I bought the original game about 6 months after release, enjoyed the hell out of it back then. Due to a bunch of reasons I didn't have the bandwidth and also couldn't dedicate the time to an MMO anymore, so had to quit half way through the first expansion. After life and my internet got more stable I picked the game up again after the release of End of Dragons. Still an amazing game, every other MMO has me thinking "why cant they do this thing like guild wars 2 does it". The game rewards the time you spend in it no matter what activities you participate in, never rushing you or making you feel like you need to catch up to enjoy the latest content. My old characters were perfectly fine to jump right back into high level content and the new expansions without having to grind out levels.

As for the "Free to Play" aspect of the game, it really feels like you need at least one expansion to get a proper feel for the end game since the class elite specializations and amazing mastery system is locked behind the expansions. The base game these days feels more like an "introduction to Tyria" instead of the core content most players sink their time into. The base game still has a ton to do with full access to World versus World, PvP, fractals of the mists and world bosses, but without an elite specialization you might get left in the dust at higher skill levels.

I bought the original game about 6 months after release, enjoyed the hell out of it back then. Due to a bunch of reasons I didn't have the bandwidth and also couldn't dedicate the time to an MMO anymore, so had to quit half way through the first expansion. After life and my internet got more stable I picked the game up again after the release of End of Dragons. Still an amazing game, every other MMO has me thinking "why cant they do this thing like guild wars 2 does it". The game rewards the time you spend in it no matter what activities you participate in, never rushing you or making you feel like you need to catch up to enjoy the latest content. My old characters were perfectly fine to jump right back into high level content and the new expansions without having to grind out levels. As for the "Free to Play" aspect of the game, it really feels like you need at least one expansion to get a proper feel for the end game since the class elite specializations and amazing mastery system is locked behind the expansions. The base game these days feels more like an "introduction to Tyria" instead of the core content most players sink their time into. The base game still has a ton to do with full access to World versus World, PvP, fractals of the mists and world bosses, but without an elite specialization you might get left in the dust at higher skill levels.