To give you an honest answer, there is "PVP" in a sense, but I don't think it's what you are looking for. There are large open world PvP zones, basically you can farm mobs with a high drop chance, and flag up to be hostile to other players. I think once you get enough kills or stay in the zone long enough or something, you can basically become like the giga-target for everyone in the zone. You become shown on the map and everyone can focus you, and if you die you drop pretty GG loot. The problem I've seen (from videos) with the PvP, is that the current CC in the game is extremely OP. You can basically just be chain-cc'd to death and with up to 4 man parties I bet people could make shit extra cheesy if they wanted. So while I'm sure you could have a good bit of fun either way in the zone, it's certainly not balanced to be fair for all builds.
Also take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, as I'm playing in Hardcore mode and I wasn't really willing to explore the zone much and risk being ganked by some super-geared high level nerd. I also have no idea if there is any level-scaling that is in effect.
Here's a video I found that explains the mechanics with a bit more certainty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-bHV26CvxE
East