One of RIFT’s many feature highlights is the MMO’s housing system — a system that actually grants players a pocket dimension that can be customized and decorated in a huge variety of ways.

While the former Trion Worlds team has moved on to other projects, it didn’t stop a designer known as Dev Salvatrix from writing down some memories of working on the housing system and identifying ways to make it better. Salvatrix noted that the housing community “skewed heavily toward adult women” who “were simply not being catered to with the same care” as the rest of the playerbase.

A redesign of the housing system in the mid-2010s was based on, of all things, LEGO bricks. “I decided LEGOs were the most comparable, applicable, model for assigning value,” Salvatrix said. “I started focusing on new items that could fall into that premium/prestige space – NPCs to place in your level, more interactable items such as doors that would open or close when clicked on, large monuments and buildings, etc. These were my minifigs.”

Salvatrix has a lot of positive things to say about the housing community itself: “I want to conclude by pointing out why my work on this feature was the most personally rewarding of my long career — the community of players that engaged so deeply with it, the Dimensioneers. This community was and is a largely positive, collaborative, and deeply creative group of people.”