Game population by the numbers.

[Shelia]

Have you been under a rock for the 6 months preceeding the release of FFXIV (or of the many games that were released in horrible/disappointing states in the past, like warhammer online, tabula rasa, age of conan and many others)? because they did pretty much the same.

FFXIV is HARDLY an example for this. The devs BARELY listened to anything anybody had to say during Alpha and Beta. The game as it is right now is pretty much the same exact thing it was in Beta 1. While I'll agree Warhammer's devs were really in-touch with their playerbase, every company operates differently. As far as I know, every single one of the games you listed were rushed products. The difference with ArenaNet is that they're taking their time to make sure the product is enjoyable.

There's no solid information about the quality and polish of the game, nor about the possibility that some mechanics will actually work as intended or even be fun (public quests in warhammer, from which GW2 is copying for their own, sounded awesome on paper, but didn't withstand the test of reality).

The reason there's no solid info yet is because they don't even have a release date yet. hahaha
You can't expect "polish" if there's not even a deadline in sight (although summer released is rumored, considering beta testing started recently). ALTHOUGH. There are a lot of videos online that display ArenaNet's progress with the game, and showing off dynamic events. As far as public quests go... all MMOs copy each other, and ArenaNet has even blatantly stated things like "Yeah, we liked this feature from left for dead, so we did something similar with it in GW2". It's not like they try to hide it, they just want to incorporate the best from games into one big awesome MMO. ArenaNet is doing their damndest trying to figure this out so people have FUN, and it's not just a cookie-cutter, grind-until-you're-bored MMO.

Btw, don't confuse ArenaNet with NCsoft. The only games ArenaNet worked on was the Guild Wars series, which seemed to be met by good feedback.
http://www.giantbomb.com/arenanet-in...veloped_games/

NCsoft has the bad track record.

GW2 biggest issue I have right now is it sounds like a 100% solo game with some form of Semi-auto group feature which is really just a bunch of people soloing on 1 mob which scales up depending on how many ppl are beating on it.

If that is right I will never touch that game. Sick of solo mmos.

No, GW2 isn't solo. ArenaNet made an enormous emphasis on team cooperation in almost all their articles and interviews. They want people to be compelled to fight alongside each other, craft together, and participate in events with each other. They stated several times that they want to establish community.