One of the best MMOs out there, no subscription
The story starts with you in the grand city of Ascalon. This is a prologue, and here you will choose your secondary class (I will go into classes later), and learn about the conflict between the humans and the Charr. After the prologue, you skip to a few years later, where the meat of the story will occur. The only way to move through the story is to complete missions (25 not counting expansion packs) where you and a few other party members (or CPUs) go through a mission trying to complete a certain task. Completing these are also the easiest way to gain access to new cities, and isn't nearly as boring as walking all over the map just trying to find a city that may or may not be there.
Now, the classes in the game (without expansions) are warriors, rangers, elementalists, mesmers, monks, and necromancers. Warriors are close-ranged, Rangers are long range, elementalists and necromancers focus on magic, monks heal, and mesmers are a class that basically slowly kills everything, and are long range as well. You choose your primary class while creating your character, and your primary class determines what skills you have and what armor you wear. Your secondary class adds skills, but you cannot wear their armor. So therefore, a Warrior/Mesmer can take a lot of damage due to the warriors armor, but a Mesmer/Warrior cannot, even though they have the same skills. With even more classes added through expansion packs there are a lot of character combinations you can have.
The map itself isn't all that big compared to games such as World of Warcraft, but is still a decent enough size to keep you exploring for a while. It is, however, very similar through most areas. There is basically the wasteland, grassland, and the tundra. They all look the same.
Also, the level cap is VERY low. It does take you a while to level up, but not long enough that you can reach the cap level of 20 within a week, maybe a little more. Luckily, the amount of quests will keep you busy for a while. Not only that, but the meat of the gameplay experience, the player versus player, is fantastic! You can create a character specifically for player versus player, which allows you to change your secondary class whenever you want and you automatically start at level 20, or you can use your player versus environment character. The great thing about the low level cap is that the best players won't be the highest leveled, since everyone basically is at the level cap, the best players will be the best strategic players. And this game really is very strategic. You have to choose (if you make a player versus player character) a secondary class that fits with the rest of your team, or you guys are going down. Also, since you can change stats and skills whenever you want (except during battles) you have to use skills that complement your team. It really is one of, if not THE best player versus player system out there.
So, if you are a person who hates subscription MMOs, even if you could care less, this is a must have game. It's one of the best MMORPGs out there, and it just is a great game. Not much more to it.