new WoW killer? Tons of class choices? no way

read a bit about this game Rift, the idea sounds awesome and I've heard some good hype from people in the beta
http://www.riftgame.com/en/

class system explained:
Each character chooses between 4 different callings: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Mage. Each eventually gains access to 9 different 'souls' from that calling, which have trees to which he can allocate a number of points gained each level. Rift's soul trees have two levels: branches, which are the specific abilities/bonuses that the player allocates the points to, and roots, which are the soul's base abilities that are unlocked as the players have allocated a certain number of points into the branches.

The soul system allows players to customize their characters to a high level. The player chooses 3 souls from within their calling, and allocates earned points into talent trees for each soul. A player wishing to tank may select justicar for its defensive properties and ability to heal the group as it deals damage, sentinel to increase his healing capabilities, and shaman to increase his melee damage output (thus increasing the amount of damage-based healing and threat generation). A character may have both justicar and sentinel, but have more points allocated into sentinel than justicar, and then choose warden as the third soul for its burst damage and heal-over-time spells, to make the character more of a healer than a tank.

Players may also keep up to 4 different soul configurations (called roles), which may be activated whenever the player is not in combat, meaning a player can switch from a healer to a damage dealer, as the group needs, between battles or instances. Because the player's abilities come from the points allocated in the soul trees, two roles that share no souls will literally have no abilities or bonuses in common with each other.

to sum up:
You pick one of the 4 main callings, and within each one are 8 classes and 1 special PvP Class. Each of those classes vary greatly from one another, and you can be 3 of those classes at a time. Want to be a Duel-Wielding DPS Warrior with a tiger? You can do that. Want to be a Tank Healing CCing Buffing priest? You can do that. etc.



open beta starts tomorrow and goes for about a week. Unfortunately I'm pretty busy this week and probably won't play but I'm signing up

also, endgame content seems to be like WoWs, need tier 1 dungeon gear to get to tier 2 dungeon which you need gear from to raid. Plus there are intermediary 'rifts' which I don't know what they are but you can get gear from to help with the dungeon crawling. also they have normal and expert dungeons

I think they are planning a mac release eventually too but don't quote me on it

so basically they copied the WoW style but it'll have tons of class choices, new shit, and won't be easy as piss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFboNrrkJco

Bosses seem pretty tough, you can't just spam your rotation and shit, you have to conserve mana (which this guy didn't do)

here's an explanation
seems tight to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnc8TMrYpo4&feature=channel