I thought I was going to be playing a similar game just improved and updated and it is so different I couldn't stand it.

Literaly me. I still consider it a far better MMO than WoW back then. Of course GW1 eventualy had its own issues too, but I was heavily invested in the GvG aspect. The competitive pvp along with the complexity of team + character building was truly unique.

I too hoped GW2 would be much closer to GW1 but instead GW2 is very much a complete pivot towards the more traditional MMO aspects, I was never a fan of the open world shit, GW1 wasn't even an "MMO" to begin with(I'm sure you remember these talks even back then lol) and if I wanted open world shit I would have picked WoW or whatever clone.

Yet even though the MMO community generally likes GW2, I can't judge, seems like a fine game on its own but its definitely very little to do with GW1.

A proper sequel to GW1 would be amazing but I'd hope its single player or even more instance restricted. So many good RPGs have scratched that character build depth since then and the PvP aspect, these days on the modern internet is just not appealing anymore.