Actually, the problem is the other races (non sylvari) don’t see Trahearn at all, period until the pact where as sylvari work along side starting at lv 10, which is HUGE. I see all these people complaining about Trahearn and how he had no development etc, yet i saw TONS of development in him due to being a sylvari and working along him since the beginning (which was mostly him being super scholarly and passive).
This is definitely a huge problem, and if it’s the case that Trahearne sees significant development as a character in the sylvari story, that’s good, at least. From the perspective of someone who only played through the story with a norn character, and even being aware of the fact that Trahearne was coming from reading the forums, I still found his introduction and preordained importance to be completely out of left field. All the more so when he was bestowed with an apparently-legendary weapon the game had never mentioned to me before, and everyone important in the world just decided he was the man because a big tree said so. I’m aware that there exists actual reasoning for all of this, that the Pale Tree has its own relevance, etc, but the story – for everyone not-sylvari, at least – does an extremely poor job of establishing it when it happens. I think we agree about all of this – but it bears stressing because it’s such a big head-scratcher.
That being said, i actually like how at the end everyone comes together and you have to accomplish the same relative goal (IE starving the mouth, cutting off reinforcements, and then there’s another 3 way split before cleansing orr) the reason i love this so much is simple, it leaves NO question on what happened in key parts of the story. We all know how Zhaitan died, we all know how Orr was cleansed, we all know how the Mouth(s) were starved etc, etc etc.
I think this could have been accomplished without making it the business of the personal story. Speaking only for myself, I think that the player and the game would have been best served if the personal story and the “main big baddie threat” story were divorced from each other entirely. My expectation, going in, was that my character’s personal story would be shaped by the nature of his race and the biographical selections I chose for him – in other words, a story having to do with him and his personal adventure. It would have made more sense for the entirety of his story to follow through like this, although obviously, it also would have required a great deal more effort in crafting fully individual, race-specific stories. Ideally, this would have been paired with a progression of the main story experienced through my own gameplay in the world. Hearts, DEs, and a more obvious, aggressive Risen threat through much of the game world would have gone a long way toward this, and Trahearne and the Pact could have been part and parcel of it all through heavy presence in higher level events (leading up, of course, to an endgame DE chain portraying an epic battle with Zhaitan.)
Idk why so many people seem to think a personal story in an MMO (where your character clearly can’t be the sole reason everything worked out, because there are millions of people who are doing the same stuff) should be TOTALLY your character and there shouldn’t even be another NPC out there to “steal their thunder”.
It is what it is, of course, but it can’t be glossed over that Arena.net’s own claim is that the “Personal Story” “really is all about you.” It isn’t, and however it might be reasoned that it’s better as it is, it doesn’t really address the failure in the message advertised.
(I should add, however disgruntled I may sound, that I love this game, and I don’t mean to single you out, Durzlla. It’s only because I think it’s one of the most potentially-unique and interesting aspects of the game that I feel especially strongly about it, and simply hope that it’s strengthened in future expansion.)