A great game that turns bitter-sweet as you delve further into the experience.
Within the first few hours into the game I was instantly captured by the level of detail that goes into my character as well as the truly innovative PvE/Questing experience the game provided. I thoroughly enjoyed my class quests and when I jumped into my first "dynamic event" it honestly felt like I was part of a group adventurers that banded together to avert a possible disaster. The zones within the game are detailed and characters and lore for each zone just as colorful, which goes to show that the devs of the game really put a lot of thought into each area. Add to the already increasing list of pros for the game is the level freedom that you're afforded in levelling your character up, from completely exploring zones, to engaging in World vs World large scale battles (which are incredibly fun to jump into though do have a steep learning curve if you've never done PvP like this before), to even something as mundane as crafting.
At this point I could walk away with the impression that this MMO has taken all the greatest aspects of the genre and smoothed out the rough edges while adding a host of new ideas into the fray. Overall an incredible experience regardless of how you look at it. However it isn't until you're a good 40-50 hours into the game that the shine starts to fade and the level of care and thought put into the earlier levels just doesn't show itself in the gameplay, leaving the latter experience of the game feeling increasingly like a lot of other MMO clones out there.
The problems start with the fact that you can be left incredibly under-leveled in the earlier zones forcing you to explore other question regions that in terms of story are mean't to belong to other races. As you keep experimenting you realize that you can level effectively by crafting and jumping into WvW just as you would if you were questing which was a pretty hole the game neglects to point out to new players. Following this the trading post for the game was down for a good 2-3 weeks after release and to date still has problems which you would think isn't a huge deal this early on in the game's release, however given that no CoD mailing options exist as well a complete lack of a trading option with players this leaves the trading post as the only possible means of making money or obtaining items outside of questing; and from here on the problems just start to get worse =/
The later zones come riddled with the odd glitches in relation to either quests, events or skill point challenges and you begin to notice a "grindy" theme in relation to a lot of the events and quests. Where in earlier zones I experienced some of the most thought out and unique questing objectives I have in any RPG not just MMO's the later quests don't even try to imitate these and resort to the traditional "collect so many of these" and "kill so many of these creatures". Even though there are added ways to complete the quests the most effective as you find out is just to go with finding items and killing mobs. It's almost as though a different team worked on the latter content of the game which really is a pity because the former half of the game raises expectations and hopes so much.
The dungeons of the game start of challenging and innovative as with the rest of the game, introducing PvE mechanics I honestly had a tough time getting used to but loved every step of the experience. However the later dungeons as with the later quests turn into dull "tank & spank" boss fights with ridiculous amounts of HP or the "kill adds then kill boss" once again with ridiculous amounts of HP. It's as though the only way to ensure players spent hours in a dungeon was by giving bosses massive bars of hp, at one boss in one of the level 80 explorable mode dungeons the party I was in literally felt as though we could just sit there and leave our characters to auto attack the boss since the fight lasted a good 10-15min with no unique game mechanics to make the experience memorable.
All in all even with all its flaws Guild Wars 2 is a great game, which makes it all the more painful to see the shoddy level of attention and detail that has gone into the latter half of the game. This could've been a genre defining title that just manages to fall short of the mark mostly because the end game content comes across sloppy and rushed.