ANYWAYS. I don't think there's an original feature to be found in Rift-- off the top of my head I think there's maybe three or four options/features I don't recognize from a game I've been playing for years, and they probably just took those from a game I haven't tried. It's not a WoW clone, but it's happily borrowing everything it can get its hands on from WoW, with the occasional feature from other games (hello EQ2 collections). There are way, waaaaay worse ways you could build a game. Honestly, power to them for not trying to reinvent the wheel all the time.
I do think, when you want to critique it, that you have to look beyond the WoWness. It sources heavily from WoW, but it really isn't the same game. They cater better to vain RPers; they acknowledge that explorers are a real thing. The playerbase is still in its infancy: take a swing by the forums and you can easily have your fill of flamewars raging over how to play "correctly". The devs are not some omnipotent, far-removed deity occasionally handing down patches like they're the 10 Commandments. All told, it's quite a bit different than the initial impression would suggest.
Honestly, if I don't stick with the game, it'll probably be because of the art flavor (SIX FLAVORS OF HUMAN, ARGH) and/or the much-overlooked fact that I am simply very comfortable in WoW, and getting that far in a new game is a MASSIVE commitment. But they let me ride my very own okapi, which is a pretty big vote in Rift's favor.
(Aside: obnoxious fanbois are an unfortunate fact of life. It's worth remembering that they're generally a tiny minority, though, and coming in swinging with the assumption that all detractors are going to be of the idiot fanboi variety is mmmmaybe not the best public relations move.
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