I'll begin by using a comparison I saw a great deal of people use: It's a WoW clone. Normally, this would be a horrible way to describe a game. For RIFT, this isn't the case. It -is- basically WoW, most of the basic systems seem like a copy. But a GREAT copy.
Now let's get down to the details...
Races/Classes: There's 6 races, broken between 2 factions. Each race has it's own distinct look, and a few nice racials. There's 4 base classes, each breaking into 8 different fields, making a total of 32 different selections, and unlike WoW, allows you to play any class as any race. Furthering the customization, each character can use abilities of 3 different classes, allowing for interesting combination.
Appearance: Little disclaimer, I'm running RIFT on a very low power system, so my quality is very low. Even so, the game looks great. environments look great, and characters/creatures design is very well done. Even on my computer, I get a pretty decent framerate, even if there is a bit of activity around me.
Gameplay: Mostly the same as WoW: Talk to quest giver, go do quest, talk to reward giver. However, there is actually more of a connected story to it all compared to WoW. I won't spoil it or anything, however. Another break from the WoW mold is it's constant global events. Constantly rifts will break open around the map, spawning numerous waves of monsters, and it's the players job to defeat the enemies and close the rift. Sadly, I've only participated in one of these so far, and it lasted about 30 seconds(about 150 people in the area of low level monsters makes stuff die fast). Additionally, on occasion, towns will come under siege from monsters, and again, players must defend the locations, or lose that town and all of its quests/stores. I've only seen one start, but I wasn't in the area for experience it.
Of course, this is still beta, and they have yet to open everything up to players, but RIFT is looking to be a great buy for MMO players. As to it becoming the new WoW, who knows.
And if anyone else is playing the beta, give me a shout, I might be nice and make a character on your server
