So, I just completed the first “chapter” if you will of the story of my latest character: a sylvari ranger of the cycle of noon who dreamed of a white stag. After finishing this segment of the story and meeting the Pale Tree etc. I reflected on the experience and realized something bizarre and somewhat upsetting: I had not made even the slightest contact with Niamh, the Luminary of my very cycle, who, by all rights, should have been guiding me along my journey! Instead, the person with whom I had the most contact during the early stages of my life was Caithe of the cycle of night, who is not even a Luminary. After some research I came to a horrifying discovery: absolutely every sylvari character’s story features Caithe, playing the role one would expect of their cycle’s Luminary(i.e. that of mentor and guide).
After yet more research(combined with previous personal experience), I discovered that this issue extends to the other races as well: every charr character’s story, regardless of legion, heavily features the Blood Legion Tribune Rytlock Brimstone, every Asura’s personal story revolves around Zojja, a member of the College of Synergetics, and so on. This trend continues on into the higher levels: absolutely every character of a particular order has the same mentor(and, more shockingly, goes on almost all of the same missions), and, most heinously of all, absolutely every single character ever made will accompany Trahearne on his wyld hunt to cleanse Orr and become second in command of his Pact in the process completing, again, almost all of the same missions with the occasional choice between two or three different ones.
This is simply ridiculous. This game, rather than featuring the diverse cast of characters one would expect from a game with such a huge world and huge story to tell, instead focuses its attention on a small handful(around a dozen I estimate) of seemingly all-important people, with everyone else having a role to play only in regional happenings. When seemingly every important event that takes place in the story features one of the same small number of characters, it makes the game feel less like an MMO set in its own, unique world and more like a novel(the epilogue to Destiny’s Edge, perhaps).
On a related note, and rather tangentially, the story being told in this game, even outside of the “Personal Story” feels far too monolithic for the vast world it takes place in. Everything in the game is either about the elder dragons or some relatively small regional concern; there are no large subplots to flesh out our understanding of the state of the world. It feels far more like a game about the dragons than one about Tyria, the opposite of what one would expect from a true MMO.