Enough about the combat already, what about the story?

It's been pretty apparent since last night that there are some people who have problems with the combat system. After 24 hours of this, I say it's time to look towards other things, namely, the story. Arenanet are very story-driven developers, so I want to see if anyone has had the opportunity to explore the story more than the beta videos already released.

The feel of the quests, the feel of the personal story and how this is tied in to the story of a dungeon are some of the main points.

For nearly every MMO currently, a quest is just something you HAVE to do if you want to get up and get out of whatever area you're currently in. In other games, most people (me included) do not stop to read the quest text, but merely accept the quest and then only when stumped as to where something is do we pull up the quest log and glance at it. It seems quite a lot of people don't give a rat's ass about the story, and only care about leveling quickly and focusing entirely on the combat. I've seen this in numerous posts here and about other games. The story always takes second place to everything else, given the fact that it seems people would rather smash a bunch of monsters than care why the hell they're doing anything in the first place. I realize that not all people play the game for the story, but I think it at least deserves some consideration.

Next is the personal story, which is supposed to be branching. Now, I know people will say they haven't felt the effects of any decisions they've made, but I will stick true to the "you haven't leveled high enough" excuse, as the decisions are supposed to multiply every 10 levels. Either that, or as I said above, people don't care a rat's ass about the story and quickly run through it and claim that it's "linear," "boring," or "doesn't feel like I made an impact." Given Arenanet's history with Guild Wars 1, the personal aspect of the story wasn't that important, but the story itself was. I highly enjoyed the story aspects on my first play through of every campaign, and given that I can make different decisions and have 5 races to play with, I think I'll enjoy every play though of GW2.

Finally, the story of the dungeons. The only dungeon I or anyone else has seen in videos (I think) is the Catacombs of Ascalon. Yes, it does get boring watching the same dungeon over and over. And yes, this does seem like it leads to comments that "dungeons are boring," "they're too zergy," "they aren't complex enough," and "I can't see anything through the particle effects." I will give you the last one, but the first three are definitely not true. Anyone who has seen TB's Hardmode explorable run of the Catacombs knows that there are multiple decisions to be made in each dungeon. This creates a different story path through each play through, and even if you pick the same option, random events spawn every time.

I did get a bit off topic on the dungeons, and I mainly want to know how the first play through in story mode is. It should be relevant and interesting, given the background of story Arenanet has created. I know I'll probably get irritated if on the first play through everyone in my group wants to skip the cut scenes just to get through the dungeon a minute faster. This isn't Metal Gear Solid, we're watching a one minute cut scene, not two hours.

Hopefully people can tear their eyes away from the posts about the combat being this or that, and start to focus on something else. Anyone posting about combat should be ashamed, and also they should be posting along with the other 400+ comments on the other threads. I'd like to see some new discussion, and some new ideas. Note that the above is all my opinion, the opinion of someone else on the internet. I know that this might be shocking and hurtful to some of you, and I would encourage people to remember that thinking is important before you post. Feel free to disagree, just know that I may not be persuaded.

EDIT: One sentence responses are not helpful in the least. Especially ones that claim, "X game is better at story". I have just one question for those people...WHY??? You have to use your words when I can't see or speak with you. Also, I'm not into RP, I just want to know how the story element of the game plays in.

TL;DR I'd like to know how people feel about the questing environment (grouping up, difficulty, are quests meaningful or bland and why, is it enjoyable, etc). Also, I'd like to know about the personal story and the choices or decisions made and how they have an impact (please, explain why you think this). If the personal story dialogue lines are terrible, paraphrase them so I can laugh/cringe. Finally, I'd like to know about the story line in dungeons and how much it relates to the world outside.