I beta tested & played the first Guildwars extensively. It was a great game with plenty of content and story to experience. Guildwars 2 is just as good if not better as the original. The best part... it's now free to download & was always free to play with no subscription.
Graphically the game is very well done. In almost every zone I'd often be looking with awe at the awesome landscape & vistas. I'd say the city of Divinity's Reach in Queensdale is probably the best looking one in any MMO I've played although I''m partial to Charr & really like their industrial steam punk style.
I've levelled every class from vanilla to 80. What people might not like is that upon reaching 80 you can if you wanted purchase all your gear from the black lion trading company.. and you're done. There's not much of a gear grind in this game unless you push for ascended which are really just a time sink. Now they've added daily rewards for logging in & one of the options is ascended materials... I was randomly awarded ascended weapons in pvp so it isn't that difficult.
The game is very easy to level. You can go from level 70-80 in the curses shore just running around getting waypoints and briefly jumping into events that occur. In every zone you'll find "hearts" which are essentially quests in that specific location. Everytime you perform the task the heart fills slightly until completely full. At this point you're rewarded exp & karma & the heart npc usually becomes a vendor for karma gear. SAVE YOUR KARMA. At 80 in the cursed shore vendors become available that sell exotic gear. You can either purchase it with karma or buy with coin.
Pvp consists of world vs world (wvw) or single player vs player (spvp). In spvp you can enter at any time and create a max level character with full gear and change their talents and traits however you please. They even provide testing dummies to try your characters build. Spvp consists of small teams with objective based battles capturing a point in small maps. Wvw consists of massive maps with keeps & nodes to capture which contribute to your servers overall standing. I was on Jade Quarry who was tier 1 for pretty much ever.
As for the dungeons they are quite fun however they're not really meant for the level they're set at. They do scale, but if you try to enter some at the level they become available you'll find them almost impossible. Most of them have enemies or traps that one shot you unless you time your dodge precisely, or events that must be done in certain ways or everyone wipes. These days you'll find experienced players who can speed run parts of the dungeons. People do this repeatedly on one small area to farm them instead of doing the entire thing.
The downside about end game is that without a gear treadmill everyone is pretty much the same. Most of the dungeons have set armor and weapons but the stats aren't any better then other exotics. Essentially you're grinding for a cosmetic item & thats what most of the end game gear consists of. Cosmetic changes to your character. After playing other mmo's with end game gear treadmills I found this welcoming. I could simply play instead of constantly trying to keep up with the new meta, and in guildwars 2 the new meta usually revolves around character builds based on what gets nerfed or not.
If you do make a new character research current builds to find out which ones are the most successful because there are so many options. Theres no trinity in this game. No set healers, tanks, dps, every single class can perform those roles it just depends on how you set your traits & your gear. You can be a warrior who heals.... you can be a necro who tanks etc.
Given that its now free to download I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already.