Free-to-play MMO RIFT to offer a traditional 'premium' subscription server later this year

The vast majority of MMOs over the past few years ditched their old subscription-based business model practically without stopping to ask 'why'. The allure of getting players in on the ground floor ended up overriding long-term planning in many cases, often leading to messier games.

Trion Worlds' Rift went free to play back in 2013, and has continued to expand in terms of content ever since, despite a steady decline in players. In an attempt to bring back some of the old-school MMO crowd, Trion Worlds will be offering a similarly old-school, subscription-based server for them soon.

The MMO scene is changing, slowly but surely. Burnt out on Rift? Check out some of these other choice picks while you're waiting on the Prime servers to be brought online.

As described in Trion's 2018 road-map here, the subscription service, dubbed 'Rift Prime', will start out as effectively a 'vanilla' server, plus some quality of life improvements. Much of the content of the game will be locked away at first, and while levelling and progression will be faster than on the F2P servers, the focus for players sounds like it'll be on completing monthly milestones and achievements together.

from
https://www.pcgamesn.com/rift/rift-prime-subscription