Originally Posted by
Wildberry
A demotion in player power and player rank is sorely needed, at this point. Promoting players to ranks such as "Commander" and "Deathlord" have had an objectively bad impact on this game's story as a whole. Beyond that, it's tedious, tiresome, generic, exacerbates "Threat Creep," and has turned Warcraft into a satire of itself.
I'm sure some wonderfully intelligent and insightful person is hitting the quote button right now, ready to tell me that they deserve to be acknowledged for killing Lich Kings and the like, so I want to expand upon why this sort of framing is inarguably bad for the game right off the bat.
During the campaign on Draenor, the player led their respective faction's war efforts against the (Fel) Iron Horde. In "Legion," players are leading their Order's efforts against the Burning Legion. The biggest issue here is that the leadership position is filled by you. Instead of being a "veteran of the Horde/Alliance" or a champion of said faction, you are leading.
Even though the format can't offer flexibility or choice (and if they did, such choices would have a canon and non-canon version), the choices made during these efforts are yours, the buildup and development is yours. The only issue is that you can't do anything with that development. "Unclbadtouch" the Undead Rogue won't become canon. NPCs on your end might recognize you; however, I won't hear of your exploits, nor will they enter canon. No matter how much NPCs kiss your ass for beating Gul'dan on LFR, you will never go on to occupy a meaningful position in Warcraft, nor will you have an actual story-arc.
All of the decisions made, development given, etc. is wasted on the player.
It might be forgivable were we in a position where the Warcraft Universe was swarming with heavily developed, deep, characters each with their own satisfying story, but that's not where we're at. Orcs went throughout "Warlords of Draenor" with no leader, until Saurfang was quietly promoted. Since then he's received nothing. Nobody can figure out who in the Hell is supposed to be leading the Trolls. Is it one of Vol'jin's kids that's only ever been alluded to in a certain reading of a single quest? Rokhan? Why, because he was present throughout WCIII, despite his flat personality? One of the two minor female Trolls? Because they made an appearance once?
Warcraft is desperately in need of more characters, not just racial leaders, either. We need more minor characters, Overlords, and the like, to receive development. These characters help flesh out races, which, right now, are defined entirely by their leaders. Look at Orcs in Wrath of the Lich King, for example, (Back when we were just "Champions" and veterans), sure they were led by Thrall, who represented a section of Orcish society; however, Garrosh, Saurfang, Krenna, Agmar, Gorgonna, Nazgrim Dranosh, etc. all helped to flesh out Orcish culture. We actually got a glimpse of bitter divides, generational gaps, philosophical differences, etc. These characters helped flesh out the Orcish race and give it soul.
These things can't be accomplished with the player in a leadership position. That arrangement siphons too much of a very small spotlight away from canonical characters that could actually benefit from such development and enrich the story.
Not only do characters suffer, but factions suffer as well. Sub-factions (ie, The Silver Hand) have had their identities watered down and diluted to accommodate all race/class options. The Horde and Alliance as a whole have to take the backseat to the player doing oh-so-cinematic things.
The game is worse off for our position.
With regard to player "power," we need kicked down there, too. "Threat Creep" is real, and doing things like killing Sargeras or battling the Void Lords directly is ridiculous and sucks some of the mystery out of Warcraft.
With regard to building an interplanetary coalition against the Void Lords, why in the Hell do I care about other planets? I want to do things on Azeroth. Draenor and Outland were only ever relevant because they threatened Azeroth, and were another, minor, stage for Azerothian actors to act upon.
Were we to work on building a coalition, we'd run the risk of (and inevitably run into, thanks to Blizzard's storytelling abilities) things feeling too detached from our own world for players to care. The "fun and mystery" that Outland/Draenor provided would most likely fall flat were it to become a regular occurrence with planets that players really have no reason to care about, either.
tl;dr: I want to go back to just being a veteran of the Horde. Allow me to work under canon characters, and battle local threats. I don't want to lead an interplanetary coalition against an incomprehensibly large, background evil.