Player characters vs lore characters

Community General Discussion
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The most frustrating part of WoW’s storytelling to me is the way our characters are being treated compared to the NPCs.

With how the stories of the raids tend to work, our characters are always the ones doing all the heavy lifting, yet we never get a shred of credit for it in the story. The focus is ALWAYS on the NPCs. We get some lip service every now and then, with NPCs calling us “champion” or “hero”, but when the big flashy stuff happens, we’re expected to stand back and let the NPCs hog the spotlight

IMO the best example of this is still the post-Antorus storyline leading into BfA.
We fell a titan and save the universe in the process. When we bring back drop of Argus’ blood to dadgar, he tells us to tell the warchief about it. What happens when we arrive?
Sylvanas, Baine and a bunch of other NPCs who haven’t done a damn thing in the entire expansion are having a big victory feast, congratulating each other for a victory they had no hand in.

We, the people who did all of the work, aren’t invited. Instead, we are intercepted at the door by Nathanos, who barks some more orders at us before sending us away again.

Another example is Jaina in BfA.
Out of nowhere, she is now a demigod who can casually levitate a giant war ship around the place and is strong enough to hold her own against 20 of the Horde’s strongest fighters, including the vaunted “champion” who is being empowered by the heart of azeroth.

The problem I have with this is that all of these favoritisms are completely unfair. Sure, Sylvanas, Baine, Jaina, etc are all important characters, but you know who has also done a LOT of important stuff? US!
With everything our characters have done throughout WoW’s history, our accomplishments utterly dwarf that of any single lore NPC, yet we’re constantly treated like we don’t matter at all.

I get that some players like being a small part in a bigger story - you may prefer being some random dude who doesn’t matter to the world at large, but that approach just doesn’t work with the content we’re doing and the enemies we’re fighting any more. And this isn’t anything new either. Forget about flying a space ship to another planet and fighting space satan - the “small fish in a big pond” approach stopped making sense all the way back in vanilla, when you first killed Ragnaros.

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I guess you just need to accept that canonically your character never did the big cool stuff and you just played through it because the game would be lame without it.

I can’t see a way for them to make cool stories like that and have a player character do any of it and have it be cannon.

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They had no problem with blaming us for Illidans death at BT :rofl:

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They should have made us members of an secret organisation (like order halls), that beats dungeon- and raid bosses. Then we could be the heroes but still work undercover for our factions as some noname.
Just an example. But Blizzard probably thought it would make more sense when the demi-gods (that defeated the Lichking, old gods, Deathwing, and even the Burning Legion) are sent to collect hyena poop in Vol’dun. Or they thought noone would really care. After all after saving the world we again get killed by some bugs or other normally harmless animals next expansion.

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Canonically none of that happened with our characters though.
All of the deeds you said are attributed to lore characters.

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Players dont like being the protagonist. There was so much QQ when we were the commanders back in WoD Blizzard changed it back to champion.

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Not really. It was true for classic where players were simple footsoldiers or apprentice mages, but as TBC went on they were started to be recognized for their accomplishments. Cata story was the last expansion where lore characters stole players’ spotlight, from MoP onwards player is the main focus. Legion took this to a whole new level by making the player leader of their order hall, not to mention they’ve achieved much more than any lore character has. I mean, we’ve killed not one, but two titans. None of the lore characters of any class can even come close of doing that in their wildest dreams.

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They’ve been attributed to lore characters. We just assisted.

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My answer would be we are soldiers and don’t want to partake in any of that political crud. As for Jaina, well I hate her Mary-Sue self so rasp

My issue is things like earning titles that are forgotten about next expansion. Oh we suddenly aren’t Commander noe. Oh, we suddenly aren’t Highlord now. Just ya regular CHAMPION. Snore.

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You’re right, it’s time the writing team properly started to acknowledge our actions and included our names in the actual story.

I’m sure people like xXxSylvanasfanxXx will make amazing additions.

Let’s be serious: “YOU’RE A HERO!” single player writing is garbage and doesn’t work -at all- in an MMO.

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Not to mention how some fights are canonically done by just the one faction although both can play it.

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That’s why I said Cata was the last expansion where lore characters stole players’ spotlight (with Thrall and Dragon Soul raid), roles are reversed after cata as most, if not all major events from MoP and onwards are achieved by players while lore characters merely assist us.

Malfurion was the side guy who spent a good half of his time in Val’sharah as a damsel in distress while players prevented the Nightmare from spreading and eventually took the fight to Xavius. Likewise, Army of the Light was brought back from complete annihilation all thanks to players. Even during the final assault on Antorus, Turalyon hasn’t done much other than holding the ground with his troops while players were the ones who has defeated others in the Burning Throne, including two titans. None of the lore characters provided help or even mentioned in the fight against either of those titans.

I don’t remember any example for this other than Alliance being the faction canonically defeating Lich King.

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There is a difference between cannon lore and ingame lore, sometimes somethings are interpreted differently and the game play is adjusted so we can fight the boss.

Take the Lich King for example, we fought him to 10% then tirion finished him off. but in reality it was a 1v1 battle with tirion afaik.

Same could be said about Antorus, we could be just random champions of the horde who assisted while magni + Illidan + Khadgar + Velen and others did the real work.

Blizzard can’t really please everyone, I just want to be a grunt/ assassin / soldier for the horde while others want to be champions and others want to be the grand heroes who are undefeatable.

So these titles alternate but never really have a big impact in game.

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