After playing GW1 for many years, i felt slightly let down by GW2. That said, i was impressed at the same time...
It's a fantastic MMO, it looks great, plays great and there's heaps to do.
The leveling in this game isn't at all a grind, everything scales nicely so you can level up no matter what you're doing. You can gather, craft, do hard quests, pvp, do easy quests, go to any map you please, grind (if you really want) and all of these things will level you up nicely.
The character creation is nice. You have 5 races and heaps of options.
The trading post is well done (By far the best i've experienced in an MMO)
There are so many things to do. You never log on feeling like 'i have to grind out a few levels tonight.. yay'. It simply doesn't feel like a chore like some other MMOs.
The world looks beautiful and is fun to be in.
World vs World and Pvp are fun.
Now.. you might be asking yourself why on earth i felt let down by this. There are 2 reasons.
1 - The story sucks.
This is to be expected in any MMO. SWTOR aside, i've never really enjoyed a story in an MMO to date (and i've played a great deal). BUT, there are things about this that make it even WORSE then normal MMO stories. Firstly, it's suggested you get to enjoy your 'personal story'. This is hardly true. You seldom make any meaningful choices and the ones you do make are forgotten momentarily. All the character stories come together in the end and actually another character becomes the 'hero' of the story. This is highly frustrating as he is the most unlikable character i've ever seen in a game (Kormir aside). For all your missions after this point in the game, be prepared to sit through cut scenes of people thanking HIM for your efforts. This may not mean much in such a poor story, but it certainly gets old and i have no idea what they were thinking. This character is boring as all hell and i shudder every time he says 'i'm coming with you'.
The worst part of it all is.. the only 3 interesting characters in the game are replaced by this character half way through the story. So no matter who you befriend, learn about and enjoy questing with, you're going to end up with this loser.
But hey, MMO stories are generally poor anyway, this is hardly reason not to play the game. Just warning you.
The servers have had some issues too, this is minor, but i did experience it a few times. They have acknowledged and are planning on fixing this issue (if they haven't already) so don't worry too much.
and finally the reason i can't get into this game.
Guild wars 1 had something that kept me coming back over and over. It was the diverse character builds. Mixing classes, finding new ways of using weapons, skills, items you hadn't thought of previously. This is completely gone.
In this game the 8 classes play very much like their 8 classes.. You meet a warrior, you know what you're in for. Sure that warrior has a choice of several weapons and builds. But ultimately you know what skills he's going to have and generally can work out what kinda build he's got. But either way he fills that role and that role only. Thiefs are all dps, elementalists are generally similar etc. There are differences in the builds you can come up with in these classes, but ultimately they are all filling the same role. I might add that the fact everyone can heal themselves and things is cool though.
This feels like a massive let down after Guild wars 1. There was a great deal of fun in coming up with ways to make your necromancer a melee character with a build that nobody ever had. Or experimenting with various elites to come up with something previously unthought of. In Guild wars 2, sure you can use set weapons and make your melee necromancer. But there are a tonne of other people with that same build.. Experimenting is no longer coming up with entire structures for how your character will play (kinda like making your own class) but instead is messing around with attributes to get the best balance between offense and defense.
The game is fun, it's well done, but it's not the MMO experience i was looking for. If you only want to PvE then this is a great game. But the PvP becomes rather dry when compared to what GW was before now. A good game, but simply not what i'm looking for. I wanted a Guild Wars 2..