Its good, but will it last?
Behold RIFT! A very very fun game. I started out making a necromancer/warlock/dominator. And as confusing as that sounds its acutally not all that bad. Basically you first pick your Faction, either Guardian or Defiler. Now each of these factions has 3 races each. Personally i thought the race selection was lacking considering everyone looks very similar. After you pick your race then you choose your class which is broken down into four diff classes. Warrior, Mage, Rogue and Cleric. Now this is where it gets interesting. As you play you are given quests dubbed "Soul Quests" to determine what your spec is gonna be.
So for me i chose necromancer for the first one then warlock for the second and i just threw in dominator for the third as a filler mostly. Every level you gain nets you points to put into one or more of those 3 trees. You can spread the points between all 3 if you desire. The customization in this game is incredible.
Now the bad parts. The lack of multiple starting areas doesnt give the game variety in that aspect. Once you max a toon out then level another you have to traverse the same regions you did before. You do get a little variation if you make a toon on the other faction however but you will eventually meet up in the same areas.
When leveling you never really can "look forward" to anything. For example on other mmo's you can always look forward to getting that new sweet pet or minion or new power every 10 levels or so. Like you hit level 10 then something new and awesome opens for you and then again at 20. It gives the players something to strive for and continue playing. This game basically every level you either get 1 or 2 points to put into your spec tree and then sometimes you can upgrade the abilities you have already acquired. Now thats not to say that nothing new opens. Once you put so many points into a specific spec tree, special abilities do unlock. Unfortunately the abilities are not like OMG AWESOME!! They just seem like filler.
Everythig else in the game is very addicting though. I do wish they would pull the enemies a little further away from the main roads so you dont aggro everything when just strolling down to the next town.
This game is a great addition to the mmorpg genre and im enjoying every minute im putting into it but i do feel as though unless Trion adds some more variation to the starting areas it will be very mundane to level multiple toons and people will get bored. To counter that they could flesh out the endgame content more so people would not want to make multiple toons but want to stick with their "main" longer.
As it stands its a fun, great game but the long term life doesnt look that great.