The player character ass kissing this expansion

[Okacz]

Something that, despite it having been sort of there in each expansion, in minor parts, in this expansion, despite how good legion is, is just how pissed off I am, at the level of ass kissing all npcs give the player character this expansion.

Now, it really began to get bad in Warlords, with making the player character a commander, where npcs would come and treat you like the leader of a war against the iron horde. It started to get bad then, but come legion, this style of interaction between the npcs and the players character has reached its peak of ridiculousness in legion.

I was leveling my draenei shaman today, and came across one of those shaman shrines, where in helping an elemental you get artifact power. After saving the earth elemental, he said to me "Thank you shaman, if it wasn't for you, the world would have been doomed". i had to rub sme frowns on my forehead, because the level of pandering given to our character is just fanfiction levels of awkward here.

When you have popular npcs, giving you their lore rich weapons and telling your made up player character, who doesn't have a personality outside of your own, that "only you can lead our order now, go defeat the legion", its a level of cringe on par with youtube prank videos and watching islamic women yelling allah akbar in the US womens march.

And, maybe thats why people love legion so much, maybe part of it has to do with just how much it panders to the player character to make the player feel like their the main hero of the story now, despite hundreds of other players having the exact same story and seeing them running around with the same legendary weapon your carrying.

To me, it isn't clever writng, it isn't creative, and it undermines any fun that could be had in the story. Our characters are token insert blank avatars that the npcs play off of, and this has worked in other roleplay games, its a self insert kind of feature that gets people immersed in the games story without feeling distracted by having to figure out the character their playing, that way your never question things about the person your playing, because its yourself.

I just feel like this expansion, and the last one, has done this to a level of cringe that isn't easy to ignore now. Its like when Tirion hands you the ashbringer, telling your 'your be a better ashbringer then me, now I die, GAH" it be like handing your child to a chuck e cheese animatronic saying it will look after them better then you can.

Completly agree.

Somehow since Warlords Blizzard feels it's necessary to acknowledge players accomplishments by giving them titles and meaning within the story. That itself is a bad idea - video games have this amount of suspension of disbelief that makes us accept that as a RPG character you do most of the work. Skyrim is a great game, but I admit, it feels weird that guards keep talking trash to the savior of the world and arresting him for punching a chicken. It would only be logical that the Herald of Companions, Archmage, Superthief and Uberassassin who defeated all the world destroying villians like Anduin or The Vampire Guy would be more recognized. Like, given the authority beyond yarls and treated as a god. That would make it more realistic. Would that make it a better game? Hell no.

The problem is that some players kept asking for it, and Blizzard kind of caved in without thinking. Players started becoming generals, Highlords, Best Guys That Ever Were etc. Artifacts are the biggest problem in all of it. Blizzard decided to give players THE BEST WEAPONS they have. Literally. Ashbringer is the peak of a Paladin weapon, Doomhammer the best an Enhancement can ask for, and I can't imagine a Fire Mage ever discarding Felo'Melorn. All of that is there just to streak players ego, but completly removes the feeling of something even better being ahead that all the RPGs need. Because what is next? Our characters being elevated to the status of a Titan, all wielding the Dragonslayer from Berserk?

So yeah, the brown nosing has gotten a bit out of control. I'd rather hear a guard asking me whether or not have I lost a sweetroll now.

[Caifas]

seems only fitting as we have helped save the world a dozen times or so, slayed or helped slay the worst of the worst, traveled to distant worlds, and alternate time lines and survived so yes i'd hope hope by now my toon would not just be some random person anymore...

This.

I remember in the Cataclysm and Pandaria me and my friends used to joke, everytime an NPC ordered us around, that we defeated the freaking Lich King, they should be showing some respect.

In the canonic lore little Billy's forsaken rogue, Megapwnzer99, not only is not a leader in any shape or form, but he do not exist. However, during little Billy's playthrough, his character does exist, and he has defeated Old Gods and killed the Lich King and Deathwing and Hogger and all sorts of powerful beings. Little Billy's character has earned that, even if, in your mind with your Rogue, his character doesn't even exist.

Doesn't it make sense that, after 12 years of existing in a game, your character gets some recogniton? There are still creatures way stronger than we are. Hell, you can't even say for sure that you are stronger than your followers. Are warriors stronger than Hymdall? Try to tank him by yourself during ToV to find out. Still, you are in a position of leadership due to your several, several achievements. If npcs treated you like a namelss grunt after all of that it would be kind of dissapointing.

Now, I understand that the fact that everyone and their moms are the leader of their faction is kind of hard to wrap your head around. It may be a bit immersion breaking when you are sharing the title of Highlord, beared of the Ashbringer, with 5 other pallies in your raid. But hey, we suspend our discredit for other things all of the time. It doesn't make sense we can kill the same boss over and over. Nor that, even though we are suppousedly the heroes, people still charge us for gear that would help us in fighting evil. Why having a bunch of fellow Deathlords is any different than watching a shining gorilla parade in Dalaran.

Finally, you are free to believe whatever you want regarding the player characters. You can pretend that they do not exist, or that they are interchangeble, or that everything is Thrall having a nightmare after falling on his head.

[Flurryfang]

That isn't an issue with the characters becoming too strong from a story telling perspective though; it is an issue of the villains being either introduced in the wrong order or not billed as quite powerful as they should be to feel a threat to your ever growing character.

I mean, we all know that Azshara is fucking powerful, but have we been more familiar with her as a background character who is as powerful as Kil'jaeden or Archimonde at least through actual events and not Blizzard just telling us that 'hur hur she's powerful yo' then this wouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

Sure Blizzard could easily have prepared for this and changed it so that we actually saw, that the next enemy(lets say Azshara) is just as powerfull, if not more, then our current enemy..... But they havent. Thats the problem.

Blizzard can do many things to help with this issue, but they have done nothing since Cata. Having Deathwing fly around and burn zones really helped with setting up his power lvl, which was very needed after our defeat of Lich King, but since then many big boss enemies have felt kind of meh. Only Lei Shen felt powerfull in MoP and while Archimonde was pretty cool in HFC, he did not have an intro and therefore it did not feel like we battled a final boss really.

Blizzard need to build up their evil characters better and prepare for them a long time in advance or we will just see more raids, where the final boss does not really give closure in anyway.

...and while they are doing that, give heroes/player characters some fucking HEROES! We need a new generation of NPCs which can be powerfantasies for the player.

[Fenderxx]

Overall I think it works. Are there a few quest text moments that go a little over the top.. sure. However, for all of WoD's faults, I did feel like the commander of this force. Now, I am sure that I was only one of many commanders in the Alliance army, so though I felt important, I was not "the only one". Legion has ramped that aspect up, but at least for the Rogues, you feel like you are part of council and their most skilled with a blade. So it doesn't get to the level of "the Chosen One" or anything, which is good.

[Deleted]

People who want to be adventurers who pick up literal crap and are treated like grunts the whole time fascinate me.

[Sandraudiga]

There has been a trend to more and more make the player character as something more than mortal, but it started before Warlords. The Dragon soul quote of "You really are the heroes of legend" comes to mind.

I think that the writing is very hit or miss, you have some very good writing mixed it with some stupidly bad writing. Doesn't seem to be alot of quality control at blizzard. It's the same with voice acting, can anyone really say that Malfurions voice actor has any skill whatsoever? Especially when compared to say Tirathon Saltheril, the first boss of Vaults? It's like a night and day difference sometimes between stories and voice acting.

[Dagoth Ur]

People who want to be adventurers who pick up literal crap and are treated like grunts the whole time fascinate me.

Players who want Warcraft to be DBZ and be warcraft's Goku fascinate me...

[Enthralled]

I think that the writing is very hit or miss, you have some very good writing mixed it with some stupidly bad writing. Doesn't seem to be alot of quality control at blizzard. It's the same with voice acting, can anyone really say that Malfurions voice actor has any skill whatsoever?

As an aside, about Malfurion's VA, I'm guessing they keep him on out of sentimentality more than anything else. His name is Ed Trotta, he's an old man now and he's been voicing Malf since W3. But yeah, the quality of his work gets worse and worse as the years pass.

[Evangeliste]

What confuses me is people are a little disheartened by the change of events but then are quite possibly happy playing other games where you as the protagonist are glorified in one way or another? Some do play on the whole team ideal but again, you are the that one survives, the one who uncovers the plots or scheming, helps kick ass whether be some super badass demons to the overlording baddy drug dealing ring or government led scheme and way too many stories that make you out to be a hero in a dark and needy times.
For the longest time, in leveling especially you were just some average Joe who was sent out to be some dumb grunt and dispensable but were amazingly surprised you could carry your own weight based on the entirety of you being some low-born peasant from some sleepy town. Even then Arthas stated that Tirion was a fool to send heroes to him to become major assets to his Death Knights so to me, its not really a new thing that you're better than average joe. And to be fair, a hero is someone better will know, adventurer even will earn merits and be heard or spoken about. We as heroes aren't the only people around on Azeroth so tongues will waggle.

With the Class Halls I think sometimes it's misinterpreted, people look up to you because you have ascended from what you could class as nothing, inspiration to the foot soldiers in the cause and something to aspire to not because you're on equal to the famous lore heroes. It doesn't make much sense that you have become heroes that can overcome great challenges and not a single other soul has not heard or recognised you. Especially in an age where you got things like teleportation and engineering so having you being glorified makes real sense and reflects what happens to day. As for the artifacts and whatnot, take Thrall for example who lost the Doomhammer, I think basically because he killed Garrosh with it and from what I understand the elements were like, no, just no, we're not here to be abused by you. I think Blizzard's perspective is we're meant to be like Ezio, we hold our own but there are people who are much better but you are just in the right circumstances. At the end we are still nothing compared to people like Malfurion, Jaina, and so forth because as challenges arises, we have to face people in larger groups. These famous lore people can face greater challenges in smaller groups with other famous lore gfolks or sometimes on their own.

The biggest setback to all of this is because it is a game. In a story where you are spectator it's easy for you overlook it and feel insignificant. But the premise is now you actually matter - you are significant and now making an impact and now people can see it. Rather then oh, we killed Arthas and then 5 minutes of rejoice and back to standing in Dalaran like nothing ever happened. As aforementioned, our actions actually now have implications on the people that live aside us in Azeroth and current affairs are spoken bout rather then before people were strangely ignorant of it all when they finished handing their quest out. We are not the only ones present on the planet ya know.
Its why we kill villains, the alternative timeline and Warlords of Draenor I think the best place for all that is perhaps they aren't as powerful as own ones was? It's a cop out but we don't have a direct super saiyan list saying "He's over 9000!". On top of that the Legion have been away from us and could have expanded and weakened? Turalyon said they have been fighting on other planets, Draenei are from another world and so much more to be expanded on. Maybe Azeroth herself is influencing by being on the planet? There's multiple explanations that can happen.
But like any game - you don't play the random NPC giving out quests, you are the hero who discovers the world and rise up top. The scale of coming out on top depends on its scope of the storyline.

[Dagoth Ur]

That isn't an issue with the characters becoming too strong from a story telling perspective though; it is an issue of the villains being either introduced in the wrong order or not billed as quite powerful as they should be to feel a threat to your ever growing character.

I mean, we all know that Azshara is fucking powerful, but have we been more familiar with her as a background character who is as powerful as Kil'jaeden or Archimonde at least through actual events and not Blizzard just telling us that 'hur hur she's powerful yo' then this wouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

But villains not being potrayed powerful enough is the same problem as players exponentially overgrowing in power, just looked from different perspective.

The perfect example for me is Archimonde. In the last mission of War3 he sent waves of undead at you, which you were trying to survive however you can. If you survived long enough he would come himself and just destroy Alliance/Horde/Nelves base like it was nothing. Back than Malfurion wasn't such boring character and he knew that we don't have chance against him in direct confrotation, so he used Archimonde's arrogance against him and set up a trap which luckliy succedded.

And how did we deal with Archimonde in WoD? We just defeated him like some chump, beacuse we're commmanders, glorified heroes. So unimagintive it's sad.

WoW has problem of demaining their villains by making players look like freaking Avengers... And Blizzard could easly fix this by toning it down a bit and when new expansion starts not making us win in every zone in x.0 patch... Imagine how more threatening Legion invasion would feel if we only saw our first victory in 7.1 or 7.2 and from there you start to build up story of victory slowly...

I know it's more MMO problem, than overpowerd players problem but the result is the same -> player characters feeling ovepowered/invincible -> Villains all feeling like Mojo Jojo's "I'll beat you next time *shakes fist angrily*"

[Wilfire]

The player character has, quite naturally, grown rather powerful over the years. S/he has been blessed by the August Celestials and the Furies of Draenor and wields weapons of legend. It makes sense that NPCs recognize the player character and his/her achievements now that s/he is one of the few beings in the Warcraft universe that can fight on par with heavyweights like Archimonde and Kil'jaeden.

[FelPlague]

Something that, despite it having been sort of there in each expansion, in minor parts, in this expansion, despite how good legion is, is just how pissed off I am, at the level of ass kissing all npcs give the player character this expansion.

Now, it really began to get bad in Warlords, with making the player character a commander, where npcs would come and treat you like the leader of a war against the iron horde. It started to get bad then, but come legion, this style of interaction between the npcs and the players character has reached its peak of ridiculousness in legion.

I was leveling my draenei shaman today, and came across one of those shaman shrines, where in helping an elemental you get artifact power. After saving the earth elemental, he said to me "Thank you shaman, if it wasn't for you, the world would have been doomed". i had to rub sme frowns on my forehead, because the level of pandering given to our character is just fanfiction levels of awkward here.

When you have popular npcs, giving you their lore rich weapons and telling your made up player character, who doesn't have a personality outside of your own, that "only you can lead our order now, go defeat the legion", its a level of cringe on par with youtube prank videos and watching islamic women yelling allah akbar in the US womens march.

And, maybe thats why people love legion so much, maybe part of it has to do with just how much it panders to the player character to make the player feel like their the main hero of the story now, despite hundreds of other players having the exact same story and seeing them running around with the same legendary weapon your carrying.

To me, it isn't clever writng, it isn't creative, and it undermines any fun that could be had in the story. Our characters are token insert blank avatars that the npcs play off of, and this has worked in other roleplay games, its a self insert kind of feature that gets people immersed in the games story without feeling distracted by having to figure out the character their playing, that way your never question things about the person your playing, because its yourself.

I just feel like this expansion, and the last one, has done this to a level of cringe that isn't easy to ignore now. Its like when Tirion hands you the ashbringer, telling your 'your be a better ashbringer then me, now I die, GAH" it be like handing your child to a chuck e cheese animatronic saying it will look after them better then you can.

we helped kill the old god cthun, and destroyed the floating naxxramas
we helped fell illidan and defeat the burning legions kiljaden
we defeated the lich king and stopped the "god of death"
we destroyed deathwing and ragnaros
we saved pandaria and took down garrosh
we defeated archimonde....

"hey yeah who the fuck are you? some nobody?"

[owbu]

I dont really mind right now. As people have pointed out, its pretty normal in an rpg to ascend from helping out grandmas to being the supreme leader of awesome. Whats weird is that we are still helping grandmas on the side.
And I really dont know where blizzard wants to go from here. They basicly went all in with legion, we have the weapon, we have the title. We gathered our troups. The bad guy from the beginning is back. Everything points toward final showdown. Just that this time they cant roll the credits and start WoW2, they have to somehow try and top this. Or go the panda way and really really tone down the DOOOM part of the game for a while.

[Yunru]

We call this *Log Horizon* effect.

[Demeia]

That's way overstated in the case of Legion, IMO -- but then again, I haven't played every single class, and for some of the classes I have played, I haven't gotten much farther than grabbing my artifact. Maybe some classes get more of the god-treatment than others.

Edit: I know paladins are practically worshipped!

We stepped into legend when we killed Ragnoros..Then Nefarion, now Guldan... How many lore figures do we ahve to kill before the NPCs SHOULD be kissing our asses? We really are demi-gods in real sense. The problem is that Wow is ALSO is an MMO and it's hard to feel like a hero when there's 20304 other heroes on your server. The two ideas cannot really be reconciled. The grunt level works better in MMOs--we're just a small part of hte war!--but the kind of amazing things that the game has you do clearly turns you into a demi-god/super-hero.

[Deleted]

There are two options:

1. We keep killing kobolds and have raid bosses like Kobold King of the Elwynn Forest.

or

2. The way things are now.

[pateuvasiliu]

I'm on the opposite end, it's about time our characters get recognition.

We killed/beat up Ragnaros ( twice ), 2 Old Gods, Illidan, Arthas, Deathwing, the Sha, corrupted titanic watchers, Archimonde ( twice ), Kil'Jaeden and so on.

Our achievements far outweigh the achievements of any one individual in Azeroth. Why would we not get recognition?

[Deleted]

Players who want Warcraft to be DBZ and be warcraft's Goku fascinate me...

Yes, I want to be Goku of my 12 years' old adventure, not Yamcha.

[Dagoth Ur]

Yes, I want to be Goku of my 12 years' old adventure, not Yamcha.

I said that jokingly What I wanted to say is if players become too powerful nothing will ever feel satisfying. Villains need to be actual threat, give players hard time and not always lose for it to feel satisfying. I can understand people who like it this way, just saying that imo we'll just slice through all enemies that have left and it won't be as good of a story that could've been.

[Zaelsino]

What worries me is what comes after this. We're already more important and influential than nearly all of the "secondary" characters, i.e. every single champion/supporting leader in the game. What's next, what can give the PC an even bigger power trip? Does the PC become a racial leader? King? Warchief? Do people really think that would be good for the lore?