I stopped following stories only doing them whenever I feel like it, which only amounted to 1 episode of the current living story. But yeah it was a complete left turn going from hunting dragons to hunting a god instead in the end, they even had that stupid naming poll for the character's group taking over for Destiny's Edge, which they eventually picked Dragon's Watch, yeah, suddenly Eternity's Guard(which the eu side had picked) and The Unbroken seem more fitting now.
As for the preview weekend, the mount felt good to me, nice weight and speed to it and even the jump felt good, but it felt really awkward not being able to strafe to the side. The zone stuff, more of the same really, bounties are just repeatable mini boss hunts, the race in the zone I did once and only because the one time I did it I lag spiked 3 times going from first to last, said fuck it after that. They're changing the loot system from showering you with loot to showering you with unidentified stuff, which has already garnered it's complaints since you have to pay to identify it. Still surprised they are going that way since they like flooding your bags with useless junk to salvage so you can think about buying more bag space and their copper and silver fed salvageomatic kits.
They're doing another preview this weekend with the elite specs for wvw and spvp, so I expect to see some broken ass shit with shit balance in there. I would really wait and see some reviews at release before buying, to get an idea of how much content is actually in there, although I'm sure even the $30 price will be worth it anyways.