The difference between now and release? easy, all the "kool trending, hipster kiddies" have now "discovered" Rift and are polluting the Forums and chat with their crap and inane babble
While it might seem selfish to me, but great for Trion, i much preferred Rift this time last year when it had a smaller, yet clued in community, it was a solid playerbase; but now seeing as all the "Hail the new Messiah!" MMO's the Prophets forecast would bring World Peace and feed the World crashed and burned, they turned their attention onto Rift...unfortunately.
Now it's just whine, whine, QQ, QQ waaah, what do you mean i have to "grind" out Rep, what grind? i did a side by side comparison of the old Rift 1.0 Factions Rep "grind" and the so-called Rep grind in Storm Legion and compared the number of days/months. So far it's on track between the amount of time for me to get Glorified with Icewatch, Dragonslayer and Mathos as i got with Lycini, Caretakers and soon Eternal City.
Storm Legion isn't even out two full months and people are filling the Pacific basin with tears, looool, priceless, totally funny to read