The truth about Guild Wars 2...are you ready to hear it?
The PvE is just a bunch of obvious instances that have loading screens. Everyone playing is just rushing around zerging everything in sight without much (if any) thinking involved. Everything is overly streamlined to the point of nausea. The world is very beautiful and alive and you hear townsfolk having conversations but it just all seems so artificial. It feels like my character is at Disneyland, not a vast world with living breathing populaces.
The PvP is a lot of fun but still pales in comparison to PvP in games like Gears of War, Starcraft, etc. There isn't much incentive to PvP either because the structured PvP (Battlegrounds) exist in there own instances and the game does not feel like an open world at all. No gear progression (just aesthetics progression) and levels mean nothing in PvE since you just go to different starting zones where you are promptly scaled down to a lower level.
WvW was a joke on my server. We completely dominated the entire map within 3 days and were left without a single outpost to take over. The server match ups were very unfair. This of course will be fixed but it was my experience.
I have been trying to figure out the target audience for this game and I realized that it is for those who have never played an MMO before. It tries to be the MMO for veterans like me but it really can't do anything but copy what's been done before.
Which brings me to my last point. I have decided that I will no longer purchase theme-park MMOs. There is no real immersion that exists. I don't feel like I am in an open world I feel like everything is very forced. I will play the game on and off for the PvP but I doubt I will level to 80 in PvE. If you are on the fence, don't buy it. Get something engaging like dark souls or a real PvP game.