A first impressions review from an MMO vet.
To start with I've been playing 3 classes: Necromancer, Engineer and Mesmer. I've tried several of the different starting zones dabbling in other classes as well like Warrior, Guardian and Elementalist. Thus far I've gotten the three classes to about level 15. So far I have been thoroughly unimpressed.
The good parts of the game: the graphics are functional. People who tell you that the graphics are spectacular are lying. The graphics are fine, not bad, better than WoW, but not significantly different from Rift or SWTOR. The weapons system is enough to provide variety in your class of choice to fit several different archetypes. The combat is fun and engaging, especially since abilities with cast times can be used while moving. You can dodge roll, etc. The combat is fun and responsive. The fast travel system makes moving across the sprawling and monolithic cities and zones a breeze.
The bad parts of the game: I had never played the original Guild Wars, but it was my understanding that you could get a character to level cap in about 1 day. The level cap was 20, and it was no problem at all. I was shocked to find out that Guild Wars 2 has 80 levels. I can't speak for other players, but at least for me the leveling speed is agonizingly slow. Its taken me 5+ hours just to make it to level 10 on my characters. This wouldn't bother me if the game's pacing was efficient.
For example: My Charr engineer ran into a problem where I was 2 levels behind both the "hearts" (basically quest hub) and my profession quest. My only option as far as I could see was to go back and do "dynamic events". This is all well and good, but what happens in 4 months when players aren't leveling en masse and these non-soloable events no longer have 20+ people mobbing them? If you refer to leveling guides by alpha and beta players they insist that you do crafting. So in order to level effectively I'm forced to craft, gather and scavenge (disenchant for you WoW types) old armor for materials then build stuff from your 2 available crafts. According to one guide there is enough EXP to gain 40 levels from just maxing out one craft. Its unfortunate that this feels completely necessary to level efficiently. To make matters worse, the tools required to gather and scavenge had item durability so you would have to continually replace them and there was very little to be gather in the open world. I had this same problem on my Norn Necromancer.
My Human Mesmer, on the other hand, had plenty of hearts except the appropriate levels were on opposite sides of the map so I had to play ping-pong to stay within my level range. All-in-all I am thoroughly unimpressed with the leveling system. Its non-intuitive and has very poor tutorial guidance.
I'm also disappointed with the "cut-scenes". They split you into a 1999 style clip of 2 characters in front of a still background talking at each other while other members of the conversation phase in replacing the on screen characters. It seems like very lazy design and I would rather have just had the characters talk at me WoW style. It doesn't look good and it shatters immersion.
Then it comes to class design. The Mesmer is one of my chief annoyances. The designer for this profession must have been living in a hole for the last 10 years of MMO design. Basically, as a part of my abilities and auto attack (depending on weapon set up) I summon clones and phantasms. This is the chief mechanic of the Mesmer. The idea is that you shatter these illusions to cause numerous different effects like AoE damage or confusion on enemies. Clones deal no damage and mimick your auto attack drawing enemy fire and looking pretty. Phantasms look like you but use weapons specific to the spell used to cast them and deal decent amounts of damage. The big flaw with this design is that if a target dies, all of the illusions created fighting that target vanish. So if you are fighting 5 enemies in an encounter and manage to summon 3 powerful phantasms, but one of the enemies you were fighting dies they all vanish and the remaining four enemies proceed to cut me to pieces. This is BAD class design.
Then there's my Necromancer. I like the class aesthetically, but its a class built on pets which is specifically why I was interested in it. I don't want to get too detailed here, but basically my pets have brittle bone disease and eventually I got tired of rezzing them and stopped using them. They might get better later on, but that doesn't give the class a good first impression.
The engineer... I liked. Great mix of utility, aoe and single target. My Rifle and Flame turrets worked pretty well, didn't die too fast and did respectable damage. The healing kit is kind of laughably useless. Not only do the med packs heal for hardly anything, but players have to actually go pick them up or I have to drop them on top of them. If this mechanic was supposed to make me a healer its the worst healing design I've ever seen.
The bottom line is don't believe the hype. The graphics are simply not as good as the fanboys claimed. The leveling is not "catered to different player types", dynamic leveling is forced upon you, so if you don't like to craft, PVP, quest or take part in dynamic questing, at least 3 of those 4 ways to level will be forced upon you. And it takes forever. In the time it took me to reach level 10 in Guild Wars 2 I could have gotten to level 18 in SWTOR, 20 in Rift and 25 in WoW. That said, there's a lot of potential here and there is no subscription fee required. If you're an MMO vet like me that's looking for a fun time sink outside of your normal subscription service, Guild Wars 2 is the only kid on the block. However, if you were looking for a game that would finally let you hang up your subscription cards, its doubtful this game has what you're looking for.