Quote Originally Posted by Jojoya View Post
... Implying RIFT gave players an entire island to decorate for free is disingenuous. What we got for free was a tiny piece of the starter zone for the character's faction and something like 10 items to decorate that had little relevance to each other...
Hold on now. You asked what F2P games let players 'get a whole island to decorate at no additional cost'. Rift does allow F2P players to do just that, without having to engage in any RMT, which is what I was pointing out. Do players still have to earn it in game? Yes. Can it be grindy? Also yes. It's also true that there are a whole slew of decoration items only available through RMT purchases, but there are also plenty of crafted or vendor purchased decoration items as well. Yes there are limits, but that's not what you were asking.

I wholly agree with you that Rift's monetization went crazy and has a lot of undesirable elements to it. Particularly since Trion went under and Gamigo bought the game from them. Independent of that however, it's still true that the basic dimensions that were added to the game prior to all the RMT nonsense are still attainable purely through in-game earned currency, which includes several larger dimensions such as the Moonshade Highlands one.

Even so, the dimension system was initially added to the game when it was still subscription only and had no cash shop. The game is 2 years older than FFXIV and completely blows FF's housing out of the water, aside from the shady monetization tactics that were later slipped into it.