Since the three day head start event, I didn't have much time especially in the first few days to even come on the forums just to see how everyone else is doing and compare their experience with mine. Let me just start by saying, not everything I mention will be of everyone's interest and I understand that, but I will stick by my opinion on what I see as end game so far.
I have been level 80 since more than a week ago and I was one of the handful who raced to max. My current progress is focusing on farming karma points, and have so far acquired two of the five pieces. This is what I look in game- nothing special, its just how I like to mix/match
I wanted to address some of the issues players have been complaining about in this post.
Reaching the level cap
Amongst all my friends that I play with, I was the first to reach 80 and even today, a couple of weeks later none of them have reached the max yet. A few complained about not knowing where to level as fast as I did and this is how I did it. Without XP boosts or anything of that sort, I did as many heart quests as possible and participated in each DE I was able to, even if I only had time to swing my sword a few times at a single mob I still did it and hoped my small contribution or lack of would get me XP points. Every three to five levels, I opened up the map to see if there were any zones that I could possibly go to further do heart quests and such. Gathered as many wood, plants, ores as possible as it gave me XP doing so AND the bonus daily/monthly achievement XP which is quite a significant portion. And a great thing about the quests is that they all give you so many options on obtaining points to your quest completion, so I had always tried to do the easiest objective such as "catch the rabbits" "water the plants" and so on. Not to mention, I did all this without the trading post ever being up, I'm sure you can't possibly have as much trouble as I did looking for gear as you level.
Plateau of gear stats
Many players were complaining that they disliked the concept that all the gear would eventually plateau after they reached 80. I can understand that making all the gears stats the same would mean the only difference between one another is the appearance and that would concern a lot of players who come from traditional MMOs where even at max level, you can still obtain gear better than the next player at max level. But, there are so many dungeon armor along with cultural and karma armor to choose from (and mix&match), it's better than another player spending real money to obtain OP gear that would set off the economy. There are also legendary weapons too, what if those had special advantages from other weapons? That would be a major imbalance and just cause even greater issues.
End game (as of now)
This has been a very important topic even before launch, and to be honest, I can't say I'm disappointed with what the end game seems to be like at the moment, but it just isn't exactly my style although I'll still continue on my warrior until I feel satisfied with the gear and titles I've attained and then roll a new character. Ever since the revealing of the 42k karma armor set, I've just been dedicating my time to farming karma in malchors' leap @ orr each day for a few hours. Doing this of course is very time consuming and it can get boring especially when there aren't enough players to do the DE. There is still much more end game to be explored for me, such as dungeons, further into orr, map completion, crafting exotics and legendary gear, and so on. I mainly focus on PvE since that's where all my time is invested into, besides, we all know what kind of game PvP is.
Grinding
Arenanet advertised the game as a MMO you don't have to grind to level 80 and they held up their words to that. I had fun reaching 80 and although I did rush, it didn't mean I was a zombie for the 90ish hours that I played and only cared about end game, no I had a lot of fun playing my way to max level. The grind of getting karma seemed ridiculous at first, I mean, a full set of armor for 210,000 karma? You only get ~ 365 karma per event w/o boosts. But after getting two pieces, it doesn't seem as bad anymore, once you know the map and how to find/clear DE for karma it gets pretty easy. In fact, I've soloed a few DE here and there with no problem, easy points. In every MMO you will always grind, you just have to accept that fact. I commend arenanet by really making the journey of leveling as enjoyable as possible, not once did I have to kill mobs solely for XP, I always worked towards a heart quest.
Making money
As I leveled, I realized that I had to pay more for teleporting the higher level I was, and it became a problem in the first week of gameplay, but if anyone doesn't know by now, one of the easiest ways to save a silver or two is by going into heart of the mists>LA>gate hub closest to destination>teleporting there. It's still a really new game so even if people knew of ways to make money they would keep it to themselves, I personally know of a few ways to make efficient gold but they aren't solid enough solutions for me to list. These days, I have about at least 5gold in my bag and make almost 3gold a day from farming my karma points. With gold, I intend on getting the cultural armor set eventually, which is why I made a norn to begin with, just loved their T3 armor. Money isn't too important if you've set your eyes on the karma set as I have, but as time passes you'll be able to afford better gear with gold.
I don't feel as if I've reached a plateau at all, farming 42,000 karma isn't easy and is a lengthy process but after five pieces I'll start on a cultural weapon and that would be it with karma unless more gear is revealed which is also obtained through karma. I'm constantly finding ways to make money and purchase exotic gear for looks because I'm into that stuff lol. With a variety of activities you can do at level 80, I don't see how none of that can be appealing to you guys who are on the forums complaining about the lack of an end game. All I know is, you can move on to a different MMORPG that is available but you'll then see how much more variety GW2 has to offer- I personally haven't played an MMO where I would wake up in the morning craving for karma farms and all those goodies. Plus, I highly doubt that two weeks into the game we will have already reached the point of knowing everything this game has to offer. I'm sure in the coming weeks and months we'll discover even more activities to do. I'm enjoying the end game scene at the moment, one of the things I can never do in any other MMO's is trick out my character with gear because there is always something better than what I have and it gets frustrating to even try to obtain the godly items. In this game, I can actually get to that point by getting my favorite weapon/armor skins and transmuting them onto max leveled gear. Once I get that taken care of on my warrior, I'll start on another class. Then hopefully I'll be able to not just look badass, but also be badass in PvP.