Hello, my name Yliah Atreides (Rendier in-game), I've been playing since the original Guild Wars beta, I was asked to participate in the Live Krewe for Guild Wars 1 (PvP), I've played various other games (and MMO's) and I played Guild Wars 2, obviously, since pre-release. (And all the beta weekends).
I've decided to make a thread about my thoughts and ideas about Guild Wars 2 because I would love to see the feedback on it, but also just because I can. I'm sure my ideas are subjective at times, but I'm also convinced I raise valid points at others. I'm going discuss my ideas point-by-point, starting with the various stages of the game, followed by some individual paragraphs regarding various (though not specifically related) thoughts/ideas I've had playing GW2. I speak quite a bit in second and third person, but everything I write is about my own experience. Usually when I make generalisations, it's because I'm convinced almost everybody feels the same way. Please read through it and let me know what you think! I know it's quite lengthy, but feel free to just read through the parts you deem interesting and comment on those...
As I usually do when making large threads: I apologize for any linguistical mistakes I make. English is my third language, and while I probably do speak (and write) better than alot of native speakers, my mind tends to work alot faster than my fingers when typing out these threads and as such I find myself making the same grammatical and punctuational mistakes over and over again, please forgive me! 
1. Introduction and themes
1.1. Sound
Pretty much the first thing you noticed when opening up Guild Wars 2 for the first time is that it looks and sounds like Guild Wars 1. I think it was a smart move to re-use the original soundtrack for multiple reasons, the most prominent one being the fact that it ties Guild Wars 2 really close to Guild Wars 1 in terms of "experience", it brings along a certain nostalgia, especially when looking at some of the awe-inspiring sceneries reminiscent of the Guild Wars 1 world. Though don't be mistaken, the music on itself is easily a masterpiece... I find myself playing the original Guild Wars soundtrack when playing other videogames. I treat it like a regular "CD" and you can find all the songs in my iTunes library, which is saying quite alot...
1.2. Looks
The second thing you'll notice after the extremely loud, but not obnoxious, intro-music is the specific style Guild Wars 2 has. Pretty much all trailers and released promotional material had a picturesque background (I know quite a bit of art -had to study it for college/uni, but it's hard to pinpoint the exact art movement) influenced by the Western action-based world.
While this style isn't related to Guild Wars 1, it definitely feels fitting for the Guild Wars lore/universe. It puts the stress on the foreground as the background looks "brushed away", quite litteraly emphasising Guild Wars 2 will focus on the story and player, yet at the same time reminds us that the background is 1 massive, coherent universe in which it all takes place.
While most people won't dig this deep into the art style and choices Anet made, trust me when I say this is not a coincidence. People got hired to do this sort of job, and they did an amazing job. It looks great, it has depth, it's Guild Wars 2 worthy, to say the very least...
1.3. Feel
The last section of the "introduction" (Read: the first things you'll notice when playing Guild Wars 2) is going to deal with the feel of Guild Wars 2. It looks, sounds and smells like Guild Wars 1, but what about the "experience"? Before I lay out my criticisms, there's a couple of things you need to be aware of before judging though:
- Anet themselves claimed Guild Wars 2 would employ a completely different (play-) style than Guild Wars 1. They, quite litteraly, added a new dimension to the game, as the original Guild Wars lacked a Z-axis (height). That alone was enough reason to rewrite most (if not all) of the original Guild Wars engine, combined with the addition of the Havok collision engine, it makes perfect sense Guild Wars 2 would not "feel" anything like Guild Wars 1. On top of this, they also introduced under-water combat, jumping (which is an extension of the addition of the Z-axis) and reworked the entire combat system to be compatible with the new real 3 dimensional world.
- All this aside, they still opted to name the game Guild Wars2, and as such we, as customers used to the original product, have the right to compare it to the original product. I'll not hold it against Guild Wars 2 trying to carve it's own path, like the Final Fantasy series, but unlike that series, Guild Wars 1 was the first and only game that put them on the map, so straying too much from a concept you know works is always risky and should be met with fair criticism.
That being said, Guild Wars 2, as expected, does not feel anything like Guild Wars 1. The world might look the same, albeit in a less bloomy but more shiny coat, might sound the same and might even have the same abilities and skills, it just doesn't feel like "Guild Wars: the next chapter".
"So is it better or worse?", would be the next question to ask, but I believe that's an unfair question, and perhaps even a question asked "too soon", because PvP is still way (waaaaay) to young to cast judgement over. Yet when talking purely about feel of the game, I definitely believe Guild Wars 1 has the upperhand.
They got rid of the click to move option, and on a similar note the "follow"-option (which in Guild Wars was achieved by selecting a player and tabbing spacebar). This alone requires quite a bit of adjustment and is simply frustrating at times, especially for the casual gamer. The second one of your hands is required for anything other than Guild Wars (pointing to nothing in particular 
), your game essentially drops dead. In alot/most other MMO's (including Guild Wars 1) you had the ability to click-to-move to a certain location allowing your character to keep moving when you were quickly taking a drink or eating a snack. Now before you go: "You can autorun and use your mouse to steer", yes, I know, and I do use it quite alot. (if not always) It is, however, merely a next-best-thing and the lack of click-to-move is still something minor that annoys me.
That said, the rest of the movement system feels pretty fluid, and some people have already experimented with controllers and booked a certain level of succes. So despite some minor nuisances and "weird" control choices (such as Left click + drag = move camera without moving your character), Anet did a really good job putting such a large input base within reasonable reach. On top of this, they almost completely got rid of the extremely annoying "rubberbanding" effect Guild Wars 1 had (even when not lagging) -which was probably the result of having no collision engine-.
So why would I claim Guild Wars 1 had the better "feel"? Well, the combat system got completely reworked and it just doesn't feel that natural anymore, but rather clunky and unpolished. While Guild Wars 1 is definitely the easier game to play (purely talking about required input), you felt like you were in control of your character and whatever action you had in mind was the action you could project onto the screen given the right input.
With Guild Wars 2, it's quite a different story: Sometimes I input certain commands, yet the game doesn't recognize these for whatever reason. During jumping puzzles, I simply ran off a cliff because the game didn't register my jump command (the obvious tab on the spacebar). Was it because there were other commands queud up? Was it because it was lagging? Was it because I was on the edge of the cliff and pressed too late? Was it because I was on terrain which you can't jump on? (Extreme slopes you slide off, for example) I have no clue, but what I do know is I pressed the jump command and my character decided to move forward without jumping, sadly falling to his inevitable death...
Queing up skills, jumping, "Rush"-type skills (Bull's Charge) and most target-ground type of skills oftentimes don't go off and you simply do not know why. Moving when casting is possible, yet it does sometimes cancel certain actions. Tumble (dodge/evade) cancels alot of "channel"-skills, yet qeues up with certain other ones. Then there's also the entire "Keep tabbing 1 to auto attack"-deal, which I will discuss later, together with the "Rush" skills which more often than not simply run "through" the enemy target and miss.
Alot of the things I mention are not breaking the game, nor making it unplayable for that matter. What I have noticed, however, is that compared to many other games, I have so many questions regarding the combat and movement system (how does qeueing and cancelling work, for starters?) and my personal input (Did I screw up, or did the game screw up?) it just ends up not feeling natural at all. I'm sure as time passes, we'll all get used to this, but for newcommers (to gaming) I can see this cause alot of confusion to the point where they'll just quit as the character on screen just does as he pleases.
I definitely think Anet could've polished the entire combat system alot more, as I don't really feel I'm in control of my character. I can tell my character to do certain things, and I can visualize the outcome, but what my character will end up doing oftentimes is not what I had in mind. Take it how you will, but Guild Wars 1 had it's controls down, Guild Wars 2 still needs quite a bit of polishing...
2. Stages in the game
2.1. Early Game
One thing I've noticed alot of people complain about is the lack of a tutorial, and it's a valid point. They get thrown into a game with annoying controls at times, get an objective, but haven't got a clue how to do anything and have absolutely no clue whatsoever what all the bells and whistles are for. Now, throughout the game, alot of things do get explained (sometimes with barely visible markers) but when you just started playing, you haven't got a clue if you're supposed to know this or not. Even the simple fact of knowing it will get explained in the future doesn't get explained, and that is extremely frustrating for some players. (My ex-girlfriend was initially extremely repelled by the extremely overwhelming experience early game Guild Wars 2 is, but I managed to pull her through it) Even now, being level 80 and having finished quite a bit of the complete game (working on my legendary), I'm still discovering things which, honestly, I should've been thaught 60 levels ago...
So the major criticism about the early game is that there is no tutorial, with all the obvious consequences resulting from it.
2.2. Midgame
The midgame in Guild Wars is quite extensive, but largely due to the lack of tutorial during the early game, you'll miss out on quite a bit. Crafting for example is something that gets completely ignored. If it wasn't for the tab under the Hero window, alot of people (myself included) wouldn't even realize crafting existed in this game. There's no instructions, there's no guidelines, there's, once again, no tutorial. Now, I'm already 400 weaponsmithing working towards 400 armor smithing, so I know how crafting works, but if it wasn't for online guides explaining how discoveries work I (and atleast 90% of the community) wouldn't have a clue how you were supposed to level.
So while struggling with all these bits and pieces of information getting thrown at you without any structure, you're also trying to race against the storymode's extreme levelling curve. You want to get to the cool parts as soon as possible (F*cking dragons, mirite!?) and you want to skip the boring parts as fast as possible, but you can't... Levelling up takes so incredibly long, and there's, once again, no real tutorial on how to level effectively. You don't know if you're doing something wrong, or if the game really does expect you to grind for several hours in between every story quest? Am I supposed to craft for example? Do jumping puzzles give mad amounts of experiences? Am I supposed to farm borderline exploit events (Gendarran fields, *cough*)? Am I supposed to use consumables?
All these things where going through my mind as I was powering my way from level 15 to 60/70 doing hearts and completing areas. The experience definitely wasn't bad and after all said and done, I levelled fairly quickly, but the "not knowing" part was just so damn frustrating...
Once again, the main problem with the midgame is the complete lack of guidance. I understand the "carve your own path"-mentality Anet had in mind with Guild Wars 2, but that's not the same as dropping someone in the middle of the ocean surrounded by 5 sharks given only a screw, a lightbulb, 4 semi-transparant pieces of paper and a knife, then telling him to solve it the way he pleases.
During every point in the game, you know what to do, but you never quite know what viable options are available to you. You know you can craft, you know you have materials in your bank and inventory and you know the various aspects of the game (PvP, jumping puzzles, ...). Yet you don't know how they tie together, what other things are out there or if you're even 'supposed' to do them alltogether...
2.3. Lategame
Moving on to the lategame, the game definitely beats it's predecessor, which initially had no PvE-endgame whatsoever (other than PvP). There's plenty of dungeons, there's WvW, there's legendaries and there's the good old PvP, just like in GW1.
By now, most players will also have figured out how large parts of the game works, which actually gives you a more positive experience than during the early and midgame. You actually feel like you've mastered something (as opposed to completed) and you can't wait to give other people the guidance you never had. Nontheless, this feeling of having mastered Guild Wars 2 still doesn't outweigh the helplessness you felt during mid- and especially early game.
Other than that, there's, currently, plenty of things to do endgame so as it stands right now, Guild Wars 2's endgame is probably the best part of the game. But it gets even better, Anet has claimed it will release more content in the future -what I assume- bridging the gap between the various future expansions. For those who played Guild Wars 1, you can compare it to the Sorrow's Furnace update late 2005...
3. Grind
Anet always claimed Guild Wars 2 will have next to no grind. Being honest, this turned out to be quite a lie. Obviously, the grind vs no grind arguement is a dead horse being beaten way to many times, but the truth is that it was Anet who raised this point to begin with. They claimed there wouldn't be (much) grind, yet there's plenty of grind in this game comparable to most other MMO's out there.
Now we're obviously walking the slippery slope of "what is grind" and "what is not?", so I won't dig much deeper, but know that Guild Wars PvE contains plenty of grind to make rewards feel worth it. Quests and farming have simply been disguided as hearts and "dynamic" events, which turned out to be more static than Anet intended.
Nontheless, they atleast tried to give a slightly different experience, and honestly they succeeded. Guild Wars 2 isn't eye opening, reinventing the way of online RPG gaming, but it toyed around with some new ideas, some working, some not. Ultimately, Guild Wars 2 (as young as it is) shows trying new ideas is worth the risk, and it's succes (in sales numbers) shows the world is ready for a new kind of experience.
4. Content
As a smaller point, I would still like to adress the actual "content" in Guild Wars 2. Now, this falls partially under mid and lategame, but it's too specific to adress under either, so I decided to make a point of it on it's own.
How much content does Guild Wars 2 have, how much bang do you get for your buck? And the truth is quite a bit... For starters, both WvW and PvP can be concidered "endless experience" meaning you always participate and it's always unique. Those aside, there's jumping puzzles, testing your precision and timing skills, dungeons which actually require skillfull play when not exploited and a reasonably large map needing to get explored.
If there's one regret Anet should have regarding the content, it's probably the lack of depth in crafting. Crafting at no point in the game is really required, but more importantly the finished product is usually cheaper than the raw materials, meaning crafting loses you money. Right now, there's still certain niches which make you profit, but after only 3 weeks after release, it's pretty depressing knowing pretty much all crafting disciplines are useless, other than the ability to craft the "Gift of ..." for legendary weapons.
It's obviously hard to balance the profit margins pre-release, and I don't really hold it against Anet (as it also depends on the community), but I do feel they could've updated crafting the first couple of days/weeks after release to balance it out so that high level crafters actually can make a certain profit, if ever so small, rather than having a small chance to make a profit and large chance to lose money. The heavy fees on the Trading Company also have got a lot to do with this...
5. Combat system
5.1. Combat system
One of the biggest 2 issues I've had with Guild Wars 2 is the new combat system, including everything around it. Because Anet added a third dimension and underwater combat aswell as the ability to jump and dodge, they must have figured it would be better to rebuild the entire system from the ground up. I can see their logic, but truthfully speaking I disagree with this. Guild Wars had a unique combat system and up to this day is still remembered as a unique PvP MMO (despite the severe decline the past 4-5 years). So why Anet decided to do it so different is beyond me...
Guild Wars 2 isn't simply "Guild Wars 1 with the ability to swim and jump", it's, as claimed, a completely different game and frankly I don't quite know what to do with it. On one hand you've got the fact that that Anet did claim it would be different, on the other hand, Anet has been playing out the e-sports card with an obvious wink to Guild Wars 1's glory days.
If you understand how amazing your original game was, why did you decide to do it all different? Why couldn't it simply be: "Guild Wars 1 with the ability to swim and jump" and better graphics... I think this is a descission that will come back and bite them in their ass, because from what I have observed, Guild Wars 2 doesn't have the depth the original had, in both controls (gameplay) and map layout aswell as team composition and builds.
Though don't quote me on this because there's plenty of esports out there which also lack depth (League of Legends for example), yet still manage to bring together quite the crowd, so depth most certainly isn't everything. So then my next question would have to be: where is Guild Wars 2 going to get it's butter? LoL has got 2 major facts going for it: it being free to play, and it being easy to play, which automatically generates a large, casual, crowd.
But what about Guild Wars 2? It isn't free to play and it most certainly isn't easy to play. It "looks good" is a bit of a strawman because most games nowadays look good. What's the point in looking good if there's no tactical depth to it? Starcraft 2 is a good example: the game looks really good, as do all the animations, but at the end of the day you don't care that the Archon toilet has funky animations or that the mothership is a massive, stunningly beautifull unit, what you care about is that that archon toilet or cloaked army just won the game. It's about the plays, not about the animations. A good animation should highlight the plays being made, and thus the better the animations (and graphics), the more enjoyable plays are, but if the game doesn't allow for plays to be made, what is left?
As I said earlier in this thread, it's obviously still too early to draw to final conclusions regarding the PvP, and Anet still has some time to polish their combat system, but from what I have experienced the past few weeks, it defintely doesn't feel like GW2 is an e-sport, unless heavily, and constantly funded by Anet themselves.
5.2. Tactical depth
Related to the combat system is the tactical depth, though they are 2 different things completely. An easy to play game can have alot of tactical depth (Guild Wars), whereas a complicated game can still be extremely shallow. So the key is to make your game as complicated (Read: required input from keyboard and mouse) as it has depth to fill up.
Imagine if you had to press 20 keys simply to auto attack. Every auto-attack that went off, everyone would be: "WOW, he just managed to auto attack!", yet auto-attacking should be something really basic, not really requiring much input, no more than 1 keystroke.
However, the more complicated the play (and thus deeper tactic), the more complicated the input should be, otherwise you'll just feel cheated as viewer or adversary. Imagine if 1 muscle in your body allowed you to play football like Ronaldo, how could you ever enjoy watching a game of football if you knew it was that easy? You couldn't, you'dd feel cheated.
So Guild Wars 2 most certainly has the visuals to go with the plays, but does it have the plays and required input to make the plays worth cheering over? And, once again, it's still a bit early to judge over this, but from my experience so far, I fear the worst. Alot of skills tend to perform quite poor: Rush skills -which rush you towards the enemy- tend to run through the enemy target more often than not, channel skills sometimes cancel what appears at random, auto attacking requires far more input than what should be necessary, especially for melee professions and ground targetting skills tend to perform in a weird manner when qeued up. On top of this, certain projectiles hit while clearly having missed, yet others hit when clearly dodged by the roll function. But those are all minor input glitches which can probably get fixed within a day, and the required input for an e-sport is defintely there (Guild Wars 2 is a hard game to play)
So lastly there's the plays, the actual depth: does Guild Wars 2 allow for plays to be made? Frankly, I don't know. The few matches I've observed so far are nothing more than experienced players pubstomping pugs or bad players getting rickrolled claiming the game is "bad".
To judge over the depth, you need to have a good idea of all skills, abilities and effects that exist within the game and understand the synergies between them. And only very few people are currently at the point at which they can claim "I know all abilities in Guild Wars 2 and how they interract with eachother".
So as for the depth of Guild Wars 2, let's just stick with: the game has the foundation to allow for plays to be made, but the question is: do the skills themselves allow for plays to be made? While there's already plenty of examples of players outplaying eachother, it's still to early to cast final judgement over this.
6. Changes to skills and builds
Probably the biggest letdown in Guild Wars 2 was the abandonment of the Guild Wars 1 skill and build system. In Guild Wars 1, you were allowed to bring 7 skills total from 2 professions and 1 elite skill. There where no limitations and you had a thousands skills (litterealy, more than 1000 if I'm not mistaken) to choose from.
The result was the unique experience called Guild Wars, with hundreds of different builds per profession; Some being really effective, others less... This resulted in certain unintended syngeries which made for really strong builds and teamcompositions and a genuine "wow"-effect that this was possible in Guild Wars. Alot of those builds got fixex and nerfed, but quite a bit simply stayed "meta", because the line between intended builds (Air attunement + Air magic skills) and unintended ones isn't always clear. (Spike builds in general) Whatever the case, this created an extremely vivid playerbase constantly trying out completely new builds and coming up with ridiculous playstyles which won them the match.
Sadly, this is completely missing in Guild Wars 2, and while there is the illusion of "builds", it's not even a shadow of what Guild Wars was. (and still is)
You can toy around with traits, insignias, sigils and runes for some cool effects. You can change out your last 4 skills and choose from a severely limited skill point (smaller a single attribute of certain professions in Guild Wars 1), but a Warrior will always be a warrior, just that. Equip a bow? You're now a warrior with a bow.
In Guild Wars one, you could turn your Warrior into a caster if you so pleased, utilizing the Stonefist Insignia (Knockdowns last +1 second) exclusively available to warriors to spam caster knockdowns. You could turn Eles into powerhealers by fully speccing into a Monk's or Ritualist's attribute while still keeping the insane energy pool and regeneration abilities Eles had.
So while newcommers to the Guild Wars universe won't really understand what I'm talking about, most veterans do. It was probably the single most thing that made Guild Wars Guild Wars...
7. Exploits
One of the last points I want to bring up is something that has annoyed me a fair bit throughout the past few weeks of playing Guild Wars: the exploits. Now, before we continue any further, realize that we are playing a MMORPG which resembles real life both economically and socially. Someone who likes to show off the fact he has alot of money buys a ferrari and drives around for the world to see... It's no different in videogames. What's the point in being rich, especially in videogames, if you can't show off your wealth? And I find that a fair statement, people who legitimately got rich do deserve the items (legendaries) to show off towards the rest of the community.
The problem is that in alot of videogames some of the richest people get their money through illegitimate ways, be it exploits or having knowledge about future changes to the market. (*Cough* butter) Guild Wars 1, for example, had a handfull of people who duped acounts full of globs of ectoplasm, but layed low when Anet was handing out bans. As a result, they managed to keep several acounts with several hundreds/thousands of stacks of ectos, instantly catapulting them to the richest players in the game.
Unlike a teenager who just got 100 euro/dollar for this birthday, though, the people smart enough to come up with, and abuse exploits are usually also smart enough not to raise attention to themselves, and as such, the smartest (and thus richest) exploiters are not the ones you find posting on Guild Wars 2 Guru, but rather on small private forums.
It was like this in Guild Wars 1 (and most other MMO's) and sadly Anet hasn't really stepped up their game. Guild Wars 2 has already seen plenty of exploits (which are to be expected, to be honest) and borderline exploits sometimes created by Anet themselves. (Sticks of butter for example)
They're instantly banning people found to be exploiting, yet they're barely containing the impact of these exploits on the economy. I, myself, for starters are more a fan of resetting each and every acount that gets involved with exploits (and following trade logs to find linked acounts), rather than banning them.
Instead, I've already found plenty of exploiters who managed to get away with their spoils leaving me with only one feeling: I wish I did it too. What point is there still grinding for prestige items when there already is players walking around with several 100G's from exploits or insider-market knowledge? How come there's so many exploits to begin with?
Every game I've ever played has had exploits at the start. Yet, in 2012, production companies still haven't figured out ways to limit the effects exploits have? Surely, it's not that hard to assign a certain value to each item (assumed market value)? Then you simply implement a counter to count how much wealth each acount has. (This really isn't that hard)
After every gaming session, if the counter went up by more than 5-10 G per hour, that acount gets flagged (all behind the scenes) giving Anet an easy way to find exploits and catch the exploiters. They have access to their own databanks (I hope...) and they have an understanding of what they want their market to look like, so clearly assigning "expected values" (Let's say 20 silver for globs of ectoplasm, 4 silver for Orichalcum ores, ...) to each item wouldn't be that hard. And if, after release, it turns out an item is worth more or less than they anticipated, they can adjust it with the click of a button. All while the game itself keeps track on how much gold players are making, and putting the richest players aside, not to get autobanned, but to get investigated and see how they're making money...
I find it sad that Guild Wars 2 is another one of those games that prooves exploiting really is the way to get rich really fast as long as you can get away with it. Why? Because of the naive notion that, while exploits will exist, players won't abuse it for personal gain, and the ones who do will most certainly get caught...
Conclusion
That being said, Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game, definitely outclassing most (if not all) MMO's other there, and it's just getting started. It has something for everyone, and most things it does, it does well enough for you not to quit. Yet, sadly, Anet let go of what made Guild Wars so good in the first place, and I'm not quite sure where they'll end up down the road. Lastly, I found myself once again being "cheated" by exploiters who managed to get away with it (Which definitely isn't Anet's fault alone) essentially turning the PvE endgame (Read: grind for elite weapons) into a pointless race against players who can outclass you with the click of a button due to their endless supply of exploited riches...