Runes of Magic US / AU

To be "real" end game, you do need to pay (particularly for purified fusion stone and for plussing items).

But, there is a (currently inflated) market for gear that will allow you to have near end-game equipment for gold rather then efforts+diamonds.

let us be honest, if you never pay anything you're leveling process will be slower and you'll have to make efforts (aka monitor the AH for the equipment you need) to gear but it is possible to be F2P for real if you put the work.

Hope this help you make your decision

The fact that you CAN buy your way to endgame does not mean you MUST. You can never be endgame without CS items; however, the CS has gifting so it is possible to buy everything you need from other players with in-game gold. It is easier if you buy the diamonds yourself, of course, but not necessary. I've played almost entirely free-to-play, and lack of diamonds or CS stuff does not keep me from higher progression.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It depends on how many diamonds you buy, what you buy, and what you do with what you buy. To efficiently reach end-game, you'll need to pop somewhere in the $200 range. Good thing is though, once you're end game and have a guild running end-game content (critical for progression) you're basically set. You can use your end game gear and farm mats/gear to sell, and potentially never have to spend another dime again.

Lets be fair here. Free to play players aren't paying for the servers to run. This game would not run if it weren't for the people who spent hundreds, sometimes thousands on this game. Many people forget this very fact.

Is this game pay-to-win?

Yes.

And if you plan on not spending any money at all on the game, keep in mind that, even if it's possible, getting to endgame will take a very, very long time for a strictly f2p player. If you are looking for a game in which f2p players can at least somewhat keep up pacewise with paying players by putting in a bit of effort...this is not that game.

Quoted from "Ravesden;502223"

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It depends on how many diamonds you buy, what you buy, and what you do with what you buy. To efficiently reach end-game, you'll need to pop somewhere in the $200 range. Good thing is though, once you're end game and have a guild running end-game content (critical for progression) you're basically set. You can use your end game gear and farm mats/gear to sell, and potentially never have to spend another dime again.

Lets be fair here. Free to play players aren't paying for the servers to run. This game would not run if it weren't for the people who spent hundreds, sometimes thousands on this game. Many people forget this very fact.

maybe ONCE you are in the endgame guild it will cost around 200.

for all the non-elitist, expect to pay way more(most of it will go to those elitist) and still not get to end game content.

have fun listening to those elitist saying get to lvl cap with daily resets(usually during an increased xp event), buy their junky overpriced gear from ah or with dias(mainly how elitist get your money/gold), and then watch as your skills are 1/4 what they need to be=more money on redemption/tp orbs. Plus you will no longer be "invited" to end game runs.

Feel free to prove me wrong by making a character, AND BASED ON ITS OWN MERIT(NO HELPING FROM YOUR MAIN/OTHER ENDGAMERS/TWEAKED GEAR/ETC), spend around $200 and get to end game(tosh/sc/gc hm).

It helps, but the alternative is the amount of TIME you put in.

All content is open to F2P if you have the TIME to grind for gold. During a double diamonds sale, $20 will net you ~1000 dia ~ 60M gold on Osha server. At only level 57 and maybe 2-3 hours a day... I can probably make 30M a week or more if my Phirius Shell pulls don't suck (they usually do).

Granted, this isn't nearly the kind of money you need to be END GAME, but the higher level you are, the more opportunities there are to make more money

F2P is possible. And since there isn't really any way to WIN, don't worry about it. Just come and have fun

assuming you purchased dia's on dbl dia. time... 12,000 Dias (2 times the $100 option)

On Reni an under dura Puppet Queen is around 60mil gold (cheapest I've seen it) and dias are around 50k per... so there goes 1,200 diamonds and you have a weapon. [10,800 left]

Next up lets T10 said weapon. If you wait for the sale of 1,000 AT charges for 1,000 dia's, and 100 AT charges for 100 dia's... you'll need to buy 3,300 charges at 3,300 dia's [7,500 left]

Left out of the charges above are the cost of the fusion stones (2,187 stones @ 1,900 gold... AND 2,187 T4 vendor belts @ 3,455 gold). We'll round down to 11.7 mil gold ~ 235 dias sold [7,265 left]

If you can wait out for the last +16 jewel sale it would be 209? diamonds per package (which will get you from +12 to +16)... At this point you would use up your rubies you've made to get the weapon to +12 after using the extra items from this package. Total cost 836 dias [6,429 left]

So best case scenario it will cost right around $100 just for a plus'd and tier'd weapon (which will need replaced every 6 months). If half your budget is used on one item... not gonna happen. Especially if you have more than one weapon. Recently a Juggler Cape sold for 300 Million... there goes your remaining 6,000 diamonds.

Sorry for the wall of text, but in Raven's defense, if you spent $200 on the game, you could get yourself decently geared enough to run the mini's to sell stats and start raiding and get accustomed with the game and slowly make your way to end-game... but be prepared to spend a lot of time in the game, because if you are not keeping up fast enough, the next expansion will only put you even further behind.

Quoted from "Sovietclam;502210"

Title. Ive done some research on this game and it has received some bad reviews claiming the end-game economy is really messed up because you can just buy everything with real money that ordinarily takes a ton of grinding, so if you spend fifteen minutes to buy something you can use it to destroy someone who has spent weeks grinding.

Thanks for the replies, and i dont plan on spending any money on this game, no matter how good it is tbh. :/

No, the game technically is not a pay-to-win. It's a pay-for-convenience or a pay-to-save-time game. Unfortunately, getting to full end-game without paying for the convenience or time-savers is impractical to the point of being NEARLY impossible. There are a few pure f2p players that have pulled it off, but the overwhelming majority of end gamers have paid at least something.

Because "winning" without paying RL money takes sooo much time & effort, most people will simply tell you that this is a pay-to-win game (myself included).

You've got nothing to lose, right? There really aren't many games that will just give you endgame without time and/or money. Many "F2P" MMOs lock you out of content unless you pay for it; RoM doesn't. Anyway, good luck to you in your search.

its really not as bad as some make it out to be. to be on the very bleeding edge, super uber, noone can beat you in pvp, yea, its cost. but just to play, quest and have fun. you can be totally free.

my advice, play it totally free for a year. it took me a year, playing couple hours a week to get to 55, wich was the level cap at the time. once you get to 55 you want to start looking for better gear, not just quest gear. by then you should be in a guild that will help you out, guide you through dirty statting process, tiering a starter weapon etc etc. you dont have to rush to the end in a month. why would you want to? there is a ton of gameplay that you can enjoy for totally free.

but to each their own.
at least give it try, for spare time boredom, i love this game.

That is important information and affects my answer considerably. For PvP, RoM is at least 95% pay-to-win. Skill can overcome some difference in gear, but if your opponent spent more money on his gear than you, you'll know it. I don't know about PvP servers, but this is my observation from siege and very limited time in the arena. RoM is primarily a PvE game with a PvP addendum.

well i can tell u that when a f2p player kills that jakazz that spent 500$ on a weapon it feels glorious. skill does matter. take time, lrn ur class, u too can pwn for free.

1. The more you pay, the more OP you will be.
2. If noone paid, this game wouldnt exist, so those that pay SHOULD have better toons.
3. Anyone that thinks the f2p format is a bunch of billionaires making you an awesome game to play out of the kindness of their hearts needs to come back to reality. I look at it this way, when times are tough and I cant pay, I STILL CAN PLAY THE GAME. p2p Games? Money short? Too bad, no game for you.

I used to p2p in this game... till I realized I was spending upwards of $300 a month on it... so I backed off, and took a break. 2 years later I returned and realized that almost all I had spent on this game was practically obsolete. Since then I've turned to F2P. I figure with as much as I've spent on this game, I have a right to play this game for as long as it's active.

Having said that, I hear a lot of people saying that this game wouldn't exist without the P2P community, and while I agree with that, they also have a way of insinuating that the F2P community is a bunch of freeloaders, and that's just simply not the case. This game wouldn't exist without the F2P gamers either.

I've known many a supposed "F2P" game out there that began catering too exclusively to the P2P community, to the point where the F2P gamers could in no way remain even remotely competitive. So they left. The 10% of the remaining P2P community realized that it's no fun playing a game where there's only a handful of other P2P gamers, all trying to sell stuff to each other that nobody needed. Eventually, the whole "king of the empty hill" games ended up being the same event over and over, and the games eventually died out. No one wants to play an MMO all by themselves.

So, for those who haven't yet realized it yet... both the P2P & the F2P communities are NECESSARY to keep this game afloat. One without the other, and the game crashes and burns.

Final tally on this thread:

Free to Play
Pay to Win

Live it, Learn it, Love it, Leave it

This is not a play or pay to win game. There is no way to win this style of game. It is just meant to be played. You can play it for free and be as powerful as anyone who spends unlimited money all you have to do is exchange time for money and farm gear or items that the people who pay money want.
But you will never win, if you can beat everything and everyone in the game they just change it and you have to start again that is the way it works.
The object of this game is to play not to win.