Rift and the F2P Experience....A Veteran's Opening Perspective

Rift officially went free to play on June 12th. I've been playing less and less of Rift in recent months, due largely to limited time, which is always going to favor "games that are fun" over "games that are making me grind." I have a low tolerance for slow progression, and Storm Legion, unfortunately, was laboriously slow. Despite buying into a year long sub at a good discount, I barely made it to level 51 on my warrior before my "I care" quotient was overhwhelmed by my "what the hell is this dragging on so long for?!?!" sense.

Still, I like Rift, and have dropped in periodically to keep up, albeit slowly. Hoping, of course, that sooner or later they would make the XP gain at high levels somewhat quicker, to accomodate more than just those mad, mad players who live and breathe MMOs and disdain the casuals like me.

Well, the new F2P model seems to have done just that: it has provided XP bonuses and potions to "patron accounts," which is a fancy new name for what a monthly subscriber is. It rewarded players by how long they had subscribed, with ongoing "loyalty" rewards for keeping with the game. I netted around 12,000 credits in the game, the currency used to buy stuff in the shop, something around $70-80's worth of currency. Additionally, the loyalty rewards dumped 23 gifts on me, in addition to a couple dozen dimension house items. Some of the gifts were useful (XP gain potions) and others were just plain cool (mounts and pets).

The prices in the game store range from the reasonable (a new character slot is about 600 credits) to absurd (3000+ for high end ten-level suits of armor). I don't have the store up so these aren't exact numbers, but they give you an idea of what to expect. The core of the game experience is entirely free, however; they are aiming to generate revenue entirely from extras, which is an interesting approach and I really think it's the smartest way that Trion could do this.

Given that I got so much loot on my many characters, and even after spending a couple thousand credits on cool mounts, wardrobe slots, and even an armor suit for one of my low level characters, I still have around 10,000 credits to use and I have to admit, it's very nice to feel like I got a proper reward for my 18+ months of dedication to this game. I've seen other conversions to F2P riddled with greed (cough >Age of Conan< cough >SWTOR< cough) and then there's the way Trion did it. Very smart. Sometimes...treating your players with respect will make you more money. I hope this pays off for them.

Whole game's F2P now, so no reason not to check it out. Population has exploded, and I don't mind since I get preferential status in queue as a patron player. Check it out! Jump on the faeblight RP shard, it's got lots of good people on it.

Rift going Free to Play

So....wonder how much a Corgi pet will cost in the Rift market place?

Sigh....I think I, and everyone else who plays Rift, expected this to happen sooner or later. Rift will be moving to a F2P (alias "freemium") model effective June 12th. Existing subscribers (like myself) will get moved to a "premium member" status as paid subscribers. They are trying to make this sound more glorious than it probably is...my monthly payment has, after all, just been devalued from "actual game access" to "some XP perks and a few other oddities, many of which I bet I already get right now." We'll see. I picked up the one year subscription deal when Storm Legion was in preorder a while ago, so I'm stuck with this model (noting that converting paid subs to premium is a great way to allegedly offer benefits without refunds or handing out much --if any-- cash shop currency).

MMORPG.com has an interview with creative director Bill Fisher here.

My prediction: I'll let my sub run out, because "daily bonuses" don't work for an infrequent player like myself. If I find four or five chances a month to actually play, then non-cumulative bonuses are pointless, and free access becomes a lot more viable. Given that I've already sunk hundreds of hours into Rift and have more than gotten my share of entertainment out of it, though....if the game sours due to the migration to F2P, along with the ubiquitous arrival of the teeming, unwashed masses, then I'll still be content to close out on it. On the other hand, if they successfully dodge the sort of freemium model that Funcom went with for poor old Age of Conan (what I like to call the "pound of flesh" model) then Rift will still have me.

If, on the other hand, I find that the cost of getting even the most basic expansion content is equivalent in price to buying out a small third world country....looking at you, Funcom!....then yeah, I'm outta here.

NeverwinterBook

There's a decent review of Neverwinter Nights for Facebook up over at Enworld (been there for a while but I just discovered it in my Enworld email). I just wanted to say that it is pretty succinct and to the point in the issues with this game, and while I was less concerned about the rules changes when I tried it out, it was the blatantly obvious "incentivized purchase and play" cash grab bits that quickly turned me off as I realized that a Facebook App by any other name is still Farmville, no matter how much you make the cows look like kobolds.

Sadly, they could have had a hit here if they'd just been willing to make it a real F2P that wasn't Facebook linked, and been willing to trust that the gaming community who would play this game do not need a dumbed-down D&D experience. Oh, and I'd have paid a retail price for this game too. I'm getting tired of "F2P" games with painfully obvious efforts to get me to pay cash for garbage tokens and nonsense just so I can gain magic items and perks in-game, something that I feel really does move into a weird territory that almost feels like the predatory environment of casinos, except without the miserable odds of any sort of decent return (being replaced by absolutely zero odds of return, if you regard the actual worth of the vitual cookie you just bought).

For extra credit, they could have marketed it as a successor to the Gold Box era, and I'd have totally bought into it. I mean, 4E is very easy to design a turn-based map-to-grid experience for, isn't it? Is there something about the mechanics that somehow doesn't translate well into the medium of PC gaming that is invisible to all but the trained programmer's eye?