I've been playing GW2 since headstart now, my thoughts
- Nickel and diming on bank, bag, and alts sucks. No sub but an additional character slot costs $$$. 8 classes, 5 slots, you want to try all 8 you're gonna have to buy more slots or delete an existing character. There's a shared bank with only 30 slots shared between characters, which means most people are gonna end up purchasing additional bank slots. Bag slots are a ripoff too.
I agree with almost everything you wrote. Just a correction. You don't need $$$ to buy additional character slots, bags etc. You can exchange ingame currency (gold, silver, copper) for gems. I did it few days ago experimenting, where I exchanged 40 silver for around 140 gems. By paying with real money - which in my opinion is fair enough, since they have to maintain the game somehow - you just buy them faster.
Some additional notes from me.
- I am not addicted to this game although I like it. Either it is not revolutionary, or I am getting older.
- Crafting is difficult and cumbersome for me. I chose artificer and clothing(?) which both need salvaging items to raise up. So I have to kill mobs to get items, which I have to salvage, then go back to town and to each of the crafting stations, craft whatever I can craft, discover whatever I can discover, salvage the created items etc.
- I really like the system that different weapons grant different skills, I don't like though that as a healer elementalist I have good healing spells only when I use staves.