Runes of Magic US / AU

It can be completely f2p but it will require A LOT of time and effort

Everything is available in game without real money, but that means that you will have to raise the in-game gold to buy other peoples diamonds (cash currency). This will be tough when you are first gearing up, but these days even from level 50 (cap is 70) you can earn stuff that all endgamers want (stats and crap stats for tiering bought with Phirius Shells from mini-games).

As someone said (I forget who, probably a Blackhand) there are three ways to get gear; friends, time, and real cash. You got any two of them and you are fine.

The game is F2P (free to play), but it's P2W (pay to win).

Basically what that means is, if you don't pay to upgrade your power in the itemshop, you will ALWAYS be a gimped, weak, second-rate gamer that won't ever see current endgame content. F2P gamers can't participate in ToSH right now, and most can't do Sardo, or even hardmode Grafu. These are Frogster's "fun zones" that, while accessible to every player, cannot be survived in unless you've spent a LOT for your character in game.

Some people will say, "you can do endgame content as F2P," and I call bullshyt, as I've been playing for years, and even with spending a fair amount on this game on a regular basis, I'm still no where near powerful enough to even clear trash mobs on easy mode ToSH. I'm fully 67/70 geared with full crim/glory/hero/bunk, at least +6 everything, and I'm only sitting on 60k hp. You need 100k min for ToSH. I "could" reach endgame if I spent a grip into the game plussing all my gear to +12 and higher, and possibly tiering my armor higher... but the fact that you MUST purchase items from the shop (including gems which can be a TOTAL scam), ​makes me question just how much actually "is" enough.

You can only garner so much gold in a day to trade for diamond/ruby shop items too... and you'll be shocked how fast that supply will disappear... 50~100m can be spent in just a few purchases. Especially with the "sales" being overpriced ripoffs costing the average player 3~5 times what they should be paying for the items.

Trust me, this game is NOT friendly to F2P gamers, though it does parade around that you "can" still do it. Just be expecting a lot of time consumption, unnecessarily inconvenient methods of doing things, and a severe degree of outcast & isolation from running anything over level 50. But yes, it is "entirely" free to play.

The PvP and End game content will be much more difficult to get into and enjoy as they are typically dominated by pay-to-win. It's not 'impossible' but will be time consuming. Like another poster said, it is a ratio of time/friends/money and you can do a lot with friends and time.

That being said, that still leaves many other instances and a several months of PvE content as well as chapter 1, 2, and 3 instances. All the convenience items can be earned with the mini-games and trading. You can easily explore to lvls 1- 50 without spending any real money and even onto level 70 if endgame is not a concern.

The hardest part I've found in F2P is meeting the requirements to get into instances (in a good guild). If your guild is Overpowered or well-geared then they might let you borrow gear so that you can get the gear from instances. My guild leader is letting one knight that I picked up in CoO that was quite an adept leveler (He got to level 70 in about 3 weeks) borrow his knight gear. He isn't the best tank yet but people still try to take him from us at times . It really depends some guilds just happen to have the very good geared beta players that haven't joined the top guilds for various reasons. In other guilds you kind of are left out because the good players are either gearing alts or memento farming. These guilds do help but it never seems to be when you need it the most. The challenge for me is getting puries and gear as f2p as you don't have enough gold without selling stats to buy puries and not enough well stated gear to get into instances whixh you make using puries. The most helpful part is to get to the level cap as soon as possible where people take mercy on you and you can then focus on gear because leveling is over. In my experience I have found it fun to level to 70 while ignoring Phirius Shell games. I only do this as I have a lot of time on my hands to do these things. Many higher up players don't see the difficulty of getting into instances as they farm them regularly and with their resources can level a toon up to about your level in half the time it took you and then gear it using their vast amounts of gold.

^ I hate paragraphs it ruins my flow

I guess you could say the only restrictions is slower progress in getting the very best endgame gear. There is some power-selling through the item shop which contributes to an imbalance between F2P and P2W players. But some of the P2W benefits are limited or subject to random chance.

But there are no restrictions in terms of leveling (currently 1-70), using chats (although I think you have to be lvl 10 to use world chats), joining parties, starting guilds, gathering, crafting, joining PvP, getting pets, titles, special relationships or having mounts.

Is there other ways/types of restrictions you are worried about?

Even with all the restrictions mentioned above, I still think this game offers MUCH more content then any f2p subscribtion based game I have seen. Most of those offer only around 5-10% of the in game content before you need to pay a monthly fee.

In RoM, you don't have to gear up until level 55 to 60, even then, you can still continue using quest gear for most of the zones after that. I'd say without investing huge amounts of time grinding, you could still enjoy around 70% of the in game content. The remaining 30% requires what is mentioned above.