Nathan, let me get a short review about the game now that you've been playing it for some time. Also answer these questions if you can:
a) How's the grouping/questing?
Not sure what you mean. As far as questing, it's straight forward. Quest objectives are highlighted on both your mini map and full map, either a circled area for collect X items or kill X mobs type of quests, or a single point for things like use X item at the Idol of Jingjabber or whatever. Once you finish one quest hub there's usually a final quest that sends you to the next appropriate quest area, though you don't have to do that. Which is how me and my cousin ended up in an epic battle against a level 18 elite at level 16, with over quadruple our hp.
The latest patch added a LFG tool like in WoW, except it's still only your shard. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, as the patch just came out a few days ago and I've been questing and PvPing. You can either be in a private group, and can invite others to join, or you can be in a public group. For instance, if you come upon a rift that other people are battling, and they are in a public group, you'll get a notification button at the top of your screen to join that public group.
b) How's the pvp?
Pretty awesome. I've only played two of them so far, I don't know how many there are. The second one you get is called The Codex, and is pretty much Arathi Basin. Control nodes, get points, first side to 1,000 points wins.
The first one you get, and the one I've been playing the most, is Black Gardens. It's first to 500 points. PKs give your team a point. But the main objective is sort of capture the flag. A few seconds into the battle, the Fang of Regulos spawns in the middle. Holding the fang gives you points, BUT you have to stay close to the middle, out in the open, to get the most points per tick. The further you get from the middle, the less points per tick you get.
My usual strategy is to hide behind a tree in the corner, closest to my teams grave yard. You don't get the full points per tick, but it's close (4 instead of 6 in the mid). Also, holding the fang is a DoT. And it builds up. It's pretty much impossible to hold it the entire time, even with a healer spamming their biggest heal on you, eventually it just gets too much and you will die. So you have to have people with you to be ready to pick it up as soon as you go down.
c) Are the talent trees cool?
Very. There are 4 callings, Warrior, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage. Each calling has 8 souls plus 1 PvP soul you can purchase with favor (honor points in WoW). You have 3 souls at any one time. When you start the game, the very first quest allows you to pick your first soul, and by the time you are out of the starting area, you have 3. To get the rest you have to get quests from the main city of your faction, Meridian for Defiants and Sanctum for Guardians. The quest is the same for each soul, seal a rift to obtain a plane shard, use the quest item on it, kill the mob that spawns.
Your soul tree has branches and roots. The branches are where you spend your points when leveling. Most of the things are buffs to spells or stats, such as +5% damage to fire spells, or things like that. The more points you have in the branches, more roots unlock. For instance spending 2 points in the mage's Pyromancer soul unlocks Flame Jet, an AoE spell. 4 points unlocks Fire Armor. And so on.
You used to be able to purchase up to 3 additional specs, and with 1.2 you can get 4 additional specs, for a total of 5. Like dual spec in WoW, but you get 5 of them. So if you had a cleric, you could have:
1. Melee DPS build
2. Ranged DPS build
3. Healing build
4. Tanking build
5. PvP build
Here is a calculator so you can get an idea of how it works:
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.htmld) How big is the world?
Fairly big. Not as big as Azeroth, I don't think. I've only ventured into the first 3 territories of Defiant, and only the first area of Guardian. Here is a map, at level 29, my Defiant has been through all of Freemarch and Stonefield, and maybe half the way through Scarlet Gorge.
I guess that's not a "short" review
