I have played my fair share of MMO games and i just wanted to give the community and Anet my perspective on the leveling experience and how the NPE may have impacted it.
to give some background, i started my first character (guardian) around sept 1st, then rerolled warrior on sept 9th so i got a little taste of pre and post sept feature pack.
my first impressions of the game were of awe, wonder, and mild (but normal) confusion. When i started on my guard, the confusing parts of the game to me were not about how my weapon skills worked or what the items were doing in my bag, but rather the overwhelming amount of different currencies and collectable materials (laurals, mystic coins, and the 10-20 other currencies displayed on the account wallet). As a player who values efficiency, i wanted to make sure i was not shooting myself in the foot by using these things improperly and (luckly) i just ignored them and focused on the leveling.
as for the actual leveling experience, although the world exploration was amazing and the gameplay felt fun yet still challenging, it was not without issues. on both my guard and warrior (aka pre and post sept feature pack), the biggest frustrations to me were the long periods of time where my character felt held back and limited. up to about lvl 36, there is close to 0 player customization. for appearences, i was limited on transmutation charges and outgrew my gear every couple of hours so i was reluctant to change my appearence from the (crappy) ones from the leveling items. Furthermore, the only skill customization came from the weapon set i used and the limited set of skills i could unlock and use. I had done my research and saw that traits offered customization, and this offered hope for my desire to personalize my character. To my dismay, the trait unlocking system made it so that by the time i could unlock the trait levels, and unlock each individual trait i desired, i was close to lvl 80. This made the leveling experience feel more grindy than i believe Anet intended.
After plugging in lots of hours on my warrior at lvl 80, i can say the endgame is fun and involved for a new player but i can see how a large portion of the community is yearning for more endgame tasks.
furthermore, i have been focusing on finishing the leveling on my guardian and the same frustrations i had on my first character have reimmerged and feel even more hindering after having played a level 80 (where the ability to diversify of a character actually appears).
Although i did not play with the origional trait system, i have read about it and can say that the new system introduced a number of frustrating problems. First, getting to level 36 not having any traits unlocked is rather annoying. Moreover, it is even more frustrating to realize that although u have unlocked blue traits, the trait you want requires a time consuming event in a zone 10-20 levels higher to unlock (great example is blade training on the mesmer requiring a sparkfly fen chest to obtain). This caused me to begrudgingly buy the skills from a vender (which ultimately felt hallow, since i wanted to unlock it).
The one plus side i can see about the new trait system is that it appears to be easier to respec at level 80 (although the ability to save certain builds would be ENORMOUSLY HELPFUL).
TL;DR this is a fantastic game that i am emensely enjoying, but the leveling experience has some room for improvement that. I believe that although ANET had good intentions with the NPE and the revamped trait system, it introduced some problems with the leveling experience while glossing over what i found to be the most daunting parts of being a newbie int his game.
all of the different consumables, and currencies in the game were what i found to be most overwhelming and required me doing outside research to figure out what they were used for. these include laurals, mystic coins, as well as black lion tickets, festival points/tokens, ext…
the trait system is unveiled too late in the game for players and really only starts to feel relevant at lvl 60ish (and that’s only if you can unlock the traits you want then). this cannot be overstated enough as it made the leveling experience feel much less personalized and often made my character feel under powered.