I think what people misjudged is that Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG and therefor still does MMORPG stuff. The core idea stays the same. If you are a warrior with a two-handed sword in WoW, EQ or GW2 or are carrying a huge lightsabre in SWTOR, in the end, at its core, what you are doing in all these games, is run around with a huge sword chopping things to tiny pieces.
It's the how this is approached that is different.
There are a lot of little things that together create a very different game experience from many other MMOs. For example I loved how in CoH I could call my contacts up on their mobile phone and didn't have to run... ok superjump back to them everytime. With GW2 getting rid off the quest log completly even more of the downtime is done away, while the events add even more things that just draw you in.
GW2 does a lot of things right and sometimes in ways that have you say "Why haven't they done this before?" or "Why didn't this work before when people where halfway there?"
And many innovations are a bit more subtle, quality of life things rather than taking the old "We will take that idea everyone loves and ... wait for it... add Lava!" appproach that seems to be common.
melkathi's comments