Feedback:User/Event Nexus/Jumping/Exploring with a Y-axis

I am ecstatic to hear that you can jump in GW2. Honestly though, the method in which this is applied will most likely make or break the game for me. I sincerely hope you have a free roaming environment in which you can place yourself on top of objects, and wall hop up mountains etc. as in you can in World of Warcraft. I have played WoW for 3 years and raided top level content; I am a hardcore gamer and I understand that is not what GW is all about, but I would never have started wow if gw had full exploration.

There are lush environtments, and crevices and cliffs... If only I could jump off some cliffs for minor damage and explore. I 'suggest' that you keep the instances (or world itself if it is persistent) just as amazingly large and as amazingly beautiful in Guild Wars 2 as they are in Guild Wars. I am no graphic designer, but I can understand that the reason much of GW is so 'pretty' is due to how you place layers on the environment. We can all see at certain camera angles that there is space behind a 'mountain' which is followed by another mountain, this being just one example. I have high hopes that you will deliver. An example of what I had wished GW1 to be: You go out into ruined ascalon and can climb the charred hills in a manner befitting you; You can go out into kryta and jump into the water and swim around; you can spend hours finding just the right path that allows you to scale a mountain in the shiverpeaks; you can get lost out in the desert.

I have spent extensive time playing online games. As it is currently documented, my WoW account is ~180 real time days, GW account is about 650hours, and runescape is at about 90 days. This doesn't include the hours in the past I had spent playing Diablo 2 or LoD, FF6/7/8/X, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, and Chrono Trigger, to name a few. I have extensive experience playing the best RPGs out there, and GW has that potential.

Along with this trailing 'essay', I have a few imperatives to make your game an amazing success, beyond market expectations:

1. Have a level cap similar to WoW's, with an appropriate # reduced from the outset to plan for expansions. Have the leveling speed very fast, so that a casual player (~2 hours a day) may hit the cap in perhaps 1-2 weeks. This also lets one fully immerse themselves in the zones as they increase in level, that often leads to forming 'bonds' with some zones, which takes the grind out of vanquishing or farming in that area.

2. Meet the aforementioned exploration/jumping expectations.

3. Don't just mention that there is lore for each zone, tell it and make it available. I -love- lore. It's what RPGs are about. But you have so many zones that have 2 sentences of lore and thats it. Off the top of my head Grenditch courthouse, Echovald Forest, Surmia, Old Kryta, and The Crystal Desert, before it was so. A former seat judicial power.... A forest with amazing ruins that have very little in the way of individual back stories.... A desert where 80% of the lore focuses on the Ghostly Hero, not his people and their trials, where they came from, why they left where they were.... And furthermore, how did Kryta and Ascalon even have wars before the searing? There is an enormous, gated mountain range/pass between them! Ancient history is the best kind; we see what is in the present, we know not of the past unless we have seen it ourselves or have been told.