Good post OP.  Character progression is one of my concerns but after testing I'm a bit more worried about just solo PvE fun.  DE's seem to be less fun than I would have thought.

  I feel like the DE's had very little to do with what I was doing or my ability or really anything.  I felt like I ran to the DE circle on the map and spammed AoE's.  And that is pretty much what my experience was with the entire weekend.  I suppose it was nice playing with others but ultimately I felt like I had little control or interest in wandering into these circles other than trying to stay alive.  I felt like yay I just helped people do something but it felt almost exactely the same as all the others.  Was I great in this event dunno...did I help I suppose so.  Maybe there were too many people doing the same DE's?  I'm pretty sure I never started a DE. 

 

The combat was nice despite the character movement.  And probably some of the best combat of the genre, but I just have a tough time finding the DE's very engaging.

 

 

Originally posted by Mardukk

Good post OP.  Character progression is one of my concerns but after testing I'm a bit more worried about just solo PvE fun.  DE's seem to be less fun than I would have thought.

  I feel like the DE's had very little to do with what I was doing or my ability or really anything.  I felt like I ran to the DE circle on the map and spammed AoE's.  And that is pretty much what my experience was with the entire weekend.  I suppose it was nice playing with others but ultimately I felt like I had little control or interest in wandering into these circles other than trying to stay alive.  I felt like yay I just helped people do something but it felt almost exactely the same as all the others.  Was I great in this event dunno...did I help I suppose so.  Maybe there were too many people doing the same DE's?  I'm pretty sure I never started a DE. 

 

The combat was nice despite the character movement.  And probably some of the best combat of the genre, but I just have a tough time finding the DE's very engaging.

 

 

did you make it past the starter zones to see the later DEs at all>?

>Implying this thread isn't here to trick hardcore raiders into thinking they are having fun with repeated content

Originally posted by Mardukk

Good post OP.  Character progression is one of my concerns but after testing I'm a bit more worried about just solo PvE fun.  DE's seem to be less fun than I would have thought.

  I feel like the DE's had very little to do with what I was doing or my ability or really anything.  I felt like I ran to the DE circle on the map and spammed AoE's.  And that is pretty much what my experience was with the entire weekend.  I suppose it was nice playing with others but ultimately I felt like I had little control or interest in wandering into these circles other than trying to stay alive.  I felt like yay I just helped people do something but it felt almost exactely the same as all the others.  Was I great in this event dunno...did I help I suppose so.  Maybe there were too many people doing the same DE's?  I'm pretty sure I never started a DE. 

 

The combat was nice despite the character movement.  And probably some of the best combat of the genre, but I just have a tough time finding the DE's very engaging.

 

 

If you don't care about what NPCs are doing then yeah it isn't terribly engaging. When you approach a circle you need to be interested in what's going on. It's not JUST escort this dude. It's not JUST collect for that guy. 

The escort dude might set up a shop in the next town. The collection guy might run off to lure a bigger monster with your collection. You can't just pickup and drop DEs when they complete otherwise you are just doing the objective not reading the story.

Skimmed over it, but I'm guessing you're an exception, not the norm of hardcore raiders.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Mardukk

Good post OP.  Character progression is one of my concerns but after testing I'm a bit more worried about just solo PvE fun.  DE's seem to be less fun than I would have thought.

  I feel like the DE's had very little to do with what I was doing or my ability or really anything.  I felt like I ran to the DE circle on the map and spammed AoE's.  And that is pretty much what my experience was with the entire weekend.  I suppose it was nice playing with others but ultimately I felt like I had little control or interest in wandering into these circles other than trying to stay alive.  I felt like yay I just helped people do something but it felt almost exactely the same as all the others.  Was I great in this event dunno...did I help I suppose so.  Maybe there were too many people doing the same DE's?  I'm pretty sure I never started a DE. 

 

The combat was nice despite the character movement.  And probably some of the best combat of the genre, but I just have a tough time finding the DE's very engaging.

 

 

did you make it past the starter zones to see the later DEs at all>?

I didn't.  I'm guessing that was the problem.  I know that it has to become more fun later on like most MMO's do.

Originally posted by Mardukk

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Mardukk

Good post OP.  Character progression is one of my concerns but after testing I'm a bit more worried about just solo PvE fun.  DE's seem to be less fun than I would have thought.

  I feel like the DE's had very little to do with what I was doing or my ability or really anything.  I felt like I ran to the DE circle on the map and spammed AoE's.  And that is pretty much what my experience was with the entire weekend.  I suppose it was nice playing with others but ultimately I felt like I had little control or interest in wandering into these circles other than trying to stay alive.  I felt like yay I just helped people do something but it felt almost exactely the same as all the others.  Was I great in this event dunno...did I help I suppose so.  Maybe there were too many people doing the same DE's?  I'm pretty sure I never started a DE. 

 

The combat was nice despite the character movement.  And probably some of the best combat of the genre, but I just have a tough time finding the DE's very engaging.

 

 

did you make it past the starter zones to see the later DEs at all>?

I didn't.  I'm guessing that was the problem.  I know that it has to become more fun later on like most MMO's do.

 

If you don't care about what NPCs are doing then yeah it isn't terribly engaging. When you approach a circle you need to be interested in what's going on. It's not JUST escort this dude. It's not JUST collect for that guy. 

The escort dude might set up a shop in the next town. The collection guy might run off to lure a bigger monster with your collection. You can't just pickup and drop DEs when they complete otherwise you are just doing the objective not reading the story.

Great post!  This is what I've been trying to say when I tell people that there really isn't "endgame" in GW2....at least not "endgame" as they know it.  Your "That Damn Queensdale" sums it up perfectly, and I think that's exactly what Anet has been saying their intent was in making the game this way.

 

Also, anyone, fanboy or not, who has said there is no gear grind in GW2 is flat out wrong.  There is no gearPOWER grind in this game, but there is certainly cosmetic gear grind, and even skill point grind, possibly. 

 

I'm glad that you "get it" and realize that if what you're doing is fun then what does it matter exactly what you're doing?  Whether it's repeating content, exploring, PvPing, endgame raiding (yes if you think that's fun, there's nothing wrong with doing it), gear grinding, etc. etc. etc., if you're having fun doing it, then screw what everyone else thinks and screw your own preconcieved notions.

 

I hope your post goes a long way toward getting people to understand why GW2 is a different creature and that that's not a bad thing.  I wish just some people would take the time to actually read stuff like this rather than skimming it.  But I just assume they'd rather just live in their own little world.

 

All that being said, if you had done all that and come to the conclusion that GW2 didn't offer what you wanted, that's cool too.  To the people who feel that way, I say good luck.  I hope you find it, if you haven't already.

See now, I'm a lot of the same way as the OP.

To me, even as a hardcore gamer (Top tier PvP, Hardest PvE, Hours invested into play sessions when possible, Completionist Habits) the one thing that keeps me "in game" is my main character. If I can find a character that I can really feel like I channel myself through in a good way and can control them in a way that few others can, I will never get tired.

In fact, the only reason I got tired of those characters from games in the past is because they were changed through patches and content shifts.

Shadow Knight - EQ

Mage - WoW

Retadin - WoW

Those are the only three characters I've ever had where I felt like everything I did was important until the day I was stricken with the dreaded rework patch.

Excellent post and it really gives me personally a slightly different way to look at the game as a whole. That being said, I think Human Mesmer is going to be the fourth on the list.

Originally posted by jusomdude
Skimmed over it, but I'm guessing you're an exception, not the norm of hardcore raiders.

why do you say that?

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by jusomdude
Skimmed over it, but I'm guessing you're an exception, not the norm of hardcore raiders.

why do you say that?

Read the second to last paragraph of my last post.  Some people just want to live in their own little world.  And they certainly couldn't be bothered to actually think a little differently than they have been.

Excellent post. I hope anyone with doubts similar to those your went into the game with will read the entire thing. You are right on about the game and how it relates to end game and character progression.

Including this last stress test, I've now been lucky enough to have spent 135+ hours play testing the game. Like you, most of my play time has been in the Human lands. I've gone a bit deaper, perhaps, but I''ve managed to save large chunks of the content that was made available to us in these events for when the game goes live. Just like you, I've repeated Queensdale over and over again, but I've enjoyed it every single time I've done it. I played a Sylvari Elementalist during this last stress test, but after getting a little taste of the Sylvari lands, headed right over to Queensdale to do all the stuff I've done before.

There are some events I've only seen in maybe a third of the runs through and a few events I've only lucked upon once. The content is fun, but the element of being able to encounter something you haven't seen before adds to the experience, as does the fact that events can play out vry diffeerently depending on the people who show up for them.

I've tried to get this point across, but it's hard to convey to people who haven't experienced it. I am utterly amazed that I have managed to get 135 hours of enjoyment from the PvE portion of this game, while managing to only experience a small portion of all the PvE content we had access to, which in turn was less than 40% of the PvE content the game will laqunch with.

I know I will have absolutely no problem getting over 1,000 hours of game play from the game. Id there 1,000 hours of individual PvE content in the game? Maybe, maybe not, but the content that the game provides is not only plentiful, but most of it is well worth repeating. The game rewards you for repeating content and the Dynamic nature of most of that ontent ensures that the experience itself will be different from one time to the next.

You are also right about gear in the game. A number of fans have misunderstood the role of gear in the game and what "no end game gear grind treadmill" actually means. There are different quality tiers of gear throughout the game. There are also some pieces of gear that offer differences in the way they distribute their "power budget" for the level/tier the item resides in. Even at the level cap, there will be some effort to obtain all the weapons and armor sets you will want for your character and the various builds you want to play with. The difference here is that the path to getting max stat gear is not unreasonably long, there are different paths to attaining max stat gear and once you get the gear, there is no "gear inflation" treadmill that will make that gear obsolete because some new "end game dungeon" comes along and offers more powerful "stuff".

I think most people understand the level scaling mechaninic, but like you, in the beginning, they don't understand why being able to do lower level content, have it be somewhat challenging, while also offering XP and loot geared towards your true level is actually a really wonderful thing!

One thing I've tried to say when discussion comes to the subject of GW2 "end game" is that I believe that most people, even hard core raiders, will "get it" by the time they actually reach the level cap in GW2. They will get why the old concept of "end game" doesn't really apply here and they will get that playing the entire breadth and depth of the game's content is where the fun is at, rather than the stuff you do to level up just being some necassary grind you need to complete to reach "the end game", where you do something very different.

I get the fears. I get the arguements. However, I also believe that most people who give the game an honest shot will understand, via the experience of playing the game, what they couldn't grasp on a purely acedemic, conceptual level.

BTW, I would say that Queensdale is maybe 4% of the world space, excluding WvW and the citiies, So you can probably multiply queensdale by 25 in your calculation of how much more world PvE experience the game may have to offer. Also, Dynamic Events do get kore involved as you get deeper into the game. I saw the progression even in the 15-25 zones, but it really becomes more apparent in Gendarren Fields, where the Centaur's designs on a large and well defended walled town depend on the state of a network of surrounding events.

I've honestly gotten to the point where I don't play to level anymore. I play to have fn and the leveling just hapens along the way. I want to see the high level zones in the game, but I really anticipate that I will be spending so much time enjoying each zone I travel to in my journeys that I will reach level 80 well before I ever reach a level 65+ game zone. With the way this game is designed, that's ok. It's just as valid a path of progression as some super efficient path that get's someone to the level cap and the level 80 game zone in the shortest amount of time possible.

It's also great knowing that I can take time to fully enjoy areas of the game with out "ruining" those areas for future play-throughs with alts or for revisits with a main. Each zone is going to be good for many play throughs and Arenanet's commitment to free live content expansion, including new DEs for all zones, on an ongoing basis, just amplifies it.

I'm glad you are a game designer, because I think this approach to world building and content design/delivery is much more efficient and offers a much better return on time/money invested than traditional MMO design. I hope that other game designers will "get it" and GW2 will signal the beginning of a new direction for MMOs and RPGs.

This game wont hold any hardcore PVE players attention after the first month. The fact is GW2 is basically a giant MOBA that revolves around bragging rights and cosmetic hunting. You're much better off sticking with WoW/Rift if you want any semblance of hardcore pve. 

@OP,  Thanks for your post. It was encouraging. I was a raider for 4 years in a good guild. I loved it. And I do somewhat miss it. I read the marketing line that "it's all endgame!" and it reads "there isn't an endgame" to me. I've been half expecting to wander off at 80. I wasn't really expecting to find the game sticky at level cap. Thanks for the positive outlook.

Izak I was a hardcore raider in the wow sense (5 days raiding for several years) and generally spent most of my time on heroic achieves on the last boss, and you know what we represent less than 5% of the community. I realised repeating the same couple of bosses 10 times a night is actually pretty bizzare behaviour, but for those who love that level of repetition you are right- stick with WOW.

Originally posted by Izik
This game wont hold any hardcore PVE players attention after the first month. The fact is GW2 is basically a giant MOBA that revolves around bragging rights and cosmetic hunting. You're much better off sticking with WoW/Rift if you want any semblance of hardcore pve. 

What's wrong with bragging rights and cosmetics? That kind of stuff can be just as appealing as getting stat sticks off the latest overglorified dungeon that will only be valid up until the next patch/expansion. I'd argue it is even more long lasting because visuals don't lose value, while stat sticks do lose value.

Originally posted by gelraen

Preamble:

This post is entirely about PvE endgame.  I know WvWvW is the focus for many people, but I'm only a little bit into PvP (though I think WvWvW looks pretty cool and will try it).

I've posted on these forums quite a few times in different discussions on endgame -- is it good, is it crap, are you fanbois, am I a stubborn old-school raider, etc.   I've mostly been arguing the point that I felt, through my impressions in the beta weekends and through reading about the design of later levels, that the so called "endgame" would lack a motivating game mechanic to keep me and others who like traditional raiding... hooked, long-term.  

I'll say for the record that I still hate it when people chant the marketing line "It's all endgame!", as I think that's only talking about the content, and is mostly what I would categorize as "blind faith", but my thoughts on the endgame have changed recently, and I would like to give you at least one hard-core raider's thoughts on why that is.

Endgame without Raids:

To give a bit of background, I am -- in "real" life -- a game designer for a large company, and a hard-core raider.   I've played all of the beta weekends and stress tests.  I don't know how many hours that is, but I guess it's enough to give me a very good feel for the game overall.  I've played most classes and a few up to the level 20 range.  I come from a background, in other games, of what I guess most people would consider hard-core raiding in organized guilds.  I've played a lot of the major MMOs, and perhaps most notably a lot of raiding in AoC, WoW, and Rift.  Contrary to some people who frequent these forums, I think raiding -- if you get into a good group of people -- can be a fantastic and fun experience.  It's cooperative gameplay at it's finest (in my opinion) and a very social experience most of the time, if you're in a good guild.

However, I love all parts of a game.  I guess in that sense I'm also like a casual player, in that I am big on exploring, seeking out shiny collectibles, crafting, grinding factions, even... gulp... fishing.  

To me, two of the most important aspects of a successful MMO are having a large (mostly) seamless world to explore, that I can be immersed in and believe, and secondly a character which I can identify with and improve over time.  I think GW2 has the world part covered nicely, but the character improvement -- what I will controversially call "progression" -- is more up for debate.

There have been huge debates here about whether or not there is enough character progression post-level-cap in GW2.  To me, it's irrelevant whether or not there is a ton of fun content in the world to play with after hitting 80.  If I can't improve or slowly work on my character over time, I KNOW my motivation in the game will dry up and I will move on.  I say I know this because it's obviously happened before.

So the big questions here have been: is it enough that GW2 gives you mostly cosmetic rewards once you have hit level cap?  Is karma a strong enough incentive system?  Will the dungeons satisfy my need to do strong group content?

When looking at the design of GW2, I have been very afraid that the answer to all of these questsions has been no.   But I have lately had a bit of a change of heart. And it all relates to my experience in Queensdale.  I will try to explain why.

That Damn Queensdale

Here I need to explain the slightly strict way that I've been playing the beta events.  I don't want to spoil the game for myself, so I've been mostly confining myself to the human start area, Queensdale.  I have a few times ventured a little into the Asura start area, peeked at the Sylvari, and the zone south of Queensdale, whatever it's called (which looks awesome, tbh).  When I started BWE3, I thought I would it would start to get boring and I feared maybe I would need to break out of there and try out one of the other areas.

But that is just the thing -- it did NOT get boring.  Seriously, I've played that damn area at least 5 times through, and I am still having fun with it.   I started to think: what is happening?  Curse this damn game, it's messing with my stubborn old man pre-conceived notions of what endgame must be!   This cannot be right.  

In fact, the really annoying thing here, is that I just keep damn well having fun in the game despite my doubts.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that I keep having a tiny bit of that "raid feeling" in the open world.  It's only in very small doses, but it's that working together, cooperative take-down-the-boss feeling that I usually get only from raids.  It's pushing a wedge in the gap of my "the endgame sucks" armor.  

I think part of the reason is that I find myself spontaneously in a group of people, cooperatively working towards a goal so frequently in this zone.  Sometimes it's attacking an overrun outpost, sometimes it's defending some beer kegs from invading thieves.  Whatever.  I'll give Anet some credit here -- they've taken grouping (and you don't need to group, which is the brilliance) to a new level, making it easy and fun.

Queensdale Multiplied

So, as many a fanboy has said, that's what you do at endgame, you run around, you do all the suff in the world, blah blah blah.  I've mostly discounted this, because I KNOW from other games that it gets boring to run around and repeat content.

Or does it?  Yesterday playing the stress test for a few hours, I was having a blast.  As I've said, I've done it 5 bloody times.  Something in my brain is pestering me... something doesnt' compute with the decision that I've already made -- that niggly decision that repeating the content sucks.

Then a long distant memory resurfaces from some other MMO I've played.  I can distantly recall complaining to myself in WoW or Rift or some other game (maybe even SWTOR) that I was annoyed there was no reason to go into the zones I loved the most.  Take WoW for example... I used to love a few of the forest zones on Kalimdor (however you spell it), but aside from leveling up a character, there wasn't much reason to go there.  Because of that also, it was generally a ghost town except for the few people leveling up.   Sometime later, they added archaeology, which kinda made people go quickly buzzing around the zone, but it didn't feel like a meaningful reason to visit.

In Rift, they do "Instant Adventures" which push people into the zones and make them feel more populated.  They also do invasions, which are dynamic events to take over a whole zone.  Each are alright in their own way, but IA's feel like a "mode" seperate from the rest of the world, and invasions -- though awesome at first -- become a bit formulaic over time.    Mostly because all invasions, in all zones, generally follow the same pattern.  This has improved over time, but not by much.

Back to GW2, I'm standing in that damned Queensdale yesterday, then I'm alt-tabbing out to a web browser and scanning over a world map which someone has labelled the zones and their level ranges.  I'm starting to do the math -- that the world is currently comprised of somewhere in the 20-24 times this Queensdale place I've been hanging out.   I start thinking of all of the dynamic events that I've been doing, the ones I like, the ones I pass by, and I guess more than anything else the real scale of the thing hits me.  I've known for a while that it was a fairly big world, and of course I thought of all those zones having dynamic events.  I had just not quite grasped exactly how many of these events there would be.   Despite myself, I just can't shake the thought of the fun I've had so far, multipled by 20 or more times.  And that's excluding WvWvW and the dungeons.

What is here in this game... what I've started to believe... is the backbone for something very good.  I'm not sure that it's all there yet, because I haven't played it yet, and at least some of those 20 odd zones could suck horribly.  But the game designer in me has started to see the potential for what this game really is and perhaps more importantly, what it could become.  

If they take the basic idea of dynamic events and go with them a bit further (and maybe they do in later zones), I think the world could really come alive, and for once, I could feel like I have a REAL reason to hang out in older zones.  

I can give one example of this.  The DEs in Queensdale, where the centaurs take over some of the forts and you have to retake them -- unlocking the quick travel waypoint at that location, etc.  I can see already if these events went further -- if they cascaded into the centaurs using those bases to organize an all out attack on one of the towns (at a larger scale than what they do now) and eventually take the town and hold it hostage, or imprison people in the dungeon below the city, etc. etc.  If stuff like that starts to happen, these zones could just come alive.... rewards or no rewards.

Maybe that's already the case -- as they've described something vaguely like that in Orr at the end, but I think it could be everywhere on a more detailed scale.  But then again, this is just the launch content.  They will likely iterate on this stuff for years.

Is there really no gear grind?

The fanboys -- you know who you are! -- here will tell you there's no gear grind.  Some people... I don't know what happened to some people, if they tried to get into guilds and were scorned, or they just sucked at games and couldn't get in with the cool kids... who knows.  Maybe they just got super burned out by copycat mmo designs, which is something I can at least relate to.  But some people seem pretty passionately against gear grinds. 

I have no such dislike of it.  Gear grinding -- or stat increasing gear tiers -- are just a device.  They are a replacement for the leveling process which slowly trickles out abilities to you on the way up to cap.   Gear grinding is a motivating game mechanic.

So does GW2 really lack this?  This is a big one for many people, and a question that most traditional raiders would be most worried about.

After much worrying and much reading and some experience in game, I don't really buy this line.  The game most certainly DOES have gear grinding, it's just capped out once you have filled all slots with a certain level of quality.  Doing this appears to be a fairly substantial grind, and I don't quite see what people are saying when they say it's easy to do.  The gear is aquired outside of dungeons -- for the most part -- but thanks to interesting crafting and the mystic forge, it is a combination of experimentation, luck, and some grinding elements to max your stats and get the look of the items that you want.  I think it will likely take people a while to fully max themselves out, and this is a GOOD THING.  This is "motivational activity #1" once people like me hit endgame.

So in short -- I believe, at least, that there is a gear grind, but as many have said... it is "wider than it is tall", meaning that you can't endlessly get more and more powerful gear, but there is a bit of a journey to achieve top stats on all items, and that journey is prolonged by a lot of sideways grinding, to get the looks that you want and experimenting with the Mystic Forge.  

There is also the fact that to you really will want multiple sets of gear, if you want to play different roles in different situations -- ie. maxing healing ability gear for times when you want more healing, maxing ranged damage builds when you want to use your pew-pew setup, etc. etc.  The gear allows a lot of specilization for different build setups, and that also is a GOOD THING.

The Skill Point Grind

In addition to doing a little gear grinding, as I said I like to improve my character as much as I can.  Most recently in other games, I like the "Planar Attunement" system in Rift, which is a post level cap experience system giving you small stat increases over time.  It's not perfect, but it's something.

GW2 offers you, at least, the ability to max out all of your abilities through skill point increases.  It may be that this is already complete by the time that you hit 80 -- I'm not sure.  However, once you hit level cap, experience gives skill points over time, which allow you to purchase high level crafting ingredients for the mystic forge, which in turn allows you to craft legendary items (something like 200 skills points for a weapon for example)... which is cool. 

I wish there was some other way to tweak your character post-cap, but I think this is something to note at least.

Conclusion, of sorts.

Will this help anyone?  Maybe not.  It's subjective to my own experience of course, but as one hard-core raider, I can say that I feel much better about the longevity of the game than I used to.  This is partly because I've come to see there IS, in fact, a little bit of a gear grind (which makes me happy) which will keep us busy for a while, and the real scale of the number of DEs is also giving me some hope.  The social systems in the game -- that feeling of being in a cooperative group against the PvE challenges is also so strong and pervasive, that I think at least it will satisfy some of what I used to get from raids.

Most of all though, I think the potential of taking the dynamic event system and going with it -- expanding on it over time, weaving it into the world even further, is what I -- as a raider -- find the most exciting.   

Will the existing reward systems be satisfying enough for most hard-core raiders?  I'm not sure.  I think they will to some extent, and then it will be a matter how exactly how long it takes people to hit that plateau of not being able to further 'improve" their character.   For myself at least, I think that peak is higher than I first thought it might be.... and potentially much more fun along the way.

 

Edit---->   For those commenting about the differences between gear at level 80, I point you to a very nice post on the subject via GW2Guru, where someone explained how the stats differ between the different qualities:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/46603-faq-equipment-attributes-and-you-updated/

 

Well thought out and informed post. You have done your homework gelraen and I could not agree more with most of what you said. I have seen some of your end-game skepticism posts before and it is great to see you changing your perspective on things in the game. I think one of the issues people have right now with end-game is the "not knowing" and it takes a lot of digging and reddit scanning to figure some of the details out. The stat grind will still be there as you say, even if it is shorter then most people expect from a game like WoW possibly. The thing that makes the item grind in this game great is that you are not just focusing on getting "BiS" items, you are focusing on figuring out what stats YOU want  as well as managing to throw together an outfit you would like to wear as well as provide enough funds to do it through crafting, trading post,ect. Not to mention the amount of transmutation stones people will have to go through to get all this stuff they want. I feel like the hard-core players will focus on the legendary items and more hard to get armor sets. The game is also a completitionist's dream. 

I think with all this combined with the idea that they are probably gonna be patching in DE's on a fairly regular basis, (probably every couple of weeks, maybe days, who knows) adding new items to go for, new dungeons with a story and explore mode, new pvp maps, personal story additions, and possibly even WvW additions in content patches is pretty exciting! Oh yeah, and the track record ArenaNet has for developing expansions faster then anyone else in the industry with TONS of new content.. (enough for them to produce 2 that stood as games of their own for the original Guild Wars) 

I think we have a real diamond here. Maybe, finally, possibly --the next "big thing" is going to be here in just under 2 weeks? Hopefully I don't wake up next Saturday morning only to find out it was all just a wet dream.

A lot of us are in the same boat as the OP.  We were a top level (server first) raiding guild in Rift.  We come from hardcore raiding backgrounds.  We absolutely welcome the fact GW2 doesn't have any true raids.  You can form groups with as many or as few people as you want.  No more scheduling content.  That's not to say there isn't plenty of large group activites in GW2 from minigames, SPvP, WvWvW, and meta events.

There is a significant gear grind in GW2 too.  You have to run a dungeon in explorable mode 57 times to complete a full set with offhand and mainhand weapons to obtain your exotic armor.  That's not counting the fact you might want exotic armor with other stats (through mystic forge skill point grinds), the 200 skill point + other mats grind for legendary weapons, sigils, runes, and gems you'll want to put into the gear too.

Very nice post. I'm a game designer my self too and can see eye to eye with your views on GW2 from BWE experiences. I can say from experience of all the zones i've been in they've been a funfilled time and there is literally always something going on, whether that be DE's or just random encounters with Boss's etc.

OP Don't forget there is outdoor raids in particular zones. Like that dragon fight ANet previewed earlier in they year. I think that will give capped character the incentive to travel back to lower level zones to take on these boss encounters. As far as i know they event scales depending on the amount of players.

I gotta give this OP props. He basically made a post that i would of made if i werent so embittered and jaded and inclined to hate any new mmo in development.

I honestly am now on the fence about this MMO having read that.  I was worried by a lot of their comments so i see there is in fact a gear *grind* (a fact for which i am glad) but thats its not absurd.  Having to spend 40 or 50 hours of PVPing for a full set, or do 50-100 dungeon runs for a full set is fine by me.