RIFT REVIEW

it feels like a good hybridization of may popular mainsteam mmorpgs beyond just wow. The average gamer is too retarded to see past the fact that wow has 75% marketshare or whatever, and just take it on an equal plane so all you will ever hear is wow clone.

I like it. I think it's worth my 60 bucks for collectors and 15 a month completely.

Edit: answering your questions specifically
-Parties: So far I've done ROTF, FC, and DD a number of times each (the 18-22, 23-26, 27-33, ish dungeons) I've had a great deal of fun, the bosses are challenging and have fairly unique mechanics. Graphically, the instances are pretty cool too, the attention to detail is pretty high.

-PVP: I'm playing a Lock/Chloro which at lower levels is insanely squishy, so I've gotten rocked pretty hard in the BGs so far. However, in world PVP I feel like I can do anything. I really like the feel and speed of pvp at this point, and things are supposedly a lot better balanced at 50, not to mention by then I'll probably not fail as much. Another note on PVP, the battlegrounds that I've done so far are great.

-The Black Garden (or something like that) is a large area where you must carry a "flag" similar to WSG, but unlike WSG, there's just one flag and when you hold it, it does a great deal of damage to you. The basic strategy ranges from sitting in a mob with the fang ans passing it around, or taking it all over the map for a wild chase. It's fairly fast paced, as the fang rapes the shit out of you pretty quickly, and even if you're losing horribly, it wont drag on.
-The second one I did was the "AB REMAKE" The strategy and game play of this one is also pretty different, instead of 5 nodes, there's four. To make it so it's not 2:2 all the time, they decided to give the Codex (top node, on a defendable hill) an extra point value. Each of the three minor nodes give 6pts a tick, where the codex gives 8, making it far more valuable than the other nodes.

-Crafting: I LOVE THE CRAFTING IN THIS GAME. I'm an outfitter/butcher (2/3 professions used) and I'm able to 'disenchant' (salvage) armors for materials, the profession leveling isn't bad, It's not too easy, and there are all sorts of good rewards. Also worth mentioning that my crafted cloth gear has been withing the higher end of at level greens, so I've been able to gear up well too.

-Finding parties is fairly easy, works by just asking in general but I haven't had too many problems getting groups (as a DPS)

I'm in a pretty large transfer guild from Warhammer online, so when I cap out (give me 1-2 weeks) I'll first be focusing on maxing my professions. The next step will be to run dungeons to get at least partial 50 gear before I settle down for the raid/pvp grind. The PVP grind in RIFT is a rank system with honor points, where you must achieve a rank/rep to buy the pieces, and there's 4 or 5 tiers of gear already in game. As for PvE, I haven't done research myself but I've heard people say there are 2 raid teirs in game as well.

RIFT has large scale outdoor raids, indoor raids, and PVP encounters, and additionally has large scale PvPvE battles (both factions fighting each other for a boss.)

6-12 months from now I see rift in a fairly good place. I'm hoping Trion manages to keep the subscriber base, and from the feel I get in game, I think they will.