Rift Watchers

On Tuesday, February 14th 2012, Trion Worlds held a community event in Rift that encouraged players to participate in player weddings. The goal was to form a new world record to have placed in the Guinness Book of the World Records, for the most in-game weddings to occur within a 24 hour period. The event ran from 9 a.m. Pacific time until 9 a.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012. I can’t wait to see the final number for the total amount of weddings conducted during the event.

The actual ability to have player weddings was added in the most recent patch, and seems to have been quite a debated topic. Some folks would argue that weddings have no place in a video game, but others are delighted at having content like this added to the game. Personally, I was excited about the concept of player weddings. The idea of being able to expand the idea of my character that I’d formed in my own mind, into including a marriage to another character; that was infinitely compelling to me.

As a firm supporter of Trion Worlds and everything they do, I was very optimistic about participating in the world record setting event. I arranged a bride for my lucky groom long before the date of the event, so it was just a matter of meeting her online. Once I had her present we headed into Meridian to begin the event. As luck would have it, Elrar, the community manager for Rift happened to be logged onto my server. Not only that, he was looking for lucky couples to attend or conduct their weddings! By this point we’d already purchased the instance, so Elrar choose to attend and watch the ceremony.

The instance itself was very well done. There were decorations everywhere, NPC’s to make the event feel more lively, and everything you might expect from presents to a wedding cake. There was also wine and ale available through various NPC’s, to make certain the reception is worthwhile. Most noted at the end of the event was the wedding ring that can actually be displayed in the hands slot of the wardrobe. There was also a small wedding ring icon on my character sheet displaying the name of the person I was then married to.

As one final note, the event promised a title of ‘the Avowed’ to everyone who was married at the end of the day. After speaking to Elrar it was confirmed that this title would be granted to everyone about a week after the conclusion of the event. I’m assuming that’s because it requires some level of manual effort to grant the titles to individual accounts. So if you’ve participated and haven’t gotten your title yet, be patient! It’s coming. An official album of wedding photos can be seen here: http://beminetelara.tumblr.com/