Like I said, I am fine with another character being the hero, but it felt wrong with how they tell the story in GW2, and that is the whole issue here. The story start to give us the feeling we are the hero just to pull the rug out from under our feet and giving then no reason to care about that new hero that comes from totally out of the left field.
Ya that is where I think Anet went wrong with the Personal story. They made it give too much of the feeling that your character is the Main hero of the Main Story when he or she was just only 1 of the many heroes or heroines of the Main story that will play a important rule as part of the Main story like the other heroes of the story.
Hopefully Anet separate the Personal Story and Main story a bit better in Act 2 of GW2 so the Personal Story would still focus on your character but give the feeling of the Personal story is your character’s Personal point of view of the Main Story rather then making it feel like your Personal Story is the Main Story.
That is where Anet got it wrong by trying to get 2 birds in 1 stone, and using it as a way as an indication to lead us to the main story final battle (orr and dragon killing etc). My guess is, I think it puzzle Anet too when they try to come up with stories for GW2. They wanted to gave as a personal story to get involve with but with no main story would look weird, or a main story only would not work too well if you are saver of the world. So they ended up with mixing personal story with main story using Treahearne (out of the blue) as inbetween, which shown it doesn’t work too well.
A better way of doing it should be separating the personal story with the main. Which I feel is doable with the existing GW2 content, and make more sense.
Personal Story:
Anet should have just stick to the race & orders and end the story up to Destiny Edge (been us becoming one of the member of Destiny Edge). You still ended up as the hero of your race but not the saver of the universe. (whether the story will be too short or not, that will be another topic).
Main Story:
By trying to save resources/time, we can present Trehearne with more detail and making use of the dungeon story mode (giving player better purpose of visiting it >< ) as the Main Story engine. It’s the main story after all and should be hard, I don’t think players will complain if it is not soloable (your exisiting personal story telling make us fight in the last dungeon anyway).
Trehearne main problem is he come out of nowhere and suddenly been the focus of the story. Hence, give him more “life” then:
after we become one of the member of Destiny Edge, we receive a mission of assisting Trehearne > a few mission with him to get player attached, then claw island > then pointer point to dungeon > main story continue with story mode dungeon all the up till the last one.
Imho, by presenting it this way, I would feel much better. Moreover, it’s a MMO (open world), so you can choose to play the Main Game Story or just wondering around the world after your Personal Story is all up to you.