1) Yes, but this is part of the combat system.
2) Yes, I know atleast one.
3) No.
4) If you accidently sold something you could buy it back (since release). (I don't know if I understand what you want to ask else here.)
5) This depends on there you are. Some shopkeepers have a showcase (in bigger cities).
6) I don't know if this is fixed. I never bought my apples there.
7) Yes, you have to interact with a Trading Post NPC to get your money or items. But they aren't only in bigger cities.
8) No, they added some new stat combos.
9) Yes, but it is balanced better now (lower damage for lv 80 people then before).
10) No, they never did and I played over 6000 hours (Don't know what your problem was.)
11) Yes.
12) Events are scripted and restart with a timer. But i don't know what you mean with global zone because all maps are on one big megaserver. Your server choise is only important for world vs world vs world.
13) Do you mean the "heart events"? If so most are some kind of fetch or kill something.
14) Most colours are outside the gemshop. Far more than 20 (since release).
15) If you looted them they will disapear soon.
16) This depends but mostly yes.

Release date?

Unknown.

1) This is a setting in the Options menu.
3) Yes, at least the last time I played. There were items meant to be carried / traded that could be dropped and picked up.
8) Not sure what you mean - part of the selling point of GW2 gear is that it's standardized so there's no more inability-to-price nonsense. Lots of people like this. They have added more stat combos if that's what you're asking.
9) Yes. Again - one of the selling points of GW2 is to play with friends of all levels without ruining their experience.
10) They never have. I played to 80 and in WvW with green gear and did fine. I hate to say this, but it sounds like you really didn't learn how to manage active combat if mobs 2 levels above are curbstomping you.
11) Yes, and it's super annoying. But there's less of it!
12) Events repeat in all MMOs.
13) I'm starting to think you really haven't played GW2 at all. There are tons of events that aren't fetch quests - do you mean hearts or the story quest lines?
14) Buying dyes has has never been necessary. They used to be able to be mob drops, and they can still be crafted. The super-special Legendary ingredient dye bottle is much cheaper now through laurels.
16) This is true for almost every MMO - Wurms is the only possible exception I know of. Players + violence = mob drops = massive oversupply of whatever mobs drop, i.e. gear.

As for substance...this is a themepark MMO. Do themeparks IRL have 'substance'? No, because the point is to enjoy rides with friends. GW2 has enjoyable NPCs (sadly, mostly not the main story NPCs), some interesting stories and some terrible ones, decent worldbuilding and a good play experience. It's not Wurms Online, but it was never supposed to be.

I got to mid-20's with my Thief. Of the other 5-6 slots, 1 is empty; and the other classes are < 15.

Vista-Expoloration was interesting. The feeling that nothing actually exists outside of your own character was far too pervasive. Too many of the mechanics|systems that were overlain on-top of the "Player Stats" seem to exist solely for the mechanic itself.

The constant introduction of temporary content --- further emphasized that feeling that nothing exists.

And yes, I frequently got my head "ripped" off in the 5-20 level range, simply by crossing a zone boundary against mobs maybe 2-3 levels above mine.

At times I couldn't complete some smaller-to-medium "zones" solo --- due to the zone resetting every 5ish minutes (while in it) (no one else around) (including the thing you are fighting ... oops back to max-health).

Also, the scaling that is done (was done) to players going to lower-level zones, was also done within the combat mechanics --- when fighting mobs outside of your "allowed range". Which would cause massive damage when the combat-level-multipliers were done with your health.

So when I got tired of dying with my Thief, I brought out my "Beast" Necromancer ... only to find out the ad nauseam repeating event in that hometown regularly spawned level 10+ aggro mobs (beside the teleporter no less).... Good Times.

Also, the Dev's refusal to fix the targeting|moving issue due to the right-mouse button, nor address the zone-reset issue (especially in low-mid level areas that might only have one or a few people even in it) was somewhat galling. It's not like I was the only one having some of those issues. They were some of the most active forum threads, well until NCSoft closed the Suggestions Forum anyways.

Perhaps, it could be viewed as nit-picky... Yet it seems to me I've played Muds in the 80s and 90s; and various RPGs (over the years) that felt more "alive" than the Guild Wars "living world".

You could also look at the actual game mechanics - How the player Stats (Attributes), Skills, Equipment and the Environment work... It's likely an exaggeration but Torchlight's game mechanics are possibly more complex.

Just some facts:

1) If you only played some toons to max mid 20 you missed a lot parts the game offered later (traits, dungeons and so on). But this is O.K.. If the games is not yours you shouldn't spend more time with it.

2) They learned their lesson with temporary content (Living Story Season 1) and started to add permanent content instead (Living Story Season 2).

3) There aren't any empty maps in this game because they added a megaserver system. Each map is populated with people of all servers. If a map is full a seconde map is generated.

4) The suggestion forum is closed because people should write their suggestion in the right forum. A suggestion for PVP in the PVP forum, a PVE suggestion in the PVE forum and so on. So it is easier for the Devs who only work on PVP or PVE parts of the game to read what people like and want or dislike.

I think it's more dead than other MMOs, as for the so called "living stories" they were a pile of junk.

Trust me you don't want to see the game mechanics after the last patch (happened a couple of weeks ago), it's even more dummy proof. I can't imagine the game's population trying to play a REAL rpg, with real character stats and stuff.

That's quite funny you know about Torchlight, because it's not far from the truth :-)

I'm pretty much playing the game for what it offers, never spent a real cent for gems or anything and paying 45e for an expansion they barely gave any details about is a rip off. Maybe I'll get it on a decrepit discount at some point.

I agree that they have to stop dumbing down the game mechanics. I had just gotten used to all the changes from the prior overhaul, which all seemed to be for the worse, and now they went and wreaked it even more.

Yeah, getting to 20 means you barely finished the tutorial zone. You never saw most class skills or even touched traits. Levels go to 80.

Listening to NPCs scattered around or going off the beaten track really helps the worldbuilding. Temp content is annoying, but I'd rather have that than what happened to Kessex Hills.

Zones don't reset, so I'm not sure what the issue is - are you talking about mobs in an event being pulled back to the event center, a heart, being asked to move to another instance of the megaserver?

It sounds to me like you really never did get the hang of GW2 combat - it's very different from typical MMO combat and emphasizes positioning a lot more than many other games I've played, even SP games. At 20 you would barely be functional in combat after the NPE changes which delayed leveling a lot.

Scaling is heavily impacted by your armor vs character level. Players are penalized if there's a big gap just due to how combat is calculated. Going to lower level zones doesn't make combat harder, but not having near-level gear or low-tier gear would.

GW2 doesn't do a great job of introducing players to all the reasons to stick around, especially after the NPE. If you want to try playing with someone else I'd be happy to meet up in game, or there are guilds like Legion of Honor / Operation: Union and events like Mapping Mondays to help people get involved and make friends.
I haven't played for the past few months - how did the trait system fix shake out?

Unfortunately I had to remove the game a month or two ago myself to make some room on my drive, so I haven't tried the new specialization trait system either.

The one they implemented last year, I didn't really mind too much when I got used to it, most builds worked out the same in the end, but they still removed some choice. The ability to unlock traits by doing stuff in game or with gold was kind nice addition though.

I'm wary of this new system, it looks like they're trying to appeal to World of Warcraft players with whole specialization thing and the removal of all stats from traits. I did notice they finally are doing something about condition stacking in PvE though, it will actually be viable to use condition builds in a group now without worrying about being useless due to maxing out stacks.

Zones Reset, otherwise they would remain empty when everything dies. And when the zone resets everything is restored to its default state. Perhaps the zone reset time-limit has been changed, but it used to be 5-10 mins for small-mid sized areas.

I hated the trait-hunt, it killed interest in new characters to need to do a huge scavenger hunt for every one. I'd played a bit with the first attempt at fixing it but haven't done anything with specializations.

I'm really looking forward to finding out how conditions have changed, I really want to run a condition Ele.

Yeah doing the hunt on all alts would suck, but for alts I just ended up paying money for the cheaper traits instead, and the expensive grand master ones are fairly easy to unlock just hanging out in Orr during peak population hours. Talking about the game again has got me curious so i'm going to re-install soon and check out new changes.