GW2 doesn't count because there is shit to do in that game other than level and watch some really bad story telling. If I had to play a leveling game, it would be GW2 for sure because they made an awesome world. But farming low level zones was as pointless as attempting to "gear up" at level 80.
If you were into the stupid grind of ascended gear, you needed stuff dropping from world bosses (those on a timer), but the "going back to lowbie zones" was just a matter of badly done scaling, you had X hp instead of Y and did 100 dmg instead of 10k.
EQNext is making me think that all those things like levels, tiers and so on, are things I don't give a flying fuck about, nor I care much about having multiple "classes" or skill sets. What makes or breakes an MMO for me is the combat and the setting. I can get behind Azeroth, as I could behind Norrath, while for example the Tera world was fairly uninspiring.
What I understood for certain is that: I prefer to pay 15 a month and nothing else for all my needs, the f2p option is nice, but I loathe cash shops that sells stuff you actually need to play without gouging your eyes out, such as bag slots and bank slots, but I'm open to discussion about character slots.
I also love playing healers, so a game without the trinity is "automagically" less appealing to me, there is something in filling up those bars at the last moment that gives me satisfaction and a relatively unpredictable gameplay (due to the occasional bad players). I don't mind a Wildstar / GW2 / Neverwinter combat, with dynamic dodge, aka the gtfo from voidzones button, but I want healers to be important, I can't help it. If I can mix healing and offense in some ways, ala disco priest, Cenarius Druid or Chloromancer from Rift, I'm even more happy.