After having been invited into the Beta event this past weekend for Rift, I have decided that I will be quitting WoW for at least the next few months.
For any of those who have played it, it does seem kind of like WoW 2.0...but only in the control scheme and how the game plays....but the content is obviously different. This fact is what makes it so approachable and also extremely polished for a game still in Beta, albeit with a release date less than 3 weeks away.
The graphics are good, not overdone, but better than WoWs and easily scaled depending on PC capability, the talent trees/ souls are diverse and enjoyable and the way you acquire new skills is very intuitive. you ultimately get 3 "souls" with different roles, you decided on which one is your main focus and put points into it, the more points you put in, the more abilities you get specific for that role/ soul, while the other 2 act as support, It leads to HUGE possibilities for role variability, but also to plain terrible combinations.
The Rift events, as the game is primarily based around as the name implies, are very entertaining and easily enjoyable. They occur randomly in all zones and are level appropriate for the areas they spawn in, so while your questing, if one blows up over your head, you won't be out of your league....sort of. Think of it like small dungeon events in WoW...so you have elite mobs your level spawning, so you can solo them one on one depending on your class but don't expect to solo the whole rift. It makes the leveling experience different every time, and easily and fluidly breaks up the questing grind so if you're bored of questing, there's usually a rift somewhere that you can tackle. Also the opposing faction (NPC's usually, but PC's can also be there) creeps into the zone and sets up camps and tries moving in on your territory. Once they are their long enough they start to spread out and take over questing hubs until they are beaten back. This gives a very "living world" feeling to the whole game and doesn't really feel imposing because you get rewards for doing both Rifts and opposing faction hunting.
The magical thing about both of these events is that if there are a number of other players participating in these events simultaneously, a little button pops up that asks if you want to join the public group. hit the button and you are automatically added to a group and get to participate with other people, get group heals, give group heals, share rewards and make friends...all while experiencing the game content at your leisure.
In any case, for those who haven't thought much about it, I highly encourage you to at least try out Rift if you are able. It is familiar enough to WoW to make it a very easy transition, but it is far from a WoW clone. Just because someone uses an idea that works, even if someone else came up with it, doesn't make it copying necessarily, it means they can use what works and be able to focus on the parts the game that really matter, like the content and I think Rift delivers. Why reinvent the wheel or try to fix what isn't broken?