When do things pick up?

I was in the demo and thinking about picking up the GW trilogy for 30 $ but I found the start to be just really slow paced and dull, I couldn't get a whole lot of time to play but the time I did I think I only had about 6 abilities and only 2 or three were worthwile attacks and I had almost no resources to spend on attacks so I ended up just autoattacking.

I've also heard that it picks up later but I'm still skeptical. When does it pick up to the point where things take strategy and such instead of just auto attack?

When do things pick up? It depends on which campaign you're talking about. In Prophecies, things get going a bit once you go to the Acadamy. (But it's still a rather slow progression) In factions the difficulty curve is pretty steep, Nightfall's learning curve is somewhere between the other two. I'd say new player would have to start thinking seriously about what's going on around him in factions once they reach the mainland and in Nightfall, the Consulate Docks mission is where the challenge begins.

The way each of the campaigns (except EotN) is set up, there are different spots along the way where the difficulty level steps up a notch.

The game gives you many hundreds of skills so you can create a huge number of varied builds, you can also have a secondary class which again adds to the mix of skills available to any one character.
Your energy pool to cast the skills gets bigger and you get skills to recover energy so you be doing a lot more casting as you progress.

The original game you have experienced so far is a slow paced game which is great for learning to play, however when you play for real you can choose to leave and get into the main game or indeed start your character in one of the other parts of the trilogy which are more faster paced.

Choose the game experience that suits you.

Theres 2 modes to GW. PVE/the story you vs the environment. PVP Player vs Player/ team gladiator fights.

Youre in presear id imagine... You can spend 20 minutes to as long as you want there. This game is simple to pick up, but there is a lot to learn to play really well. Average to below average gamers can do fine here and so can advanced gamers. There are guides to speed through the game or do a bunch of quests and learn the basic mechanics of the game. Basically you need a 2nd class added to your primary to leave the prophecies noob area. I believe mesmer is the fastest 2nd to add.

When you choose to get to the next area, you can't go back and do stuff. Not a huge deal for most and you can make a new toon for that later. Then you play through the campaign and max out at lvl 20. The storyline is ok and you can get through prophecies in a few nights of gaming with a little help or all by yourself if you want. Then you can access end content stuff and that's pretty fun too. All 3 campaigns have a noob area to start and the main story area and then some end content and hard mode/hm end content.

If you are a gamer that likes pvp, try that out asap. PVP is another beast entirely with a much steeper learning curve.

Well worth 30 bucks for most, but it does take a while to learn/master.

the game consist of one expansion and three campaigns, all sold together in a pack or separatly. In all three campagins there is a tutorial area. The demo plays in prophecy's wich has a double tutorial area. First there is pre-searing where you played the demo, after that there is the region called ascalon wich is also very tutorial based. That means that prophecy's has the longest learning curve. When only owning and playing that campaign you won't be max lvl before you are bout 75% through the campaign.

Factions is the second campaign and the designers recognised that the start of the game was too slow. So they made an ultra short tutorial. An experienced player can get to lvl 20 in bout 3 hours and have access to an huge amount of skills and max waepons and armor. new players would be max lvl in bout 10 hours of playing

In the last campagin Nightfall they decided to find a middle road, in my opinion they did a good job, though they made it lenghtier by adding some farming quests that are a bit grinding imo.

Nightfall is in fact the best option to enter Guild Wars, since it has the best paced tutorial. Prophecies is dull, boring and much too slow, and Factions is much too fast.

Regarding this "grinding" in Nightfall: Nope. I recently started a fresh character in Nightfall and absolutely didn't have to grind anything. Just by doing the primary and all secondary quests, getting every shrine bonus from the Sunspear scouts whenever I see a shrine, and no rushing anywhere it is possible to reach the level and sunspear point requirements automatically that are present in some of the primary quests.

Things get tougher as you complete the game. The goal is to kill stuff in 2-3 seconds. Stuff gets tougher to kill as you progress; new skills will be needed. And after you complete a campaign, Hard Mode opens. To top it off there are Elite dungeons.. It never ends.

I'm liking Nightfall a lot more than Prophecies, too. You may find the first ten minutes a bit redundant or overly hand-holdy if you're in pre-searing Prophecies right now, but that's because they changed the tutorial mechanic - you'll actually hear a mentor character telling you to left click, how to move, how to engage in combat, what aggro bubbles are, etc. But right after that you're thrown into your first mission, which is quite short, still - fun!

Don't skip the early side quests! Much money and valuable stuff (free rune of vigour, bags, expert salvage kits, etc etc) to be had there, as well as Sunspear points. I didn't know about the bounties at first, but it only took me half an hour or so to catch up using the bounties when I found myself short of Sunspear points for the second mission - that one actually does require some strategic set up to defeat the last boss if you do it on level - or possibly I just suck. The boss can change its profession at will, and it's got three of them, as well as being able to retreat into a solid form. I failed it I think six times, sat down and had a good think, rearranged my skills, rearranged some hero skills, changed the party composition, and then got it. As a previous poster mentioned, it takes another upswing at Consulate Docks (fourth or fifth mission, I think, definite Ode to Sam Peckinpah stuff :), and then again before you hit Vabbi, you've got to do some serious strategising. End game I'd rather not think about just now, but that's another quantum leap.

Quite a lot of the quests are fairly interesting, as well, instead of the generic kill ten rats, and you're caught in the middle of some very interesting political intrigue.

You need to be at rank 6 or 7 Sunspear for one of the primary quests in Kourna (mainland), but there are bounties there as well, higher than the ones in Istan, plus quests rewarding Sunspear points. Compared to the average MMO, though, it's no grind at all - again, maybe another half hour or hour at most to catch up. You can go higher with the title, and you will get higher ranks just by playing the game, but Sunspear General is the highest rank you actually need to advance the plot, and that comes very quickly so long as you're aware that there are bounty-givers (sometimes several of them) in every outpost.

My only experiance is with Prophecies, just a little taste of the other two; but IMHO things get a good bit more interesting at Yaks Bend, but If your an experianced Gamer; I would say do a little farming there level up to 15 or 16 and move onto Krytia Bigger Badder Mobs there lv 17 or So - they pack a solid Punch, I think they'll make yea think some. I prefer exploring to sticking to the story line; Make for the Cursed Lands, you'll see the name fits well. ; )