I actually had no performance issues after Friday. My understanding is that graphics were un-optimized and limited by CPU, and I was running on a new 8-core machine.

Hopefully they will have some graphics optimization done by the next beta.

I agree with most of your post. I, for one, didn't experience any issues with performance. I am running an i5 2500k, 8 GB RAM, and a 6950 2GB gfx card. I had all settings on max and resolution at max and it was flawless for me. I only have a 19" monitor and it doesn't support HD, so my resolution wasn't as high as someone who has a bigger, newer monitor, but I would estimate that the lowest FPS I hit was around 45-50. 

You seem to have a PC that will handle it, so be patient, as they optimize it will get better. One of the major problems I had was hearing people complain about performance. Someone running a Core 2 Duo has no right to complain. Seriously, upgrade your PC. If you can't afford it, this isn't the game for you. Developers are buildling on todays technology, not yesterdays. I for one upgrade my PC a week ago specifically for this game and because I was running a 9600 GT and AMD Athalon x2 64 (lol). 

Disclaimer should say "if you are running anything lower than a quad core, go play something else.

I would say that this is a pretty honest and fair write up. Fairly brief, so kudos for being able to say what you want in a clear and concise manner (something that is lacking with many other write ups).

1) I agree. The presentation was excellent. I was impressed with the freaking login screen, how often can you say that? The interface is also minimalist, but shows everything you absolutely need to know. I love being able to see more of the world and less of the UI.

2) Agreed again. The subtle humor was all over. This is a nice touch for those who are paying attention, and I am certain you'll notice more the more you play, and replay.

3) I'd give combat an A personally. I really think the feeling of uneveness is coming from a lack of experience. For example, I saw more than a few Mesmers taking on 3-4 mobs solo in the 1-15 human area. Once I got the hang of things on my Elementalist, I was able to take on 2-3 mobs, and at least escape with my life if I happened across more. I also found myself able to take on some Veterans solo as well. The sense of danger was very real. I haven't died so much in a mmo for a long, long time....and I loved it!

4) Yeah, you have to kind of take the good with the bad. I did notice that the "collection quests" seemed to happen fairly randomly, where as the more combat oriented events happened on a more consistent basis. In a mmo, there's really only so many quests types, so I feel they did well, even if some of the events were just simple collection quests. I just wonder if the feeling of epicness will only grow with the level range of the zones. Perhaps the 1-15 areas feel a bit noobish at times, because they are noob areas. Time will tell.

5) I have little to no performance issues. I am running an i5 2500k, 8GB Ram, gtx560ti, so I have a pretty mid-range set up. Aside from random disconnects, and freezes before the disconnect, I did not have a single technical problem. Many of the issues folks are running into are either, lack of optimization (which is what beta is for, to test this kind of stuff), or a lack of decent hardware on their part. Minimum Requirements are just that, the bare minimum and they might even have to reduce their personal video settings in game to increase performance. It's just the nature of the beast. If the game launches, and many folks with more than the minimum are having major issues, then yes there is a problem. For now, I chalk it up to ANet finally getting the game into the hands of the masses, and get a true variety of set ups.

6) When my Elementalist was level 9, I accidentally caught a deer in an aoe attack. I was taking on a Centaur. The next thing I see, is a herd of Deer including a very mad Stag coming over and completely owning me. It was very funny. My wife saw the whole thing and laughingly said to me, "Hun, that's for all the deer you slaughtered in WoW over the years", (I used to moonfire every Deer critter I ran across in WoW). Good times.

Originally posted by megillas

I agree with most of your post. I, for one, didn't experience any issues with performance. I am running an i5 2500k, 8 GB RAM, and a 6950 2GB gfx card. I had all settings on max and resolution at max and it was flawless for me. I only have a 19" monitor and it doesn't support HD, so my resolution wasn't as high as someone who has a bigger, newer monitor, but I would estimate that the lowest FPS I hit was around 45-50.

I have the exact same setup (The I5 runs at 4.5gz) and I also had 0 performance issues.

Most of the "cons" you listed will be fixed by launch, well I hope. So that's good news for all of us, well except for the balance issues, that is relative to the person. Some people feel it's fine, others do not. IMO I feel there is a discrepancy between melee and range, and my feelings were solidified after reading in the GW2 forums how the devs felt about it.

All the performance problems you had , according to Arenanet, were due to the game not being optimized & taking your gpu into consideration, in other words the game was cpu bound.

The quests felt "grindy" at some points, and others felt pretty epic. That's expected from a MMO. I was more disappointed in the fact that all these people kept saying how GW2 will do away with quests and grind, yet here we are killing 10 spiders and collecting apples /shrug. I have no qualms with that, It felt like a traditional mmo because of the quests, and for that I am glad because GW1 was one big disappointment.

The combat felt odd at times. Certain melee classes had a stutter about them, and abilities felt delayed. I disabled auto attack on skill 1, yet still had that awkward moment with my warrior and guardian. And eventhough i would dodge and circumvent a creature, somehow it would still manage to hit me from its back while attacking its front, I was on a high speed network so it couldnt have been on my end. I decided it mustve been a server latency issue, and I am fairly certain they will fix this as well at launch. and no I am not talking about centaurs, they CAN attack front and/or back, it was pretty awesome.

As a Mesmer I felt  taking on multiple mobs was very exciting. At first it was difficul,t but once I figured out the class better and unlocked weapon skills I was able to stick illusions on different creatures, kite them all around, herd them into one bunch, then time my illusion shattering with my cooldowns in order to do it all over again. It was a lot of kiting and extremely fun.

Originally posted by HeadBytor
another Pun: there was also the rangers shortbow skill, crippling shot, that refered to ending a players dream with an arrow to the knee.

Head, Thank You!

That's great!

It ran like a scalded dog on my box, even in WvW with 100 players in my face.

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Originally posted by mambome

4) Epicness: HIGHLY VARIABLE F-A

 

So the first parts of an event chain are often really boring and mundane: "Gather apples for my pie! (This is an F even if there are giant spiders in the forest)" Sometimes they are kinda quirky and fun, but still mundane: "Whack kids with snowballs! (This is a C because it's fun and goofy, but not that great)" However, later events can be very epic a good example of this is the ends of the "tutorial" events (These are Bs). A BETTER example would be when the children summon "The Bear Moot" and a huge number of angry bears attack all at once (A++).. Unfortunately, Bear Moot Moments (tm) were the exception, and most of the events were fairly mundane, though usually somewhat enjoyable. For example the event where the Charr have to slay Tar elementals was excellent.

 

5) The Ugly: Very Ugly

 

Performance was not great. When I first logged in it was like playing a flip-book. Performance was awful, and with the action oriented combat of GW2 this makes it unplayable. I had read the notes that the game was processor bound, but I didn't think it would be as bad as it was. Once I set my graphics to the bare minimum I was able to enjoy the gameplay, but not the stunning artisitic style that you can see in people's screenshots. However, Arena Net consistently improved performance of the game throughout beta weekend, and by the end of the beta I could play smoothly on maxed out graphics. I have an i7 12GB Ram and a 6970 just for reference.
 

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The things you call 'the first parts of an event chain' are not actually events. They are Hearts. Yes, they are boring, but they're just something to keep you busy until a DE shows up.

Hearts are not DEs!

The only problem I had with the actual events is that there weren't enough of them. There were often no DEs nearby, and if there were, you often already completed them earlier. But for now I'm gonna assume this is just a Beta problem.

As for the performance, I tried playin on my desktop (i7 and ATI Radeon HD 5450) which was pretty terrible, even at low graphics. It could play WoW at reasonably high settings though, so I think it might be that GW2 simply doesn't like ATI.

But then I tried my laptop (i5 and Nvidia GForce GT 540M) which was just so much better. I could even set the graphics options that really mattered, like shadows, shaders and textures, to max, while keeping an average of 30 fps.