Trion Worlds’ award-winning MMORPG, Rift, has gone entirely free to play with “no trials, no tricks, and no traps”.
The critically acclaimed game, set in Telara, emerged as strong competition to the WoW dominated MMORPG genre with 1 million players in January 2012 and over $100 million in revenue.
Bill Fisher, Creative Director of Rift, said that Trion Worlds are not following the pay-to-win or “freemium” model. Fisher said that players will notice a big difference between Rift and other free-to-play MMORPGs as they “don’t restrict content, and [they] don’t offer pay-to-win items.”.
With no restrictions on levels, content or locations for registered free players it should encourage new players to start class-building, boss-fighting, character-customising, dungeon-raiding and battling bosses.
There will still be some paid-for content in Rift, in the expanded in-game store. Faction changes, mounts, character customisation items, pets are all available but Trion Worlds insist that the best gear is only available through playing the game.
While Rift is going free-to-play and not pay-to-win, there will still be some benefits for maintaining a monthly subscription. Subscribers will be rewarded with “Patron” benefits. These may include increased storage space, or faster mounts. So whilst they won’t give players a definite advantage in combat, there are some perks to paying players.
Rift moving to free-to-play coincides with a huge update - Empyreal Assault. This update adds a new area, Dendrome, 10-player raids and gameplay stability updates.
A game going free-to-play is nothing new, but Rift is a pretty big game to be taking the leap and if they follow through with it not being pay-to-win it, and it pulls off financially, it might set a precedent for others to follow. The idea of a voluntary subscription for minor, non-game winning perks is particularly interesting.
