Back in Juny 2010 Daniel Dociu Said in an interview, that dev. team was close to 200.
Add to that music score and something very costly : big load of Multi-language voiced dialog, must be close to 100 millions.
Realistic looking graphics will always fail.
First reason is that they need top nocht game gear to be playable.
Then, as says before, you need a lot more work to make them realistic (animations). In fact going 100% realistic is impossible. Eve…
As for the need to form groups or parties, the dev have said the group mechanism was disabled for the demo.
The parties will become mandatory for the instanced dungeons that will make part of the end-game, and will be also present during the level…
here a 50 min footage of the demo (human ranger start).
With the in-game sound directly recorded from the demo-PC.
http://vid.buffed.de/v/mvzjEXAUHA7/Guild-Wars-2/Wartower-Spotlight-GC-2010-Folge-7/
enjoy !!