Possible new player questions?

Hello all, I have heard of Guild Wars for sometime now however never really paid it much attention due to playing WoW. My wife and I have been done with WoW for about 2 years now though and are looking to start up a new mmo. I know Guild Wars 2 is coming soon and had a couple questions.

1. Does your toon carry over from guild wars 1 and if so will this be an advantage.

2. Correct me if Im wrong but in guild wars everything is instanced except cities. So out and about we would only run into people in our group?

3. Are there raids/dungeons like typical MMOs

4. Last but not least and what interested me most about guild wars and correct me if I am wrong but My wife and I can play just the two of us and fillout our group with comp bots if we would so choose and still basically play everything the game has to offer?

Any answers to these questions would be greatly appreciated.

1. Your character does not carry over, however you can achieve awards for in GW2, such as armor, weapons and titles, by filling out your Hall of Monuments in GW1. See: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-gam...-of-monuments/. Also note that your character names will be reserved for you to use in Guild Wars 2.

2. Indeed everything is instanced except for the cities and outposts. Do also note that GW1 is a team-based game. As soon as you walk outside of a regular town, you should have a full party with you (preferably with 1 or 2 healers) or you will be dying. A lot.

3. There are dungeons that can be done with 8 man. Besides dungeons there are several elite missions that are quite difficult and considered end-game content. The Underworld, The Fissure of Woe, Urgoz's Warren, The Deep and the Domain of Anguish are all end-game missions that function very similarly to dungeons. No raids though.

4. Yes you can fill out your team with bots. In every city and outpost there are henchmen you can add. Later in the game (in nightfall and eye of the north) you actually get customizable bots called "heroes". You can give them weapons, armor runes and custom skills.

Thank you for the answers. I have one more questions. Are there different servers/realms? I just downloaded the 14 day free trial and the only availible game is prophecies which I clicked on then the game just started.

Not in the familiar sense. You can play with anybody in the world at any time. Each outpost (town, etc.) has different districts for different geographical areas (edit: and languages), but you can switch between them at will.

I think you're referring to two different things here. In GW, we have "districts" (which are like servers) that are basically copies of outposts that people can gather in, they are usually designated by geographic area and language.
But what you are alluding to with Prophecies is what we call "campaigns" (which are like realms). GW has 3 campaigns and one expansion, which were released in consecutive order -- Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North. Think of the campaigns as continents. They each have their own map and storyline (and in the case of Factions and Nightfall, exclusive professions). When you buy the actual game, you're able to start your character in any of the campaigns, and can travel to any of the others once you reach a port city in your home campaign. You cannot create a character in Eye of the North but can also travel there once at a port city and at least level 10.

Unfortunately, yes, you're limited to just Prophecies (and its core professions) in the trial.

As said by the poster above; "prophecies" is one of 4 campaigns, and buying each campaign unlocks a new continent, and so new stories to play through. Think of it like each campaign being Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms/Northrend etc.

There are no "servers" like WoW - because the only persistent areas in the game are in outposts, there's less stress on servers - therefore you can switch servers, (or districts,) at will, within seconds.