[Gnoma]

You realize that you only experienced a small fraction of the overall game, right? The level 1-10 game, for the most part, is just a tutorial to get you acquainted with the basic gameplay mechanic. It's boring but you can breeze through it in about 6 hours if you actually do the missions. Apparently you spent all your time in the explorable areas which are only intended to support the mission structure, not constitute the majority of PvE gameplay.

In fact the missions make the PvE campaign far superior to any other online or cooperative game I've seen. While the first few are rather simple and easy to get through the difficulty and complexity rises steadily throughout the course of the game. In one of the early missions you help an npc fix a catapult and fire it into a group of unsuspecting enemies sitting around doing nothing. Late in the game you are tasked to defend a fort from invading enemy forces and your team has to coordinate a defense using 4 catapults covering two approaches while keeping the guys that do get through from getting through the gates and attacking an important npc. The only major flaws are with the highly structured environment making the missions completely linear with one or two set paths and no significant deviation.

As for the loot, Guild Wars isn't designed to be a loot based game. It's mainly there to provide a slight measure of added character diversity, which doesn't really work. The difference between players is intended to be decided by skill set-ups and teamwork, not powerful items that require lots of time or effort to obtain. So you will see a large number of similar weapons with different bonuses that provide a small benefit to your character but don't make or break your viability in PvE or PvP. The crafted armor is there to keep your defenses in line with the type of mobs you will be fighting and you only have to upgrade about 3 times through your entire career. Apart from Fur Squares all the crafting items are readily available and if you save up the materials you get from missions you should have enough to upgrade at the necessary points. It usually takes 1-3 minutes to salvage and sell you stuff to a merchant at the end of a mission and you can buy the materials for pretty cheap from other players through trade channels or the materials vendor if you are short on something. I never found a point where I had to actually go farm or grind to get money or materials until the end-game prestige armor that offers no benefit to your character apart from a fancier appearance.

I haven't really tried the pre-made PvP thing so I can't comment much on that. Obatining the skills for it is an annoying timesink if you are only going through the PvE campaign for that purpose, but you get them at a nice rate if you are playing through the missions normally. This changes with the late game Elite skills, which are obtained by finding boss monsters that cast them then using a Signet of Capture which will copy the skill for your own use. The problem lies in the diffculty of not only finding the right boss mob for the skill you want but it can be difficult to get the mob to actually use the skill you need to capture over their normal mundane skills. However there's only around 8 elite skills out of 75 skills total per class and you can only have one in your line-up at a time so your character will still be strong without them.

And the major error in your post is that you are able switch your secondary profession about 3/4 of the way through the PvE campaign. You get 4 slightly difficult quests for the professions you aren't already using and once you complete them you can switch between them anytime you want. You will have to spend your somewhat limited number of skill points or go back and complete a bunch of quests to obtain your new secondary profession skills though.

Overall I'd give Guild Wars about an 8.5. The PvE is fun but short compared to other computer rpgs, whether mmo or not. The PvP gameplay has alot of depth but currently most people are going with cookie-cutter builds and it hasn't reached it's potential. Hopefully it will get more interesting as people gain access to a wider range of skills and realize how easy it is to shutdown a warrior/monk. Until then it can be tedious and frustrating as often as it is enjoyable.