Guild Wars 2 - A Shardless System?

When I finally got my copy of PCGamer and frantically read everything pertaining to Guild Wars. However, I am left confused as to whether GW2 is going to be a shardless (realmless or "serverless") system, similar to GW1. The article says "you'll have to choose a world to play in when you begin the game," which sounds like a sharded system.

One of GW1 strengths is that I am not forced to create characters on different shards so that I can play with my different friends. I can simply meet them in Lion's Arch in District X and start playing with them. Although the article continues to say that "a global character database will allow for characters to be easily transfer between worlds," I am still confused (and concerned) as to whether GW2 is a shardless system. Could anybody clear up my confusion?

I think it'll be that the worlds are servers, but pretty much just districts. We have servers now, one for each area (America, Europe, Korea, and more)

It means that you can choose to play on whatever realm you want.

But all character information will be global, so no matter what realm you are on your character and items are still accessible.

I'm pretty sure it's going to have realms, but they're going to be called "worlds". The difference GW2 have with most MMOs is the fact that you can change between worlds. Very cool.

How it has been explained so far.. (always subject to change)

They are changing from regional servers as in GW to a open-access system that allows you to choose between world servers each time you login. Each server will have a limit (not decided yet) as to max people.

So, if you live in Australia (currently Euro server) and want to play with someone in Taiwan (currently Taiwan server), you just both choose the same server for login - no switching regional server; no international districts.

I believe they said you will be choosing servers (regional only or various "sub-servers" within each regional server I don't know). Regardless, so far you will be allowed to change server/region any time you want instantly.