The adverstize of this game states "forever free". It is not so, As we´ll see below.

   First thing needs to be said. It´s an amazing game. I tried many MMO´s but none of them has kept my attention not even close to what this game has. You have a historical game, with true nations, true citys, the real world map. Many content, many things to do. If you are bored to level land battle, go explore, make trade runs, battle in sea, hunt pirates and so on. Many crafting too. As you evolve in game, more to it there is. Siege wars, guild wars, you name it. I can´t see how you cannot addict to this game.

  When it comes to the free, then things start to get strange. I don´t mind critics about double xp scrolls. every game have them. I don´t even mind complains about the auto xp scrolls(6 hours of online imobility give you 21,6 mil xp points in certain skill). But when you get to high level, things really go weird. You cannot go beyond lvl 100 in any skill, unless you buy a phase 3 book( that costs 15 bucks, rl money). When you realize you need to get high level gear, you see the mats are non existant. There are 5 types of dragon gear(the pre-patch top of line). Flame and green are easy, golden is hard, white needs a miracle and black is impossible if you want to collect mats and craft for yourself. Because you have not just to collect nearly impossible to find items, you have to deal with the crafting failure possibility, that is always high.

    The solution IGG found was to make a monthly "Exchange Event" meaning you level a certain feature of your gear to a determined point and then you change it for the next. For exemple, if you want to change a flame dragon weapon for the next one(green dragon) you need to enhance the attack bonus of you weapon to a +50. You can craft the weapon with some bonus, but if you have none, you will need Item Mall Pure Steels to get you  the bonus. And then your problem starts. As everything in VCO, the item mall stuff have a fail rate. And the refiners, even costing rl money, are no exception. They have a high fail rate. One pure still costs 20 IM points(about U$ 1). If it succeds, it adds +3 attack. If it fails it TAKES OUT 3 attack points(yes, you can get negative bonus). result of this is you may need 600 IM (U$ 30) points or more to refine your weapon to trade from dragon 1 to dragon 2.  When you reach a certain cap of bonus (in case of weapons, a +60) you start needing a refined steel if you want to keep going on adding bonuses. It costs 50% more than the pure steel. This one does not reduce your attack when fails, but it´s fail rate is shameful. Most people get 1 success of 10 attempts(every attempt costs you U$1,50). One may think "then why don´t stop in the excellent +60 already got?". Easy. To refine from golden(dragon 3) to white(dragon 4) you need a +62 attack. And from white to black(the last dragon) you need +68 attack.

   If you have a good rate with pure steels you get 1 fail every 5 attempts. This means that at every 100 IM points(U$ 5), you get +9. that would cost about 700 Im points(U$ 35) to reach +60. Then, you need a +8 with refined steels. At an average fail rate 9 fails for every 10 attempts, it would take you more 30 refined steels(900 Im points, U$ 45) to get from +60 to +69, meaning you just spent U$ 80 to get your white dragon weapon into a black one.

   And that is just for change weapon. You also have to change you armour and helmet.

   And after that you have to refine them, so they get competitive stats.

   I just got two exemples, refining and phase 3(above 100 in each skill). 

  If you want to be strong in PvP, be ready to spend some thousands of dollars in IM stuff.

  So much for forever free.

  But these are some aspects. The game is great and if you are not a PvP focused player, there is a lot of content to make you entertained for a long time.

well said CaptAntillus.