Rift Complaints: Users must buy 4 Callings with real money?

I’m not a Rift player, never heard of it really until the big free to play news. Today, however, there was an interesting twitter debate between @Riftgame and @Survious1977. According to @Survious1977,  four of Rift’s callings are only available if you buy them with real money. Now I’m not really sure what the callings are, but it sounds like the common free to play archetype to me; make optional content only available if you have money.

Complainer can’t even correctly state what he is complaining about!

I looked into what the user is actually complaining about–souls, not callings. From what I understand the callings are the four main job/class archetypes, and you build your class up from three of the nine souls available to each calling. So if I’m understanding the complaint right, you must purchase the souls from the expansion pack with real money. @Survious1977 is claiming that Rift’s promise of the game being free to play with no restrictions is false due to the charge for these souls.

Do you agree with Rift’s decision?

The thing is, most free to play games do things like this. While it’s frustrating to people who can’t afford to spend the extra money on games, the fact is, optional content is optional. Since the game itself is free to play there needs to be money coming in somewhere in order to fund the continuing availability of the game.

I personally don’t think charging for the expansion souls is a bad way to go about it. At least this way there isn’t a huge plummet in the in game market, unlike games like TERA. New cash shop releases increase the gold of those who buy the items to sell in game. Who then turn around and ruin the market for in game acquired items causing the prices of everything to continually rise.

Sorry @Survious1977 but I’ll have to side with Rift on this one.