Rift is now fully free-to-play this week

Creative Director of Rift ensures players it’s ‘not pay-to-win’

In case you haven’t heard during the madness that is E3, Trion World’s MMO Rift is now fully free-to-play as of yesterday, having previously employed a “lite” version of the game that limited players to level 20. The claim is “experience the entire game world; every dungeon, every zone, and every level and get full access to all current and future game updates.” Essentially, they’re going to be making money from their store, which sells faction changes, mounts, boosts, and more. We’ll see how it plays out in practice.

Although I didn’t maintain an active subscription for more than a few months, I heartily enjoyed my time with Rift, as I thought it was a fairly solid MMO. I’m getting ready to load my old account up as we speak to test out the new model. Interestingly enough this is one of the last big MMOs that follow a subscription model, with many recent conversions in just this past year alone. It’ll be interesting to see where the MMO market goes from here.