Rift endless free trial arrives under a year after launch

By Robert Purchese Published 1 February, 2012

Capped at level 20 - Telara your friends.

It's taken MMO Rift 11 months to introduce an effectively endless free trial.

Rift Lite arrives today with game patch 1.7 and offers anyone with a Trion account 20 levels of free play. And there's no time limit, so you can take as long as you like reaching that level cap.

But World of Warcraft held out for more than six years before introducing an almost identical 20-level free trial - is this an admission that Rift activity is dropping off?

rift

One of Rift's rifts and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. A COINCIDENCE?!

Would that be so surprising? Rift is no longer the exciting new kid on the block - the colossal Star Wars: The Old Republic is.

Or we could be reading too much into this; Trion's motivation for the free trial may be no more spectacular than 'it was on our to-do list'.

Plus, we're never likely find out how well Rift is really doing, anyway. Trion is a private company and has never released subscriber numbers. And there are no prying outside investors to persuade Trion to do so.

We ought to be content in the knowledge that Rift is "a healthy business and a successful game" - that's what executive producer Scott Hartsman told Eurogamer back in November. He also said Rift had "definitely been growing since launch".

Rift patch 1.7 is known as Carnival of the Ascended, and it brings "quality of life" improvements to the fantasy MMO.

PVP advancement is "smoother" and has better rewards, and Expert dungeons have been overhauled to offer more options and better treasures. Endgame loot has also been improved.

Rift players can now be married, and there's a two-person River of Souls Chronicle that probably makes for a wonderful honeymoon.

A new Master-mode dungeon has been added called Caduceus Rise as well.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 4 months ago

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  • Machetazo #1 4 months ago

    "Or we could be reading too much into this; Trion's motivation for the free trial may be no more spectacular than 'it was on our to-do list'."

    It comes on the back of Trion repurposing most of the game's lowest population servers, relabelling them to "trial servers" (only trial players can make characters on these). Some commentators felt that move was brought on by and indicated, a drop in demand.
    Edited by Machetazo at 01/02/12 @ 14:57

  • berelain #2 4 months ago

    It *might* be to combat low subscriber numbers, but honestly Rift's servers seem as full now as they ever have- Bloodiron is absolutely heaving with players - though that could be thanks to the availability of free character transfers enabling players to gather on the most populous servers.

    Either way, I don't much care; Rift is an absolute corker of a game, and even after playing solidly for the last 11 months I'm still never at a loss for things to do - and that's with only one character at the level cap and one rapidly approaching it.

    A lot of speculation in-game is that there seems to be a lot of people currently starting out in Rift - perhaps on the back of the free weekend Trion had a few weeks ago, but also maybe - just maybe - because the month free that gamers got with The Old Republic has run out and players are looking for something else to tide them by until TOR's endgame is brought up to scratch. Only speculation, of course, though I've spoken to plenty of players who say that's why they're playing Rift atm...

  • levitate #3 4 months ago

    I don't think RIFT is on the decline. I might have stopped playing it a month after release (mostly because of time restraints) but since then it has become a really strong MMO. In some sense stronger than SWTOR will be.

  • pipito #4 4 months ago

    oh cmon ppl when u last time logged on EU servers?:p half of them 30-40 ppl online. Yes there few strong servers with high population but rest just dead towns

  • ucankurbaga #5 4 months ago

    It even copies the WoW trial lol.

  • ilmaestro #6 4 months ago

    No-one plays this game, so the pun in your subtitle falls flat.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #7 4 months ago

    I think the press is reading far too much into this Trion/Rift isn't exactly know to do things 'by the book' by treating certain things the same.

    In fact like transfers, mobile apps, and this it's very much the reverse of what you would expect from a MMORPG, but thats the charm it's worked as it's more about the service then making money, think about it with all the 'premium services' between SOE and Blizzard, Trion makes your £8.99 a month a bargain compared.

  • jimr9999us #8 4 months ago

    Rift has become my #3 mmorpg in time played, after WoW and LotRO (both at 2 yrs) and before W:AoR, AoC, and SW:ToR (8 months, 6 mos, 2 weeks respectively).

    The eternal trial is no different than WoW's. Sub based bus models have to do something to compete with f2p's non-existent barrier of entry so it makes sense.

    Btw, the most expensive game I ever played was LotRO's f2p model. But WB is a big company so it makes sense they would know how to get $$$ out of me :)