For anyone thinking of playing Rift, or getting friends into it, you can soon (in 5 days) get the base game for free via rewards in the game tracker Raptr.

Raptr is a game client that acts much like Steam or Xfire for tracking game playing and friends and the like. It certainly isn't a replacement for Steam, IMO, but it provides access to Raptr's rewards system, which provides in-game rewards for a variety of games depending on time played in those games.

Recently, Rift has added rewards in Raptr as well. Rift rewards are different depending on what your time played rank is, but you can get everything from a free copy of the game, to unique hats/helms, to a spider mount.

Also, friends just trying out the game via the Rift free trial can use Raptr and rank up their playtime on that, then get access to a free copy of the game. Not a bad deal.

There is also the free week going on in Rift that I mentioned in the last announcement just a couple hours ago.

For those scanning this for news about the Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm beta, here's where you want to pay attention. If you have achieved Elite status (~110 hours of playtime) in the base game, you can get access to one of 650 beta keys for the upcoming expansion. I'm sure there are people willing to saw their arms off in Korea for one of those. So if you want either the key, or some Korean kid's arm, it's worth the time. >:-)

Anyway, anyone wanting more details on any of the above or just to drop in and say hi can still find me on Steam, TS3, Facebook, or the Alpha website, besides in game or phone or the like.

See you all in game!

-Hells