1-3-2018 trion sold its games to a german company about 6-8 weeks ago and there has been little to no contact with players. don't spend much if anything untill we hear more about their plans for rift.

UPDATE: end game has a new set of "gear" called fragments. these are another set of things you add to your characters to boost states. sounds nice? well its not! they are a money sink with rng states. yup, you wast gold to maybe ruin the fragment with each upgrade if it gets stats you don't need or just fails to upgrade and you need to roll again. don't get the idea the good ones are easy to get. nope grind, grind, grind to throw gold away on a gamble to upgrade that may also fail and it has a chance to fail EVERY TIME. i once failed 5 times in a row. did i mention these were put in place as money sinks. yes, remove gold by rolling the dice on the players stats. i wouldn't even care if the frags has set stats but the rng is an insult to players.

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 2nd beat gear gear and avoid this. (this is good or bad depending how you look at it) this gear is about $400 if you want to be "competitive" (gotta love f2p prices)
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.

open world pvp? it's dead and the one pvp server is barren.

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 but at level 65 the paywall will smack you in the face. this has changed since the last xpack was opened to f2p people and i kind of feel bad for all the people who got the xpack for a few months before they opened it to everyone. this is also another way this company screws paying customers cause they don't know what they are doing.

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 40% only give 1 silver and that's the lowest amount possible). raiders complain about this because the gold cost to for raid consumables is more than they can farm in a decent time frame. what raiders are left that is and trion has stated any new raid will only be 10 man ones do to the lack of players who raid.

1-3-2018 trion sold its games to a german company about 6-8 weeks ago and there has been little to no contact with players. don't spend much if anything untill we hear more about their plans for rift. UPDATE: end game has a new set of "gear" called fragments. these are another set of things you add to your characters to boost states. sounds nice? well its not! they are a money sink with rng states. yup, you wast gold to maybe ruin the fragment with each upgrade if it gets stats you don't need or just fails to upgrade and you need to roll again. don't get the idea the good ones are easy to get. nope grind, grind, grind to throw gold away on a gamble to upgrade that may also fail and it has a chance to fail EVERY TIME. i once failed 5 times in a row. did i mention these were put in place as money sinks. yes, remove gold by rolling the dice on the players stats. i wouldn't even care if the frags has set stats but the rng is an insult to players. 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 2nd beat gear gear and avoid this. (this is good or bad depending how you look at it) this gear is about $400 if you want to be "competitive" (gotta love f2p prices) 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. open world pvp? it's dead and the one pvp server is barren. 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 but at level 65 the paywall will smack you in the face. this has changed since the last xpack was opened to f2p people and i kind of feel bad for all the people who got the xpack for a few months before they opened it to everyone. this is also another way this company screws paying customers cause they don't know what they are doing. 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 40% only give 1 silver and that's the lowest amount possible). raiders complain about this because the gold cost to for raid consumables is more than they can farm in a decent time frame. what raiders are left that is and trion has stated any new raid will only be 10 man ones do to the lack of players who raid.