The game runs fine. Adjust your settings or use the easily found workarounds.
A much bigger issue were the insane skill lag problems on some maps + wvw, which since have been completely removed it seems.
In PoF we didn't have our own actual Elder Dragon. Things have changed, although we didn't directly get a line from Aurene saying it or something.Pretty sure we know at this point that Aurene can do it with her powers as a full dragon with Elder status, back then we were only working towards it without really knowing it would result in an instant transformation.
I don't see a new map coming, I'm pretty sure we will get instances that will have a bunch of variations on already existing ones and new instances like during the Braham part of the latest release.
Did that last year too, from 0. Having a friend to do the grind with MASSIVELY increased my enjoyment! We know they are working on that, but they said last year to not expect it 2020 or next year, so 2022 we might finally see them :)
You'll be happy to know that none of the story since then was anything like that and you could easily do achievements either during the first time or directly at the appropriate step.
Only the Dragonslayer ones I consider expensive. The others are pretty fair, all things considered. They are about what collections and crafting should be in my opinion.
What makes you think they aren't human? All it takes is having a character there, log in, open and log out of that character again. I open the three big chests in Desert Oasis every day.
The "competition" aspect of the challenge is to get people to try, because last year that event was completely worthless and beyond boring.Now it's actually quite rewarding and fun, the "best" gets an additional stack.
Honestly they are okay. They are not long enough to be annoying IMO and optimizing the pre-event is kinda fun. Just annoying when you have to wait for NPCs, especially if they decide to attack this one random destroyer that was not even near them.