Assistant Community Manager James "Elrar" Nichols wants to make one thing perfectly clear: character transfers are in the works. Here's the comment he recently posted on Rift's official forums:

"We’ve seen renewed discussion lately asking about character transfers and how we plan to allow more of you to play together and enjoy RIFT with friends. While it has been mentioned in interviews we wanted to clearly state that a character transfer feature is currently under development. We’re still ironing out the details which we will share as we get closer to its release, however, we wanted to let you know today that it is something we're actively working on."

ZAM user teacake has started a thread about this topic in our Rift general forum. Feel free to join the discussion!