At around 11 a.m. during our Gamer Day visit to the Trion Worlds offices in Redwood City, California, the fan site and press site folks parted ways temporarily. The fan site crowd went on a tour of the offices and met with the development team, while members of the press were led to a room with a long line of computer consoles. Taking seats around the table, we found Rift accounts with several level 50 characters waiting for us. My own computer had two Defiants and two Guardians, one of each calling. Since I primarily played a mage in the beta events, I took control of one 20 levels above what I was used to and logged in.

The zone we entered was snowy and placed us right outside an instance. “This,” the representative told us, “is the Abyssal Precipice instance. Have fun!” I looked around the room at my fellow news folks. Given level 50 characters pre-made and set up with tier 2 gear and the best spells would make it a blast, right? Right?

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend Trion Worlds' third Gamer Day event at their office in Redwood City, CA to get a closer look at Rift before its official launch on March 1. During the event, I participated in a roundtable discussion with members of the Trion team, including Russ Brown, vice president of development; Scott Hartsman, chief creative officer and executive producer; and Design Producer Hal Hanlin. With several other fan and news sites in the mix, we learned many interesting tidbits and took a peek into Rift's future.

Keep reading after the jump for an in-depth look at the wide variety of topics we discussed, which cover everything from end-game content to souls and customization. Check back later this week for more of my hands-on impressions from the Gamer Day event!