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[Editorial] Rift: Hitting Its Stride in F2P
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Rift has been officially free to play for a couple of weeks now. We've been playing the game as a F2P-er and have some first impressions to offer up about our time in Rift. See what we think and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
What makes Rift’s F2P conversion so amazingly special is the fact that servers are once again packed. Granted, there are fewer servers but that’s a good thing as the populations are consolidated making PvP better, raiding better, rifting better and more.
Read more of Suzie Ford's Rift: Hitting Its Stride in F2P.
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Comments
F2p is good for rift too because more people will actually download and check the game out. If they had to sub, well then not many people would bother.
This leads into ine of my other rules in that f2p is ok if the game just isnt good enough to merit a sub. In this case that is also true. I know thats subjective but for the most part its true. Rift is after all a less fluid wow clone with more realistic graphics that become exhausting to look at after a few days.
Agreed, though I don't do subscriptions, I'm loving it. I am to the point where I wouldn't mind throwing a bit of money to help if I had some though.
I really like the F2P conversion. Still subbed and going to stay that way for a while. I'm enjoying playing the game with a lot of people once again.
Also do note that every item from the shop that's purchaseable in-game can be bought through the cash-shop (so to speak) for in-game currency as well. No need even to look for the right vendor.
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...
I haven't played the game since launch, but a few friends decided to pick it up once it went F2P so I redownloaded it to check it out.
I'm pretty impressed with the huge amount of changes made to the game from the last time I played (River of Souls). My once level-capped mage is a lot of fun to play and the mentoring system is extremely useful for getting new players into the game. I'm looking forward to dungeon crawling with my lower level friends and getting to re-live the early days of the game while preparing them for the new content that none of us have seen.
Good job Trion.
it's still the best themepark out there IMHO; not bad for a dev company's first attempt
as soon as they put a new starting zone in there for both factions i'll pop back in with my wallet open (i've done each of the current ones 4x and if i start again i want to start a brand new character)
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
First of all you probably know that's never going to happen. Secondly you can level through instant adventures and pvp past the starting zone (assuming you mean Freemarch/Silverwood) really fast now.
The pure starting zone (mathosia and the defiant one) is reduced to basically nothing and my fastest time there is 12 minutes (defiant zone) :P
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...
I'm still playing Rift. I think it's been 4 months now. I refuse to look at time played because I know I will be embarrassed at how many hours I've played.
I'm still paying a sub. That could change in the future, but at least for now I'm enjoying the bonuses. The Rift store is the best f2p store I have seen. I bought more bank space, more bag space, more wardrobe slots, some clothing, and a mount for a very reasonable price, saving me 1k of in game plat. Some of that was purchased with money Trion gave me when the game converted to f2p but I dropped $50 into game credits rationalizing it's how much I would pay if I were to buy a full fledged expansion.
I still have maybe half of those credits left. I'll probably use them to buy trade skill expansions so I won't have to keep alt hopping. It will also give me something to do.
One of the other nice features of the f2p system is the loyalty system. When the game converted I got some freebies like an extra dimension slot which is something I was really wanting, a free dimension, anew mount, bonuses to xp, coin, rep, etc.
The server I am playing on is very healthy too. It's nice seeing more people
Yup, if you are going to convert to a f2p, this is without a doubt the best conversion I have seen to date.
My thoughts exactly. I am thoroughly enjoying myself in Rift!
(a short off: LotRO's f2p wasn't bad at all, especially back at the time and for previous subscribers... in fact with a 1month sub it's still a very decent model)
There was a thread when Rift switched, I wrote in there my very first impressions, and it's pretty much the same after the weeks: it's an awesome model.
I liked when in the announcement they stabbed a quick one in TOR (with not restricting anything and not jacking up the xp curve
), and they're holding up to it. Actually they did the exact opposite approach as EAware, and I think it will serve them better on the long run.
I mean, both games have a pretty big gap between free and subscribing players. TOR made it in a negative way (subs have the former game, free ones are restricted), Rift did the opposite, free players have the former game, and patrons receive extras like the boosted <everything> (xp, gold, reputation, etc), daily / weekly gifts, and the instant mail / bank / ah (which alone is a huge convenience boost, at least for a hoarder like myself)
Add to that the REX option, where both free and patron players can further advance the veteran status, and free ones can get store currency with in-game currency - and you get a very friendly f2p model. No wonder that maybe it was the smoothest f2p transition so far, there were almost no bashing on the web
(probably the gear-in-the-box issue was the only one, calling it pay2win, but even that isn't affecting the game much)
Well, I guess we'll find out if F2P can work without having any actual pay wall barriers to game play.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Open-World PvP, hello!
The best part..
"Chat channels are humming with activity, enough so that I turned of global chat to be able to avoid some of the overly exuberant chatters in the game. "
I have had a lot of bad experiances with F2P games, most so that I was avoiding them at all costs, reason, eventually forced to use item shop and the cost would be ridiculous and also end up being 3, 4 or 5 times more expensive than a monthly fee used to be. It was also buy to stay in touch or lose out.
The first game I have actually touched that has been F2P is Neverwinter, I do a lot of grinding and convert items and other things into item store currency. It does take a lot of working, but I only do what I get on my journey.
Lotro left that when it went F2P, tried it for all of a week in F2P and have never been back since. Account was with codemasters who ran the EU side, I had forgotten my PW and could not log back in, its now changed (I believe) and my account I had and everything has been lost (no e-mail received other than the one from codemasters saying it was moving over). Will I go back, nope, not if it means paying again for what I once already had. There have been many other F2P games I have been in and not been in and a lot of word of mouth to avoid.
I do not know about Rift as of yet, there must be a catch somewhere, they carnt go from P2P to F2p and not have some sort of catch where you will have to use the item shop eventually?
Sorry but past experiances say this and it will take time for this sort of thing to become trusted again. In the past its been F2P = grind as much out of players as we can before we finally turn the servers off.
rift isnt the first; aion and L2 also operate this way.
(rift is better than aion though and l2 is a different type of game than rift)
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
I don't really want to turn this into RIFT good or bad but i was subbed once and couldn't last until the end of the month.I tried pretty hard to like the game but i just kept getting bored very quickly.
However no matter what i think about the game,the topic is about F2p.
They did something i highly commend them for the initial entry into the game.You don't need an account,you can trial the game as a guest,which imo is a brilliant idea,surprised nobody else thought of that.Now i do realize there can be a lot of cons to that idea but as a developer trying to get people to try their game,it is a win win.This only lasts 10 levels before you have to register but it is still a good way to get a feel for the game because having played it,i can say it doesn't change much after you begin to add other classes to your arsenal.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"the frighteningly zone-locked Lord of the Rings Online for horrendous examples of free-to-play transitioning gone bad"
Come on Suzie, the zone locking in Lotro was easy to remove. I still find the Lotro implementation to be one of the best moves to ftp, besides just subbing for a month unlocked a lot of things. SWTOR is much worse.
First time I have tried Rift and they did do a good implementation of ftp. Their IOS security app is broken though. Fun game.
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