RIFT: F2P One Week On

Trion's accomplished completes its first week as free-to-play, How is it for you?

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When we first broke the news that RIFT was going F2P--in our interview with Trion's Bill Fisher--fans were undoubtedly excited.

RIFT, particularly with the added landmass and content of Storm Legion, is a huge game with involving character customization, huge bosses and a fantastic player housing system in Dimensions.

Fisher promised that the F2P version of RIFT would not be pay-to-win and the promise of "no trials, no tricks and no traps" certainly seems to have held true.

Though you can buy cool options such as the Shaper Beast Mount, the RIFT store offers a ton of items and services to make a viable revenue stream without offering unbalancing power; players must still earn the best gear in-game--as it should be.

Not only did RIFT open its doors to everyone with the new revenue model, but Update 2.3: Empyreal Assault added a lot of real estate in the form of Dendrome (a new zone), a new 10-player raid, new open world raid bosses and lots more besides. Check out the details of what you can expect from RIFT F2P here.

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With one week under its belt, we want to know what you think of all the new content and whether the F2P model Trion is using sets the standard for others to follow.

Leave a comment below and let us know how your adventures in Telara are progressing. Also, keep an eye out for a future edition of The Free Agent, where we will be taking our own close look at just what is on offer for fans of F2P gaming. Finally, be sure to check out Rifthead for the best tools and resources you could ever need to enhance your RIFT experience.

Scott "Jarimor" Hawkes, Editor in Chief

Tags: News, RIFT

Comments

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Weird
# Jun 24 2013 at 2:50 AM Rating: Decent
37 posts
If you had previously played for a year you would have had the caps removed, so frankly I'm not buying that whole post.

Souls are optional. If you purchased Storm Legion you would have had them.
You can also do the raptr promotion and get them for free.

I have experienced a few crashes but nothing like the comment above me, and they bring you right back into the game where you were in very short time when they do rarely happen.

There are some days where I got DCed in regular intervals, but hasn't happened lately.

They game had a massive influx of new players and there were obviously some issues, but they are dealing with them and honestly during normal play I don't feel them at all.

This is probably the most free F2P I have every played. Yes there are a lot of things that you want to spend money on, but none of them are game changing or pay to win.

Considering you still have access to the entire original game, and the entire content of the expack, minus the expansion souls, for absolutely free, I honestly can't see how somebody could complain.

The game is a lot of fun, the class system is excellent, and the zones are beautiful.
Dissapointing on the promises, Average as far as F2Ps go.
# Jun 19 2013 at 9:41 PM Rating: Decent
Credentials: Played Rift pre-F2P for a year. Have played many other MMOs in the past, many of them also offering F2P: Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1&2, Dungeons and Dragons Online.

So far? The servers are unstable. Both myself and the guild of people I've been in that have been subbed to the game since game launch are frustrated with the client crashing at least once an hour. I've experienced these crashes as well, they normally occur when you travel from area to area (IE, porting from Meridian to Kingdom of Palladia). I usually crash 3-4 times per session.

There's a lot of lag. A LOT of lag. Went to Dendrome (as a level 51, lol) to see a world event. Event failed because there was a 10 second delay on all casts and it was affecting everyone in the zone.

For the RMT store? Still have to pay 10 bucks to unlock all of the available 'souls' (WoW equivalent of 'Talent Trees'). Must spend a minimum of 5 dollars to remove the INSANELY low platinum (gold/currency) cap and chat restrictions that's on every new, F2P/non-Patron account. So you have to drop $10 to actually be able to access full game features right there. There's no two ways about it.

Interface of the RMT store itself is poorly designed, had to get guildmates to explain where to look to redeem Loyalty rewards. Noted that people were getting level 60 legendary (orange-quality) gear from some 10 dollar boxes from said store when most of the raiding rewards in the game are only epic (purple) on drop and requires extensive effort to upgrade them to legendary as well.

Irked slightly by the blatant offers to use the RMT currency for anything that costs over 1 platinum at EVERY. SINGLE. VENDOR. IN THE GAME. Also? "Would you like to reset your Soul Walk (ie, you only ghost-walk for 10 seconds from your own corpse instead of from a graveyard) cooldown for XX amount of currency?" That's what I would call a "Hard Sell".

So in summation? Servers are unstable, game client is unstable, and on the whole game being "truely free" and "no 'pay to win'*" Trion has outright lied on both counts. Not impressed, but for what it's worth, it's pretty par-for-the-course as far as most F2P games go.

* My definition of 'pay to win' that I've gleaned from the many different F2P games I've played is when a person is able to slap down any sort of amount of money in order to provide themselves instant access to same-as-or-better equipment, rewards or prestigious rewards that negate the point of even playing said game. IE: "Why should I bother raiding when I can pay 10 bucks to get pants that are just as good/better than what could ever drop from Crucia?" or "Ha ha, I got this mount that's identical to the Meta Reward mount for Infernal Dawn, and it only cost $7!" <--- this particular point, there are several persons in my Rift guild who are actually VERY upset about this.

Edited, Jun 19th 2013 11:44pm by Contay

Edited, Jun 19th 2013 11:52pm by Contay
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