Well you can’t please them all I guess. Most of this is a matter of opinion and seems to just paint the game with a swath of negative colors while completely ignoring the beauty and vibrance that the game does have.
I don’t feel the personal stories are poor or bad. They’re not awesomely great or stellar, but certainly no where near to the extent of horrible that you seem to suggest. The cutscenes are not captivating like a movie and don’t use a lot of cinematic flair in them. The story itself, however, is not bad at all. The fact that you chose to skip all of the dialogue (and thus the story) is your own problem. That’s like opening a book, skipping around and reading the section headers, and then complaining that the book sucked.
While a LFG system would be nice, finding a group isn’t that hard. And if you still have that much trouble, then you may want to join a guild who does dungeon runs.
Some PvE being bugged is definitely troublesome, but it is, again, not that bad especially compared to how buggy endgame content has been in other MMOs. And they have been working on it. The only zone I’ve been in that has been brokenly bugged (as in clearly not tested enough to ensure that the zone didn’t melt into a pile of goo) was the Iron Marches. Every other zone has clearly been worked on. I mean this is a game launch. ALL game launches have bugs, ALL of them. And the game hasn’t been out for even a month yet. Seriously, if you wanted a bug-free game experience then the general rule of thumb is to wait three months after its release. No amount of time in beta or development eliminates all bugs; that is the nature of games in general.
Also on SPvP, the point is to be strategic without being overly complex. While I would like to see other game types (capture the flag?), I’m okay with the point capture of the maps. You also make no mention of WvW I noticed (which I would consider PvP). While it does suck that you can’t play casually with a friend, it would also suck to be solo and casually play normal games to only find that they are a bunch of pro premades that facestomp your pug. So.. it balances out.
As far as what to do at 80, I felt sort of similar to you at first. Once you get to 80, there is no more handholding on what you need to do. There is no “Well you can do these things here, but you’re required to stay on this gear treadmill to continue being viable.” Once you hit 80 and get your full set of Exotics (not a hard task mind you), then you’re left with a variety of options and goals that you have to set yourself. In most other games, your goals and next course of action are generally dictated to you (grind this dungeon, get this gear, etc.). In GW2 you can: Master crafting, complete the aesthetic look that you would like, begin working torwards crafting a legendary, get 100% world completion, begin involving yourself seriously in the WvW metagame, grind achievements, and/or begin exploring the full capability of your class in SPvP. Or.. you can do none of that and just reroll or leave the game. Your character will be just as viable in any case.
