As the tittle says,if you are looking for a AAA themepark style MMO that is not WoW and isn't trying to be WoW,GW2 is your go to game.
Been playing it since launch,and instead of making this a long essay,I will try to quickly describe a few of the game's strong and weak points,always in my humble opinion.
Strong points
-Varied and extensive unique stories/starter areas/cities/follow on areas,for each of the 5 available races.This is most important for the replayability of the tittle.Most MMOs provide you with one story line,the same for every and each time you will roll an alt.In GW2 there are 3 available story arcs for each race,and even the follow on paths vary,ensuring that leveling up alts will be a fresh experience for a long time.This applies to the vanilla game,as the follow on stories on the expansion content are universal for all races,but that is to be expected.
-Great combat system with beautifully designed classes,with a break away from the classic hard trinity system that's been done to death,and a hybrid tab/action style that will be familiar both to older as well as younger players.
-Extensive class customisation options.
-More QoL features than any other MMO.
-A full variety of all the game modes and activities one expects to find in such a game.Open world PvE,Public Events,World Bosses,Dungeons,Raids,PvP,Open World RvR,it's all there.All but the traditional on rails Questing.
-No gear grind,and almost to none gear gateways for accessing content.The only items that require a grind to acquire are purely cosmetic,and the grind is no where near as insane as in a traditional gear grinder MMO.
-Gorgeous artwork and a coherent artistic style that is hard to come by in our days,and level designers that are masters of their craft.
-Great out of the game support with community created content like the wiki etc.
-The best and most honest B2P model.The base game is free,the first expansion you have to buy,any additional story content they release is free as long as you log in once while that story arc is still active and then is available for purchase in the cash shop.Yes,there is a cash shop with cosmetic items/services etc,and there are gambling boxes,but these are simply options you can ignore,and nowhere near in your face and mandatory as in the majority of the F2P MMOs.They even allow you to buy currency for the cash shop with in game gold.
Weak points.
-A very basic character creator.
-Some parts of the UI are incomplete,or redundant.
-Very few UI customization options.That beast is set in stone.
-Very little add on support and only via overlays.
-Lack of polish in some parts of the story,as well as in some of the environmental audio effects used in game.
Other than that,the game is dope.Always in comparison with what else is available on the market.It's up there with the best of the genre.
Now I'm off to the forums to q(uaggan)q about something,because wtf.A MMO without qq is not a MMO.