Guild Wars 2

SPOILERS Ahead!!!

Hello everyone, I just wanted to talk about a character who is much hated, and perhaps rightly so.

You all know I’m talking about Trahearne, the wimpy scholar who knew things about Orr, and then received a sword and took over the orders and our story. ( He did not unite the orders, we did.) He does not look inspiring or talk inspiring, he just look like some guy who should be my Adviser at most. I would have been happier if it was some Famed hero, like a Charr or Norn, rather than an unknown Sylvari, which leads me to my next point.

I really expected Destiny’s Edge to be a major part of my story, but they were not, unfortunately, I was looking forward to working with them ( Apart from dungeons) I was really disappointed when I couldn’t.

I would have been GLAD to have seen them lead the pact and me as commander, just not Trahearne. to most of the races, hes just a random guy who receives way too much attention. But the Destiny’s edge members, we know about.

I agree, in any game, the players wouldn’t be king or leaders and stuff and I’m okay with that, just not Trahearne, please! his lines are bland, self centered and boring.
At one point, he even says " It is clear that you are the primary target, but the attack is OBVIOUSLY meant for me. (Roughly).

Seriously? And then this woman calls me Trahearne’s right hand man, and another says that the chances of us killing the dragon are WAY too low, but we might be able to do it with Trahearne’s help!!

This is supposed to be my story, sure Marshal is a hard job and all, but it doesn’t mean Trahearne has to be so condescending and important, heck, it doesn’t mean it has to be Trahearne!!

The personal story in this game had a LOT of potential, but it steadily declined from level 50.. I would HATE to play second fiddle to Trahearne AGAIN if I wanted to create a new character… This is really a mood breaker for me

I completely agree.

I was quite excited as I found out about Destiny’s Edge and the backstory of my mentor, only to have them all immediately scuttle out of my personal story into dungeons.

Did Trahearne steal my account or something? Where did he hide my warband?

I know it’s probably too much to change now, but if the personal story is expanded in future: could my character be the main character again? And can my warband/friends reappear?

I don’t think the warband can reasonably make a reappearance — same with your krewe or hometown pals. That’s just too much possible variation to take into consideration.

But there’s NO technical reason we needed a character to come out of left field and take over the whole show. The player could’ve been the one making the dramatic speech in the tree’s vision. The player could’ve been the marshall of the Pact. (The player’s the one that picks the direction the Pact is going in, anyway!) The player could’ve been the one folks were looking to to save the world. Just do what they did in earlier arcs — refer to your character by title (“Slayer” or “Hero of Shaemoor” or “Advocate” etc) and that’ll keep it generic without cutting you out of the loop completely.

Honestly I think it’s entirely for continuity reasons, same with Kormir jacking your spotlight in GW. They need to be able to say “Zhaitan was slain by Firstborn Sylvari Trahearne”. Not, “Zhaitain was slain by the commander of the pact but we know absolutely nothing about him.”

Twoflower.3176:

I don’t think the warband can reasonably make a reappearance — same with your krewe or hometown pals. That’s just too much possible variation to take into consideration.

You’re right about that, you couldn’t expect them to have any sort of influence on the plot. However, I don’t really need that. I’ll try to explain:

My sparring partner, Clawspur, never appeared in any cutscenes or had impact on the plot. He was right by my side for a number of personal story missions, and would occasionally make some incedental comment at the beginning. If I was sitting with a friend I’d spin my chair to them and say “That’s Clawspur! He’s like a thief/assassin dude. He’s my second in command.” I’d introduce my whole warband and explain how I’d recruited each. I was building a thing! I love that.

Their introductions tied me to their characters, the longer they fought silently by my side the stronger that bond became. (Especially when I found out I could have recruited different members!)

After joining the pact I’m having new characters thrust upon me every other mission. Good characters, mind: those two bickering Charr, I’m sure are secretly in love; that Asura with a hologram announcer fight-proxy. I could really get into those characters. However, after they’re introduced and I’m attached they’re whisked away again. I’m brought to the brink and denied the reward every time.

The only persistent character now is Trahearne. Due to this I stuck to him like a limpet. I couldn’t understand why my friend, who was further ahead than me in his storyline, couldn’t stand the gentleman scholar. As Trahearne rose to power and fame, I – like a shakespearean villain – became bitter and jealous. Friendly to him only on the surface. I feel that in a sequel, I’d be the maniacal end boss.

What really grinds my gears is that I can’t figure out how to phrase any of what I’ve said as constructive criticism, but it does bother me. It’s not really a feature that can be changed at this point. So, since I’m absolutely loving the game, and will definitely be playing any future content that comes out, I hope that this sort of complaint is acknowledged when that time comes.

Rather then uprooting him, and changing the personal storyline dramatically, add another part where we learn a lot more about him, we make him our friend and confidant and him us, and allow us to like him a lot more then people obviously do. Make him personable and a leader that was truely thrust into the position and does an outstanding job with it.. don’t just add a character we barely know to be the leader of the free races, without a background and have us blindly follow the guy through thick or thin.. make us love him, make us respect him. Thats what should be done, that way when we see him take up the mantle of responsibility we see exactly the internal choices he makes and respect him all the more for making it and being thrust into it.

Haha I like the way a lot of hate for Trahearne. I agree with most things but even the Sylvria story with him start to look stupid. It all get like that when you get to the point before the battle of claw Island. I was like really why are you beheaving like we never met at all. Then I site down and thought about it. This was because this part of the storyline was design for those who are not Sylvria. The same thing happen to the mother tree too and was like, really how come the mother tree do not recognise me one of her daughters. All I can say is there was, a mistake from when you first meet him for the claw island business, or it could just be bad write. Apart from that his a cool guy.

You guys may dislike me greatly for this, since you obviously enjoy a story.
But I’ve played on mute and skipping all the cutscenes.
The games been completed for a while now and honestly only found out that Trahearne is a self-righteous kitten from your post.

But the reason for my skipping and muting is because that storyline in new MMO’s tend to suck.
I’m waiting until they have everything just perfect before I put my surround sound speakers on, pull up the 3 screen HD displays and fall into the world of GW2.

Oh and I might also point out I’m gaming on performance atm. So everything is just several blurry shades of poop.

:D

I disagree that there was no way to include the earlier stages of your personal story into the later parts. They didn’t need to make your warband or Krewe an integral part but they could’ve shown up now and then to help out or just as part of the background, all tehy had to do was add some lines of text so you could talk to them before and after. Heck, it would’ve added to the ongoing world immersion and the characterization of NPCs you already had a link to.

Also, not sure why they would worry about continuity? They can call all PCs “Commander” and be done with it. We’re all Sheppard after all! Unless they really are destroying the personal story experience for a lot (most?) players in order set things up for secondary media like the books….surely they would know better than that? Most agree that very thing (outdated mechanics aside) is the biggest failing of WoW.

I’ve got a lot of grievances with the Personal Story (and with some of the world-building aspects in general), but I’ve got to say, aside from continuity problems and the disjointed nature of chapters in general, one thing I think is a major issue is that everything ends up exactly the same for everyone.

When the orders were first announced, I loved the idea that, as stated, they each had a different approach to fighting the dragons (“Vigil smash”, OoW wanting to put them back to sleep, the Priory searching for historical references and relics, etc.), and I feel that if this was embraced ’til the end, we could have alleviated a lot of the problems we had here.

Allow Trahearne to be Marshall, but instead of just leaving us as a generic ‘Commander of the Pact’ regardless of our prior choices, give us a partner based on our order, and have our path to take down Zhaitan be dependent on that. Have Trahearne just give us general authority as needed, but otherwise take a back seat. The story could then have 3 (or more, depending on the degree you’d like to implement prior choices into this) distinct endings that all have the same result; Zhaitan is dead. Or if you really must have everything converge into the same “plan” in the end, then it could be that all 3 orders enact their plans in parallel, so you only see a part of what it takes to ultimately bring him down.

Basically though, Trahearne could have still had his story and been the “Leader of the Pact”¹ without being ever-present in yours. Kahedins didn’t do much at all in the first part of my story, and Steward Gixx didn’t steal the show in the second part either, so had Trahearne been left as the general “glue” binding the final paths together while not consistently being thrown in our faces, I’d imagine he would be considered much less of a burden and would be far better-received.

¹ vroom, vroom, vroom!)

The problem with the story isn’t the fact that they had to give credit of slaying Zhaitan to another lore character.
The problem is that that they did it in the worst possible way.

The existence of Trahearne just isn’t necessary. There were way better candidates for doing everything he achieved by a character or characters who actually makes more sense.

Let me explain why.
The pact doesn’t need a marshal to begin with. It could very easily be 3 completely autonomous orders fighting for same goal with an agreement of co-belligerence as every order already has a leader to begin with.
Every order gets attacked by Zhaitan at one point + the claw island incident, after that the threat should be enough to motivate all 3 sides to sign at least a co-belligerence pact, if not a even an alliance.
You could still shovel everybody to Orr AND your order would still maintain its identity, as it’s still being led by it’s original leader. (not to mention the focus of the personal story could still be kept on you)

Now to the next point.
The cleansing of Orr
It could have been easily done with Destiny’s Edge and it would have made more sense in lore standpoint.

Well known band of heroes, introduced to every player at very early stage in posession of not 1, but 2 Legendary human swords having divine power in them performing the cleansing of Orr, a human holy land?

Absolutely no reason to invent a new character to perform this as the Destiny’s Edge is quite clearly the more sensible choice.

Why does Trahearne exist? The only real qualifications he has is to become an advisor and even then there are people who have studied the subject longer than his entire race has existed.

There simply is no other reason for the existence of Trahearne, except the fact that somebody fell in love with their own character so much that he thought “You know what? screw the other characters, this is about this guy now.” They literally shove him to your face and expect you to think that he is the next best thing since sex, despite never been given a single reason to like the person.

The real kick in the teeth is the fact that every NPC constantly praises him like he is some sort of holy man and how with him they finally have a chance. Completely disregarding the fact that whenever he goes to fight ANY enemy 1 on 1, he dies.

EVERY SINGLE TIME

I can’t read too much of this thread, as I am just getting into the Trahearne parts, but I’ve heard enough and can see the shift from My Story to This Tree-Who-Came-From-Nowhere’s Story.
One of the things I loved so much about GW2 was the personal story. Just about every other MMO out there has your character a small part of what is actually going on, you’re just a soldier in an army who is slightly elevated above fodder.
Following the Personal Story was so much fun, made it so much…well, personal. Then, suddenly (and really, I mean suddenly, out of the freakin’ blue) this Sylvari comes along and it is rapidly becoming all about him. From my character’s story I didn’t even know who he was until he showed up and now everything is all about him. It is something I really dislike…borderline despise.

After all, “This is My Story” is how it starts off. Now, I don’t know how all the quests go, like I said this is just how it is currently showing, but from what I hear from people further along the story line is that it is still all about him. It makes me dread continuing the story, because frankly I don’t care about Trahearne at all, not the slightest.

Same complaining and same argument in this same thread tons of people made. Yes i do agree that he was introduced in a bland way where most people don’t know him well enough but right now I’m holding off hating Trahearne until we get to know him a bit more in the future Acts of Personal Story Anet is still working on. So far Anet still follow the story that Action makes the true hero and not fame.
Yes history wise Trahearne will get the credit but reality wise the real hero is you despite not getting the fame. So far the story doesn’t follow the Savor of the world stuff for our character who people build statues and tell stories of but the path each people must follow to make defeating the Elder Dragons possible.

Trahearne being the founder and leader of the Pact which is the only army that can stand up towards the Elder Dragons
Destiny Edge being the ones who will truly defeated the Elder Dragons
Our Hero being the one who will make these possible being not a hero but a person who chosen to do what others did not. Not for fame, fortune, nor glory but for protecting what he cares about through those choices.

Umm OP, It is true that most games don’t allow you to be the hero people talk about and build statues for the player, and we made do with the fact that at least we know what we did, we know we’re the true heroes and that sort of stuff, but Guild wars 2 wanted to CHANGE that, it WANTED to make us the hero, it promised that it would make it so, if this was just another MMO, this thread wouldn’t exist. So think about that.

Oddoad.5478:

Rather then uprooting him, and changing the personal storyline dramatically, add another part where we learn a lot more about him, we make him our friend and confidant and him us, and allow us to like him a lot more then people obviously do. Make him personable and a leader that was truely thrust into the position and does an outstanding job with it.. don’t just add a character we barely know to be the leader of the free races, without a background and have us blindly follow the guy through thick or thin.. make us love him, make us respect him. Thats what should be done, that way when we see him take up the mantle of responsibility we see exactly the internal choices he makes and respect him all the more for making it and being thrust into it.

I really like this solution. While it would do nothing to improve the poor dialog writing, and the less-than-inspiring voice acting, it would at least give every character, regardless of back story and race, a chance to get to know this character that becomes so all-important to the plot. No more of this BS crap of “Oh hi! So even though I only just met you, and know nothing about you, and despite the fact that you really aren’t that inspiring or interesting, I’m going to follow you everywhere and do whatever it takes to help you achieve your goals. And sod my own goals, and sod my friends that I had before you too, and while we’re at it, who. really care’s about those Destiny’s Edge has-beens, let them run themselves ragged in the depths of the world if they want, we don’t need them”!

By adding in new personal story content that allows us to get to know Trahearne, and ideally that also gives some in-game reason for the absence of our friends in all of this (maybe they are off on some other highly important support mission that enables Trahearne and us to do what we do together), we could at least feel like the story is still a little more our own, and we could feel like we have reason to follow Trahearne around.

Basically, we need a reason why we are so vested in Trahearne’s success, something above and beyond the mere fact that the content writers wanted it to be that way. We need some practical reason why Trahearne is the right person for the job of Marshall of the Pact. We need some plot reason why Trahearne is the one who must wield Caladbolg (as opposed to anyone else), and for Sylvari characters, a solid reason why the Pale Tree gave it to him instead of us. We need some reason why Trahearne is the chosen one who must defeat Zhaitan, and some reason why he alone can accomplish it.

I’m ok with playing second fiddle to a lore NPC, IF there is reason why it must be so. But the way the personal story plot line goes right now, the character that becomes the “main” hero of the story is entirely superfluous and expendable. Remove Trahearne entirely from the story and you get a story that is virtually unchanged. Replace him with any other character, and the story would see no great difference. That, I think, is the fundamental problem with him.

As gamers, most of us are used to hearing/seeing poorly written dialog, and we are used to having voice acting that just doesn’t quite work. We also generally allow such things to slide in favor of a good story. The problem with Trahearne is that there isn’t a good story to distract us from the flaws in the dialog and voice acting. The story itself is disconnected. There is no flow for players, no immersion, no engagement, no emotional investment. There is just no reason for us to care about the new hero that is foisted upon us. And the result is that many of us secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) harbor ambitions to assassinate the guy after the dragon is defeated. And while I agree that seeing this supposedly great and powerful hero that is the hope of the world die CONSTANTLY is a serious disconnect that must be addressed, at least we can use it to fulfill our fantasies of watching the annoying sot die horribly, even though it must be vicariously and not at our own hands.

Anyway, I’ve sort of gone all over the place with this one, so allow me to summarize. Essentially, we need some better reason (especially for non-Sylvari characters) to be invested in Trahearne’s success. And I think that Oddoad’s suggestion of new intermediate personal story content, where we get to know Trahearne and have reason to follow him, is a great way to accomplish that. And such content could also be used to give worthy explanation for the absence of our prior story companions (the one’s we actually have an investment with). Such a solution would require quite a lot of content development, and would also require new cut scenes to be voiced. And that process would certainly take a great deal of time (and no small amount of money I imagine), but it could be so very worthwhile and could potentially salvage a story that at the moment is strongly disliked by the player community.

I’m hoping Anet kills Trahearne in future content. Either kill him or knock him down so hard he can’t get up. Not because I particularly hate him (although I do agree his role in the plot is super questionable), but because as long as he exists, I don’t see any real way the player can be anything more than a sidekick. I don’t see how, while he exists, the factions can regain their autonomy and separate from the mindless blob that is the Pact.

I don’t think the Pact is a terrible idea, but I was really hoping the end was going to be like Dark Saviour mentioned. I was hoping that, by choosing the Vigil, I would be engaging in a massive ground war with the dragon. I was imagining, after the earlier Vigil missions, 100 NPCs on the ground against a gignormous dragon and his minions, similar to the Claw Island, only magnified. I was also hoping the Priory and OoW would do something different for their end missions. Have three massively separate events that are defined by your order. And then, if you want some final event that’s the same for all three factions, if you want players to descend into Arah regardless of their orders, I would be ok with that.

The way the personal story is now, though, I feel as if none of my choices matter. Yeah, cool, I recruited some Grawl a long time ago as part of the Vigil, and they showed up in this one mission. Why is that the extent of meaningful choices? Every choice I make feels like it has no real impact. Every choice given results in a generic “Progress the Pact further” and doesn’t really reflect MY choices.

I understand the massive difficulty presented to the devs when people say things like “I want my personal story to matter!” when there are what, a few hundred possible combinations of personal stories, just out of character creation? I didn’t honestly expect that my “Protector of the mists” backstory would account for anything towards the end of the story. I had hoped, but I didn’t expect it. The Vigil, however, is something that has the setup and appearance of being a constant presence.

To give the devs credit (or give myself some optimistic hope), I haven’t gotten to the Pact on a second character yet. My alt will probably hit it today, and I’ll see if the OoW offers anything distinctly unique that the Vigil didn’t.

If Anet listen to its player base they will cripple him beyond repair, no need for him to die as they may need him for lore or future content but it would show that Anet has listened and cared.

Let it be known the pact is lead by a Necromancer, because Necromancers are win.

While I can’t comment on end story aspects yet, I personally find it terribly jarring to build relationships with your orders’ members and your race’s Destiny’s Edge member only to have a scholar foisted upon you at Claw Island to play buddy with you for the rest.

I mean, I am glad that DE try to get together and work through things in the story modes of dungeons, but it feels like a big fork in the story with one side having all the appeal and build up and the other coming from nowhere and feeding into an NPC’s ego.

The storyline has so far made me feel like you character is the “Hot Potato”. You are simply bounced around from one person to the next until you are supplanted (wow supplanted by a plant person how ironic) by Trahearne. You then become a lackey for him. I have said this before and I am putting more and more belief and strength behind the statement, “Aim for the Middle.” You aren’t the hero, you are the lackey. You simply are the right hand person of the primary person that steps out of nowhere to take over the role of bringing down the primary threat to the land.

The storyline I was enjoying up until the entrance of his character. I did feel like they introduced and simply let characters drop off the face of the planet. It felt disjointed and a very much rushed, however still enjoyable. Then getting supplanted in this manner was simply poor thought processing on the story line. Yes you are still involved in the story but only by doing the bidding of some unknown person and you really are just a sword at his disposal.

Blah it really kills the replay-ability of the story line since you simply get to watch someone just step in and boss you around.

TL;DR. Basically, you’re a lackey at the end of the story, and some walking cabbage is the ‘real’ hero. Worst story line ever. Basically some really bad writer fell in love with his own creation and makes you the backdrop to the chosen one’s story. You’re nothing but a boot licking, lick spittle toady to the true hero – Mr. Rutabaga head.

I quite enjoyed the Norn personal storyline until the Claw Island part started and where the entire story shifted in to another generic main story (or Trahearne’s personal story if you want to put it that way).

While I don’t mind if my character isn’t the hero, or if she is following some mentor/being a sidekick to another character etc. But I would at least expect that another character to be someone who my character could look up to / respect lore wise.

Take Eir for example, she has a proper background and is already established as a hero in the lore – sure, things are going bit rocky for her at the beginning of GW2 story – but that doesn’t take away her achievements and she still is someone my norn could look up to and hope one day I could establish a similar legacy. (After all, isn’t that a huge thing for a norn?)

Now on the otherhand, there is Trahearne: He suddenly appears in my story, with barely any background to speak of – besides that he knows stuff about Orr and some people also know him – and then he proceeds to blatantly hijack it by taking credit for a lot of things that others actually make happen.

To make matters worse, each time Trahearne appears in any story mission it is very rare that outside of scripted events/cutscenes he does anything else but:

A) Pretend that he is fighting
B) Followed by waiting face flat on the floor while everyone else is clearing the risen
C) Pose in his own glory (while invulnerable) and do nothing to help while everyone else is fighting

It certainly makes me wonder why my norn appeared so eager to follow him, after all, he seemed to have no combat prowess, everyone seems to be doing just fine without him and my character knew next to nothing about him expect that he pretty much just pointed himself to be the marshall so he can bark those Commander, Roll over, sit, fetch, play dead orders.

Perhaps he was intended to appear otherwise or perhaps you need to play the Sylvari storyline to get a better impression of the character. I don’t know and to be honest, after finishing the core storyline – I can’t say I care or even want to find out anything more about him.

In my opinion Trahearne was an awful character and I dearly hope that is the last we see of him in any GW2 storyline, though given his role in the Pact it seems rather unlikely which is a shame.

You do know what is Ironic about this character? He is a Nercomancer…. tasked to kill a Necromantic/undead dragon… never mention how annoying his hijacking of the spotlight is.
I would have loved more action with my Iconic Race leader instead of being babysitter for a inpromptu <insert random uninteresting character here> guy.
The story was alot more interesting and enjoyable before the Tree entered the show.

It’s cool, Trahearne is going to fall to the allure of necromantic arts. You could tell by his devotion to Orr and it’s rituals the Risen beasts. He’s going to be corrupted, in the best way a villain can be – you can also take his side and see where he’s NOT the Villain. He has to.

It’s the best way to make him interesting.

Enerjak.2475:

Let it be known the pact is lead by a Necromancer, because Necromancers are win.

Then why did he reroll to get a Greatsword?

/bull rush

I’d rather they ‘fix’ Trahearne in the future, instead of killing him off. Letting him die is such an easy thing to do, especially for Anet. Honestly, who doesn’t die or disappear in the story? It would be a much greater accomplishment to turn him around and make him a loveable character that we can all relate to. I could see this being done if they allowed us to go revisit his character’s roots and discover more of him. After all, He does seem to have an interesting little back story. It would be a shame to throw all that potential away.

PsionicDingo.2065:

Enerjak.2475:

Let it be known the pact is lead by a Necromancer, because Necromancers are win.

Then why did he reroll to get a Greatsword?

/bull rush

Now that I think about it… Necro + Guardian (he had Guardian greatsword skills) would be pretty epic.

warning spoilers abound*****

i think part of the trouble… is that we’re simply told by our order leader… that trahearne did something really important for said leader. and that’s it… and then we help trahearne along his path of the wylde hunt, and then as soon as his quest is over, bam, he’s done. “here, take over the pact commander, and good look taking out zhaitan!”

i actually semi respected him for raising a glass with me to Tybalt every now and then throughout my story, especially since he helped Tybalt and me rescue Demmi from her father’s agents by sneaking her out of lion’s arch… but then to just simply quit once he accomplished his wylde hunt? that would have made a LOT more sense if he was almost fatally wounded during “against the corruption”… but that obviously wasn’t the case… after everything we’d been through… i rather felt abandoned, even if he did basicly step down as marshall…

In terms of narrative, I honestly thought that Anet would have learned from Nightfall that you shouldn’t have an NPC take the spotlight from the player.

@Forgotten Legend

Trahearne is till the leader of the Pact. At that point of the story he only made you the temporary Marshall because he was greatly weakened from purifying Orr. After all did you expect someone to purify a entire Nation from the corruption of a being powerful enough to change the very face of the world without suffering a horrible withdraw from using such a powerful magic?
Trahearne did state that he can’t go because of his condition and also if he had gone with us he would of been a burden to because he was in his horrible condition.

I’m sure they would have found a way to make him leap off the airship and deliver the killing blow to Zhaitan with Caldabolg while Destiny’s Edge cheers him on had he come along.

Trahearne ruined the whole story for me.

Its all about Trahearne and you can come to, but don’t steal any of the glory from TRAHEARNE. Hes the real hero, chump.

agreed with the OP, I loved my personal story, literally up to the moment where Sieran died and Trahearne pushed me out of the spotlight like he is one of the Hodgetwins “get the f—- outta the waaay!” . I too would not have minded if Destiny’s Edge would have been the center of attention, hell, I had the feeling it was setting up for that after I arrived in Lion’s Arch with the storyquest. Then all of a sudden this dude comes in and starts commanding me around.

I lost all connection to my character and became Trahearne’s lapdog, while the first parts of the story set me up as Zojja’s lapdog, no, she even treated me with more respect than he did (go figure). I would have been fine with that, instead I am serving this narcissistic prick.

Drake Phoenix.6158:

By adding in new personal story content that allows us to get to know Trahearne, and ideally that also gives some in-game reason for the absence of our friends in all of this (maybe they are off on some other highly important support mission that enables Trahearne and us to do what we do together), we could at least feel like the story is still a little more our own, and we could feel like we have reason to follow Trahearne around.
Basically, we need a reason why we are so vested in Trahearne’s success, something above and beyond the mere fact that the content writers wanted it to be that way. We need some plot reason why Trahearne is the one who must wield Caladbolg (as opposed to anyone else), and for Sylvari characters, a solid reason why the Pale Tree gave it to him instead of us. We need some reason why Trahearne is the chosen one who must defeat Zhaitan, and some reason why he alone can accomplish it.
I’m ok with playing second fiddle to a lore NPC, IF there is reason why it must be so. But the way the personal story plot line goes right now, the character that becomes the “main” hero of the story is entirely superfluous and expendable. Remove Trahearne entirely from the story and you get a story that is virtually unchanged. Replace him with any other character, and the story would see no great difference. That, I think, is the fundamental problem with him.
The problem with Trahearne is that there isn’t a good story to distract us from the flaws in the dialog and voice acting. The story itself is disconnected. There is no flow for players, no immersion, no engagement, no emotional investment. There is just no reason for us to care about the new hero that is foisted upon us. And the result is that many of us secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) harbor ambitions to assassinate the guy after the dragon is defeated
Essentially, we need some better reason (especially for non-Sylvari characters) to be invested in Trahearne’s success. And I think that Oddoad’s suggestion of new intermediate personal story content, where we get to know Trahearne and have reason to follow him, is a great way to accomplish that.

This^. Nuff said. Got my point accuratly and wrote it into beautiful flowing goodness I do not have the tallent for. Do this and the games story will be saved. I love the storylines in games. ME series, DA, FFVII, and countless countless others have made me whoop for joy at the historic endings that have the power to bring tears to your eyes and weep with frustration, horror, anguish, and best, Happiness, pure joy at the most amazing ending you can think of to such a long journey. Where it feels like you just spent your life watching the best 50 hour movie of your life instead of playing a repetitive game that is really just a honest time waster to escape your misserable paying job, your small dumpy kitten apartment, and your girlfriend complaining at you to do something with her.

Thats why when I finished my movie I was left dissapointed, there was nothing epic about it, the dragon dies slowly while being pummelled with cannons. (like that was hard) The story leading up to it is hijacked by a character you have no reason to love or respect, though the entire time you are just hoping for a reason to make this man your king, your leader, a man you would follow to the edge of the earth for at the drop of a hat, and then asked if it was his pleasure for you to jump, and if he said yes, you would. No hesitation.

But this wasnt a movie, it wasnt a epic tale of loss and love, of friendships forged in battle or a king you respected enough to die for. Not even a tale of just grizzly war, and the tragedy that it causes, the reality versus the fiction, where war is not glorius, not pretty. (and yes, thats me saying that particular story step im referring to was awfully written) No. This wasnt a tale of any of those things. It wasnt even “My story”. It was just another escapist activity poorly written to look like a bad amateur roleplay forum.
I do love your game btw Anet. Just wish you had spent more time on these things.
^ well that and making dungeons actually fun and worthwhile. Otherwise the rest of the game is great. <3

I am (reluctantly) playing through the personal story with one of my characters. With the rest, as soon as I see the words “Claw Island” appear that’s when I stop engaging with it. The cultural and order aspects of the personal story are (generally) fantastic (especially the Charr ones) but pretty much as soon as Trahearne is introduced to non-Sylvari characters (who have to put up with him much earlier sadly) it all goes to pot and I start skipping scenes and falling into a “just give me a fight and some loot” mentality which, given the beauty of the early game is a terrible shame.

Nimmi.1650:

I’d rather they ‘fix’ Trahearne in the future, instead of killing him off. Letting him die is such an easy thing to do, especially for Anet. …..

I’d rather they don’t. Kill him off and start again I’d say. I’d like my story back, not for his to try to un-sour me on the character.

I had no problem with him the first time thru.

I’ve got a 2nd 80 now, almost done with the personal story line.

Most of the later part of the story quest is the same or nearly the same for everyone and so many of the steps are so long, tedious, and boring, that I can’t see ever doing it all again without vomiting.

Plus 2nd time thru Trahearne is so annoying that I want to skip thru all of his dialogue but some are forced and it’s brutal.

I swear it seems mostly everyone’s solution is to kill Trahearne. You people need to find other ways to make a story better than kill off a Main Story character because from all the games with horrible story. When they start to kill off characters people don’t like they only end up making the story worse by having a even worse character people hate more take his or her place.

Besides, i don’t find Trahearne much of a issue but just underdeveloped compared to the rest of the character casts. Anet just need to expand more on Trahearne background so we have a better understanding of this character. He even has a better understanding of his situation compared to the other Main characters we meet.

Trahearne isn’t a bad character, but the way he gets awkwardly placed into the story as a result of every ten levels being a completely disjointed story segment just really doesn’t work out.

It’s not a big deal if you’re a sylvari because you already know who Trahearne is. You know what a wylde hunt is, you know what Caladbolg is, you have more background on Trahearne’s research into Orr. Other races meet him 2 missions before it seems like he becomes the most important character in guild wars.

Turtles All The Way Down.5608:

Trahearne isn’t a bad character…

Sort of. His background story is fine, but when you’re actually interacting with him he’s flat and ineffective (and every character, including your own, seems to automatically respect and adore him for no particular reason). He’s not a bad character, he’s a badly written character.

My main issue with Trahearne is that he is very much a Mary Sue in terms of how he was introduced and “developed”. Particularly the (lack of) development gets to me when it comes to him. Not even going to take his flat and boring voice in consideration, just looking at the character from a writer’s perspective here.

They introduce him as a very calm scholar, whose knowledge will be of great importance to the grand finale, who just so happens to have the necromancer sort of power to be able to hold his ground in times of need.
That was fine. Credible. He read a lot, learned a lot, tried things out and can summon some minions to protect himself. A decent and believable character so far.

Until… they began to break that down and added and added and added, without ever letting him suffer a consequence for it. They gave him a legendary mighty sword, a new position, a burden, a title, everything, but never once did he question it. Hell, he didn’t even do so much as gasp or blink!

A scholar gone warlord is far-fetched, but not impossible if written well. That’s to say, he’d not understand why he of all things was chosen for this. He’d need some help, a push in the right direction. And that is what the player character could have been for. To aid him as a friend and dear companion, rather than a nameless pawn for him to push around… a pawn whose glory he keeps on stealing by pretending he was the one doing all the hard work.

For example, Trahearne and the player seeking out Destiny’s Edge to get their stories and advice would’ve made for quite an interesting plot point.
Did they ever consider tis? No.

Why didn’t they? Because they eliminated the need, by tossing everything at Trahearne automatically. I filled in part of his personality in a rather lengthy and decent Mary Sue test on the web. He scored 38/50 possible points, solely because he gets everything by default.
I hope that eventually they can fix him… one way or another. He needs a kick and a new spot to claim, one that doesn’t tower over every other character for no apparent reason.

Auruan.2837:

And that is what the player character could have been for. To aid him as a friend and dear companion, rather than a nameless pawn for him to push around… a pawn whose glory he keeps on stealing by pretending he was the one doing all the hard work.

And if he says, “Commander, to me.” like a dog one more time, I’m going to shove my staff so far up his rectum that he’ll taste it in his throat and love it before summoning Mr. Huggles from inside him to give his internal organs a big ol’ squeeze with those machete-like arms…

I thought the point of the game was to develop MY personal story, Trahearne was the biggest failure of this game

Continuously stealing credit and idea your character tells him

Biggest fail of GW2, He is easily 10x worse than the much hated Kormir who also hijacked your story but AT LEAST SHE WAS SUBTLE ABOUT IT

Personally i cant stand Trahearne either, Part of it is due to the extremely dull monotone voice of the character which is totally void of any emotion which totally puts me off playing though the part of the game where he hijacks ***YOUR*** story.

The other part is down to the extremely shoddy Ai. I’m taking a total pounding from a mob of risen/undead and hes just standing there not even a stones throw away just totally lost for thought staring aimlessly into the distance like some sort of vegetable.
He gets attacked and poisoned a few times but still just stand there like if hes waiting for some sort of trigger to activate where he will come to life, pull out his big kitten motherf**king sword and scream like Jack Black making ROCK HISTORY!! before engaging the risen/undead in effect taking some of the heat off me.

thats not my only gripe either (while we are on about how terrible Ai teammates are)
I turned the story mission ‘Volcanic Extraction’ into a drinking game…. Every time an Ai teammate went down, i took a shot of tequila.

after pretty much slobbering my way through the mission in a severely drunken state after downing almost the entire bottle by the end of the mission.
I finally came to the conclusion that despite how bad kitten and heavily armored Ai team mates looked (im guessing some the the characters were Vigil? I cant exactly remember) that their armour was made of nothing more then a thin sheet of paper or black bin liner even.

Thats not the first time that Ai has been a total let down.
——————————————

Obviously when a game is new, you are bound to run into problems, its totally inevitable and I can understand that. but its now starting to feel like it was half finished before they said “yeah we can run this!” and released it with its ton of bugs hoping it would hit the ground running and they could work on it and make changes while it was in full swing.

Honestly, GW2 has been forever delayed but I wouldnt of minded waiting upto an extra month for the game to feel more polished and presentable.

Hats off to the team that deal with all the bugs. they must really have their work cut out for them.

Turtles All The Way Down.5608:

Trahearne isn’t a bad character, but the way he gets awkwardly placed into the story as a result of every ten levels being a completely disjointed story segment just really doesn’t work out.

It’s not a big deal if you’re a sylvari because you already know who Trahearne is. You know what a wylde hunt is, you know what Caladbolg is, you have more background on Trahearne’s research into Orr. Other races meet him 2 missions before it seems like he becomes the most important character in guild wars.

Yes, as a Sylvari you definitely get a better grasp on the character, however, once it becomes the Trehearne Show the problem is that you [the Sylvari] are also treated like any other dope off the street, including by the Pale Tree. She seems to suddenly forget who you are. Caithe when only minorly involved is the same way. Anyone you met through the first 40-ish levels now seem to think of you as “Trehearne’s buddy” instead of a Sylvari with their own important Wyld Hunt. The Pale Tree doesn’t even call you “my child” anymore! I mean it’s like Trehearne MIB Flashy Thinged everyone you ever met to forget everything about you!! That is ridiculous story writing and very disappointing.

I would have to say, AS a Sylvari Trehearne makes more sense, but all that I have previously mentioned does not, and I can imagine as a character or a different race it’s worse b/c you don’t even get the background early-level intros of Trehearne so NOTHING makes sense. I could live with Trehearne becoming a famed hero, BUT I do not like all my efforts and my position with my race to be completely forgotten. Change that, keep the relationships personal by just choosing the dialogue wording more carefully (code it like “if x race dialogue = …” or “if not then =…”) I really don’t think it could possibly be that difficult.

Anyway, I’m cringing through the rest of my PS and hoooping I see some change according to choices that differ from accounts of my friends’ PS, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Last night a friend and I decided to carry on with our personal story quests (we were at the level 71 story and moved all the way up to level 75).

We did all the brunt work and guess who gets all the praise in the storyline? The supplanted Traeherne. Everyone praises him on the decisions and the work that is done. Not saying I need constant praise… but think about it at work. You create a solution to a problem and then do all the work and then in a big meeting your Boss takes all the credit and praise and you simple sit there watching this being done.

Think of that feeling. Incredibly poor poor writing and thought process on this personal story arc.

Personally, I hope in the later story he pulls an Aizen, ala Bleach. Everyone thinks he is a good guy, a hero and whatnot…but after we defeat the necromantic dragon, the NECROMANCER HERO takes that power upon himself, and becomes the villain we need to defeat.

Then it would all make sense, his stealing our glory and everything, the manipulations… it would be a set up to /make/ us hate him.

That is how I would fix the Trahearne problem.

I unapologetically love Trahearne, and I enjoyed working with him to weaken the dragon that I was tasked with killing as part of my personal story. Just like I worked with other NPCs to solve problems in every previous step of my personal story. I’m also looking at the bigger picture - cleansing Orr was the first step to take down the first dragon. I assume that when we move on to other dragons, we’ll be introduced to more racially appropriate characters so people have more to complain about, like a Norn with a lifelong ambition to kill Jormag, for example.

And aside from his grievous offense of saying he named Fort Trinity, which I assume is more of a continuity error than him being malicious, I can’t remember a single time Trahearne took sole credit for something. He and the other NPCs always told me I did a great job, they couldn’t have done it without me, we’d do it together as we were meant to (that particular line made me want to give him a big and probably awkward hug), etc. Maybe they just liked me better.

That said, I do feel there are some issues - mainly that his introduction to non-Sylvari players is lackluster, and his performance in combat makes me wonder how he solos Orr on a regular basis. The latter could be easily fixed just by tweaking his AI, so he does something besides autoattack without you having to drag mobs into him. And the former, as others have suggested, add some conversation options during Claw Island (or the second arc for Sylvari) so he can tell you a bit about himself and his calling. Perhaps add a big dynamic event in Caledon Forest where you help him fight some risen. It might cause continuity wonkiness if it happens when he’s supposed to be elsewhere, but at least it would give everyone a chance to see him in action early on, without having to create a new personal story step.

Overall I think he’s an interesting character, and I hope he continues to play a big part in the story (a positive part - no killing off or corruption, please), but with the aforementioned issues fixed and his background expanded on more.

Kinda hate jumping on the bandwagon here but I don’t like him either.

Couldn’t care less about him stealing the glory and getting all the praise, in other MMOs I never liked getting all that praise shoved up my behind anyway. NPCs treated you like a god and basically elected every single one of those 10 million players (yeah I’m talking about that game…) to the status of superhero. All that brown-nosing and hero-mongering was awful. I don’t necessarily want to play a hero in an MMO; an anti-hero serves just as well. Best thing is if the player has the choice.

If you could actually play a Personal Story that has an influence on your character, that revolves around your character and his development and is not entirely focused on some big event in the world that would be great.

Anyway; I would have gladly served as an underling in that story if Trahaerne didn’t have the charisma of a wet paper bag. Both his voice and his appearance are absolutely unheroic. The fact that he just stands at range, shoots little lightning bolts from his sword and doesn’t do any damage by it doesn’t help either.

I mean no offense to Sylvari. Give me five minutes and I can make a kitten looking Sylvari. Then why does Trahaerne, the most prominent character in GW2, look and sound like a whimp?

Almorra Soulkeeper, Warmaster Forgal or that Dorne Velasquez guy would have made better leaders. Or even Tonn the crazy Explosives Asura. :-/