Rift Review

The downside of free-to-play

Rift was originally released on a World of Warcraft-like subscription service. Ever since it went free-to-play, the in-game store has gotten bloated.

The PVP equipment has been completely removed, which means that special stats have also been removed for dealing with specific situations. PVE has become more casual, and getting into endgame raids is next to impossible for solo players. This means that if you want the best gear in the game, you will need to purchase it.

Some people, myself included, don’t mind throwing a few bucks here and there on a free-to-play game we like. But when it’s the only way to progress, it gets a little daunting.

If the store didn’t offer such powerful equipment and instead just cosmetics, as it did when it was a subscription service, it wouldn’t be that bad.

Final verdict

The biggest red flag on the Rift game is that Rift Prime closed earlier this year. Rift Prime was a paid server that progressively unblocked content as it played. With the acquisition of Trion Worlds last year, it’s starting to look a lot like Rift may be at the last stage.

That said, Rift is still a fun MMORPG experience if you’re looking to kill some time. There are better free-to-play MMORPGs out there, but that doesn’t stop Rift from being fun for a couple of hours here and there. If you haven’t played it yet, maybe you should try it while you can.