Guild Wars 2 intial impressions

Let me first preface this post by saying that this is the first MMO game I have ever played.  So most of this post will be from a "noob" perspective.  There are a few reasons I decided to check this game out, first was because I kinda got into Skyrim, and figured that a multi-player co-op version of this would be interesting, and a couple of my good gaming friends were going to get the game, so I figure it would help ease the learning curve a bit.  I also liked the competitive aspect of the game, the whole server vs server vs server, or as they call it WvWvW.  Last, and most important reason is because Guild Wars 2 does not have a monthly subscription fee really drove me to give this gaming genre a try.