First, I've thought about doing this for a long time- making a post marking the staggering amount of large-scale changes and patches that have contributed to Rift becoming what it is today. This information is invaluable to understanding how truly successful Rift has been both in term of community and developer-response, considering that all changes occurred prior to an expansion or additional fees. These changes and many, many others have all been compounded by "the_real_seebs" and his thread on the official forums, which is where I'm copying this information.

1.0 Hotfixes

Raid rifts -- new rifts aimed at raid-sized groups.

Locations can be linked in chat.

Coin lock feature (When logging in from a new computer or such, you get emailed a code; until you enter it, you can't do anything that destroys your stuff or removes money from your characters.)

Mobile authenticator added for Android and iOS.

Patch 1.1

First world event (world event mechanics added).

Video capture, complete with YouTube uploading.

Unmerge option for public groups.

Rift contribution is no longer measured against other players.

1.1 Hotfixes

Self-cast modifier key added.

River of Souls event bonus pack for characters who existed prior to the event.

River of Souls raid open.

Change to AFK logic; if there's no queue, you can be idle for a very long time without getting kicked.

Patch 1.2

LFG tool added (same-shard only; this changes later)

Wardrobe slots (cosmetic equipment)

Crafting rifts -- new rifts that reward crafting materials

"Slivers" and quantum/omen sight added.

New "sliver" raid added, enterable only with those abilities.

New diminishing returns design for CC in PvP.

Experts retuned for LFG, and to stop requiring second healers.

PvP rank adjustments.

1.2 Hotfixes

LFG instance ranges increased.

Item sellback and purchase confirmation added.

Patch 1.3

Guild banks.

Character transfers added! Character transfers are free, once per character per seven days.

AH remembers recently-used prices.

1.3 Hotfixes

"Trial shards" introduced.

"Exposed" removed.

Bind-to-Account vouchers for planar currencies.

Most event currency made Bind-to-Account.

Hammerknell Raid now open.

Patch 1.4

PvP rifts added.

LFG goes cross-shard.

New sliver raid (Drowned Halls)

Alternate-mode warfront feature added.

Water Saga epic quest chain added.

Quest items stored in separate quest bag.

BoP items tradeable to eligible characters for 30 minutes.

Soul Quests removed (souls are now purchased)

Synergy Crystals added (they give soul-specific set bonuses from armor sets)

PvP ranks 7 and 8.

"Take All" button for mailbox.

New crafting cooldowns.

Apothecaries can salvage planar essences.

1.4 Hotfixes

Can stay mounted in more of Meridian or Sanctum.

Taskbar icon flashes when message boxes pop up.

Vengeance stat added for PvP, Valor retuned.

Patch 1.5

Chronicles (solo/duo instances) added.

Veteran rewards added (subscription-length bonuses).

Planar Attunement (post-50 advancement).

Master-mode dungeons.

New warfront, Library of the Runemasters.

Introduction of addon API.

Ancient wardstones removed.

1.5 Hotfixes

All zone event sourcestone is now purple, drop rates and costs retuned.

Patch 1.6

Ember Isle -- a new zone for well-geared 50s.

New dungeon, Caduceus Rise (actually more than one instance).

Fae Yule world event.

New sliver raid, Rise of the Phoenix.

90% mounts adjusted to level 30, not 40.

Addons can manipulate inventory.

Foraging and mining of some mob corpses.

1.6 Hotfixes

Instant Adventure -- LFG-like open-world adventure for 45 .

Mail to your own characters on same account regardless of faction.

Auction House is also cross-faction.

Rift Mobile app (access to guild chat from smart phones/tablets) for iOS. (And later Android.)

Patch 1.7

Massive revamp of PvP ranks and gear.

Massive itemization revamp at 45 .

T1/T2 experts combined into a single tier.

"Purpose" system provides soul templates to help newbies to a role.

In-game weddings.

Master-mode Caduceus Rise.

River of Souls chronicle.

6th role slot.

"Mercenary" system reassigns players to opposite side in warfronts to reduce queue times.

Wardrobes have individual settings for equipment visibility.

Crafting uses bank items.

HUGE volume of UI updates -- seriously, read the patch notes for these.

XP lock -- you can disable XP gain. (Removed in 1.9)

1.7 Hotfixes

Guild bankers added in crafting areas of capitals.

Change to Target Nearest behavior.

Item comparison tooltips show stat comparisons.

Equipment visibility on the non-wardrobe wardrobe slot.

Ember Isle restricted to level 48 .

Ember Isle added to the "only one event" group of Ironpine

Peak, Shimmersand, Stillmoor.

Patch 1.8

Infernal Dawn (new 20-player raid).

Fishing and Survival skills.

Guild Finder. (And somewhere in here, mailed guild invites.)

Leaderboards.

Instant Adventure on Ember Isle.

Seals (a new inventory slot, exclusively crafted).

New max-level crafting quests.

Anti-Planar Augmentation and Holy Champion replaced with a new Fury of the Ascended power.

Many pet graphics updated.

Debuffs have a new priority system to prevent weaker debuffs from overriding stronger debuffs.

New recipes to refine 20 of a material at a time.

Addon-style @ specifiers work even if you don't use addons.

Non-party-leaders can recommend players for invitations.

"Usable" at the Auction House now filters out already-known recipes.

Many more UI tweaks and improvements, QoL changes, and so on.

1.8 Hotfixes

Nameplates added! New settings. Color is based on the colors that unit

names were drawn in.

Streaming client; you can now play before a patch is fully downloaded.

Porticulum cost changes (in-zone ports are always cheap).

Patch 1.9

Conquest: New three-way PvP for level 50s.

Mentoring: Starting at level 15, you can artificially lower your level, whether solo or in a group.

Instant Adventure expanded to Silverwood, Freemarch, Gloamwood, and Stonefield.

Queueing for "random adventure" may mentor you to put you in a low-level group.

Barbershop! Basically, recustomization of appearance other than race or sex.

New raid sliver, Primeval Feast. Harder than RotP.

PvP ranks increased to 50, along with new armor and such.

Optional icons showing what NPCs do.

XP locking feature removed (replaced by mentoring).

Cross-shard friend and chat functionality; you can send tells to Character@Shard, and you can join

Channel@Shard private channels. Public channels are not cross-shard.

Daily quests for fishing and survival, additional features and functionality.

Improvements to the 300-skill crafting quests.

Cut/copy work in the chat input field.

World Event currencies that recur moved to the Currency tab.

Many addon API improvements.

1.9 Hotfixes

Friends list is now cross-shard within entire region, not just wargroup.

Friend and ignore lists not cleared when changing shards.

Many encounter and Conquest tweaks.

Patch 1.10

Faction boundaries reduced dramatically on PvE shards. PvP shards keep most of their boundaries, but LFG is cross-faction everywhere.

Guilds can contain members of both factions, and can do either set of guild quests.

Groups, whether player-formed or public, can contain members of both factions (who are not flagged).

Dungeons, instant adventures, and such are all cross-faction.

Characters can trade and mail across factions.

Characters can marry cross-faction, and public channels are shared (except World Defense).

Cross-shard tells, friends, etcetera are all also now cross-faction.

You can buy things like expansions, CE upgrades, character or guild renames, inside the game.

Instant adventure added to Scarwood Reach.

World event for fall. Lots of lighting and fog improvements because of the Storm Legion rendering updates.

Icon overhead markers available (not just numeric ones).

Automatic "fill soul" button on soul trees.

Rare spawns should be more reliable.

Shuffling of locations and contents in Meridian and Sanctum to improve various things.

Train All button on calling trainer.

Bag UI scaleable.

Combat logs, screenshots, etc. moved to My Documents folder.

1.10 Hotfixes

/who command works cross-faction.

Various improvements to synchronizing cross-faction, bug fixes.

Patch 1.11

This patch represents many fundamental mechanical changes as preparation for the Storm Legion expansion.

As a result, it has unusually huge patch notes, even though this doesn't include the bulk of the new content.

1.11 Hotfixes

Pretty much all crafting materials now stack to 99.

Discovery log moved to same configurable directory as other logs.