GW2 Dev Talk: Imagine a world where you fight off the bandit king and if your party decides to kill the Bandit King, X happens. If you lose Y happens. If you win and talk to the mayor of town, you get reward A. But if you kill the mayor, you don't get reward A but trigger event Z. All this happens in real time across multiple zones.
GW2 Reality: Multi level scripted events that trigger each other. Player behavior often sparks off these events in a cycle without much variable outcomes. In the end, these dynamic events were just scripted events happening on top of the open world layer. Almost always linear. Player reaction was just different events to grind for xp and kharma. World did not change from typical static combat.
Rift Dev Talk: With our engine, we will be able to create new dynamic events that can change the layout and textures of the over all world. Imagine Rifts fighting each other and/or slowly taking over zones. We will be able to change the face of Telara to offer you a truly dynamic experience.
Rift Realty: Very small and local spawned events with several levels of events players can win. Each event was mostly kill X in 2 minutes or some other objectives. Invasions were random groups of mobs that would take over different positions if left alone. Mostly were ignored unless a character was leveling.
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The cynical side of me stick story bricks right in the middle of these two things. What I foresee is a world that is crafted using a finite sum of bricks. You will have your bandit/invader brick. Your rescue the princess brick. Your slay the dragon brick. In the end, you'll have your scripted GW2 events but placed randomly generating across the map like Rift's rifts. Players will be able to recognize the same pattern across the world with different skins. Just like in Rift where you say, "Oh here's another Fire rift, I know what is going to happen", in StoryBrick World you'll just see familiar patterns and the rest is arbitrary.