Sure, we accomplish a lot and can wield powerful magic, but what’s to say a level 2 farmer can’t do the same if he gets to be a level 80 farmer, using powerful gear?
Well, let’s look at the facts: pretty much every NPC, even those who are trained militia tend to only attack at a rate of one attack per second. The every player character, regardless of profession can lay between two to three hits with their basic attack alone, and if it is a “one-per-second” attack, it usually possesses a lot of bells and whistles that make it worth the low DPS, I’d say player characters are decently special.
Also, watch an event sometime where NPCs charge a fortification and have no player backup, chances are, they get creamed. (A centaur fort in Kessex hills is a good example), notice how ally NPCs will have the numbers of more than most PC parties.
After the Seraph or whoever get creamed, storm that fortress yourself. Chances are, you will walk through it and over everyone inside with gusto.
This puts the average PC somewhere in the range of “one-man army” special.
Finally, watch in Ashford Plains how charr soldiers, you know, those guys from a quasi-facist race who have built their entire society around military, get their kitten handed to them in one-on-one combat with… Devourers. Not even Flame Legion, but you watch them get their furry tails handed to them by pests and local fauna.
How did they become a powerful nation again?
I’m pretty sure that the gap between regular NPCs and PCs is, lorewise, smaller than it is in game. Part of it is that we’re just smarter than the AI – we pull off our stunts through pulling off tricks the AI can’t, if we behaved like the AI, we probably wouldn’t have as much better success than our friendly NPCs do. Consider Destiny’s Edge, for instance – according to the lore they’re hot stuff, in practise they tend to spend most of their dungeon time waiting for a revive.
Another part is simply to let the players be the heroes. ArenaNet wants to make is so that the players are making the difference, so even if lorewise the friendly NPC organisations are actually holding their own more often than not, ANet makes it so they’ll usually lose without PC involvement.
The third part is, I suspect, that is implicitly assumed that, in each player’s play experience, while their PC is the Pact Commander, those other PCs running around are not. Instead, depending on the zone, those other PCs are taking the part of local militaries, mercenaries, lower-ranking Pact members, and so on. So, for instance, if you take the northern Harathi Hinterlands event chain… what we SEE, during more active times anyway, is often a horde of players swarming over everything, and the odd token NPC. I suspect that if we get told the actual lore of those events, though, it’ll turn out that the bulk of the force was Seraph, with a few heroes (you, and maybe your party or guild) lending a hand.
Or to put it another way, the PCs are the bulk of their race’s military power, even if their personal story says they’re not actually a Seraph or that they’re detached from the Legions or whatever. Realistically speaking, the dozens of PCs that are on a map at any given time can’t have all individually gone through the same basic fifteen or less sets of experiences, so from each players self-centric viewpoint, its they who have gone through their personal story, and the other PCs they see could have had backgrounds entirely different from the PS – including being formally part of the military of the region they’re in.
That said, referring back to Elric’s note – it is canon that what the PC does marks them as Someone Very Special from level 2 onwards. The “tutorial” mission, according to the lore, is something that has already lead to them being labelled as one of their race’s heroes.
While, lorewise, characters DO increase in power, the mechanical level of the character is not a direct translation of the power they have in lore (otherwise, you’d have to explain massive differences in the strength of common animals like wolves depending on where they are, and that’s just silly). Lorewise, the difference between the newly-acclaimed Hero of Shaemoor and the level 80 Champion of Orr is probably closer to the difference between them in WvW (when the new Hero of Shaemoor is sidekicked up to 80) than what you’d see if you dragged a level 2 into a level 80 zone without sidekicking and compared them.
Essentially, according to the lore, a level 2 PC is probably already superior to a level 80 NPC who isn’t at least a veteran or higher.. The PCs are special right from the bat.
To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
