First of all, I'm sorry you lost your little Tori.
I have Syrian hams and rats so maybe I can help.
My rats are very social, they are also great fun to watch as they interact with each other and with me. They will sit and watch TV with me and cuddle or I get them out and they play together and keep coming to me for a fuss. All my current boys are rescues and they have come round really well with a bit of trust training. I had a group of rescues as my first rats and they never really got over their fear and they were not really people friendly, which meant I enjoyed watching them play but they never willingly came to me for affection.
As much fun as my rats are I would say they are harder to care for than hamsters. Its probably very similar with care as in cleaning out and feeding but rats are more demanding and also more prone to health issues, in my experience.
It sounds like you have a good rattie set up and if you have a breeder nearby that is even better as you should get healthier rats. I would say look in to a good diet as diet seems to have a big impact on rat health in the long run. I always feed fresh and dry food daily and monitor protein intake. I would say use cardboard based bedding as I used carefresh and it set of resp problems in my boys. I use walmsley premier bedding which is just cardboard squares and it comes in bales as its made for horses.
When I took my first rescues I fed fresh daily along with a Shunamite diet (ratrations in UK), I still have two of those boys at 2 years and 4 months and another lady had several of their siblings, she fed lab blocks only and she lost all of hers before they reached 2 years.
Look into a book called the scuttling gourmet if you go for rats, that's a great source of info on diet.
I really love hams but I'd say go for rats, you can have a really special bond with them
