Hmm...well for me Bahmi and Kelari have the worst set of hairstyles. Kelari aren't so bad, but the Bahmi...I really want to make one I just can't stand any of the hairstyles!

@Sylphas: Yeah I thought that it was a little strange too.

Did some warfronts, Guardians won all five of them. Wonder if it is because everyone and their mother is going Defiant, or if it is another invocation of the law that any side you roll on is the one always losing in PVP Leveling up a Guardian cleric now, to have a look at the other side. Inquisitor sounded kinda cool, but felt a bit boring thus far. I'll stick with it for another while though, maybe try some of the other cleric souls.

I'm rather liking my druid/shaman, if only because I tend to think "stop... hammertime" when I start smacking things around. Plus the whole... pet that primarily exists to make you personally better is kinda cool.

I am intrigued by this game, but terrified by the class listing on the site. How do they balance all those?!

Most of them do the same thing with different flavor. A lot of the rogue combo builders, for example, are pretty much the same thing. It shouldn't be as hard as it looks, but I can't speak to how the balance currently stands.

Balance as most people think of it doesn't matter in PvE, as it's very forgiving so long as you don't make a build that fails as soon as it's born and you don't run with min-maxing people that keep their noses ground into DPS parses.

In PvP? Oh man. In the present state of things; they're still working on it. I have plenty of fun warfront stories.

Law confirmed. Did some warfronts on my Guardian character, and guess what? We lost them all! That's one thing I miss though, RL friends playing WoW made that there were always people to jump into a battleground with, and that made even losing much more enjoyable. Wonder if there will be dedicated PVP guilds on the RP PVP shards or if I should go for a regular PVP shard. I'm considering buying the game, not sure yet at start or wait a little, since I'm no longer paying for WoW.

That's the one thing I'm missing right now, friends to jump into with stuff. Might end up pulling more WoW friends off of that and into Rift if I can.

There are some definite balancing issues as far classes and I had a couple of small installation issues. Otherwise the game is looking and feeling pretty polished. I like the theme of the defiant side but I do not like the options for the character models. I feel the opposite about the guardian side of things.

I really like the whole Defiant "you lost, our turn!" thing they've got going on with the time travel.

Elaborate, please?

All of the Defiant player characters come from the future. On the last day of the world the Defiant perfect how to make Ascendants, souls reborn into bodies the Defiant make, to rival the Ascendants that the Gods of the Vigil made for the Guardians. After they make them they're sent back in time to fight Regulos and keep the world from being destroyed. As the Guardian's ascended couldn't do it the Defiant are using their own.

When you play Defiant you're essentially an engineered super solider sent back from a hopeless future to re-write the course of history and save the world from destruction.

Nice.

The name "Defiant" is also pretty badass in itself, I think.

Mmm, just read the lore and classes and races and they sound awesome. Running the installer now...

Although, my first thoughts when I looked at the Ascendended Souls system was 'How are they ever going to manage to balance all that?'

Yeahbut... where are all the furry races?

Dwarves are covered in hair. Furry enough for you?

Do you need a beta key to start playing?

http://www.riftgame.com/en/beta/index.php

Nope, you just need to make a free trion account. It's an open beta.

Last question, I promise!
Can anyone confirm if this is going to be a "pay every month" game?