How do you guys feel with Guild Wars 2 being one of /r/games most regretful buys of 2012?

Disclaimer: I don't want this to be a bashing post. The game is worth every penny I paid for it just for WvW alone, but I want to bring attention towards the outside world, opinions from players who aren't in this subreddit.

I was reading through this post about what game people regretted buying most this year, and right behind Diablo 3 was Guild Wars 2. It's kind of a breath of fresh air in terms of how many people don't like the game compared to the vibe in this subreddit. Many of the comments can be boiled down to players who just won't like any MMOs in general, but GW2 was supposed to appeal to that crowd as well (according to their preview videos hyping the game). For the record, I really do like GW2, but my criticisms for the game are consistent with why people stopped playing it. For starters, it was way different from GW1 (which is good, otherwise it should have just been an expansion). But on the other hand, it dumbed down character building to sealed-deck type builds. When GW1 was on its last legs, ANet introduced a lot of strange gameplay modes like Codex and a new quest structure system in EoTN that I wasn't too fond of. They pretty much used that to beta test GW2. I adopted, but it took over a whole BWE to get used to it. I was afraid people won't want to have "get used to it" and end up quitting after initial impressions.

The release wasn't as smooth as it should have been. Plagued with bugs and instability. Auction services weren't working, the tutorial system wasn't too intuitive, and it was crowded and laggy. Aside from that, the game did lack a good feel for immersion that really made you want to keep doing the next step. You couldn't get lost in the story because you'd have to continuously go out and level to meet the next recommended level bracket in order to not get stomped in personal story instances. While the holy trinity removal made grouping easier, it kind of made team dynamics weaker. The combo field system isn't as brilliant as I thought it'd be. It's rarely utilized enough to make it important. There are still defense, offense and support roles, but they aren't as dependent as classic Guild Wars 1 team building.

Now, I'm more OK with it than most, but seeing how almost my entire guild from GW1 quit GW2 after the first weekend at release got me pretty angry. They didn't want to change this much. They loved GW1 and they wanted an extension of that. We were pretty big on PvP, and most of us spent thousands of hours doing just PvP and some PvE on the side. I whole hardheartedly think PvE gameplay is better in GW2, but the story is weaker. The PvP definitely isn't the same, and I tried to ease them into it during the beta by explaining my experiences so they didn't have unrealistic expectations at launch.

GW1 had its launch issues as well. The group of friends I played with loved it during pre-searing and almost all quit after they made it to Ascalon (post-searing) and saw how dry the environment got after seeing the beautiful pre-searing maps. It wasn't a huge deal overall since the game got prettier, but having to endure the barren landscape hurt their launch and potential to keep players. I ranted about this during beta when everyone here was defending that it was "just beta". Initial impressions are just as important as anything else. The game could get great later, but if you had to wade through a duration of weak experience to get there, you're not going to keep everyone interested.

I really am curious to see if and how GW2 will change over the next couple years. I know GW1 became a better game for the changes before EoTN, but I don't know if it will be enough to win back the hearts of ex-GW1 PvPers who liked team building as much as building their skill bars.

With that said, how does everyone else feel about r/games essentially voting GW2 as the 2nd most regretful buy of 2012? Do you think ANet will be able to address any of these issues?