Mhhh not sure if you wanted this post to be just about the technical/server aspects or about the game/gameplay in general. If it was only the former, then my apologies for going offtopic.
As far as the later is concerned, Rift sadly turned out to be essentially WoW with better graphics and a few gimmiks/extras.
... same monotonous combat, same repetitive gameplay / grind / endgame design. A few bells and whistles here and there (like the soul / multispec system) and some "special mobs spawns" called "rifts" that may make your quest npcs inaccessible for a while, but at the core still the same old MMO gameplay that has been there for years.
If you like traditional MMOs ala WoW, Everquest, Warhammer,
http://progressquest.com/ 
, etc., you may like Rift..., but if you dislike them, Rift has a snowflakes chance in hell of changing that.
As far as MMOs go... there are - to my knowledge - currently only 2 potential contenders for people who are dissatisfied with the "traditional" MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic - which appears to still offer very traditional gameplay, but at least with a focus on an actual story made by Bioware; and Guildwars 2 - which appears to be the only upcming game to go beyond simply tacking some gimmik onto the old formula, but rather finally radically breaks with almost all the typical/traditional MMO conventions.
If either game can live up to its promise remains to be seen of course... but at least these two upcoming games actually have promise that goes beyond being a traditional MMO clone with a few different bells and whistles.
