Guild Wars 2

Yep, impossible. Shields don’t go up fast enough, and 3/4 of the time the fire spot across the ring from where I am trying to light the fire is the one that gets the shield. By the time I get across to it, the shield dissipates and I’m either dead or hoping to get a new one. Shields don’t prevent stun/knockdown/interrupt consistently. Fire doesn’t come soon enough, I spend too much time running in circles between lighting the fires waiting for a new fire. By the time a new fire shows up, last fire is already out. Barely got a third one lit, usually can only keep 2 up at a time. Shadows are invulnerable at all times, so can’t keep them from putting fires out. This was obviously completely untested, or the slightest hint of lag throws off the timing of the NPCs too much to make this doable. Shadows either need to be killable, or the fire just needs to always be in the center of the ring so I am not waiting for it while the shadows put everything out.

I got to the end, got the achievement, wandered around the platform for a few minutes wondering why I was there (there was nothing there other than the NPCs and the cheering gingerbread). Went back to Lion’s Arch only to find out later that there was supposed to be a chest? Wasn’t there for me! Not that I missed much though, a couple of snowflakes and some karma. Whoopee.
I HATED the clock tower because of the timer not allowing me to have a thought. I am very happy that the forced death was delayed a second longer with this one, made all the difference, but if the only way you can think of to make these challenging is to enact a timer, you’re doing something wrong.

Totally agree, especially with #2 & #3 above.
In addition, the time commitment required was too large.
It would have been nice to have a shorter event (1-1.5 hours?) but have it repeat 2-4 times over the day, with the one time loot as above. I think that would allow more people to participate across various time zones/life schedules.