How much does RIFT actually cost?

Free to play (F2P) games are all the rage, but the F2P MMO, RIFT is unusual in that it's basically still a subscription game masquerading as a F2P game. So... how much does it cost? About the same as WoW is the short answer.

The long answer is that you pay nothing to get started, but access to much of the new content for higher levels requires some degree of purchase. Fortunately (and craftily) there's the equivalent of a boxed set that gets you all of the important bits up to, but not including the most recent expansion: RIFT Essentials Edition. For  $50, this gets you everything that you really can't play on the same level without (additional skill trees, an extra calling (class) and two  additional gear slots among other goodies). Once you have that, you should probably play the game for a while and see how you feel. Becoming a subscribing "patron" gets you some nifties, but nothing that's essential. Then there's the most recent expansion ($40) which usually buys you the extra features, levels and content of the expansion.

So, for the complete functionality of the game, once the new expansion, Starfall Prophesy comes out, you would pay a total of $90. The ongoing patron subscription really doesn't add much to that,  but if you wanted to do that, it would be an additional $11/mo. if you buy the annual version.

It's cheap entertainment at that price (especially when compared to going out to movies or dinner) but it's certainly not the free game that they might tease in their ads.

Path of Exile updates and how the game has changed

An exile's hideout

I've been playing PoE for a long time it seems (not as long as some!) It's a great game, and I highly recommend it, but I think it deserves an overview for those who might have heard of it or played it a while back, but not kept up on what's going on.

The game has evolved substantially in the past year or so and there's lots you should know. For starters, the amount of content in the game increased dramatically.

RIFT: Free to Play first impressions

RIFT Free-to-Play launch page

I tried out RIFT on my far-too-old living-room entertainment center laptop last night in order to see how free-to-play was. I was kind of blown away, but there were negatives too, so let's get into it!

First off, in case you haven't followed it: RIFT, a popular second-tier MMO with a peak of an order of 1-2m users has gone free-to-play. I think that this is largely a result of their having lost user-base after the first rush of new users during their first expansion, Storm Legion... I'll cover why that was in another post. Free-to-play isn't the end of RIFT, though, if last night is any measure!

RIFT plays a lot like early WoW, before it got all of its sharp corners filed off. This is both good and bad. The game is far more dynamic than WoW, and presents the player with many more choices in terms of character development and play style. However, it also leaves casual players at the bottom of a deeper chasm of learning curve than the modern "just make it simple" MMO. As such, RIFT is much more of an MMO fan's MMO, and if you haven't played MMOs before, you might check out one of the simpler ones first (like Guild Wars or Star Wars... WoW is an option, but it's high-end grind is a bit too daunting in terms of time commitment for most new players right now).

Anyway, so RIFT is free-to-play; what does that mean? It means that you can log in (sort of... paying customers or "patrons" get priority if the server population is too high during peak hours), create a character, and do just about anything in the game, just like a paying customer. Paying customers get some bonuses like extra goodies, resurrection is a bit more convenient, etc.