I actually really like the game, and kind of had the opposite opinion - it does a lot of things well that I thought Guild Wars 2 royally fucked up on, and basically ensured that I'm pretty much 100% done with giving GW2 a shot.
After playing through and solving (without Google!) the Investigation quest that the priest gives you that has you tracking down old Illuminati clues throughout the whole town, I can't go back to a game filled entirely with WoW style kill-and-escort quests. And for me, the fact that the quest I'm working on belongs to me (and my party) instead of just being open season for every idiot in the area to jump in on is absolutely essential to the experience.
What they did with the power curve is also really nice. It takes you maybe an hour or two to fill out all your armour and skill slots. After that, the difference in power between you and a person who's basically completed every quest in the area is very small. It seems more like a linear growth rate than an exponential one, and people who had almost just started the game had no problem keeping up with a character who'd basically 'finished' everything in the beta weekend.
The skill bar and the absolute freedom you have over how to build it (from a gigantic pool of total skills) is also a lot of fun, even if there are only "simple" skills with less interesting synergy available in the beta weekend. I also really like that the skills are mostly run off of a shallow pool of a fast-recharging and aptly named resource ("Resource"). Where cooldowns exist, many of them are short, in the 5-8 second range, with some exceptionally powerful skills being on a cooldown as long as 20 seconds, whereas Guild Wars 2 gives you almost zero freedom to build your skill bar, and then has cooldowns where 20 seconds is considered a fast recharge.
The Secret World's skill setup reminds me a lot of Guild Wars 1, and that's pretty much the highest praise that you can give an online RPG. It's a bit weak in terms of providing interesting skill combos, but then only ~25% of the total number of skills in the game are available for use, and the developers have specifically said that these are designed to be the 'simple' skills without a lot of nuance, so that new players can get used to them.
The only real problem I have with the game is its business model, as I flatly refuse to play any game that has a mandatory monthly fee. Had they gone with the Guild Wars model of buy-to-play plus cash shop, I'd be all over it. Thankfully MMORPGs don't really keep the subscription model for more than 6-12 months these days, so I'll be able to play it then.