I had a blast this weekend. This game is going to live up to most of the hype (it's not possible for any game to live up to all the hype because some hype is unrealistic). I played an elementalist and got up to level 26, leveled up jewelcrafting and tailoring to 90+. I didn't mess around with PvP during this BWE, but I will during the next one.
The lag and connections were really bad on Friday, but by the end of the weekend, it was SIGNIFICANTLY better. I hope the next BWE runs as smoothly as the game ran on Sunday.
I like the concept of the dynamic events and many of them were very, very good. But there does need to be some tuning done (as expected for a beta). Most events don't seem to scale well. The difficulty can range from very difficult while soloing to trivial with 20 people around. I expect ArenaNet to have this worked out by the time the game is released. The other problem with the dynamic events was how often some of them repeated. Some were repeating within a minute of being completed, and that's just silly. Lots of people have been complaining about this to ArenaNet, so I'm sure they'll fix this to a certain extent, but in some cases I think they just need more DEs, which may not be feasible to have before release.
I love the combat. I've heard some people complain about how the game is all about spamming buttons, but that's just noob talk. I didn't experience this at all. In fact, when I tried spamming skills, my effectiveness went way down. I was able to solo several veterans and there's absolutely no way I could have done that if I just spammed skills and stood still like someone playing WoW.
This game really does have a next-generation feel to it. It's not trying to copy WoW or ride its coattails. It's trying to be something different. And no subscription fee, so I won't feel like I'm wasting my money if I don't play!