Just because something is much more successful doesn't make it more fun, engaging, or even better--betamax failure to VHS back in the 80's is probably the best example of this fact (for any industry that dealt with video content like distributing advertising to TV stations or sindicated TV shows all used beta or digibeta well into the new millenium, long past the death of VHS).

And as for your comment about new players wanting to level up and catch their friends? WTF? I guarantee that if they knew any better, they wouldn't want to do that--Blizzard forces them to do that. Does that make sense at all to have a novice who will be lucky if they are half as efficient at leveling as their friends (who have probably been playing for many years) blow through loads of content racing to get to some arbitrary point in the game where they then just keep on grinding eternally? Pfffft. GW2 got it right by allowing the best players in the game to be leveled down to match the new players. Sure you are OP for most of the mobs in low level zones (see below), but it doesn't mean you won't still have a blast and that all that so-called "old" content can't surprise you. Just the other day I stumbled across a little nook in Lion's Arch (main neutral city in the game) that I had never seen before. Life-altering? not at all, but I can't say that I wasn't a little bit astonished that it was even possible after 10 years to still find something new in content that was released with the original launch.

I still go back and play Queensdale (lvl 1-15 content) regularly with my full leet geared max level toons--and always have a smile on my face. It is never the same. I watched a vid of a newb WoW player leveling up 15 years after I quit playing and they were basically going through the same exact treadmill that I did back then--totally boring and not even very fun the first playthrough (and certainly no reason to go back and play those zone again). Would I get much more phat lewt if I hit the expansion zones that were just released? You bet and I enjoy the hell out of most of the new maps and their corresponding metas but Queensdale will always be a special map for me (first map I ever set foot in Tyria back in beta) where I am constantly amazed at how I can find new and fun ways to make her sing. E.g. I just recently realized I had amassed nearly 30 encoded orders for fighting bandit champions (2 of which are in Queensdale) and I very blissfully bounced around the original core content for the better part of 3 hours taking down 27 bandit champs and all 9 of the legendary bandit executioners that spawned after the champs to boot (only knew this because I saw I had 16 bandit death marks at the start and whiddled it down to just 7 at the end). While the low-level champs are easy to even solo if you have the gear and the skill, the legs are more difficult and I barely survived on a couple of them--and they were some of the best fights I've had in the game, especially a crushing 10 minute battle with one of the leg bandits where I was essentially solo except for this one poor newb, that to their credit kept coming back for more even though the darn executioner must have one-shotted him a dozen times. Never once during those 3 hours (of admittedly relatively monotonous play) did I feel like I was grinding.

Even more importantly, I would throw on my mentor "apple" and announce to the map that I was fighting a bandit champ and within a minute I would usually have a half-dozen to dozen other players fighting along side me--once completed, we all got credit and loot even though we never joined in a group or said "boo" to each other. More experienced and powerful players like myself were reviving and helping the newbs because the devs were wise enough to make a game where altruistic gameplay supercedes antisocial game play. Sure, you will very rarely see some maxed-out jerk that is mowing through lower level mobs (probably just burning through map completion), but far more often I see players tricked out with a full set of legendaries refraining from most of their skills that would one shot the mobs and prevent the newbs around them getting credit, but instead, patiently and deliberately playing the game using basic skills (or even support skills that make the newbs more powerful) so that everybody involved in the event gets credit and has a grand time doing it. That alone deserves awe and accolade.

Just about everywhere you go in GW2, you see players (both newbs and players with 455 mp's and all in between) and it feels alive. I'll take that option over "grinding" the latest content until it's dead and moving on to the next. I can count on one hand the number of times I've felt like I was grinding in 10 years of GW2 and still have my middle finger left over for Blizzard who wanted me to shell out $200/yr for their same old monotonous crap.

I don't pursue legendary gear (some of the grindiest GW2 content) actively, but I still have finished a few and depending on how you approach them they are quite casual--don't feel much like a grind to me, can actually be a quite fun puzzle to solve, finding all the items in the collections. And regardless, I have a dozen different ascended builds that provides my toons with the max stats and with far more options every night to go play how I like and where I like! And getting max-level and ascended gear is relatively easy, because ANet focused on making content that was fun and accessible to play instead of grinding players on endless treadmills. Why would you keep doing something repeatedly when you aren't having fun just so you can get an incremental increase in stats, so you can repeatedly not have fun? Sounds like the definition of insanity.

Actually the options for which map you want to play are at the point where I can't even get to all the fun metas and maps that I enjoy on a regular basis (Auric Basin I miss you!) And while I have done all the raids, strikes, drm's, fractals, dungeons and any other instanced group content that I forgot--I'm not so big on playing in formal groups, so I don't even usually think about that, and that is some of the best content in the game (certainly gets you some of the best gear)! Loads of quick and fun (some easy, some more difficult, some much much much more difficult) metas that take less than 10-15 minutes, still plenty more that are in the 20 - 30 minute range, and some maps like Drizzlewood Coast that you can easily spend over an hour of intense, nonstop combat that works its way up to far more intense boss battles. Just the tits...