GW1's story was extremely generic, yes, but it was well written. Good pacing, good sense of urgency, and a sense of importance to your character's actions. Can't really say the same for GW2.
No, GW1's story was awful for the exact same reasons as GW2's story, you're just letting nostalgia coat your point of view.
"Good pacing"? The pacing in Prophecies is awful, dragging out the story long past its welcome and introducing several factions and villains throughout the narrative without properly weaving any of them together. Factions' story, by comparison, is much too short, too short to establish Shiro as any sort of credible threat. Nightfall was much closer to a decent speed, but still not great. Neither was EOTN's story.
"Good sense of urgency"? All four of the games told their stories through quests that could be completed at any time, which led into missions that could be completed at any time. You were never forced to start the story at any point. That's literally identical to GW2's format, though GW2 is attempting to stretch its narrative into a much longer length than it can reasonably manage without some grinding in between parts.
"A sense of importance to your character's actions"? Yeah, you got to watch as your character royally screwed things up most of the time. In fact, a lot of the GW1 hero's "screw ups" helped create the problems of GW2. The Underworld leaking into Tyria in GW2? Apparently caused by too many people crossing between the two realms on a regular basis....oh wait, whoops. The War in Kryta helps establish the final defeat of the White Mantle and the Mursaat (who are both implied to still be around in GW2), AND it's been strongly implied that the hero helping Salma onto the throne has helped unlock the seals binding the Mad King to his prison (it's likely that in the upcoming Halloween event, it will be revealed that he in fact broke free of his bindings 200-some years ago and that's why no one has seen him). Winds of Change set the stage for the xenophobic policies of the future emperor and the subsequent exile of other races (like the Tengu) from Cantha, as well as the closing of their borders.
Put nicely, the player character in GW1 is a massive dunce who has saved the world, sure, but he's also done a lot of harm to the world too, setting the stage for many of GW2's problem areas. And there's no question that your actions have impact in GW2 if you care to look for them. Sylvari characters hunt down "Saladborg" (I know that's not its name, I'm being a brat) which appears later in the tale. The "Infinity Ball" from Asuran characters is implied to have played a background role in some later quests. What perhaps bothers me more is not that my actions have no consequence (because they clearly do), but rather the fact that I'm a second-stringer next to Trahearne, aka Kormir V2.0. I *hate* this poorly VAed prick.
Honestly though, GW1's story is pretty bad. What made me stick around was the brilliant world that felt unique and interesting. But the stories that the devs tend to write in that world are....not very good, and GW2 is just continuing that trend. Great world....shitty story.
