Many bloody words have been spilled over the personal story in Guild Wars 2. The general wisdom seems to be that while it starts all interesting-like and engaging, it eventually descends into a spiral of Merigold Sue worship of a certain tree-hero and a large-scale conflict that is kind of dull. I agree with this, but there’s plenty of other things to do in GW2 so I’ve made my peace with it. Unfortunately, due to the personal story being 100% soloable up ’till the very last mission, which requires a group run of Arah, I hit a wall and hadn’t been able to complete it. Until last night, that is, when my guild rallied and we got it done for a few people.
I’ve been seeing Guild Wars 2’s dungeons quite a bit this past month, and I anticipate their usage going up when the LFG tool comes into play. They’re… hm. They’re not the typical MMO experience, for good and bad. I mean, loot-wise, load me up — the chests and hefty gold rewards make them worth running, no doubt about it. But what I’ve seen are people avoiding mobs at all costs to try to blitz to the next boss and try to take it down with no proper tank or healer. It’s sometimes fun in the chaos and sometimes frustrating, and I like how some of these places look.
Arah was really different than what I’d seen in the other dungeons so far. I guess it’s been a long while since I’d been back in Orr — it’s not a place that I find myself drawn to casually visiting, you understand — so it was like plunging back into a zombie pool with barnacles everywhere. The run was divided into two sections: a ground and an airship part. The ground-pounding was fine, nothing too challenging, but the airship felt like a weird way to end the battle. It was a mixture of fighting boarding mobs and manning cannons to fire at dragons, because when you spend 80 levels building your character, you ultimately want to use a device to fight a dragon instead of all of the skills at your disposal. Makes sense, really.
It looked pretty dang neat, I’ll admit, especially as we glided through the green mist and saw these giants lumber out at us. I also got a good look at the interior of the ship hull, as I got knocked off the bow, fell through the game world, and ended up stuck between decks for a while. I die a lot. It’s my contribution to the team. Gives them XP for rezzing, I guess.
At least it’s done, and that’s one thing off my GW2 plate that’s been hanging over my head for some time now. I really need to bite the bullet and get world exploration done, although that means I’ve got to dive back into WvW. They should have guided tours for that sort of thing or white flags for us explorers that don’t care one whit about your PvP. I mean, what possesses you to fight for and die for a color? If you were in kindergarten and had a limited crayola selection, I could see that, but c’mon — we’re grown-ups here. Well, most of us. Some of us. OK, go fight over your purdy colors. DEATH TO GREENIES! LONG LIVE BLUES!
Bio Break 
It always annoys me when people use the colors as the team names. It’s your world you’re defending and that comes with a name, as do the worlds attacking it. Not like it’s hard to remember who’s who and it makes a massive difference to the emotional involvement and impact if you call things by their given names.
“You have to learn to despise people on a personal level, not because they’re red, or because they’re blue, but because … you can’t stand them.” – Church
On the other hand, all this tribalism is important practice for when the next major conflict breaks out based on the tribalism we keep practicing. Anyone who is not currently chanting “USA! USA! USA!” is a Communist.
@Bhagpuss: That may be the reason for calling them by colors. People lack an emotional attachment. Chicken or Egg?
As far as the main thrust of the post, my lovely bride and I had not quite made it though Orr on our own when we were called upon by a couple guildies to help in the final battle which we gladly did. Unfortunately, that took all the wind out our enthusiasm for completing our own stories. After all why finish our own when we’d already helped our comrades—and Trahearne, essentially performing the support role we would be doing in our own story anyway. As Syp pointed out, it ended up being far more about The Plant Guy and not really at all about the player character. This is an old beef, but I much preferred the first chapters of the personal story, when it was intimate—about helping friends and family—rather than the epic fetch quest the later chapters are. Oh and FWIW, supporting our guildies on that last mission (months ago) was just about the last GW2 activity we participated in.
Heh, I hope you enjoyed the nice ending song at the Fort Trinity conclusion quest. I liked that too! As for WvW colors… those cycle per week. 😛