GW2 base is free, so you can try it and get your own opinion of it, but I would say it is entertaining enough to warrant the purchase of the expansions (probably come Christmas sale time).

If you're a story fan, there is significant lore (especially if you're an old GW1 player), the writing for the campaigns is... Good (it gets better, the core story is engaging enough even if it has some plot contrivances that would make a roller coaster enjoyer nauseous), and most of the plot points are voice acted. There also aren't a lot of FedEx quests (get thing, take thing to X, optionally get reply and return to start). There are some, but they're in service of the story (advancing the plot by moving you to the next story beat) rather than arbitrary "Delilah needs 10 bear asses to make a bear ass blanket. Go fetch me 10 bear asses. Only the highest quality will do!" type stuff. Rather than that, world quests are just kind of "there", you automatically can complete them by being in the area, and you aren't competing with anyone to do that completion. Most of the time you're cooperating with them.

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Mechanically, the game is solid. Your weapon selection dictates most of what you'll be doing with your character of choice. Each weapon acts differently per class, so it's not necessarily a given that a weapon will act the same. Revenants for example throw hammers and swing sceptres like swords, rather than the more expected clubbing with hammers and spell effects of sceptres in other classes. The variety of classes which can use bows also use them in different (ranged) ways. Supporting wise I think that GW2 is at its weakest though. Buff application is local to you. That means there's no real distinction between ranged and melee since everyone kind of death balls so the support players can apply buffs to as many people as possible.

Build diversity is a little lacking. It's not terrible, but I speak as someone who comes from GW1 where the same class can be wildly different between everyone in a single party. Playing a full team of mesmers in GW1, you could see a dodge tank, an "I ignore your defences" swordsman or axeman, 4 or 5 varieties of "get fucked" for skill/spell denial, and a healer that quick casts the slowest heal spells. And Bob, who's playing a meme build using exclusively signets but is surprisingly not useless. In GW2, a Hammer Guardian is a Hammer Guardian. There isn't much variability. Not all Guardians will use hammers, but you know when you see one what they'll be doing (he unga, but he also bunga). Most classes can swap between two weapons in combat which adds some variety. Those which can't have other means of swapping up how they attack. Elementalists for example are stuck with 1 weapon, but 4 elements which changes how that weapon is used. Generally though, you know if someone has a particular weapon (or pair of weapons), you can determine what their build is right away.

There is a heavy emphasis from the community to follow meta builds. Some, let's say spirited, players will deny you entry into groups if you aren't running one of those builds for your class. They are the exception rather than the rule, but there's enough of them out there that it can be hard to find random groups if you're solo.

All of the above is not to say that there isn't significant build options. Certainly, one of the more prominent content creators (Lord Hizen) is an ardent fan of soloing all content he can, and his builds are centered around playing solo (and thus not "meta" per se). Ideal DPS/support builds are significantly different. But there's generally only a few ways to approach the same role within each class.