YouTube user Wip3ou7 of the "Ironstar Movement" is featuring a video walkthrough of Trion Worlds' upcoming fantasy MMORPG Rift: Planes of Telara on his channel.

The demo is narrated by Rift Design Director Simon Finch, and we're shown the game from the perspective of a Defiant character (one of the game's two factions). The video begins with a short demo of the game's character creation where players can choose between the aforementioned Defiant (or Guardian) factions and three different races per faction for a total of six. Once you've chosen your faction and race you move on to choosing your calling (class) and then finally move onto the actual physical customization of your avatar, which looks fairly robust.

Simon then drops out of the creator and instead chooses to enter the world with a higher level pre-made character. Entering the game for the first time, we're shown a pretty striking image of Telara which is being torn apart. A "soul stream" is seen shooting out through the sky from Telara itself, and Simon explains that the player characters are actually reconstituted through the harnessing of these souls becoming what they are calling "ascended Telarans".

Skipping ahead Simon takes us to Meridian, the capital of the Defiant on Telara itself. Simon uses a GM ability to teleport here and notes that the loading screen being shown will never be seen by players in the game because the entire game is entirely seamless, we're only shown loading screens because of the fact the GM ability is literally teleporting the player to other areas of the world.

Meridian serves as a social hub for players, replete with a variety of amenities such as banks, crafting halls, auction houses, merchants, etc.

Teleporting once again, Simon takes us outside to the training yard where he describes the game's class system in depth, discussing the "soul" system by which players collect the souls of fallen Telarans throughout their progression and apply their abilities to their character. A players calling (class) will limit their weapon and armor choice, but beyond that players have generally free reign to design their characters as they see fit, selecting from a variety of souls to attune themselves with.

Simon then teleports us to a field where we're treated to a demo of the game's dynamic events system (the Rift system), but you'll have to check out the full video here to see what happens.

[Thanks Piasek for the tip!]