See that new cartoon in the sidebar? Earlier this week my coworker created this wonderful character version of me in real life. (Well, a stylized version.. I’m not always toting around a giant sword.) If you need any contract graphic design work done, look her up! :)
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Someone said the other day that for the MMO genre the first expansion is always the best expansion. I’ve only been playing it since Tuesday, but thus far Storm Legion would seem to fit that pattern. It certainly feels like Trion has taken the original game, applied all the lessons they’ve learned over the last 18 months, and refined it.
Quest mob tagging was removed and quests are laid out in a more organic way, which in turn allows for a little more freedom in zone design. Thought has clearly been given to making towns and cities feel like a place where a virtual person could actually live rather than just a hub for quests. Almost every mob you run into is part of a carnage quest, which you can pick up, complete, and turn in while out on the move.
Although I’ve only seen a smattering of the gear and wardrobe items available, my initial feeling is that Trion has spruced up their design as well. Complaints about RIFT’s original character and costume design were always well founded, and while it would be nice to see a race option with an unusual silhouette at least the gear is showing some imaginative flair now. (And weird hats. So many weird hats.)
The new zones have embraced RIFT’s more steampunk, “magitech” design elements, and the move away from archtypical fantasy is welcome.
There are so many things to do now, although to be fair that’s always the case at the beginning of an expansion. There are a million different ways for me to level, there are new souls to investigate, new dungeons to run, crafting to level. I haven’t even bought a Dimension yet, although that’s in large part because I’m saving money to buy a fancy one.
There are certainly things that other games provide that RIFT does not — the story in SWTOR, or the crafting in GW2, or whatever — but if you want a solid themepark game in my opinion Storm Legion places RIFT solidly ahead of WoW, LotRO, and other similar MMOs.
Oh, and speaking of Dimensions, I poked my head into one of the public ones that has been heavily upvoted and saw this amazing statue. It was created by combining boulders and wooden planks and other standard objects, and it is even more impressive in person. Enjoy this photo and a few more below it, and I’m gonna get back to playing!
Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
I agree with your analysis, especially regarding the look and feel of the zones. Trion have made them much more 3D – the old zones felt very flat, even when there were hills, but in SL you can move up and down and around and through a space, which is very nice. Plus, the presence of many more signs of habitation – towns, etc – makes it feel much more alive: only Stillmoor really did this well in original Rift; now all the zones I’ve entered so far feel, at least, like people *once* lived there.
re: story. Story has always been the weak point of Rift, to put it mildly. They’ve made the right move of stripping out the rubbish story in most parts and leaving us to explore a zone to find quests, whilst concentrating the narrative aspects on making the actual storyline quests less rubbish.
Trion have really played to their strengths with SL, and I’m really enjoying it. The long-term playability is there too: Dimensions, PvP, gear upgrades (and raiding/ instancing, if that’s your thing). long-term and story don’t go together, as both SW:TOR and TSW learned, and so Rift’s weak story never really hurt that :), but they seem to have learnt that people want something to do, long-term, that has a purpose without being entirely purpose-driven. As soon as Conquest comes back, I’ll have everything I want from SL :),