Take the best of existing MMO worlds, and put it into one fantastic new world.
Perhaps the first and foremost thing that new players entering Rift's world of Telara will see is the vast customization of characters and their particular roles that they can play. You can have a small Guardian Dwarf that can carry a huge staff or two-handed warrior weapon and craft fine accessories in between, or a Defiant Bahmi that can wield a mighty bow or musket rifle and spend crafting time creating great cloth or leather armor, or make great backpacks that can sell real quickly at the auction house. You can make your characters the way you want them to look in the world, all without having to see some huge-breasted female warrior running around. With 8 souls available for each class, there is alot of room for making your own crazy build, and with 3 additional roles you can purchase with the base class trainer, you can have your rogue switch between being a ranged damage-dealer and being a bard that provides heals and buffs while still doing some damage and debuffs...on the fly.
The world itself provides the usual array of quests, places for gathering crafting items, and hubs and towns for people to gather in. It's the constant opening of rifts, though, that provide a good change of pace from the usual menageries of MMO's. You could be questing at first, killing the necessary mobs for items and coin, but then see that a major rift event is happening, and you're forced to team up with others to stop the ongoing invasion. Rift invasions make each and every player important, as it is pretty common to see invaders establish a foothold somewhere, and then overrun a hub town and establish a foothold there. Players then have to drive them out in order to "bring back" necessary NPC's to complete quests or do some shopping. PvP is very solid, with an array of different battle modes available, and it's not unusual for players on opposing factions to flag themselves for PvP in the open world, especially during major Rift invasion events in mid-high lvl zones.
Visually, the world bolsters a great mix of terrain and intrigue, from the lush forests of Silverwood, to the canyons of the Scarlet Gorge. The audio itself is pretty nice, although some, like myself, will turn off the BGM for comfort in long playing sessions.
As much as the Gamebryo engine provides some good pros for many players, especially those with lower-end PC's, there are some technical issues that have hampered it some. There are also a few minor things for the team at Trion to fix, although not very significant, and players can send feedback at any time. Trion is also working to address the usual MMO issues of people hacking into accounts with the recent addition of a Coin Lock feature to help protect player accounts, although there has been no real word about how they are addressing the usual influx of goldspammers. Furthermore, there are a few gameplay features that veterans of other MMO's may see missing, especially the lack of a dungeon finder that WoW veterans love, but is unnecessary in Rift because each zone has just 1 dungeon that can be easily marked on the map, and when one member of a party or raid group enter, the others can "immediately join in", regardless of where they are beforehand.
That being said, Rift is a great alternative for those looking to "escape" from WoW or other existing MMO's. The constant mix of Rift invasions, questing, crafting, dungeon crawling, raids, and PvP mean that there is relatively minimal downtime, depending on your usual style of play in MMO's. There is always something to do in Telara, and in my books, it's worth the subscription rate.
-- IGN (As of the time of this review) --
* GUARDIANS ON THE AEDRAXIS SHARD (SERVER) *
Mairna, High Elf Rogue (Ranged DPS / Bard)
Elliesandrya, Mathosian/Human Warrior (Melee DPS / Tank)
Danina, Dwarven Cleric (Primary Healer / DPS)
Vicorria, High Elf Mage (DPS / Secondary Healer)
* DEFIANT ON THE DIMROOT SHARD *
Niarrvina, Bahmi Rogue (Ranged DPS / Bard)