Oh thank the gods, finally. Someone who stops using that damn word while reviewing GW2.
"Revolution". Ugh. I hate that Guild Wars 2 keeps advertising itself like that, especially because (as someone who has played the game for hours and LOVES it) I can honestly say it's NOT a revolution, it's an evolution. It takes most of the concepts present in other MMOs and refines them and/or makes them work better than they used to.
The leveling curve and "grind"? A flatter leveling curve and more methods of gaining experience make leveling faster and easier than in most MMOs. Plus, as you point out, the death of "kill tagging" and "kill stealing", in addition to additional behind-the-scenes mechanics that provide players with bonus experience for things like killing mobs with other allied players or reviving your allies/party members, leads to players actively cooperating with each other for the benefit of everyone.
Quest mechanics? Instead of gathering a list of things to kill and items to collect, you're given two types of "questing": 1) Hearts, which provide an individual questing experience that gives you multiple methods of completing the quest satisfactorily; or 2) Dynamic events, where you're given a group progress meter and everyone has to work together to achieve certain tasks within the confines of the quest, and everyone receives rewards based on their level of contribution. In both cases, the questing feels more life-like because it does away with much of the flavor text, replacing it with actions and events that spawn seemingly out of nowhere that make the world feel alive. But perhaps the best part is that unlike typical quests, you can repeat group events on a fairly regular basis ("farming" them if you so choose), allowing you to keep playing events that you enjoy rather than just completing a quest, turning it in, and moving on.
Skills? Instead of a massive bar full of skills, the game restricts you to five primary combat skills (based on your weapon), a healing skill, three utilities, and an elite (which functions as a more powerful and rarely-used utility). The combat relies far more on a player getting to know the intricacies of their weapons and using them smartly. Something I enjoyed was that I figured out ways to mix my Ranger's longbow with other utility skills to create massively powerful combos that can absolutely crush enemy monsters. That sort of design allows skillful players to really excel, killing things they may not otherwise be able to beat, which is something I truly appreciate.
Really, the game does a lot of things much better than I've seen them in other games, and is worthy of every high rating it gets.
That said, though, there are plenty of issues with it, as no game is perfect. The big ones that come to mind for me personally include:
* Excessive queue times on World vs World
* No direct player-to-player trade (you have to trade via the Auction House, which is often taken down for maintenance, or using the mail system, which leads players vulnerable to potential scamming)
* The episodic design of the Personal Story leads to many seemingly important plot revelations being dropped or forgotten.
* The tail end of the Personal Story veers deeply into the same major flaws that Nightfall's story suffered from (including the introduction of a sylvari who is essentially Kormir 2.0, but with a blander voice and a less interesting backstory)
* The dye system is character-locked, such that dyes must be unlocked individually on each character (which is STUPID).
* The jumping mechanic and significant emphasis on jumping puzzles is downright frustrating, since different races and sizes of character will be perceived as jumping differently, causing players to fall to their deaths on many occasions for a jump they should have made. It doesn't help that the jumping mechanic itself feels somewhat unreliable to boot, as you'll have to push the jump key and forward key in slightly different ways to achieve completely different jumping heights and distances.
And there are others, of course. But even with all of the flaws, the game delivers such a fresh experience that I can't bring myself to hate on it. It takes so many frustrations from other MMOs, things that normally end up convincing me to stop playing those games....and it makes them fun and enjoyable. That alone is worthy of praise: taking things that most people find boring and reducing or even removing the mundane nature from them.
All told, the best MMO I've ever played. And I'll be playing it for a long time.
EDIT: Oh, and Guild Wars 2's charr race has created arguably the best holiday ever. Meatoberfest. I want to celebrate that holiday in real life. Just gather a bunch of friends together to drink alcohol and eat meat-on-a-stick. That's how the charr roll, baby. What, you think that's dumb? You wanna fight about it? Back off, meat.
