Trion today announced that their MMO Rift Online would be joining the great migration from subscription-based gaming to a free-to-play model, walking in the footsteps of Lord of the Rings: Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and DC Universe Online.
Though one key difference between Rift and all those other MMOs… we’ll let the list of restricted features speak for itself.
Lord of the Rings: Online was one of the first to shift to free-to-play:
So many lists and charts.
DC Universe Online is a little better:
Tera’s isn’t the hardest to wrap your head around:
Everquest 2 is more complicated than my tenancy agreement:
Star Wars: The Old Republic goes on
And on:
And who decided to take out the free players ability to revive?
So that’s everyone else.
Here’s Rift:
Pretty succinct, eh?
Unlike every other MMO developer making the jump to free-to-play, Trion aren’t putting roadblocks in front of their free-to-play players. They’re not arbitrarily tearing out features (I mean, who at Bioware decided that taking off a helmet or the ability to run should be paid-for content?) they’re just letting people into the game to play it, see if they like it, and making it a pleasant experience to stick around and occasionally throw money Trion’s way.
This is how free-to-play should be done.
Rift’s switch to free-to-play is set to happen on 12 June. Let’s hope this sets the fire under Blizzard’s behind to get their own free-to-play version of World of Warcraft out the door.