Guild Wars 2 Interview

After chatting up Guild Wars 2 designers Curtis Johnson, John Stumme, and Ben Miller about the game's "activities" - personality archetypes, feats, achievements, and that sort of thing - IGN has provided us with the results in an article-style interview called "Killing Time Without Killing".
Feats are another feature we discussed. Feats are like little daily achievements that give the player more immediately achievable goals that reward the player with experience upon completion. The feats vary depending on what you do. "One of the feats is just a simple kill-count," said Game Designer Curtis Johnson, explaining that as the player killed ten, twenty, a hundred enemies, they would complete that feat. "As that goes on and players reach each threshold, they get harder and harder to achieve." There may also be feats for slaying a certain number of different types of enemies. The idea is to both make casual players advance more efficiently in the time they are playing (like rested experience in other games) and to encourage a variety of actions. Feats run in the background regardless of what you are doing, and will reset daily.

Personality is another aspect being introduced. Previously known as diplomacy, in Guild Wars 2, it serves to establish the type of character you are playing. Over time, the way you respond to NPCs will categorize you as a certain personality archetype, and from there NPCs will act differently, and your actions towards them will change. The example we were given was the "badass" character who would use intimidation to obtain food or an experience buff from an NPC. A more honorable character might inspire the NPC to help, or talk them into it. The end result is the same, but the means are different. In that respect, personality is mostly cosmetic, but it aids players in getting into the spirit of their character. If role-playing is your thing, then personality is going to help you define and maintain your role.