[Speculation] The Personal Story Possibilities

[Malthurius]

We know what the personal story is. When you make a character you answer some general questions about who your character is and those choices effect your personal story in some way.

Example - As a Charr you are asked who was the Charr you sired you (Who is your father). You can either say he was a loyal solder, a shaman that isn't trusted among the current life style of the Charr, or an honorless loner. This choice will effect how other NPCs react to you and perhaps where the personal story will take you.

So we understand that, what we don't understand is how long the personal story is, what the personal story will contain in terms of content, and how many branches or perhaps even outcomes there are.

What do you guys expect and what do you want to see in the personal story that isn't confirmed?

For reference, if you want to see what races/classes get for choices at character creation, here is a...
Character Creation Tool

I was thinking that some parts of the personal story will ask you to fill in some hearts on the map by doing some DEs.

[omlech]

We know that the Personal Story goes all the way to the level cap and likely a bit beyond depending on when you get around to doing your personal story stuff much like Missions in GW1.

[Malthurius]

We know that the Personal Story goes all the way to the level cap and likely a bit beyond depending on when you get around to doing your personal story stuff much like Missions in GW1.

Yeah, I would assume the the personal story will scale based on your level. But considering that, could you just rush through the personal story? (Not saying you'd want to.) or maybe perhaps the personal story only scales up if you're say level 80 (or scales you down.) and your personal story hasn't been touched. So you wouldn't be able to finish the personal story on any level other than 80 unless you are really good at the game.

[Zeek Daniels]

your personal story may ask you to go into zones that are higher than your level thus u might have to increase your level.

[Deleted]

Ive seen in some video about the personal story that when you enter the personal story area it says what lvl is prefered for that bit of the story, so i would say, no you cant rush it but you have to lvl up some from time to time to be able to get thru it

[omlech]

You won't be able to rush through it and ONLY play that. Much of the personal story requires you to get to a point in the world in order to start the story, you get to the starburst on the map and zone into an instanced version of that area where that part of the story then plays out. I'm going to assume the levels of mobs in these areas will all be a static number so therefore you couldn't really expect to go into a level 40 personal story at level 20. I mean you could probably TRY to go through the story and only gain levels from getting to the story and completing those parts, but I'm going to have to say most people will be crushed trying to attempt this or it might be just downright impossible past a certain point.

[Squirrelbanes]

I would expect one of the members of DE, probably caithe in the early stages as she's the one who wants to get them back together, coming to you when you hit the level for next segment of your personal story. Maybe a different one will come to you as you progress, until when your about 60 or 70 they all come together and work together, then at 80 you go (SPOILER!!)
kill Zhaitan.
Having the whole game run on the personal story would feel too much like an RPG (even though I love them), and you'd be missing out on a lot of the game if you tried I think (which is why I don't think it will be possible in GW2).

However, it will probably be possible to skip them alltogether if you want. I don't think they'll be mandatory.
I'll definitely be doing them though.

[Thrage]

You know, this is so far the only feature in GW2 that rubs me wrong. I don't want a story assigned to me; I want to create it myself. And I don't mean through actions later on, either - I want to decide just about everything that has happened in my character's life right up until the point where I took over. Don't give me a back-story, I don't want it, I got it handled. This whole 'personal story' deal really screwed up SWTOR for me (Not that it was even close to being SWTOR's biggest or only problem).

Whatever the personal story ends up being, I hope it's extremely minimal and completely optional.

[MissCleo]

You know, this is so far the only feature in GW2 that rubs me wrong. I don't want a story assigned to me; I want to create it myself. And I don't mean through actions later on, either - I want to decide just about everything that has happened in my character's life right up until the point where I took over. Don't give me a back-story, I don't want it, I got it handled. This whole 'personal story' deal really screwed up SWTOR for me (Not that it was even close to being SWTOR's biggest or only problem).

Whatever the personal story ends up being, I hope it's extremely minimal and completely optional.

I do like the fact that we get some in-game recognition of our characters actually having a backstory and an existence prior to logging in for the first time, but I hope we have slightly more freedom in deciding the elements of that story, and a high degree of freedom regarding our story as we progress through the game (freedom of choice doesn't necessarily mean control - our chosen actions could have unforeseen consequences). Answering a handful of questions at the creation screen and making a binary choices here and there in the game don't really seem like enough, but it's better than nothing in my opinion. I would also like to see a more varied response option in player-NPC dialogues, à la SWTOR, one that has a real effect on personal story progression. That said, I expect to enjoy playing through the personal stories.

[NightZero88]

You know, this is so far the only feature in GW2 that rubs me wrong. I don't want a story assigned to me; I want to create it myself. And I don't mean through actions later on, either - I want to decide just about everything that has happened in my character's life right up until the point where I took over. Don't give me a back-story, I don't want it, I got it handled. This whole 'personal story' deal really screwed up SWTOR for me (Not that it was even close to being SWTOR's biggest or only problem).

Whatever the personal story ends up being, I hope it's extremely minimal and completely optional.

While I agree it would be cool to have that option I, personally and I'd gather a lot of other people as well don't want to fill out a book before I can start playing. I think once I'd like to do that but short and sweet is nice as well. I bet some people will think the story mode that exists already is too much and they just want to jump in. Hopefully Anet will give you both options like they are with customizing your char. Can spend hours or minutes, it's your call. Story might be a bit more complex though.

[Thrage]

While I agree it would be cool to have that option I, personally and I'd gather a lot of other people as well don't want to fill out a book before I can start playing. I think once I'd like to do that but short and sweet is nice as well. I bet some people will think the story mode that exists already is too much and they just want to jump in. Hopefully Anet will give you both options like they are with customizing your char. Can spend hours or minutes, it's your call. Story might be a bit more complex though.

Nah, you misunderstand. I don't want to fill out anything prior to jumping into the game world. I don't want the game world to know anything about the story I've cooked up in my brain. In a roleplaying playstyle, having a history only cramps your style. Sure, yes, use race and maybe class to decide things about who your character is here and there, but as far as I'm concerned, everything my character did in life up to that point should be up to me. Maybe I want to play as a sniveling coward of a man-boy who is repeatedly thrust into terrible situations and remains alive purely through dumb luck, but my "personal story" keeps insisting I'm some kind of hero, as evidenced from the very words coming out of my own character's mouth. It doesn't jive, know what I mean?

[Malthurius]

Nah, you misunderstand. I don't want to fill out anything prior to jumping into the game world. I don't want the game world to know anything about the story I've cooked up in my brain. In a roleplaying playstyle, having a history only cramps your style. Sure, yes, use race and maybe class to decide things about who your character is here and there, but as far as I'm concerned, everything my character did in life up to that point should be up to me. Maybe I want to play as a sniveling coward of a man-boy who is repeatedly thrust into terrible situations and remains alive purely through dumb luck, but my "personal story" keeps insisting I'm some kind of hero, as evidenced from the very words coming out of my own character's mouth. It doesn't jive, know what I mean?

I understand where you're coming from. However if you're trying to RP, the personal story can be completely ignored or embraced. It's not something that will be staring you in the face at all times telling you who your character is.

Anyway, I was watching a video of a Dev panel at Eurogamer 2011, and Colin said that there are 15 different personal stories (5 races x 3 choices (Iron Legion, Blood Legion, Ash Legion or Commoner, Middle Class, Upper Class) and he made a comment about how much it branched in the first 10 levels alone. That's really exciting to me personally how different your story could be. I wonder if it will end up being as interesting as SW:TOR's story, or even as large.

[Deleted]

I'm hoping there is an option to make a small biography statement for your character sheet , nothing complex or deep, jsut kinda introducing yourself

[Malthurius]

I'm hoping there is an option to make a small biography statement for your character sheet , nothing complex or deep, jsut kinda introducing yourself

That would be nice. I really liked that feature in LotRO, however in that game it was the only thing that really defined your character's lore outside your actions, so I spent a lot of time on that window trying to come up with something cohesive. I bet no one ever read it though, that's the funny thing.

Also, I found this video (I don't know how I hadn't seen this before) that goes through the personal story at the gamescom demo.

Here are some things I noticed:
-Your personal story is heavily instanced. You apparently go to green waypoint like portal where you are then placed in an instance with you and any party members to do that part of the personal story.
-You technically have henchmen from the looks of the video. At certain parts the Charr has a buddy from his warband (probably the one you choose during the character biography)
-It isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. I assume this because our Charr Guardian friend gets dominated at the end of the video pretty harshly for not dodging and playing effectively. Of course that could be balanced later to be untrue, we'll see. (or it could be that he was under leveled for that part of the story, hm.)
-He chose Blood Legion in his story (despite the intro being ash, different characters for some reason.) so he interacted with the blood legion and their ideals. I can see there being 3 very distinct stories based on that choice alone.

EDIT - It's also interesting to note how the demo lost some shine and polish as he got deeper into the personal story at the demo (Missing voice clips and substitute voice clips stick out.). I know the footage is old, but that fact can be used to gauge how much more work they might have to do from levels 5ish - 80 and beyond. That's a lot of voice acting and a lot of content.