One thing I must say Vanguard has going for it is the gorgeous visuals, by which I don't just mean that they're far more realistic than those in WoW: Warcraft is kind of cartoony, on purpose, but there's still a heck of a lot of pretty scenery--I'm thinking here of Nagrand, which I first encountered at night and which nearly made me cry. Nothing in Vanguard has given me that experience yet, but there's a lot to be said for it in general; so far I've been to all of two landscapes, and they're both made me smile, at least.
The Raki (fox-people) starting area in Kojan is a temperate forest with a Far-Eastern feel; lots of drooping willows and cherry blossoms and elegantly angular conifers. Another Kojani island, meanwhile, is much more deserty; they've still managed to keep the Asian flavor in that, despite brown hills covered in scrub brush, one expects to find the Gobi rather than the Mojave.
Meanwhile, despite not being able to make a female character with less than a C-cup, there at least are different faces running around the place, and at one point in my quest to get to the desert above I encountered some floating islands1 that just made me smile. I'm sure someone of high enough level can visit them...
1: And also an NPC I decided to avoid, on the grounds that someone whose byname is "the Corruptor" was probably not a person I wanted to spend time getting to know.