Or: Look at the Shiny!
Long post. TL;DR: Gushing about/describing Rift. You should probably buy that. Or you can try it free. Y'know, whichever.
So, Rift. Holy crap, my Warcraft addiction has been completely displaced. If I ever feel the need to play an MMO, I reach for my Droid instead of my keychain (since I need one or the other to complete the two-factor authentication both games boast).
What is there to say?
What isn't there to say?
Rift is yet another popular MMO boasting the dubious reputation as "next potential WoW-killer." They even boast in their advertisements, "We're not in Azeroth anymore." Now, in my own humble opinion, no game is actually going to kill World of Warcraft. That honor rests squarely with Activision-Blizzard, whose various policies have elicited more than one rant that I'll save for another time. As it stands, however, if a game could kill off World of Warcraft, Rift would be it.
Let's start with the basics. Like Aion before it, Rift is simply beautiful, the graphics absolutely stunning, with almost as much control over 'how much death this will wreak on your graphics card' as the former. (The graphics have also, at least on one occasion, killed off one of my characters - I momentarily forgot I wasn't playing Aion and therefore didn't have wings to catch my fall.)
Rift has significantly more character customization options than World of Warcraft, but not quite as much variety as Aion, resulting in a marked absence of flea-people and deformed monsters with gigantism (and real-life celebrity copycats), yet still managing to offset the, "You ALL look alike!" feel of World of Warcraft.
There are ... four? ... ish? distinct races in this game, two of which are split into ethnic subcategories that totally don't evoke any unfortunate implications or anything.
Totally.
The humans (every game has humans, even Aion had humans - in fact, Aion only had humans, even if some of them did have talons and manes) of Rift are split into two nationalities. The light-skinned Mathosians appear to be setting themselves up as the idealistic, gods-fearing "good guys" of the piece, while the dark-skinned Eth are the last remnants of a technomagical empire, and will do whatever is necessary to save the world from itself. With SCIENCE.
The elves (most every game also has elves. Aion didn't, but the 'pointy-eared willowy thing' look was an option) are also split along faction lines. On the Guardian (Mathosian) side of things, we have the High Elves, pale, nature-loving, also gods-fearing folk who, inexplicably, developed the powers of flight upon ascension ... or something?
On the Defiant (Eth) side, there's the Kelari, dusky-skinned, branching-eared, Uncanny Valley-eyed technomagical prodigies, with a side of heathen spirit ... uh ... negotiating. The Kelari believe themselves equal to the gods, not subservient. They strike deals with the spirits they work with, not prayers. Instead of flight, the Kelari turn into foxes, which in turn makes all Kelari foxy ladies, excepting the men, anyway.
Finally, the spares. On the Guardian side, we have Dwarves. All dwarves are alike. You don't really have to describe dwarves. But I will, anyway: short, kind of broad, generally bearded, scary fanatics who accidentally destroyed their underground cities by using the chained souls of their deceased for gasoline. Wait, what?
Anyway, their Defiant counterparts are the Bahmi, taller, broader, descendants of wind spirits, who gain by this descent a racial super-jump. They're big into ancestor worship, which given their ancestry, wouldn't be terribly different from the Kelari's practice, except for the whole I AM ALSO A GOD thing the Kelari sport.
Ultimately, choice of race and faction boils down to 'do I want to come off as a conservative judgmental zealot, or do I want to come off as an egotistical mad scientist?' Followed by 'How exactly do I want to get around the world faster, on foot?' (Unless you're a dwarf. And then it's WHEE FALLING.) And after that, y'know, actual aesthetic concerns. The +resists would be more distinguishing except everybody fights everybody else, especially all kinds of rift invasions, with more life and fire invasions in the Guardian starting zone, and more death and water invasions in the Defiant starting zone. (Although everybody always hates the death plane slightly more, so +death resist might be for the best, except for the recent influx of fire and earth, and ... yeah, it's basically irrelevant.)
So that's getting past the intro screens. From here on, either Arthas - er, the ... new leader of Mathosia ... guy ... is very, very proud that YOU. ARE. A. GUARDIAN! or Asha Catari is calling you Obi-Wan Kenobi, because you're everybody's only hope.
More on actual gameplay at an unspecified point in the future. Whee, non-permanently fatal gladiatorial deathmatches!
