Amaranthe.3578, ArenaNet has a long reputation of paying no attention to the needs or desires of role-playing gamers. Nevertheless, GW2 has had, and still has, an active and vibrant RP “scene” despite the random instancing that destroys any possible sense of “server community” found in other games.
Forums devoted to role-playing, including characters, guilds, etc. can be found at: http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/
If you are an NA roleplayer, the most useful guild is TCRP – a “hub” guild primarily designed to facilitate player meet-ups. Anyone in the guild can invite you – if there is room.
There is no way to manually select an instance (unlike other games with instanced “zones”). However, representing a guild significantly biases the instance logic to putting you in the same zone as other guild members – in this case TCRP roleplayers! Failing that, you can use guild chat to request a “taxi” (a method that exploits party mechanics to get you into a specific zone).
The zone with the most open-world RP every day is Divinity’s Reach, the human home city. This the place where you find like-minded players. The scene there has been vibrant for years, including RP guilds for the two competing city police forces, the “Krytan Ministry” guild to represents the human kingdom government (and does it well, by RP standards), and even a brothel guild (The Coin) with its own semi-secret tavern location. There are also three more conventional taverns (Busted Flagon, Maiden’s Whisper, and “The Sun” in the Ossan) available in Divinity’s Reach that are commonly used by RPers, especially “The Sun.”
The only recent game I’ve encountered with a stronger RP environment is Final Fantasy XIV. However, the main RP server there has been closed to new accounts for years (there are ways around that using character-transfers between servers, but it’s costly).
