungeons and raids team. I work on dungeon population, as well as boss abilities and scripting. We've got some great instances in store for you, and I look forward to your feedback to make them even better.

Awesome~

My names Christopher Junior, and I'm one of the many systems drones currently slaving away at crafting some wicked abilities, saucy items and all around general goodness. Oh yah...and also working on ways to allow you to pwn your fellow Telarans...

Hello all, I'm Larry Boles, Content Developer and I work on the rifts themselves primarily and have had no small part in the first zones you will find yourself starting in!

I've formerly worked on Warhammer Online where I did PQ's, monster lairs, and seasonal events. I also did a lot of non-development work with Dark Age of Camelot & Ultima Online.

We are working hard to make the rifts system to be a truly unique experience that has never been seen in an MMO before and I can't wait to hear your feedback on them!

Cool³
Amazing³

Thank you all³

[Tachi]

Awesome~

My names Christopher Junior, and I'm one of the many systems drones currently slaving away at crafting some wicked abilities, saucy items and all around general goodness. Oh yah...and also working on ways to allow you to pwn your fellow Telarans...

My good sir! You put your fellow developers to shame with the awesomeness that is your avatar! Verily, I say, desist, sir! Tone down the magnificence of that which is obviously you and your avatar until your fellow comrades can also attain such a thing that doth do them honor and bring them glorious recognition as yourself doth languish in!!

(It just struck me that most of the other devs need really cool one of a kind avatars to!! Someone get to work! A contest perhaps? hmmm ? I'm illiterate, lack any form of creativity AND... I type with 1 finger so I got nothing... Ok, some of that was a stretch but you get the point! )

[Joker_B]

My name's Kevin Bjorke and I'm a Senior Technical Artist on RIFT. My primary task is to make all the pixels perfect.

This mostly means working with all of the other artists on the team to ensure that the graphics hardware delivers metals that look metallic, water that look wet, skin that looks alive, and rifts that look rifty -- which is great because it means working with everyone all the time, all across the entire game. It means doing a lot of many little things and some occasionally huge things -- a good mix! I'm looking forward to seeing how people react to what we've been making and how we can keep making it better and better.

Before coming to Trion I consulted to many game companies as the Worldwide Art Evangelist for NVIDIA, and before that have worked in games, films, TV, print, and even theme parks creating computer animation and illustrations at companies like Square and Pixar.

[Massabik]

Everyone needs their own Pixel Pusher, now we know we have ours! Welcome!

[Liziana]

Aww we'll be pixel perfect!! Welcome to this small place that is the Riftmaniacs home....we're barely containing ourselves in anticipation of ripping apart your pixelated rifts.

[Hazardous]

Hello Hazardous and thanks for being on the Trion team.
One question if I may. What character graphic style do you most prefer to work with? Realism,Cartoony, or Anime?

Good question!!

I come from working on mostly realistic style characters, but in my spare time I've always built fantasy / realism styled characters, some do have an asian anime vibe to them as well!

I have no problem working on all of the above, no matter what the style as long as the 'character' is protrayed well, its a success!

If ever forced to choose... I'd probably be pick characters that are designed with a healthy dose of fantasy style realism, hints / flairs of anime and a dashes of cartoony !

[Massabik]

Sounds like a chef making a good omelet...only with toons!

[Apoth]

If ever forced to choose... I'd probably be pick characters that are designed with a healthy dose of fantasy style realism, hints / flairs of anime and a dashes of cartoony !

so that would be ... Reanimoony art style?