Since launching in March, Trion Worlds’ Rift has made good on its promises of releasing regular dynamic content updates, which have been received with mixed reactions. The first large content update, “River of Souls,” sported some fun early stages in its world event but a short and unrepeatable final stage, which drew the ire of pretty much everyone who wasn’t logged in for the specific time period that it was active. The second, “Spoils of War,” added new “Sliver” instances and crafting rifts, a LFG tool, appearance slots, a fifth class role, Facebook integration, and a bunch of balancing tweaks, and was generally received positively.

Trion Worlds is attempting to do even better with Rift‘s Update 1.3, “Waves of Madness,” which ties directly into the MMO’s overarching storyline by having players take on the forces of the planes of Water and Death, which are attempting to take over the lost dwarven city of Hammerknell.

Along with a new opening world event, repeatable climactic stage, and 20-person raid, Trion Worlds is adding new Hammerknell item sets, PvP world quests, bind-on-account wardrobe vanity items, a host of balances and fixes, and free in-game character transfers.

Yes, you read that right–you can transfer your characters from within the game, for FREE!

Rift‘s developers also originally mentioned that the much-desired guild banks would release with this patch, but it seems that they’re still working on this feature and will release it separately.

“Waves of Madness” unlocked June 22 on all servers. For the full patch notes, head on over to the official Rift forums.

[Source: Rift]