Rift
I have been looking for the next PC game to hold my attention for longer than a week ... I have found it in Rift. It's a solid MMO that has taken a bunch of things I liked from other MMO's, pulled them together, and managed to look good doing it. I am pretty sure I'll be playing this pretty regularly until Guild Wars 2 finally releases.
My inner alt-a-holic is very pleased with the "Souls" mechanic. There are a number if different specializations of the 4 classes that can make game play a completely different experience on the same character - depending on what souls you choose, and how many points you put into them. Huzzah! No more starting a new character, and leveling it all over again, just to see how a new soul works. And you can change things around at any trainer. This means that every cleric you see running around is not necessarily a heal-bot .. and that warrior could be dealing out a ton of spell DPS instead of tanking. I'm sure as time goes by, there will be preferred "builds" that crop up for dungeons/raids - but on the whole, I really like the flexibility you have with how your character evolves.
An idea they took from Warhammer Online - public quests (aka: Rifts). I really love this - it's a great diversion from random questing. You can chose to join .. or not. And you get different rewards for participating that strengthen your character in new ways. They also randomly spawn around the map, so you don't have to just hang out in one area to complete it. You can come across one accidentally.. seek them out on your map (they are marked when they appear) .. or casually ignore them. Up to you.
I like that they kept the movement & camera options pretty standard, so there is no learning curve to just walking and looking around.
The game itself looks good - even on the low graphic setting (which is what I have been playing on). I really like that it feels more "realistic" than other games .. females are not overly exaggeratedly female - or overly slender waify things. Males are not hulkingly huge wrestlers, or super effeminate metrosexuals. Female armor is not designed for a horny teenager, proportions on the avatars make sense and are relatively balanced (with the exception of male dwarves HUGE hands and gorilla arms), and armor in general tends toward being "matchy" which makes my inner fashionista happy. I love that they are not using a color saturated, cartoon-y feel with this game (always hated that about WoW) .. and it looks like clipping was kept to a minimum. Even the elves and dwarves felt like they belonged in the world, and not just thrown in to be fantasy stereotypes. And - huzzah for dwarven females that are perfectly proportioned short people instead of long torso'd, short armed, huge headed freaks.
I'm not sure I like the crafting professions .. but then I'm pretty biased against them. Don't like wasting my game time creating a slew of bags or potions or armor I'll never use and can't sell for more than peanuts. I'll probably swap out to gathering professions and just sell them at the AH for money to purchase the items as I need them instead.
I am amused that the "Guardian" (or good-guy aka: Alliance) side seems to be the underdog. Where the "Defiants" (or bad-guy aka: Horde) side seems to be drawing the most players. I'm sure populations will even out over time - but at least right now - it's worth it to play a Guardian if you want to not have to compete with a slew of other people for quest objectives.
I have not yet made it to the capital city - I'm still checking out what all the different souls do .. and the different races/classes, getting a feel if there was a particular character I liked to play enough to focus on it. And settle on a server that doesn't have a 2 hour wait time where I can find a guild to play with.
With the pre-order special, the "rental fee" for the game is about $9 a month - about 1/3 less than WoW or Aion. Totally justifiable.
All in all - I like the game, and have picked it up and am looking forward to making new online friends.