A new, official developer Q&A for Trion Worlds' MMO, RIFT, has surfaced, in which the developers address a number of common questions raised by fans. The array of topics touched upon is fairly eclectic, and include questions about the possibility of playing cooperatively with friends in other factions, whether or not Arenas will make it into the game, and even whether or not players will be able to to warm their avatars' chilly, virtual shoulders with cloaks.

Folks interested in playing RIFT with friends from the faction opposite their own may soon be able to do so, though Trion Worlds is still sussing out just how that will work. "We are exploring many different ways to provide players with opportunities to play alongside players from the other faction," the developer notes. "The first step in this process is, of course, the mercenary system. This has had the fantastic benefit of virtually eliminating PvP queue times. We do have other, grander plans in store, but I can’t go into details yet."

Expanding RIFT's "soul system"--which would include adding more souls, levels, or "callings"--is also something on the developer's radar, but envisions those changes as part of a more "large-scale," future update for "expanding the game further."

Arenas, on the other hand, go against RIFT's design ethos. "We have no plans for arenas at this time, RIFT is a massively multiplayer game and we really want to embrace the mechanics of getting large groups of players together and arenas are counter to that." However, Trion Worlds is doing some things to serve more competitive players.

"We are adding leaderboards to both PvE and PvP content complete with divisions and rankings so players looking to compete will have a great tool for measuring how badass they are," the developer states. "We've also got some exciting new PVP content cooking but it’s still too early for us to give any details."

"Cloaks of all types (Guild or otherwise) are something we really want to do," Trion Worlds writes in response to inquiring fans. They'd love to add them, you see, but not at the expense of gameplay performance. "RIFT is unique in the fact that we have many activities that encourage hundreds of players to play together and we don't want to negatively impact that experience," the developer states. "You all will be the first to know if/when we solve this particular problem since you know we could never keep something that exciting under wraps for long!" Pun intended, we think.

You can check out the complete list of topics and answers in RIFT's latest developer Q&A for more tidbits.