Why it never made sense for individual PCs to receive recognition

[Wewlad]

This exchange is a reoccuring sight:

A: I just want to be an adventurer and not a fake commander/class leader.

B: Yeah but our characters have done so many cool things so it makes sense for them to receive recognition.

This is why B is dead wrong.

Your character, as an individual, never actually accomplished much alone prior to WoD/Legion hamfisting a false sense of importance in everyones' faces.

Rather, they were part of a raid group numbering 20-40 or so which did accomplish great deeds.

So why isn't the group effort recognized? Individuals come and go, they only really matter when joined in a greater effort with many others.

Rather in the current method of storytelling, the fact it takes a solid group to take on great enemies is treated as an afterthought while every NPC is apparently juggling 20ish dicks to suckle in their special individual sessions.

I was fine with the PCs being called champions or heroes in the generic sense, but they themselves are just parts of a whole which is ultimately greater than the sum. Without the group, they are nothing of note and the story should have kept it at that.

Instead we now have a plot hole infested story because there are so many blank slate characters who are so dearly important to the class stories yet they cannot be even referenced to outside of their bubbles. When you really look at the class stories, especially when orders collaborate in some manner, the chinks in this crude armor become agonizingly apparent.

Or whatever. I've lost any real involvement with the story due to the apparent the lack of stakes and tension. Burning Legion invades? Who cares, you're now a special snowflake character who's the chosen one, just don't try to connect any dots between these class stories.

[Jonnusthegreat]

Inb4 seal team six members are worthless without the rest of the team.

Every member of the team is a champion... your PC is just one of them.

[Wewlad]

Inb4 seal team six members are worthless without the rest of the team.

Every member of the team is a champion... your PC is just one of them.

I forgot another point. Why are our characters promoted to leadership positions? Just because they're excellent soldiers doesn't warrant them becoming commanders, highlords, etc. They always followed orders, extremely well mind you, but until the bullshit in WoD they weren't giving orders.

EDIT: Hell, there are several quest chains which make light of how our PCs will blindly follow orders and fulfill requests despite how obvious it is that they shouldn't.

[Pandragon]

Lorewise those 20-40 other people in the raid are NPCs following your command. Your character is unique in that he became very powerful, while the others were just normal adventurers joining you in fighting evil.

Think of your character as a lore figure that you control, no different than Uther, Tirion, Khadgar..ect...ect.. Except your playtime is the chronicling of you growing stronger. This is why we are now the leaders of the order halls. Because, of those in your class, you are the strongest.

[Jonnusthegreat]

I forgot another point. Why are our characters promoted to leadership positions? Just because they're excellent soldiers doesn't warrant them becoming commanders, highlords, etc. They always followed orders, extremely well mind you, but until the bullshit in WoD they weren't giving orders.

EDIT: Hell, there are several quest chains which make light of how our PCs will blindly follow orders and fulfill requests despite how obvious it is that they shouldn't.

Now that's a good point, lol.

[Wewlad]

Lorewise those 20-40 other people in the raid are NPCs following your command. Your character is unique in that he became very powerful, while the others were just normal adventurers joining you in fighting evil.

Think of your character as a lore figure that you control, no different than Uther, Tirion, Khadgar..ect...ect.. Except your playtime is the chronicling of you growing stronger. This is why we are now the leaders of the order halls. Because, of those in your class, you are the strongest.

I have never seen this or any real acknowledgement of the raid group aside from offhand quest text mentions.

In either case it's a piss poor excuse.

[derpkitteh]

I have never seen this or any real acknowledgement of the raid group aside from offhand quest text mentions.

In either case it's a piss poor excuse.

it might be poor, but it's the one they went with.

legion has made us some of the most powerful beings in warcraft lore. i mean, for fuck's sake, in 7.2 we get infused with power by the council of six, meaning we're basically a mini-guardian

i would honestly like another game where we're just a mercenary, handling bandits and renegade spellcasters. never touching the big things like taking down legion commanders and things like that. the raids only being there for gameplay and us having nothing to do with them in lore, even as just a face in the crowd. but now that we've hit this point in wow, i don't want them to reverse course. we are who we are now, it'd be bad storytelling to reverse course.

[Shinrael]

I always thought it'd be cool if world first guild kill counted as canon. As in, Guild X who got world first HC Deathwing becomes an actual institution/character in the lore. And you can have them and their feet mentioned in some of the books.

[Camthur]

A good many of the npcs we "grew up" with have died over the years. It would look really silly if we, an ultimate survivor with a great deal of combat experience, started out some expansion just standing in line like some newbie recruit taking orders from some new guy.

[Evangeliste]

It's an MMORPG. Not a Offline RPG. You play as an individual that joins a group of others to overcome. Even in offline RPG's they always talk to the main character or the character you're playing and have a lot of emphasis with the word 'you', but in World of Warcraft if they are addressing you individually, talk about matters that directly involve you like you picked up a ring from a boss you helped kill and talking to only you for the quest, they don't know who you went with do they? You is about individuals as well as used for you plural.

You character is just plain to begin with, Level 1, bottom of the pile but like a lot of people they don't stop and read the quests, don't take it in and realise they on a journey to start becoming someone.
Even in media it's always published about someone great, it doesn't go out of their way to congratulate everyone. Actors and their awards, the local paper sspeaking of a local hero, so on and so. None go well thanks to this person who helped, or my mum and dad who raised me, who the entire crew and financing that helped me win this nice shiny award.

Not every soldier gets picked to be commander, but what game do you play as a RPG where you play some random who has nothing special to give? No sense of adventure who stays at home and tends to their farm? The answer is virtually none. At least World of Warcraft poked fun at it with Johnny Awesome and all those quests in Western Plaguelands where you are the NPC giving our quests.

[Shostradamus]

A good many of the npcs we "grew up" with have died over the years. It would look really silly if we, an ultimate survivor with a great deal of combat experience, started out some expansion just standing in line like some newbie recruit taking orders from some new guy.

I understand your point, but being an experienced, veteran soldier doesn't automatically qualify you for leadership roles. I agree with the OP almost entirely. The "praise and prestige" the PCs are given makes the story blame and generic to me.

[Camthur]

I do think our being the go-to guy all the time does have some adverse effects on the storyline. Everywhere you go, you have to be the guy to fix things. Every npc you run into is made to look incompetent. While garrison and class hall followers sorta try remedy this, it doesn't really work since they mostly just scout for you or beat up things you already did.

I think maybe the game needs more situations where somebody asks you to help do something or help kill something instead of "hey you, go fix everything by yourself".

[Deleted]

Because it limits the story, if you're a nobody who's still killing bandits and thugs then its makes no sense for us to be simultaneously fighting god-like entities, Even if your character is new you still can't expect to be part of the raid that takes down kil-jaeden without possessing some history. Also, the reason your a class leader is it allows you to do quests that you wouldn't be able to do if you were some random champion. You wouldn't even be interacting with these lore characters if you're just some grunt. Also, there needs to be something to show that our characters are getting more powerful otherwise there's no sense of progression.

[Magnagarde]

Indeed. It should always be refered to as a group of heroes, instead of there being just one.

[therealbowser]

Well, there is a champion for every class in Legion, and there were presumably a lot of garrisons in WoD. I don't see the issue with individual heroes receiving recognition. I just preferred being an average Joe adventurer; it always led to more interesting stories for me.

[Justpassing]

One thing I don't understand: Are all of you unaware that WoW's story has been going on for a decade and it's still...a RPG? You know how RPGs work, right?

[Aucald]

Military leaders still follow orders - whether you're a captain, commander, or general there's a chain of command that exists above and beyond you. The PC's in WoW are no different in this regard - they still answer to their faction leaders or the command structure that surrounds those leaders. In WoD these commands devolved from Thrall or Yrel, then on to Vol'jin or Varian, depending on your faction. In Legion you're the commander of a Class Order but you are still very much beholden to Anduin/Genn or Sylvanas/Nathanos whenever your faction's leadership comes calling. It's a form of externalized narrative progression in the story but not much else - and on the elemental level you've still got reputation NPC's requesting you fetch them twelve bear asses like a basic peon.

[Deleted]

The point is, that the raid gruop in Legion is composed by the Champion / Class leaders.

Take Khadgar for example outside Nighthold Raid entrance when you finish the quest-line, just before the Gul'dan kill quest. He specifically ask you to form a gruop of capable heroes to slain the evil inside the citadel.

So we are not a God, capable of doing everything alone, we need the help of the other class Champions. Ideally, every raid shuold be (lore-wise ofc) composed by 1 priest 1 paladin 1 shaman 1 warrior 1 warlock and so on...

[Darknessvamp]

I know it's not the best story telling at times but it's certainly a fresh take in place of just being another random adventurer. Though my problem is that the "your character as the hero of faction" thing has been done for the last three expansions now and it's getting kinda old (the hero requested for the Pandaria scouting mission, the garrison commander and now Order Hall leader). Though I do usually jokingly wonder why they don't instead have quest givers praise the first adventurers who completed their quests in their turn in dialogue as having done the job better than us. Those Sephiroth42s and Bowjobs of the world really do need their recognition for collecting 15 orc ears or talking to someone a short distance away in such an efficient way. :P

[Wewlad]

I come back to posts trying to apply single-player RPG logic to an MMORPG.

Yeah, in Dragon Age or KOTOR it makes sense for your character to be at the center, but not in a game where your character is supposed to be a small part of a grand world.

That's really what ticks me off about the push for single-player RPG storytelling in MMORPGs. It goes against the founding principle of a living world that doesn't require your character to exist for life in the setting to go on.

Now in WoW, Blizzard is so hellbent on centering the story around the PC that the story and setting are currently in shambles because of all the gaping holes created by the presence of vague characters that can never be explored to any meaningful degree since people would riot if "canon" PCs were ever devised.

There is no reason the "Highlord" should not have been present to defend their own order hall from invading DKs. Or the priest PC's absence when Balnazzar attacks.

No way for all of these class stories to interact with each other in meaningful ways due to the ironic restrictions placed by the forced importance of PCs who can never be defined in the lore proper.