Trion are trying for most eager / productive / most worthy of support design studio ever. They have now announced a rather tempting 12 month deal which includes the expansion free. As this news item points out it’s not quite the same bait and switch as the Blizzard annual pass for two key reasons:
- Trion have such a good record for releasing monthly updates that I would expect them to not hook players with this deal and then only release two very mediocre updates in the whole lifetime of the 12 month deal as Blizzard have done with WoW
- Trion have no ‘Diablo 3′ carrot as a consolation or alternate prize but then they probably don’t need this either – if you enjoy playing Rift then 200% more landscape content plus 10 new character levels should keep people busy for quite a while…
Honestly I’m half tempted, as the linked post points out in Sterling (£) it’s only approx £72, for 12 months of game time and and expansion. Darn it, I’m getting tempted, the only recourse is to RUN AWAY! 
Yeah it works out to $10/month in the States plus gets the expansion to boot — I’m very tempted as well.
I’ll see whether it’s still around in Oct or Nov, as I simply can’t justify spending money on games this month. Very tempting though, even just to be able to dip into the game once in a while…
Blizz only released 1 update in that time, pretty much at the same time as the pass. We’ve been stuck with nothing for 9 months!