Ever wondered how other free-to-play projects on Steam got Overwhelmingly Positive or Very Positive reviews, Trion? I can give you a few examples. There's a certain free-to-play MMO game here on Steam where you can get almost *anything* in the game by trading the in-game items with other players for premium currency. Little by little you will accumulate enough premium currency to buy almost *anything*, except for a few cosmetics which are availible only for real currency and for a limited time. Cosmetics, Trion. Not top-tier PvP/PvE equipment, not character classes, unattainable by other means. Cosmetics.
That being said, almost every item in that game can be bought and/or crafted using the in-game resources. Is it grindy? Yes. It will take you a while to get somewhere and get the needed resources. The things is, however, you don't need to spend a penny on it to get a viable character, both in PvP and PvE. All you need is time and the will to play and have fun with other people.
Now, let's talk about Rift. Not only is it grindy — god-awful grindy, not only do you need the resources/hundred kinds of different currencies, you also need the crafting skill/reputation required to get the things you need — the *only* way for you to get the premium currency without paying real money, is to buy REX, which gives you a portion of premium credits and costs unreasonable amounts of in-game currency. Apparently, god forbid you from making the premium currency and the advantages it gives you — numerous advantages — more accessible to your general public.
I suppose you forgot the meaning of the word "accessible" at this point.

I'm using my friend's account to post this because you banned me without any further notice from the community hub for calling you out on your fraudulent schemes; funny thing, it was me who invited this friend of mine to play Rift in the first place. Needless to say, we both are sceptical about touching Rift ever again considering your business practices and paywall policies.
Also, nice moves, Trion, acting like a little kid who sticks his fingers in his ears and starts yelling because he doesn't like what he's hearing. Next you'll start removing negative reviews like some megalomaniac indie developer who can't take criticism. Sure this will make your game better and shift the Recent Review ratings to Overwhelmingly Positive, eventually!
Nah, it won't. Just kidding. Watch your player base dwindle as you invent new ways of leeching money out of people. Either that, or show some respect to your player base. Take a look at your forums, reddit, steam hub, you'll find more specific suggestions on how to improve your game from your very players; more than you would like.
Make the game more accessible in general, and people will come to support you. Earn their trust and loyalty, and their money, not by building paywalls, but by making the game more accessible.

PS: This is a copy of the thread I made on the Community Hub, in case of the thread getting overrun by trolls or deleted for no good reason. This negative review is here to stay, unless Trion does something about their pay-to-win policies.

used to be a zillion times better then WoW till it went F2P but now its just P2W. sad end to such a great game. nothing but a sinking ship now thats getting pretty full of water.

if you like pvp don't touch this game!
1)there is no pvp untill max level do to low population and removal of incentives for f2p'ers
2)max level has a huge gear gap so when you 1st start you will lose 90% of your pvp matches do to no fault of yours or your teams since matchmaking will tend to stack the better geared players on 1 team. (lack of players is also at fult here)
3)do to to pvp matches consisting of steamrolling your opponent or getting steamrolled, pvp is unfun. there are very few matches this will not happen in.
4)rift has about 10 souls for each of the 5 callings that you can mix and match BUT 1/4th are useless for dungeons/raids and 2/3rd are useless in pvp. a note: the 5th calling is a pay one with about 7 souls, the 7th you need to buy in a soul pack and since it didnt sell well they have not fixed the weapon procs or the resistance bugs it has.
5)you can p2w to top gear and avoid this. (this is good or bad depending how you look at it) end game gear is only $400 if you want to be "competitive"
6)the rift engine is still unstable even with the new fix and you sometimes get dc'ed normally when your winning a pvp match.

so what about end game raiding?
well do to rushed content most end game raids are bugged for month upon release and sometimes forever after(there are still bad bugs in content made when rift first came out). they are also removing hardcore raids but not to make rift mainstream (like wow did) but do to rushed content people can not beat the bugged content without making it easier also if your a streamer and stream raid content you run the risk of a guild wide ban if you do something the devs don't like or if you have an "agitator" in your group.
for normal dungeons again do to low population and a change to the que system no ones does these untill end game and at end game people just want a fast run.

you can do open world pve untill 60 with little to no issues but at 65 the paywall will smack you in the face. open world pvp is dead and the one pvp server is barren.

the game used to be so good with a great f2p model but 6 months back they changed to an aggressive cash shop model and now rush all content before proper testing can be done that will normally crash the server like last week when it was down for 2 day because they didn't test the holiday updates or just leave some things outright broken for months untill they get around to patching it. some holiday events even have the same bug pop up every year that never gets fixed like a Halloween quest that doesn't give defiants the reward. sadly this game was a hallmark for a good f2p model but has now gone the way of the other rippoff f2p games.

p.s. there is a item in game that lets you buy credits with in game gold but the amount you need to get is very hard to amass since alot of end game things give little to no cash (about 30% only give 1 silver and thats the lowest amount possible)

so, rift. my very first MMO. when i started playing i fell in love with it. was such a good game, all the specs and classes were completely somewhat balanced, pvp was fun-ish(not a pvp fan honestly) and pve was the best thing i've ever found. i played a rogue and ended up becoming a world first member of the fires of heaven. sadly the game has declined and declined and declined. plane touch wilds was an "ok" "expansion" if you were to call it that. and primalist is dumb. 1 button top dps is very very "pay to win" as people would say. and then the nerf to mind of madness came. nothing was challenging. nothing was fun. and now there is a expansion that MUST be bought in order to play. rift is officially dead.
uninstalled.

P2W (locked equipment even if you are a subscriber) ,dead but with enough fanboys to make it look like people still play it.They should add a pay to uninstall option to make the pack complete.

I would just like to say this game this to be amazing i use to love this game played if alot in 2012. The game was fun. fairly simple and intresting to see how different i was to other mmorpg's

Coming back and trying it again.... this game is very lacking

I check the game is free now pretty cool, micro transaction, uhhhh not a big fan of that but sure but playing this game for a while. i felt like this game is just pay to win or grind really hard i know you would be expected to grind in mmo rpgs but this is like 2X the grinding to the old rift and i just wanna play some dungeons do some rifts meet some new people. Now most of the time its just grind.

well i agreed with all negative reviews that you can see here..
Rift used to be my fav before and Ive spent a lot of money on it (im obsessed with character customization)..
but by time, the in-game currency is not enough for you to enjoy the game, which you HAVE TO pay a bit using real money to keep yourself 'comfortable' along your journey..
so that you wont be the weakest person in that game especially if you are in the PVP zone, and someone who is "richer" than you can kill you easily using their more "expensive" weapons and stuff

however i really love this game back on those ol'days.. the gameplay, the way you customize your character, the mounts, the dungeons, good fps and graphic even on my lowest spec pc, the parade (on certain events only)...
oh yeah you have to pay a bit to get a good mounts so you can move a bit faster.. the expensive mounts, the faster you can move..

TBH, Rift SHOULD NOT be free-to-play game at first place. They should sell the game like ESO or GW2 and we pay to play the game. So that these terrible things can be avoided.

p/s: rn im spending my money on TESO (on character of course) :D

Don't waste your precious money for Starfall Prophecy DLC. It's not worth the price. There are a lot of great games to be worth spending on or just save it. Don't be a victim of Hype.

Pay2Win

very generic feeling