I still play Rift. The gear system, PvE wise, is actually quite good. You can pull a full set of tier 2 out of your butt in about two weeks with no guild involvement simply by mashing the dungeon finder button; and bam, you're ready to raid. It doesn't get nasty hard until Hammerknell (Tier 4 raid), but they've got it horrendously overtuned - even the elitists can't clear it right now.

I doubt my guild (and by natural extension, myself) will play it much longer, though. We joined for the a PVP system that is falling apart due to neglect.

But back to the original topic of discussion - pretty soon here we're going to all have complete access to every class and spec with no restrictions. Without tiers of gear, or at least a variety of gear types and qualities available to max level characters, what's going to distinguish one character from the next?