First Off, WOW is an iconic and epic game.. that I owe countless hours of fun and excitement too. I would venture to say that it was the most influential game of all time. With that said..
I finally got around to playing Storm Legion for a significant amount of time yesterday and if anyone is on the fence about whether it is a good expansion or not, or whether RIFT is a good game or not.. I think SL kills any discussion on the topic.
I have played WOW for 8 years and I just can't get myself to play it anymore. I have put so much time into WOW, have 5 x 80's and I'm so disappointed in what that game has become for me. And I've become so used to MMO's being my "filler". If i'm bored I could always look to an MMO to keep me interested and excited. That process started to get rough.
Since RIFT's release I thought it was a game that was a little too late. It was WOW v2.0 and although a good game was not good enough to replace WOW.
Then on the release of MoP and as the press clippings and beta of SL came in it started to shift for me. RIFT became a game that finally caught up with the developers work. It started to look more impressive in different and unique ways to WOW that it is now standing on its own. I went through today and created an entirely new Assassination build with the features I would like to use and see. I hit "M" and saw that the map was huge on only one of the new continents (I'm in Cape Jule currently). Everything just feels right. The maps are huge but not thrown together, the PA and XP system keeps you from getting to 60 in one day, but keeps you rewarded on a micro level. The builds are extremely customizable,relevant and varied more than ever. The performance with my GTX 680 is tremendous and there is too much to do. I haven't touched dimensions and I can honestly tell you I won't touch near all the content in 8 months to a year.
It is not a WOW clone anymore, imo, it is something more. Its a unique game that is getting better and better by the day and has renewed my faith in the MMO genre.
Thanks Trion if your reading for making a promise you kept to your customers.