This is directed more at ArenaNet than other players. But, maybe others will find some worth in it.
Story: The story starts out engaging and has high hopes, but it does get rushed really fast. I ran the story as both a Sylvari and a human, and the experience was only different in that the screen went wobbly every now and then. The single biggest issue, I believe, is that the story was designed to be grandiose and time ran out. It feels very jerky and poorly paced. Some parts don’t even make sense and the player is left just moving from point to point with no real purpose.
Specializations: I have gotten 8 of the 9 elite specs (minus Revenant) all the way up and I can say it was a bit of a grind for all the alts. Now too cumbersome, though. All of them feel different than their predecessors, but Berserker feels completely useless. I am only using the F2 portion and none of the skills as I found them useless and bugged. Tempest is also underwhelming. The others have a nice feel and fluidity to them, especially Chronomancer (my main). However, the lack of introduction to them was a HUGE disappointment. Some kind of story unlocking them or even a cutscene would have been good. I mean, this is possibly the biggest part of the expansion and it goes completely unnoticed.
Maps: Simply put, they’re gorgeous. They all feel very different and I am getting used to the level architecture. Gliding is very fun (albeit still sometimes buggy and slow to deploy) and the new travel mechanics are interesting. Tangled Depths is — by far — the least enjoyable of all the maps. As a matter of fact, me and my guildmates avoid it like the plague if at all possible.
Meta Events: These can get tiresome. The same thing over and over again is very grindy. “Oh, defend this outpost for the 15th time today….” When this expansion was announced, one of the conceptual points is that what our characters did in these events mattered. I realize that we can’t logistically clear out the map and call it a day, but perhaps longer event chains. Maybe a multi-day cycle where you slowly clear the Mordrem out and have a mordrem-free jungle (if successful) at the end for a couple hours. This would really make it important to participate in the event cycle. As of right now, I can participate or not and everything resets in an hour or so.
Masteries: I’ll be honest, I actually have no problems with masteries being so XP intensive. It doesn’t take too long to get the mandatory ones, and the variety is nice. What I DON’T like is how most of the high-end masteries are worthless. Exalted lore 4 and 5 are basically worthless, even though it’s the one line I was most interested in. Other lines are similar. Just make them more important, that’s all. If they cost millions of XP, they should be very valuable.
Guild Halls: Good fun to obtain, beautiful to look at, and a TREMENDOUSLY HUGE GOLD SINK. Holy cow, ANET, you either want small guilds to take 9 months to even start fighting in an arena, or spend thousands in gold. Don’t get me started on scribing requirements. So I unlocked scribe and now I have to unlock something completely different to actually make a chair???? Great concept, poor execution. I don’t mind things taking time to get done, but I do mind unnecessarily gated material.
Overall: Like many others, I had a great deal of hope heading in to the expansion. I feel a little let down. I don’t think this XPAC lived up to the hype. In some ways, it’s wonderful. In others, it failed completely. Right now, It gets 3 out of 5 stars. With some minor tweaks, it could easily be a 5 star expansion.