Bumping this because the game is out now, and it's pretty good. Also we were discussing it in Idol's thread about his pacifist WoW character, which got locked? (sorry, didn't mean to hijack it)
@shock PvP in Guild Wars 2. There's no pvp in the open world like there is in WoW, and there's only one faction. The two types of PvP are Structured PvP (sPvP) and World vs World vs World (WvWvW). In sPvP everyone has equal footing and you'll never be outgeared. In WvWvW the gear cap is relatively low and it's pretty easy to get the "best gear" in the game so that you're on equal footing with your opponents.
sPvP: You use the game UI to jump into an area that's basically a PvP lobby. There are vendors that will give you free armor and weapons. Your level is boosted to 80 and all of your abilities are unlocked. You can reset your character's spec for free as many times as you want. The setup for your character in this lobby and in all of sPvP remains completely separate from your PvE progression. There's a character you can talk to to get a list of PvP games, which looks and works very much like old school online FPS server browsers. You see a list of numbered rooms and see how many players are in each. You join one, and it plays a match, then cycles maps. The only game type currently is a capture and hold mode similar to Arathi Basin or Battle for Gilneas in WoW. Each map does have a secondary objective that's map specific though.
WvWvW: You use the game UI to reach this one as well. Your stats are boosted to 80, but you are limited to the gear and spec of your PvE character. A low level character isn't as powerful as a level 80 in good gear, but you can easily contribute to larger scale confrontations. This mode has 4 zones: 1 central zone with a massive castle to fight over, and 3 home zones for each of the 3 servers participating. This game mode is for large scale keep/castle sieges, and 3 servers fight for control, with the server matchups changing every 2 weeks based on who won/lost.
I should say a little more about the gear grind at max level. The armor/weapon quality coloring is similar to WoW:
Basic (white)
Fine (blue)
Masterwork (green)
Rare (yellow) - These are rarer, and sell for a bit more. Probably not worth using before level 80 because of the price.
Exotic (gold) - This is your goal for all equipment slots, unless you're going for a legendary.
Legendary (red) - It takes an obscene amount of time, materials, and gold to gather the materials to craft these. I believe they have the same damage and stats as exotics (maybe negligibly more), so they are purely for cosmetics. Some change your footprints to leave fire, shoot rainbows, etc.
All items of the same quality, at the same level, will have the same amount of stats/damage. Different prefixes will give you different stats, but for example all level 80 exotic daggers have the exact same damage range. You'll start in whites and by level 10 or 15 can easily be wearing all blues/greens. You'll see the occasional yellow, but you're probably better off selling those. You can pretty easily keep your crafting leveled up as you level up your character, and make yourself gear every 5 to 10 levels, so a yellow item won't last long. Once you hit level 80 you should craft or buy a set of yellow gear. Then you start working on exotics. You can get them from WvWvW, crafting, buy them, get them from dungeons, or farm karma for them. Karma is a currency you get for completing open world events, and a couple of the level 80 zones have exotic level 80 gear you can buy with it.
Once you have full exotics you're done farming. Unless you want another set with different stats, or want to go for some items for a different look, you won't need more gear.
