No when you open a vendor in Rift yes it brings you to the cash shop (they universed vendors so it's easier and gives you your own personal vendor) but it does not bring you to any part of the cash shop that would sell you stuff unless YOU physically click to that part of the cash shop. You can easily sell your shit and then exit it without looking at a damn thing it sells on the cash shop. Don't coat the truth.Every time I open a vendor in Rift I'm shown the in game currency price and the cash shop price for everything is the worst offender to me. I like that Rift left all the features available in f2p, but the vendor thing is obnoxious. But also seeing interesting items on other players and then learning the only way to get them is through the cash shop, that to me is advertising.
subjective.They weren't good when they released
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That was intended, though afterwords it was changed for the West because that's how the WEST market works.Aion was a massive grind from about 35-50, almost no quests after there had been standard MMO questing up until then (Aion mostly survived on Asian subs).
RoflRIFT was missing most of its features too when it released: no raid/pvp rifts--or if there were they were broken, overtuned dungeons, no instant adventures or chronicles, a single 5 boss, buggy raid, no LFD. SWTOR was missing lots of basic features and had little level-cap content. LotRO is the only one I didn't play when it released so can't say what caused its problems.
features that were added as new content later in the year =/= key features missing from launch. PvP rifts were an experiment close to the end of the year which failed (they even stated it wasn't good) and is hardly a key feature. Dungeons were not even close to overtuned (they made master mode because of this), instant adventures were added later (they were not planned for launch) and came out before WoW scenarios.
When isn't there a buggy raid in any game? LFD wasn't a necessity either and came out about a month later.
SWTOR I don't ever consider that game anything but illogical.
AoC was the only game that went F2P because they had too, the other's did not have to, P2P isn't as profitable as people think. It only works for WoW because that got 6 million people subscribing.