There are plenty of Contracts flying around, but no, our world isn't entirely reliant on them, or at least that's what I've gleaned in going back and forth through pretty much the whole book recently.
Or at least, it doesn't have to be. One could run it that way, of course, but there's nothing that states that it is, and it's reasonably heavily implied that our world is as normal as things ever get with the Word of Darkness.
You are evil for planting that concept in my head when it's probably never going to be run, you know that?![]()
Anyway. While most Durances are pretty much horrible, awful, experiences, they don't necessarily have to be. To take two examples from A Gathering of Mists, one of the characters was basically starring in action movies all the time while she was in Arcadia, but abandoned her sister to do so, and came back because she realized that being without her responsibilities didn't mean they'd stopped existing. Another was taken and dropped in a forest, where she got to be a hero every day, only wanting to come back when it was revealed that the whole thing was essentially a very popular Arcadian TV show. They're both just as effective as the two with more traditional Durances.
(Please bear in mind this is all gathered from reading about them. I am not playing in the game in question. But most of it is taken from reading the OOC explanations by the players of the pair in question, so it should be pretty accurate, I think.)