For a basic breakdown of what RIFT is, I found this Info on another forum:
"What is Rift, anyways?
It's an upcoming fantasy MMO from Trion Worlds. They are a company that was formed in 2006 by experienced MMO and online game staff from EA, NCsoft, Blizzard, and Sony (Everquest).
It's just another WoW clone!
It's indeed in a fantasy setting, but I wouldn't call it a WoW clone. The two sides are The Guardians and The Defiants -- while one might make a comparison to Alliance vs Horde, it's a bit different from that. I may be a bit biased, but the Guardians mostly come across as big dicks ... chosen by the Gods, etc. while they expect the Defiants to just pray to god and kiss their butts goodbye. So the Defiants have created their own MagiTech creations and artificial Ascendants in order to fend off Regulus.
Regulus and Ascendants?
Players are called Ascendants. You are beings brought back from death, using bodies able to hold multiple souls in them -- far more powerful than the average humanoid -- you are the only real hope of holding off Regulus -- an evil dragon from the Plane of Death bent on destroying all of Telara. (Yes, yes it kinda sounds like Deathwing at this point, but I doubt they could have known that 5 years ago when they started making the game...)
Most importantly: Why should I care about this game over WoW?
I'm an old veteran of the MMO genre, having played at least a dozen or more since Ultima Online in 1997. (And followed or know of dozens more). And honestly -- this is the most polished and well-thought-out MMO I've seen in many years. The only one I was anywhere near as impressed with as this one was Lord of the Rings Online. Even in beta debugging mode, I can run the game on Ultra with a 3 year old CPU, and a Radeon 5830. It's only beta, and yet the game already plays like one that's been released for a year, as far as being free of bugs and annoying glitches goes.
They have a keen sense of knowing where the core bulk of their audience is going to come from, so they don't waste time changing non-gameplay elements just for the sake of making them different. By that I mean -- item quality, chat colors, general layouts, etc. will all be familiar to players of WoW. Yet they also show some very innovative new elements to build upon failures in WoW and to provide a gaming experience that is different from it. (Basically the opposite of how S-E handled Final Fantasy 14...) Of which I'll hit upon the most important and interesting of them briefly below...
Soul talent trees, and you -- class spec diversity
At first glance, the Soul Talent Trees look very similar to what you would find in WoW. You get to use 3 of them to spec out a character, you can respec in town at an NPC, and you can switch saved specs out in the field which save their key layouts per-spec. Where this system really shines though is in the diversity of the type of characters you can build up, and the ability to have 4 specs you can switch between in 2 secs time as long as you are out of combat. There are currently 4 core classes: Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric --- from there you build your class out of 8 sub-classes. Each Sub-class is 1 of your 3 active soul talent trees. If you do a full respec at an NPC in town, you can also entirely swap out your soul trees for one of the other 7 trees -- you aren't permanently stuck with the same 3 talent trees forever.
For example: You can be a Cleric with Shaman, Warden, and Judicator sub-classes. This gives you good melee fighting capabilities, with some defensive and group support abilities. Or you could go Cabalist, Inquisitor, and Warden to be a ranged caster with some backup healing capabilities. Most importantly: You don't have to switch equipment sets to switch between roles with changing specs. The spell-based trees for Cleric give you a base passive talent that has your spell stats also buff your melee stats so you can use the same gear.
Rift PVP and You
Rift features a number of different ways you can get involved in PVP. It features the usual battlegrounds you would find in WoW, but also has Battlefonts which are areas of the map that become contested and encourage world PVP. There are also Open-PVP servers for a more realistic conflict between the Guardians and the Defiants. (As if Regulus wasn't enough!). The above-mentioned 2 sec respecs while in the field also open up interesting PVP options -- not only do you not know which 3 of the 8 trees necessarily that they may be using, but also that they could duck behind cover and respec to change tactics on you or vice versa.
Class roles in Rift
Lastly, briefly cover some of the interesting class roles in Rift you don't see in WoW.
Chloromancer: Mage-based healer that deals damage to the enemy to heal their allies via a multiplier coefficient.
Dominator: Group-support and CC specialist. Features CCs, debuffs, mana drains, etc.
Riftstalker: Rogue-based tank that relies on increased healing talents, evasion, etc.
Bard: Rogue-based support class that buffs/ debuffs, and provides some spot healing abilities. (Not sure what their healing is anymore as that got adjusted in beta)
Judicator: Cleric-based tank class that spot heals and supports their group based on taking damage and damaging the enemy for Conviction counters.
Misc Errata
The game has a few other nice little improvements over WoW which include: AOE looting to allow you to loot everything within like a 8yd radius around you with one click. Area where quest mobs or items can be found is shown on the minimap via shaded circles besides on the usual world map you bring up. The before-mentioned Rift events which randomly spawn invasion points for the various elemental planes which you can auto-add yourself to the group if in the area to get point rewards and drops to spend at point vendors, etc.
I hope this was informative for some people. I recommend at least trying out one of the last two beta phases. The game releases on 2/24 for those that pre-order, or 3/1 for those that just buy the standard edition. If you pre-order you can also qualify for reduced monthly fees of as low as 9.99/mo if you get a 6 month sub."
This is yet another breakdown of RIFT that I thought was informative. Somewhat similar but offers a little bit more info about certain aspects.
"I've gotten tired of reading some of the incredibly misinformed junk being passed about the forums, so I thought I would clear some up. I'll update this as I come across more.
1. It's a WoW clone!
Oh noes, someone managed to get their hands on WoWs DNA! First off, WoW is the most successful MMO of all time. OF ALL TIME! (/kanye). Why on earth wouldn't you look to see what Blizzard did right and emulate it? Yes I know, even the chat colours are the same, but why make us relearn something that has no impact on the gameplay? And yes I know, the professions are startlingly similar, but at least they are expanded upon and improved (ie you can uncraft anything you made to regain most of the materials). Secondly, there will always be an action bar, a map, a chat box, your party frames, raid frames, players always want these things and they are key to any RPG style game. You will always have quests, there will always be mages, warriors, and priests, and we will always want some way to specialise our role and find some method of character development (talents/souls or whatever). It's going to be a long time before someone finds a way to break that formula.
2. It's an eastern/asian MMO, it's going to be 'grindy'.
Apparently all good looking MMOs are asian or something. A bit like women maybe? Kidding! Seriously though Trion Worlds are an American company. As for grindy, yes and no. No, there aren't gaps without quests like Aion, in fact there is an overabundance of quests. I was L23 by the time I needed to move to the next zone, which was marked as a L19-26 zone. But yes, like all MMOs, those quests involve killing mobs, looting items, escorting NPCs and travelling to different places. This is just how MMOs are. Fortunately there are dungeons to break that up a bit, and of course there are Rifts and Invasions which can literally give you a couple hours distraction.
3. The Rifts are just like WoWs elemental invasions, people will get bored and stop playing.
I agree to some extent, they are a bit like WoWs elemental invasion. But they are also a lot like the world bosses from vanilla WoW (green dragons) and TBC (Kazzak, Doomwalker), and they get the same rush of excited players trying to get there and partake in the kill as you would have done years ago in WoW. Public grouping which got implemented last beta makes grouping up for rifts and invasions really easy and I feel at last brings some social aspect back to MMOs (WoWs tendancy to allow people to solo anything and everything outside an instance isn't great in my opinion). The end bosses are pretty epic too, not overly complex with the mechanics, but hard hitting and with a TON of hitpoints. They are definitely worth doing and they are so much fun. Sure in time they might get boring, but you have to remember that rifts are just added extras, there are dungeons too, and heroic modes have different bosses to normal. Also there are currently two raids at launch.
4. It's going to flop within 6months because of reason X, Y or Z.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Neither you nor I have a crystal ball or a time machine (yet, but as soon as I invent one I am coming back to this moment to give myself the time machine) so we just don't know. I can honestly say that there is nothing in beta that makes me think that the game won't succeed. I've yet to see endgame, but you haven't seen it either so really we're both just guessing at this point. What I can say for sure is that the game is fun and worth a look, especially as the two beta events coming up are free and there are plenty of beta keys floating about the interwebz.
5. Rift is a WoW Killer!
I sorta doubt it, nor would I want it to be. Blizzard are really the leaders in this field right now, and the only reason that all these other MMOs are springing up is because they showed the gaming world that these games can really take off, providing consumers with a ton of fun and publishers with a ton of money. On top of that they continue to innovate the many refinements that other games then emulate. Rift would not be so well polished and bug free if WoW wasn't setting such a ridiculously high standard.
Besides, WoW is fun and I have six years of friends here, I'll still log in to raid even if I prefer to play Rift (unless Rifts raids are better, but I doubt that at this early stage...).
6. Amagad it's eating my frame rate aliiiiive!
Yeah more realistic graphics and all those pretty spell animations and lighting effects do that, but take hope, along with continuing tweaks to the games engine apparently the Rift beta runs a debugger in the background which is causing lower than normal frame rates, so you may gain better fps once the game launches. That said, if you want to play on Ultra settings, you will need a powerful machine.
7. I think Rift sucks because I heard/saw...
Stop right there! Seriously you're going to let someone else's opinion be yours? You're going to judge a game based on a few screenshots or a video? Even I was turned off by the first Rift video I saw. If someone released a video with WoWs graphics today we'd laugh at the cartoony graphics. One of the first things many of the people who have watched me play say is that it looks cartoony. But we all know just how awesome it is, and we know because we tried it. So give Rift (or any other MMO) a fair chance and try the free beta before you start throwing around your opinions.
8. What's different about Rift?
Okay, I'm actually going to start out listing what's the same and the reasons that this is not a bad thing, then we'll get to the new stuff.
Same as WoW:
+ Quests. There's lot's of them. There is also a quest tracker akin to WoWs current default one, letting you track five at a time.
+ The UI. Very much like WoWs default one or that of most MMOs. No addons currently though. However you can move any element of your UI anywhere and there are a lot of options.
+ Colours. Chat colours, gear quality colours, white and yellow hit colours. All the same as WoW.
+ Talent trees. Called Souls in Rift.
+ Professions. Very familiar, although sometimes under different names (alchemist = apothecary, enchanter = runecrafter).
+ Mounts. Although some of them do look fairly epic (check this and this).
+ Dungeons and raids. Honestly I am not sure how similar these are in terms of mechanics, but a dungeon is a dungeon is a dungeon right?
+ Achievements. They're ingame, and there's a LOT of them.
So, there is a lot that is the same. But honestly, what did you expect in an MMO RPG? You're going to need some method to level (quests) some form of character advancement (talents), you want to see what you're doing, chat to people, have your abilities lined up to nuke/heal things (UI), you want some means of making gold and gear (professions) and you want to sit on a horse and look down at some noobs (mounts - yes I know they're for getting around faster :P). You want some way of getting better gear and taking a break from the quests (dungeons) and once you reach top level you want to keep advancing your character and doing something with your spare time (raids, achievements). Keeping things similar to WoW is a smart move. In the same way that FPS makers keep their controls and interface the same (left mouse click is shoot, right is alt fire, WASD is move around, space is jump, you can see your health, ammo etc) it makes sense to keep UI elements the same. None of this impacts on gameplay, in fact it makes your life easier as you know where everything is, and most importantly for Trion it makes the transition from WoW easier so they can steal your souls! Your real souls, not your ingame ones. Those are safe. Phew.
Different to WoW:
+ The games looks. Yeah it takes a beasty machine to enjoy it to it's full potential, but for a fantasy themed MMO it looks awesome and there is no denying it. The second zone I got to, Gloamwood, has a really nice spooky feel to it which is a nice change after the bright and pretty starter area of Silverwood. After years of WoWs cartoonish looks, which I am not denying have their own unique charm and WoW has its oh wow that looks cool moments, it's nice to play something that looks more realistic and pretty. Eye candy is important y'know!
+ Talent trees. The concept is the same, but the execution is markedly different to WoW. WoW may as well not have talents, the PvE expectation is so rigid. Even the 'optional' talents have been theory crafted to death to determine which gives the greatest benefit. In RIFT you have eight souls (trees) for each class (Mage, Cleric, Warrior, Rogue) and you can pick and mix any three from those eight. Imagine in WoW if you could pick three trees and their corresponding abilities from ANY similar class. Suddenly you're a feral kitty dps, with deathgrip, sap and bladestorm. Or a frost mage with dps bonuses for elemental damage and some self healing. You have enough points to literally reach the top tier talents in two trees at the same time if you wanted (at max level). However, to get all the 'root' abilities (core spells, one for each 2-4pts in a tree, the best ones require 51pts in a tree) you need to make a major investment in one tree, with some points left over to pick out some nice stuff in another two.
+ Rifts and Invasions. One minute you're questing, the next all hell breaks loose because either a rift opened up or an invasion started and you might as well join in! You get very good XP for closing rifts and defeating invasions, and the rewards (unique to these activities) are well worth it (level appropriate rare and epic gear). They are also really fun. If you manage to successfully complete all the objectives given by a quest for an invasion (close this many rifts defeat this many invading forces, its zone wide and not too hard to do) a general appears and spanking him takes a lot of effort (think Kazzak or Doomwalker).
+ Public groups. These went in last beta and worked nicely. If you approach a Rift or invading force you get an option to join a public group with nearby players. This helps coordinate but mostly it ensures you get some nice heals, which can be important when you're a L10 noob who decides to try to join in a L20 rift closing :P There are also some other improvements, such as quest mobs are no longer 'taggable', meaning that if someone tags your quest mob nearby you can just join in and still get credit, which encourages team play I feel rather than WoWs every man for himself attitude.
+ Crafting is mostly the same, but you can take three professions. You have the option of breaking apart old gear to recover some of the mats. Runecrafting (enchanting) is nicer too, as you can turn lesser items into greater items until you get the top level shards (ie five glowing shards combine to make one bright shard, five bright make one brilliant, five brilliant make one of the next level etc) meaning you won'd have tons of old mats lying about. Just little improvements. Also there is no cooking and fishing, which were nice in WoW but sometimes were a bit of a grind or an expense for food.
I think the most important thing is that the game has a lot of polish, it doesn't feel like a beta right now. Lots of little niggles are gone (like quest mob tagging, crafting improvements mentioned above) and are things that Blizzard would do well to take note of. It's enjoyable to play. If you play WoW you should love this, yeah it's similar, its another fantasy MMO RPG, but it has its own unique twist and it's doing a very good job."
I think you can start with throwing this block in the dust bin. There are more dead links in there and some links to dead sites too, but let's start with those.
Comments
Great post! Would greatly appreciate if you could please add www.RIFTNation.com to the fansite listing. Thanks very much!
For a basic breakdown of what RIFT is, I found this Info on another forum:
"What is Rift, anyways?
It's an upcoming fantasy MMO from Trion Worlds. They are a company that was formed in 2006 by experienced MMO and online game staff from EA, NCsoft, Blizzard, and Sony (Everquest).
It's just another WoW clone!
It's indeed in a fantasy setting, but I wouldn't call it a WoW clone. The two sides are The Guardians and The Defiants -- while one might make a comparison to Alliance vs Horde, it's a bit different from that. I may be a bit biased, but the Guardians mostly come across as big dicks ... chosen by the Gods, etc. while they expect the Defiants to just pray to god and kiss their butts goodbye. So the Defiants have created their own MagiTech creations and artificial Ascendants in order to fend off Regulus.
Regulus and Ascendants?
Players are called Ascendants. You are beings brought back from death, using bodies able to hold multiple souls in them -- far more powerful than the average humanoid -- you are the only real hope of holding off Regulus -- an evil dragon from the Plane of Death bent on destroying all of Telara. (Yes, yes it kinda sounds like Deathwing at this point, but I doubt they could have known that 5 years ago when they started making the game...)
Most importantly: Why should I care about this game over WoW?
I'm an old veteran of the MMO genre, having played at least a dozen or more since Ultima Online in 1997. (And followed or know of dozens more). And honestly -- this is the most polished and well-thought-out MMO I've seen in many years. The only one I was anywhere near as impressed with as this one was Lord of the Rings Online. Even in beta debugging mode, I can run the game on Ultra with a 3 year old CPU, and a Radeon 5830. It's only beta, and yet the game already plays like one that's been released for a year, as far as being free of bugs and annoying glitches goes.
They have a keen sense of knowing where the core bulk of their audience is going to come from, so they don't waste time changing non-gameplay elements just for the sake of making them different. By that I mean -- item quality, chat colors, general layouts, etc. will all be familiar to players of WoW. Yet they also show some very innovative new elements to build upon failures in WoW and to provide a gaming experience that is different from it. (Basically the opposite of how S-E handled Final Fantasy 14...) Of which I'll hit upon the most important and interesting of them briefly below...
Soul talent trees, and you -- class spec diversity
At first glance, the Soul Talent Trees look very similar to what you would find in WoW. You get to use 3 of them to spec out a character, you can respec in town at an NPC, and you can switch saved specs out in the field which save their key layouts per-spec. Where this system really shines though is in the diversity of the type of characters you can build up, and the ability to have 4 specs you can switch between in 2 secs time as long as you are out of combat. There are currently 4 core classes: Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric --- from there you build your class out of 8 sub-classes. Each Sub-class is 1 of your 3 active soul talent trees. If you do a full respec at an NPC in town, you can also entirely swap out your soul trees for one of the other 7 trees -- you aren't permanently stuck with the same 3 talent trees forever.
For example: You can be a Cleric with Shaman, Warden, and Judicator sub-classes. This gives you good melee fighting capabilities, with some defensive and group support abilities. Or you could go Cabalist, Inquisitor, and Warden to be a ranged caster with some backup healing capabilities. Most importantly: You don't have to switch equipment sets to switch between roles with changing specs. The spell-based trees for Cleric give you a base passive talent that has your spell stats also buff your melee stats so you can use the same gear.
Rift PVP and You
Rift features a number of different ways you can get involved in PVP. It features the usual battlegrounds you would find in WoW, but also has Battlefonts which are areas of the map that become contested and encourage world PVP. There are also Open-PVP servers for a more realistic conflict between the Guardians and the Defiants. (As if Regulus wasn't enough!). The above-mentioned 2 sec respecs while in the field also open up interesting PVP options -- not only do you not know which 3 of the 8 trees necessarily that they may be using, but also that they could duck behind cover and respec to change tactics on you or vice versa.
Class roles in Rift
Lastly, briefly cover some of the interesting class roles in Rift you don't see in WoW.
Chloromancer: Mage-based healer that deals damage to the enemy to heal their allies via a multiplier coefficient.
Dominator: Group-support and CC specialist. Features CCs, debuffs, mana drains, etc.
Riftstalker: Rogue-based tank that relies on increased healing talents, evasion, etc.
Bard: Rogue-based support class that buffs/ debuffs, and provides some spot healing abilities. (Not sure what their healing is anymore as that got adjusted in beta)
Judicator: Cleric-based tank class that spot heals and supports their group based on taking damage and damaging the enemy for Conviction counters.
Misc Errata
The game has a few other nice little improvements over WoW which include: AOE looting to allow you to loot everything within like a 8yd radius around you with one click. Area where quest mobs or items can be found is shown on the minimap via shaded circles besides on the usual world map you bring up. The before-mentioned Rift events which randomly spawn invasion points for the various elemental planes which you can auto-add yourself to the group if in the area to get point rewards and drops to spend at point vendors, etc.
I hope this was informative for some people. I recommend at least trying out one of the last two beta phases. The game releases on 2/24 for those that pre-order, or 3/1 for those that just buy the standard edition. If you pre-order you can also qualify for reduced monthly fees of as low as 9.99/mo if you get a 6 month sub."
This is yet another breakdown of RIFT that I thought was informative. Somewhat similar but offers a little bit more info about certain aspects.
"I've gotten tired of reading some of the incredibly misinformed junk being passed about the forums, so I thought I would clear some up. I'll update this as I come across more.
1. It's a WoW clone!
Oh noes, someone managed to get their hands on WoWs DNA! First off, WoW is the most successful MMO of all time. OF ALL TIME! (/kanye). Why on earth wouldn't you look to see what Blizzard did right and emulate it? Yes I know, even the chat colours are the same, but why make us relearn something that has no impact on the gameplay? And yes I know, the professions are startlingly similar, but at least they are expanded upon and improved (ie you can uncraft anything you made to regain most of the materials). Secondly, there will always be an action bar, a map, a chat box, your party frames, raid frames, players always want these things and they are key to any RPG style game. You will always have quests, there will always be mages, warriors, and priests, and we will always want some way to specialise our role and find some method of character development (talents/souls or whatever). It's going to be a long time before someone finds a way to break that formula.
2. It's an eastern/asian MMO, it's going to be 'grindy'.
Apparently all good looking MMOs are asian or something. A bit like women maybe? Kidding! Seriously though Trion Worlds are an American company. As for grindy, yes and no. No, there aren't gaps without quests like Aion, in fact there is an overabundance of quests. I was L23 by the time I needed to move to the next zone, which was marked as a L19-26 zone. But yes, like all MMOs, those quests involve killing mobs, looting items, escorting NPCs and travelling to different places. This is just how MMOs are. Fortunately there are dungeons to break that up a bit, and of course there are Rifts and Invasions which can literally give you a couple hours distraction.
3. The Rifts are just like WoWs elemental invasions, people will get bored and stop playing.
I agree to some extent, they are a bit like WoWs elemental invasion. But they are also a lot like the world bosses from vanilla WoW (green dragons) and TBC (Kazzak, Doomwalker), and they get the same rush of excited players trying to get there and partake in the kill as you would have done years ago in WoW. Public grouping which got implemented last beta makes grouping up for rifts and invasions really easy and I feel at last brings some social aspect back to MMOs (WoWs tendancy to allow people to solo anything and everything outside an instance isn't great in my opinion). The end bosses are pretty epic too, not overly complex with the mechanics, but hard hitting and with a TON of hitpoints. They are definitely worth doing and they are so much fun. Sure in time they might get boring, but you have to remember that rifts are just added extras, there are dungeons too, and heroic modes have different bosses to normal. Also there are currently two raids at launch.
4. It's going to flop within 6months because of reason X, Y or Z.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Neither you nor I have a crystal ball or a time machine (yet, but as soon as I invent one I am coming back to this moment to give myself the time machine) so we just don't know. I can honestly say that there is nothing in beta that makes me think that the game won't succeed. I've yet to see endgame, but you haven't seen it either so really we're both just guessing at this point. What I can say for sure is that the game is fun and worth a look, especially as the two beta events coming up are free and there are plenty of beta keys floating about the interwebz.
5. Rift is a WoW Killer!
I sorta doubt it, nor would I want it to be. Blizzard are really the leaders in this field right now, and the only reason that all these other MMOs are springing up is because they showed the gaming world that these games can really take off, providing consumers with a ton of fun and publishers with a ton of money. On top of that they continue to innovate the many refinements that other games then emulate. Rift would not be so well polished and bug free if WoW wasn't setting such a ridiculously high standard.
Besides, WoW is fun and I have six years of friends here, I'll still log in to raid even if I prefer to play Rift (unless Rifts raids are better, but I doubt that at this early stage...).
6. Amagad it's eating my frame rate aliiiiive!
Yeah more realistic graphics and all those pretty spell animations and lighting effects do that, but take hope, along with continuing tweaks to the games engine apparently the Rift beta runs a debugger in the background which is causing lower than normal frame rates, so you may gain better fps once the game launches. That said, if you want to play on Ultra settings, you will need a powerful machine.
7. I think Rift sucks because I heard/saw...
Stop right there! Seriously you're going to let someone else's opinion be yours? You're going to judge a game based on a few screenshots or a video? Even I was turned off by the first Rift video I saw. If someone released a video with WoWs graphics today we'd laugh at the cartoony graphics. One of the first things many of the people who have watched me play say is that it looks cartoony. But we all know just how awesome it is, and we know because we tried it. So give Rift (or any other MMO) a fair chance and try the free beta before you start throwing around your opinions.
8. What's different about Rift?
Okay, I'm actually going to start out listing what's the same and the reasons that this is not a bad thing, then we'll get to the new stuff.
Same as WoW:
+ Quests. There's lot's of them. There is also a quest tracker akin to WoWs current default one, letting you track five at a time.
+ The UI. Very much like WoWs default one or that of most MMOs. No addons currently though. However you can move any element of your UI anywhere and there are a lot of options.
+ Colours. Chat colours, gear quality colours, white and yellow hit colours. All the same as WoW.
+ Talent trees. Called Souls in Rift.
+ Professions. Very familiar, although sometimes under different names (alchemist = apothecary, enchanter = runecrafter).
+ Mounts. Although some of them do look fairly epic (check this and this).
+ Dungeons and raids. Honestly I am not sure how similar these are in terms of mechanics, but a dungeon is a dungeon is a dungeon right?
+ Achievements. They're ingame, and there's a LOT of them.
So, there is a lot that is the same. But honestly, what did you expect in an MMO RPG? You're going to need some method to level (quests) some form of character advancement (talents), you want to see what you're doing, chat to people, have your abilities lined up to nuke/heal things (UI), you want some means of making gold and gear (professions) and you want to sit on a horse and look down at some noobs (mounts - yes I know they're for getting around faster :P). You want some way of getting better gear and taking a break from the quests (dungeons) and once you reach top level you want to keep advancing your character and doing something with your spare time (raids, achievements). Keeping things similar to WoW is a smart move. In the same way that FPS makers keep their controls and interface the same (left mouse click is shoot, right is alt fire, WASD is move around, space is jump, you can see your health, ammo etc) it makes sense to keep UI elements the same. None of this impacts on gameplay, in fact it makes your life easier as you know where everything is, and most importantly for Trion it makes the transition from WoW easier so they can steal your souls! Your real souls, not your ingame ones. Those are safe. Phew.
Different to WoW:
+ The games looks. Yeah it takes a beasty machine to enjoy it to it's full potential, but for a fantasy themed MMO it looks awesome and there is no denying it. The second zone I got to, Gloamwood, has a really nice spooky feel to it which is a nice change after the bright and pretty starter area of Silverwood. After years of WoWs cartoonish looks, which I am not denying have their own unique charm and WoW has its oh wow that looks cool moments, it's nice to play something that looks more realistic and pretty. Eye candy is important y'know!
+ Talent trees. The concept is the same, but the execution is markedly different to WoW. WoW may as well not have talents, the PvE expectation is so rigid. Even the 'optional' talents have been theory crafted to death to determine which gives the greatest benefit. In RIFT you have eight souls (trees) for each class (Mage, Cleric, Warrior, Rogue) and you can pick and mix any three from those eight. Imagine in WoW if you could pick three trees and their corresponding abilities from ANY similar class. Suddenly you're a feral kitty dps, with deathgrip, sap and bladestorm. Or a frost mage with dps bonuses for elemental damage and some self healing. You have enough points to literally reach the top tier talents in two trees at the same time if you wanted (at max level). However, to get all the 'root' abilities (core spells, one for each 2-4pts in a tree, the best ones require 51pts in a tree) you need to make a major investment in one tree, with some points left over to pick out some nice stuff in another two.
+ Rifts and Invasions. One minute you're questing, the next all hell breaks loose because either a rift opened up or an invasion started and you might as well join in! You get very good XP for closing rifts and defeating invasions, and the rewards (unique to these activities) are well worth it (level appropriate rare and epic gear). They are also really fun. If you manage to successfully complete all the objectives given by a quest for an invasion (close this many rifts defeat this many invading forces, its zone wide and not too hard to do) a general appears and spanking him takes a lot of effort (think Kazzak or Doomwalker).
+ Public groups. These went in last beta and worked nicely. If you approach a Rift or invading force you get an option to join a public group with nearby players. This helps coordinate but mostly it ensures you get some nice heals, which can be important when you're a L10 noob who decides to try to join in a L20 rift closing :P There are also some other improvements, such as quest mobs are no longer 'taggable', meaning that if someone tags your quest mob nearby you can just join in and still get credit, which encourages team play I feel rather than WoWs every man for himself attitude.
+ Crafting is mostly the same, but you can take three professions. You have the option of breaking apart old gear to recover some of the mats. Runecrafting (enchanting) is nicer too, as you can turn lesser items into greater items until you get the top level shards (ie five glowing shards combine to make one bright shard, five bright make one brilliant, five brilliant make one of the next level etc) meaning you won'd have tons of old mats lying about. Just little improvements. Also there is no cooking and fishing, which were nice in WoW but sometimes were a bit of a grind or an expense for food.
I think the most important thing is that the game has a lot of polish, it doesn't feel like a beta right now. Lots of little niggles are gone (like quest mob tagging, crafting improvements mentioned above) and are things that Blizzard would do well to take note of. It's enjoyable to play. If you play WoW you should love this, yeah it's similar, its another fantasy MMO RPG, but it has its own unique twist and it's doing a very good job."
I think you can start with throwing this block in the dust bin. There are more dead links in there and some links to dead sites too, but let's start with those.
It takes one to know one.
These two sites moved recently:
http:// www.riftzone.nl/
http://horrifticintentions.com/
It takes one to know one.