Rift's launch was great, and I was very impressed with the design of the starter area for Defiant.

Without spoiling too much...

You start in this laboratory, and you have to fight your way through the battlefield of the apocalypse to a teleporter. If you do it the way I do it (taking the time to talk to NPCs, read quest descriptions, explore nooks and crannies for hidden stuff) it takes you about 1-2 hours. And once you reach the teleporter, from there you can see across the entire zone all the way back to where you started, and you realize it felt like you traveled pretty far, but to quote Bill from "Left 4 Dead", "Son, we just crossed the street."

It is off to a great start, and there's a lot of potential if they decide--now that they've grabbed a sizable chunk of people from WoW--to slowly deviate from the WoW-clone mentality and start trying different things. If they do it right, the WoW-heads won't even notice they're playing an actual game instead of a gear grinding circle jerk!