QUOTE(areix @ Jun 3 2013, 10:33 PM)
Rift is going F2P effective 12 of June 2013. You get all the stuff what the subscribed players have now, but they will get the 'patron' privileges which is somewhat nothing much. Players are basically grinding Raptr. hours on rift to get it for free atm. With wow too you have the lvl 20 cap, provided you tried almost everything that you can try i do think it is somewhat enjoyable. I find IA on rift interesting and so as the rift closing activities either solo or in party. I have to say Rift offers a slightly different aspect of activities to do when you go questing so its somewhat not a mundane, run here run there thing.
Tho my complain about rift are that lack of addons and lack of quest guide, data. I was scratching my head to find the exact remaining 11 quests that I failed to find anywhere in scarlet gorge and it seems that it is possible for that to happen on rift and without proper info/data that's hard/difficult to find out. The other thing that I found out is that, majority are former WoW players, but surprisingly all of them stopped either during BC or Cata and a portion said they tried MoP then left. Nobody actually dared to answer my question if they had actually tried doing MoP dungeons, raids and scenarios which offer a different kind of approach and experience during engagement. So I'm assuming they rated WoW simply based on Cata/WoTLK and not really the latest content.
Rift ppl are a bit nervous about the ability of the servers to cater floodings of ppl and fluctuation of bots when F2P goes of which would highly effect the ingame economics. And also the community dimension would definitely change as anybody can play and ruin the game experience for you. And since Titan is still 3 years away, blizzard have to come out with new ideas constantly to keep their clients interested unless Rift F2P becomes a fail. Trion took a big step going F2P but whether it will eat WoW or somehow benefit WoW, only time can tell.
Like I said, 20 lvls is too little to represent the actual gameplay especially when the advanced gameplay esperience is so much different from the starting zone. At lvl 20 you can probably run RFC, Deadmines, participate in WSG and that is it. After so many expansions, they should at least offer people a limited 1-2 months trial period for the base game for free, that would be more representative of the actual advanced gameplay.
I left WoW during the WotLK period because I got bored out of my mind grinding, when someone left the game you don't expect to see them in the game anytime anymore because they either grown tired of the game or they already invested their time into another game. In my case, after I left WoW, I went into Champions Online which keeps me entertained for a fairly long time with its free form character creation and character builder, the money I saved from not paying WoW monthly allows me to invest a little bit into the game which makes it so much enjoyable. After I left Champions Online, I went to Steam for my games, and again the money I saved from not paying monthly allows me to buy quite a lot of games especially when it is on sales. By the time I am thinking about checking out WoW again, it is already in the MoP expansion, at that point there is no way I am going to pay for 2 expansions + a monthly subscription just to get back into the game just to check it out. I would rather invest the money into newer games than into a game that I have left once. Fast forward to today, there is so many high quality F2P like Tera, Aion, Path of Exile and the upcoming Rift for me to choose from, not to mention the B2P Guild Wars 2 that I have invested into as well. There is no way I would ever go back to WoW right now unless Blizzard gives me some crazy out of this world offer like free upgrade to the current expansion with 6 months free play. Even then, I would probably left after 6 months ended because there is no reason for me to pay monthly for the game when I got Guild Wars 2.
For me, MMO is all about exploring the world created and discover exciting things by yourself, not having some programmes showing you where you should go and what you should do, so I definitely never miss the quest guide and addons, not even a bit. Even in WoW I am playing the game without guide and running raids without DBM addon. There is no point to have a beautifully crafted world if you are going to follow the dotted lines everywhere.
If a game is popular, you can bet that there will be bots and farmers in the game whether it is P2P nd F2P. I have caught many bots especially those teleporting, floating in air miner bots. I have even seen those rumored underground mining bots that are running below the world and mine everything they wanted. That is not counting those bots flying around on mount or flight form that are harder to determine. Going F2P just means removing 1 gate that is useless in stopping bots and farmers. Also, as I know before I left WoW, there already a steady amount of people in game that are prepared to ruin the gaming experience for you even without going F2P, so conclusion is whatever happens in F2P MMO will happens to P2P MMO as well because people on the net are generally a**holes. As for people flooding and overloading the servers, I am hoping Trion is prepared for that.