I think I finally have enough time in GW2 to give it a review and know at least half of what I'm talking about.

This is, easily, the most friendly MMO on the market for someone who doesn't have infinite free time, or is known to take frequent breaks from games. That's me, I am always intermittently able to play games and never really have the time to sit down and put extended hours in one go into a game. Two things in other MMOs turn me off despite my enjoyment of those games (I've played more or less all the big ones).

1. Gear treadmills
2. Subscription fees

Wanna know what GW2 doesn't have? Gear treadmills and subscription fees. I'll explain

While most MMOs traditionally increase level cap and add new higher spec gear with each expansion, Guild Wars 2 has horizontal progression. The TL;DR for that is essentially, once you get gear and a build that works, you're set. Like, for *all* content, you are set. The level cap doesn't raise, the requirement to do the highest level content doesn't raise, and while there are new, exciting variants, you can more or less use the same gear set from the moment you hit level 80 until you decide to stop playing the game.

The other huge thing that GW2 has over other MMOs is no sub fee. You can play the entire base game for free, albeit without access to the trading post, and beyond that all you need to do is buy the expansions. I would highly recommend that you get the Elder Dragon Saga -- Complete Collection bundle when it goes on sale a few times a year for 50$. This includes Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, End of Dragons and all of the living world seasons, which you cannot buy on Steam any other way unfortunately. Its a really good deal and provides you with 10(?) ish years of content to work your way through. SOTO and Janthir, the two newest expansions, are both quite good too, although Janthir isn't done yet as I'm writing this. One important note for new players is to decide where you want to play GW2 and stick to it. If you play through their launcher, Steam or now EGS you CANNOT swap platforms or buy things on one platform and transfer it to the other.

Now, without comparison to other MMOs, what does Guild Wars 2 do beyond the standard fare of the genre? Well, for starters, there is a significant and constant push by ANet to incentivize old content being done. In my time with the game over the course of about a year and a half now, the only content I have ever found to be slightly "dead" was dungeons, and even then "dead" just means it took a few minutes for the LFG to fill. GW2 veterans are extraordinarily welcoming to new players, and there is an abundance of helping hands extended. If you ever have questions, just ask in map chat and 90% of the time you'll get a good answer. There are map meta's across the entirety of every expansion that are constantly run, entire guilds that run world boss trains or the big world boss events that require coordination, and generally speaking this is the least "solo" MMO I've ever played, not because content cannot be solo'd, but because there is always someone nearby to give a helping hand. The community is half the reason this game rocks.

The one thing that I think this does truly lack is a real introduction to endgame content. There is no Tank Healer DPS holy trinity in GW2, but a bit more complex boon system (certain buffs needed to clear content) that is slightly hard to understand at first. The lack of the holy trinity also makes queueing for content a bit more difficult because you can't just tick a tank or healer box and call it a day. That being said, ask questions, and just try stuff out.

Guild Wars 2 really does have something for almost everyone. I really found it kinda amazing how well the maps are structured. Exploration is a huge part of the game, and there's a great variety to the biomes and content to be found in each map. There's PVP if you just wanna bash heads, there's WVW which is giant map serverwide PVP instead of small 5v5s, there's Fractals (which are essentially dungeons in other MMOs), Raids and a whole host of non-combat related activities for you to do. The only thing that I would warn people looking for their forever MMO against GW2 with is the lack of truly challenging content. I'm by no means a raid master, I'm not crazy good at games, but I've now seen 3 of the raid wings and done a fair bit of strikes (Trials in FFXIV) with challenge mode on and... The hardest content in GW2 isn't all that hard. There is definitely still challenge, but its not keyboard smashing crazy as of right now. ANet seems to have heard the requests for some higher end content difficulty, though, and a new raid wing and challenge modes are coming out with Janthir Wilds. There's some issues with this game, sure, but overall its impressively well run and the team really seems to take most feedback in stride. Just don't listen to the GW2 subreddit, those guys can be so whiney lol

This might not be your forever MMO, but I can most definitely say that nothing else offers the breadth of content with the flexibility of how you approach it as GW2 does. This game is awesome, and I highly recommend you give it a shot. Thanks for reading, comments are open for any questions.