I am working on my 4th level 80, and GW2 is probably my most played game of 2013. There are tons of content and plenty of stuff to explore, even a year out. Definitely a fun game and the GAF guild is great with the planned guild missions and WvW.
But I can understand how it doesn't really catch with some people. The lack of the trinity and the shared xp approach makes it very much a solo game if you want it to be. You can run around with a group of 30 other players zerging Champion mobs and never need to talk without the occasional "ty" for the rez. Even if you want to chat during a dungeon, the actiony nature of the game and the rush to finish most players seem to have makes it difficult. It makes me kinda miss the days of shooting the shit while pulling mobs in eq...kinda
After reading the first page of this thread, i updated my client for GW2 and jumped back in, made a new elementalist (my fav class) from the beginning and dinked around for a bit. I couldn't believe how dead the starter zones were.
Anyways, the reason I quoted you, I whole-heartedly agree about the social aspect of this game. With everything being an action fest zerg rush, there is no time to chat, there is no need to chat, and nobody even looks at the chat box. EQ and FFXI were great for this, with slower combat and XP parties, you could really get to know your fellow players. Hell at times in FFXI i used it for a glorified chat with special effects and catgirls. So just like any of the action-y MMOs, I eventually got bored with this and quit.
Also agree above with the fact that the skill progression is done way too fast, and the "tie-in" to weapons kinda stinks. It'd be great if there were 20+ skills per weapon that you could set, but on the guy i just made, i had all my dagger/scepter/staff skills for fire/water/thunder before i hit level 4. Then you have to use that the rest of the game and it's very "meh".
Dungeons really made me miss the trinity system in this too. I tried to makeshift heal using water staff skills on my first elementalist, but there just was too much cooldown to make it really viable. You kinda end up feeling like you don't really matter in a dungeon, plus i felt the trash mobs were way too tough on average.
I had a lot of fun trying one character of each class, getting all the weapon skills with each, and then a few of the supplementary skills, but after about level 20 i'd get bored with each character and start a new one.
Production values are amazing on it, the combat is fun to watch (although as others have mentioned, it lacks weight), but it just didn't hold me very long. Would love to see an overhaul of the skill system. That would bring me back in a big way.