This post is mostly a mini rant that hopes to start an abstract discussion about the topic. This is something I've had on my mind for awhile.

I've been playing Rift now for some time, and I think it has a fair cash shop. Just about everything you can buy in the shop, you can get in game, and that's OK in my book. You can pay for stuff to skip content with real money if you want, but it's also possible to buy the credits with in game currency as well. The problem, however, is the game itself is somewhat boring; I have a feeling that IF I hit max level, I won't have much more that I actually want to do, and will just quit slowly after. I'm only level 40 as of this writing and I can pretty much conclude that the game is basically a carbon copy of World of Warcraft with a much better class system and some world events. I will still choose this game over WoW for the following reasons:

  • I played WoW to death for over 2 years.
  • The friends that made the game worth playing are no longer playing.
  • My account was hacked multiple times.
  • The community has gone to shit ever since they introduced the dungeon finder and cross realm play.
  • I really don't want to pay the $15 / month fee anymore.


The last bullet point is the most important to me. I would much rather pay $15 - $30 per month for permanent items that are of my choosing; this allows me to come and go as I please, and play whenever I want without an obligation. That's an important feature to me when I pick an MMORPG to play. If I have to pay a subscription fee, I can't stop playing it. If I do, I feel that I've wasted my money. The funny part is, Rift is just WoW. You can try to twist it to say it's not, but it is. It just has a few different features and some different content. I'm tired of this system and would love something different. Enter Archeage.

Oh, Archeage, how disappointed I was in that. I remember starting that game and thinking how amazing the game play was. The combat was fluid, the crafting allowed for limitless possibilities, and the visuals were breathtaking; it has some great music too. I knew that I could seriously get into it, but the core part of the game, primarily buying land to actually participate in the property building and construction of the world, is behind the subscription pay wall. You must pay $15 per month to have access to this content, and that killed the entire game for me. It really pissed me off that this game is marketed as free to play. If you truly want to enjoy it, you'll need to fork over the sub money. DC Universe Online had the same problem. I was able to enjoy the story, but if I wanted to truly enjoy the features of the game, I needed to fork over a subscription fee.

I hate the subscription business model. I'd much rather make a one time payment and be done with it. What's even worse is when games are marketed as free to play, but they have the subscription fee as 'optional' when it really isn't if you actually want to play normally. To me, this is worse than DLC. At least with DLC, you pay once and you get your content. With this, you decide not to pay, and you lose access to play the game, or you lose a very important chunk of the game's features. It's a stupid model that interferes with the actual game itself. Screw that. Discuss.