As much as I begrudge many of the design choices Anet makes (cough paid build templates cough), gameplay-wise I believe GW2's present era is the best. I love the playstyle of Weaver, the current story surrounding the Charr is pretty interesting in my opinion, and I love my mounts. I absolutely loved Vanilla GW2 as well, but in hindsight that was primarily because it was new, and no one knew what was good or bad. Dungeons were absolutely brutal before people optimized the fun out of them, many of the hidden secrets/gems in the maps had yet to be found, and the world was dangerous (also because we hadn't yet optimized our classes). Power creep or no, it was inevitable that the world became a pushover. Such is the way with MMOs. See: Classic WoW.