Last night was gonna write a reply here half praising the game for it's combat, left it to saved to finish today... then I get a message this morning the anet mods deleted (instead of merging) my entire thread on the upcoming balance in the wvw section of the official forums, because they would like the feedback discussion in the same thread..... except it's also being discussed in 10 other sub forums.... I really hate the anet moderation team, it's the worse I've encountered in just about any official forum.
Anet team has some good people but also some very stubborn.
I was one of the first few 100 people to get into the alpha in 2011.
I watched a lot of good feedback get tossed aside, it drove away a lot of the friends that were also in the alpha/beta.
The game was a complete deviation from GW1. They rarely listened, just wanted bodies for testing obviously broken stuff.
PvE content was always praised, and imo rightly so. But the PvP content has been seriously flawed since day 1.
I had a good group of PvP players from GW1 and what they settled on for GW2 was so disappointing.
They wanted GW2 to be an esport from Day 1. They saw LoL growing the space and wanted in on the cash-grab. Their Arena PvP combat was supposed to be baller. We reiterated over and over how flawed the concept was, but they plowed forward anyway. They settled on having 3 capture point objectives in a very small map. Compare this to Guild v Guild in GW1 which was a far superior format and could have been a much better e-sport.
They took the "Guild" out of "GuildWars".
Also Heroes Ascent in GW1 was completely abandoned even though it was one of the most innovative and fun PvP modes and has yet to be replicated. The format wouldn't make a good esport though.
WvW was one of the last things added and has been a problem since day 1 as well. From re-using the same map in the beginning, to match making, zerg fights, lag, 1-server steamrolling, night-capping, etc etc etc... they had no good solutions for anything.
GW2 PvP failed when they abandoned GvG as a PvP mode.
Their PvE team is top-notch but their PvP team was/is filled with the most mule-headed game devs.