Right so given RIFT was a flop in MY OPINION because I rapidly lost interest in it, I struggled to decide why I should post about another up and coming mmo.

Well here's a few reasons why:
- ABSOLUTELY NO monthly fee "Buy the game once, and you can play forever"
- Promises innovative personal story
- Promises innovative dynamic events
- Promises innovative combat

The story affects your characters development, regarding story and level and area progression, including in terms of skills. So take RIFT's idea of customising shit, and make it actually have meaning.
It includes dynamic events like RIFT, except they are not all 'oh no an invasion is occuring'. Events have meaning and follow up events that pertain to the results of the previous event.
It's art style is meant to be 'painterly', not realistic. This should give it some more charm.
Combat is more involved, no such thing as homing projectiles. it's essentially realtime.

watch this interview if youre interested. but if you bought RIFT I feel bad, because this game gives me more hope for a good game than that one did.
That said, I'd wait for a demo again before deciding anything, as with all games these days.

Was it the original Guild Wars that had other players running around in towns but when you left the cities etc. you entered an instance of the world with your group?

Yes.

Guild Wars 2 has changed that and is now a 'true' mmo with a persistent world. So the only instances are dungeons and raids.

Watch the interview there's tons of stuff brought up that sounds like a huge improvement on WoW and other mmos. That and no monthly fee makes it tempting.. but again, I'll wait and see

In terms of "innovative combat" they're doing exactly what DCuO did. Either way the game is looking great so far from the videos I've seen

in depth article here:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-23-guild-wars-2-hands-on

I like what I read.