Hi there, just like it is said on the thread title this post will contain spoilers. Please do not read this if you have not finished your personal story.
After completing my sylvari personal story and I feel like the personal story was at times ( mostly the ones at level 40+) horribly designed or that the feature itself was launched incomplete.
First things first, the game does not care of your character’s race or your past decisions at all. ( Especially if you are a sylvari)Near the events of claw Island either the game forgets that my character is a sylvari or my sylvari has a serious case of amnesia. You get reintroduced to Traherne and to the Pale Tree. This is an immersion breaker because you know Anet got lazy and instead of making some Sylvari specific lines they just said that it was not worth the effort or that the player would be unable to remember main characters in their stories.
However it would not be so bad if this was the only weak point. Later on you story splits (presumably) depending what you answered to the Pale Tree when she asked you what your biggest fear was. I personally had the path where I killed (unknowingly) my own troops and was confronted to a treacherous charr in the Pact. It was greatl interesting until the game said “Nope you picked the wrong story let me give you the right one” and arrives the Story mission “Battle of Fort Trinity”.
There right at the beginning of the mission I discovered that me and my best pal, a norn named Apatia (who I never even met nor was introduced to until this point) had discovered some sort of deus-ex-machina-orb -of-undead-slaying! Follows a real fun mission where you defend the Fort. Then Thraherne tells me it is time to go save my best friend Apatia! Yay! let’s forget there is this Charr killing our troops! That never happened! There followed this mission I just did not care about because really I never even met the gilr why would I care if she dies or whatever?
Then I tell myself: well that must have been a bug of some sort the story will become epic again! Nope. the game just decides to screw over the sylvari again!
Later on in the mission “mirror, mirror” it was described that I had to use a magical orrian mirror to kill an Eye of Zhaithen. I thought neat! one of the choices of my personal story is coming back to help me defeat the Dragon! Nah… Instead these two sylvari that I saved tell me that they got saved by Thraherne, that he got the magical mirror! (thats the 2nd time this guy steals the spotlight since he got Cadalbog which I found too!) I just magically became a stranger in my own personal story. This became probably the peak of my fustration in the game in 80 levels of gameplay because these 2 people I passed 10 levels helping just ignored me completely and forgot about me!
Finally it is also frustrating that once Thraherne gets introduced ( the 2nd time for the sylvari) it becomes more and more obvious that this is not your personal story. You are merely a guest in Tharherne’s personal story. You have become his sidekick and nothing more.
tldr; Arenanet have really not planned the Sylvari storyline while making the race an important part of defeating one of the Elder dragons.
Thank you for reading this post!