So...Why is none of the NPCs powerfull and awesome anymore?

[TheFirstOnes]

So a faction leader is a faction leader because he is the strongest? Thats some tribal reasoning right there. Not without reason - Vanilla introduced faction leaders as one of the hardest raid bosses, and certain characters like Thrall or Sylvanas were known in WC3 as great fighters. Still though - there is no reason for faction leader to be the "strongest baddest around", thats not why they were chosen to lead. Lorewise, its player character thats currently the "muscle" during missions, while others take the role of coordinating the campaign (Khadgar, Turalyon, Velen etc.).

And still... have you even paid attention to Illidan? Dude exploded Gul'dan and evaporated Xe'ra, and we know whats still to come for him....

Yeah, but Gul'dan was Weakened, Xe'ra was not a Void Naaru at Full timely empowered strength (Like L'ura), and The Pantheon (And our Artifacts) are Jailing Sargeras, Illidan is just watching his Chains, making sure he does not escape. Also, WE (The Players) fight Argus' WORLD SOUL! Sure, it's just a World Soul, but his World Soul alone is/was so strong, it COULD (Could've) easily destroyed the Universe (Blame the Aggramar Boss Description for that, not me).

[Swalload]

So i did the last part of the Argus campaign and i was actually really exited to play it through, since it showed alot of NPC interaction, fighting beside Turalyon and Velen, and doing the new dungeon with Alleria, but something really struck me, something that woke up a thing that have annoyed me for a while.

...Why are none of the NPC characters powerfull or atleast just doing something awesomely powerfull in-game? Are NPCs not allowed to be awesome anymore?

From a lore standpoint, characters like Velen, Alleria and especially Turalyon are very powerfull and can do powerfull things. They should be able to stand on their own against most enemies and do great things....But in the game, compared to the player, they do nearly nothing. Turalyon should be cleaving through demons and burning them down with holy fire, yet he does very little even compared to my follower companion. Alleria in new dungeon was even set up to be very important, but from a player standpoint, she did nothing but open a few doors.

I can understand, that from a gameplay point of view, it is not good to have NPCs doing all the work, but i really feel like we are making all the NPCs in the game seem weak, when they are not allowed to actually kill enemies anymore. Illidan seems insanly powerfull in the Xe'ra Cinematic, yet he seems to have his hands full when he is just dealing with minor demons in-game. For me, this makes it harder to look up to these characters and idolize them. While Turalyon looks cool, i feel like a guy like Tirion is actually even stronger and i think something is wrong about that.

I remember back to the days of Erunak Stonespeaker, who used Forked Lightning 5-6 enemies and 1-shot them. The Lillian Voss storyline in the Tirisfal Glades, where she jumps around killing lvl approbiate NPCs. The entire Battle of Undercity, where we really got to see why our faction leaders deserved to be our faction leaders. It is sooooo long since we have had an awesome moment, where an NPC actually comes in and does something amazing.
Creating these moments for new characters would help. Having one of the outposts on Argus be attacked only for Turalyon to warp in and slice through some elites would make it much easier to see him as powerfull. Having Velen go with us on a quest and heal characters to full health and burn down big enemies would also help his image.

TL;DR: It seems like NPCs in current WoW are not allowed to be cool and awesome in-game. I think that something is lost because of this. Characters like Turalyon and Velen would be alot easier to see as cool characters, if they actually got into combat and showed their power. Right now, i sadly feel like the players are saving a world full of weak people, who can do absolutely nothing to defend themselfs.

What is your standpoint on the current in-game powerlvl of the major NPC characters?

I was thinking the same, specially with Turalyon when he fights demons with you and he does maybe 100k dps, if anything. I feel like stats and lore should go together, if he's stronger than me I should fucking feel it when fighting mobs with him. Just make it a special moment with stronger mobs that would otherwise take forever to die if I was alone, so it feels right to be fighting with him doing tons of dmg and having stats that represent his true power.
Maybe that was too complicated to make, or maybe they just don't care about things like that.

[TheFirstOnes]

*Cough* Khadgar *Cough* Turalyon *Cough* Illidan *Cough*

Again, they're strong, but they're not as strong as us. OP wants Lore NPC's to become stronger than us, again. But, as of now, only the Titan Pantheon (At their prime), Sargeras, And the Void Lord's are stronger than us (Maybe even Elune), and they range from being fucking Gods, to beings beyond the Gods themselves.

[Flurryfang]

Because Blizzard decided to make us the chosen snowflakes of Warcraft. They want to make us feel special as a player. Like "YOU are the hero now! YOU are the chosen one to lead us to victory!". It's so fucking corny.

WoW feels so empty anymore though. It's like they tried to be all edgy and dramatic like Game of Thrones and were like "I know! Lets kill a bunch of our iconic characters!" without any other characters to back them up. Well, at least for the Horde side that's how it feels. Alliance got Anduin Wrynn in place for Varian (who looks like he might be a badass after watching that last cutscene) but who does the Horde get for Vol'jin and the badass turned pussy, Thrall? Sylvanas, who is also looking like she might either be killed off or be turned evil...and then killed off and when/if that happens who will the horde have then? Thrall? Pfft, yeah right. What's he gonna do? Throw his anal beads at people? Everytime he enters battle he's gotta be dragged out because his weak ass can't do shit. I miss Warchief Thrall. This washed up Captain Planet can go to hell.

This is why I'm turning to the Alliance now after Horde being my main faction for like 10 years because at least they have more interesting characters that are still alive and their story seems to be more interesting right now (Blizzard favoring the Alliance over the Horde conspiracy theories intensify). Horde feels empty and boring now. They are a hollow shell of what they once were (RIP pre-douchebag Garrosh era).

Yeah, i think that the problems about Blizzards insane 100% focus on faction leaders is beginning to show its faults about now. Having only 1 or 2 people from each race be important for the overall story makes the story fragile, making deaths hit hard but also creates problems for the overall story. Like, atm, there is no troll ready to take the post of leader of the darkspear tribe and without a huge lore focus, there wont be anytime soon. The same risk is happening with some of the other races aswell. The orcs, the gnomes and the humans are right now without any potential candidate for leadership role if their current leader dies and that is even counting half-neutral characters. I would even count the Goblins with them, but they don't even have a visible leader atm, so they would not really be worse off.

[TheFirstOnes]

WTF? NPCs are already OP!

Illidan one shotting a Naruu Prime
Velen one shotting demon generals...
Khadgar pulling out ridiculously OP magic

Ahahahahaha.

Illidan killed Xe'ra, yes. BUT, Naaru are FRAGILE. Xe'ra was not capable of defeating him, due to Illidan surprising her. Besides, we've defeated Naaru back when we were lvl 70. L'ura is a special case, since she's been empowered by TONS of Void machines/creatures.

Velen only defeated Tal'gath, cause he was both weakened to shit, and cause of the fact that he was stunned. Nothing else.

And Khadgar did nothing. The only thing he does now is crush on a girl he likes, hang with his friends, while aiding us in battle (And by "Aiding" I mean by helping on the fields, not in terms of fighting). Khadgar is weak. We've defeated Gul'dan at 100% might. We defeated Kil'jaeden with Illidan/Velen on the side-lines, and we've defeated L'ura. Now, we're fighting off against Argus' World Soul, Aggramar's Avatar, and more.

[zlygork]

Because your toon is the greatest hero of all time. Along with.. everyone else and their toon..

Is there room for anyone else?

That is the biggest problem with this kind of story telling in an MMO. Everyone is the hero in their story with millions of other people being told the same thing. Even if they are standing right next to each other. Story was a lot more interesting when it was about major NPCs in the world driving it and the players were adventures. But it is to late to go back now.

This is the way it is now. So just accept NPCs don't matter. You and all the other special snow flakes are what matter now.

For all that people complained about Draenor's lore being time travel and whatnot, THIS was the biggest problem it had. Leave being the ultimate hero to bethesda games and Diablo

[Flurryfang]

I was thinking the same, specially with Turalyon when he fights demons with you and he does maybe 100k dps, if anything. I feel like stats and lore should go together, if he's stronger than me I should fucking feel it when fighting mobs with him. Just make it a special moment with stronger mobs that would otherwise take forever to die if I was alone, so it feels right to be fighting with him doing tons of dmg and having stats that represent his true power.
Maybe that was too complicated to make, or maybe they just don't care about things like that.

Some people might say, that it is a problem that i am making up, but when i get Turalyon as a combat companion and i expect him to kick ass, i feel the kick in the nuts when he hits as though he were wielding a hard crusted baguette.

I think Blizzard have actually made it work before by having us fight beside powerfull characters and all they had to do, was increase our stats at the same time. Give us an aura buff, that comes from the character, like the one we got in Battle for Undercity. Him doing 50mill dps on a target would still awesome even if i did the same, but since i could see my buff (giving 500% dmg), i could understand that without him, i would be lost.

[Granyala]

Probably the usual gameplay > lore BS.

I got a good chuckle out of Illidan trying to kill world quest mobs while outdpsing him as a healer.
Typical faceroller dungeon DPS.

[Flurryfang]

They were never powerful. It was always us downing all the bosses from the very start, with the occasional cameo once every 20-30 bosses.

So requiring a raid to kill was not powerful? Doing awesome unique shit, that the player could never dream off is not powerful? Sure it was us downing the bosses, but that was because we did it for loot, not because we were in mortal danger. Bolvar did not have to leave Stormwind to take care Neferian, because he was not an imminent threat, but since he had loot, the players went after him instead. So it was for most of the bosses in Vanilla and TBC, there was not really an urgent need for the bosses to die, but the player characters wanted loot so they went in and killed them. When it came to Wrath, they even answered why it was not important and urgent, and why the other big named characters did not engage, except they were still there in ICC.

Many of the raids thereafter were explained to be Covert Op, sending in the best soldiers(us) while the forces of good(our leaders and friendly named NPC characters) stayed behind to the fight the enemy army.

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Probably the usual gameplay > lore BS.

I got a good chuckle out of Illidan trying to kill world quest mobs while outdpsing him as a healer.
Typical faceroller dungeon DPS.

He does look a bit sad there flaying around his fire blades at the small bats trying to take them down xD A better alternative would have been to have the entire camp be swarming with bats in the sky and then have Illidan come flying in and just taking all of them down one by one

[Queen of Hamsters]

Because Blizzard decided to make us the chosen snowflakes of Warcraft. They want to make us feel special as a player. Like "YOU are the hero now! YOU are the chosen one to lead us to victory!". It's so fucking corny.

WoW feels so empty anymore though. It's like they tried to be all edgy and dramatic like Game of Thrones and were like "I know! Lets kill a bunch of our iconic characters!" without any other characters to back them up. Well, at least for the Horde side that's how it feels. Alliance got Anduin Wrynn in place for Varian (who looks like he might be a badass after watching that last cutscene) but who does the Horde get for Vol'jin and the badass turned pussy, Thrall? Sylvanas, who is also looking like she might either be killed off or be turned evil...and then killed off and when/if that happens who will the horde have then? Thrall? Pfft, yeah right. What's he gonna do? Throw his anal beads at people? Everytime he enters battle he's gotta be dragged out because his weak ass can't do shit. I miss Warchief Thrall. This washed up Captain Planet can go to hell.

This is why I'm turning to the Alliance now after Horde being my main faction for like 10 years because at least they have more interesting characters that are still alive and their story seems to be more interesting right now (Blizzard favoring the Alliance over the Horde conspiracy theories intensify). Horde feels empty and boring now. They are a hollow shell of what they once were (RIP pre-douchebag Garrosh era).

Lol, can't say I relate in any shape or form to this post.

But then I never was a turncoat either. The Alliance have their character development after 2 expansions where the Horde and results from Horde characters had the focus. Eventually, we'll have Horde-centric expansions again. We're currently fighting the Legion, with characters relevant to that storyline.

[Swalload]

Some people might say, that it is a problem that i am making up, but when i get Turalyon as a combat companion and i expect him to kick ass, i feel the kick in the nuts when he hits as though he were wielding a hard crusted baguette.

I think Blizzard have actually made it work before by having us fight beside powerfull characters and all they had to do, was increase our stats at the same time. Give us an aura buff, that comes from the character, like the one we got in Battle for Undercity. Him doing 50mill dps on a target would still awesome even if i did the same, but since i could see my buff (giving 500% dmg), i could understand that without him, i would be lost.

Yeah something like that, I guess they just don't want people to watch a strong NPC do everything for them, which is understandable. But there are so many ways to design things to make it interesting. Like make an encounter that throws both the player and turalyon in a void arena where we each have to fight waves of shit to get out. We could see him destroying mobs as fast as us, but the player still needs to fight cuz we're seperated.
I mean I just pulled that out of my ass, I'm sure a full team of brave Californian designers can come up with better.

[Nixl]

Lore characters have much more power than you realize. When they die, they stay dead unlike us. Their suffering ends and they never have to do the keg WQ ever again.

I envy the Lore npc's

[Engal]

...Why are none of the NPC characters powerfull or atleast just doing something awesomely powerfull in-game? Are NPCs not allowed to be awesome anymore?

Farondis disagree with you.

[Flurryfang]

Yeah something like that, I guess they just don't want people to watch a strong NPC do everything for them, which is understandable. But there are so many ways to design things to make it interesting. Like make an encounter that throws both the player and turalyon in a void arena where we each have to fight waves of shit to get out. We could see him destroying mobs as fast as us, but the player still needs to fight cuz we're seperated.
I mean I just pulled that out of my ass, I'm sure a full team of brave Californian designers can come up with better.

One of the things that often baffle me when it comes to WoW, is that despite them proberly having one of the most well-payed and educated teams in the world, they still make fails at the same lvl as some newbie and indie teams does all the time. You would imagine that all the experience and time they apperantly use on the game, they should be able to awe us sometimes, yet they still can't find a good way to make NPCs fit well into the world.

Not gonna say, that i can do it better, but i seriously would be pressing for better performance if i were their supervisor.

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Farondis disagree with you.

Farondis is the exception that proves the problem. He is absolutely amazingly made and his power is very clear while also playing a part in his character development I could talk about Farondis for days, because he is really well made, but the thing is, when they can make characters like him, why are they not atleast trying to do the same with other characters?

[Engal]

One of the things that often baffle me when it comes to WoW, is that despite them proberly having one of the most well-payed and educated teams in the world, they still make fails at the same lvl as some newbie and indie teams does all the time. You would imagine that all the experience and time they apperantly use on the game, they should be able to awe us sometimes, yet they still can't find a good way to make NPCs fit well into the world.

Not gonna say, that i can do it better, but i seriously would be pressing for better performance if i were their supervisor.

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Farondis is the exception that proves the problem. He is absolutely amazingly made and his power is very clear while also playing a part in his character development I could talk about Farondis for days, because he is really well made, but the thing is, when they can make characters like him, why are they not atleast trying to do the same with other characters?

Arthas was also powerfu enough, without Light Marie sue, we would be serving him as undead, he killed a whole raid in a single skill.

[Justpassing]

This thread's premise is completely wrong and I'll tell you why: Black Temple flashback.

So everybody pretty much knows TBC BT and how it went. Dps tonk heal dps tonk heal then Maiev shows up and puts down shadow traps and you defeat Illidan. Except it apparently wasn't.

In the flashback of Xe'ra questline you clearly see Illidan casually oneshotting every player, healers at the back constantly resurrecting and jazz: But the big difference is that Maiev showing up seals the fight. Maiev who in TBC just set shadow traps and does 1k dps kills Illidan in a duel.

Moral of the story is: The npcs showing up in raid encounters who do no dps aren't actually doing no dps, it's just a gameplay mechanics beacuse if Khadgar at Gul'dan did seven million dps like he would've then there wouldn't be a player-driven raid encounter.

tl;dr: Npcs doing no dps is a strict gameplay mechanic, it does not trivialize npc power level.

[Flurryfang]

Arthas was also powerfu enough, without Light Marie sue, we would be serving him as undead, he killed a whole raid in a single skill.

He was alright too. I was a bit disappointed, that the only moment of real action from his side was at his boss battle. It would have been cool to see him do some real dmg during the questline in Icecrown.

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This thread's premise is completely wrong and I'll tell you why: Black Temple flashback.

So everybody pretty much knows TBC BT and how it went. Dps tonk heal dps tonk heal then Maiev shows up and puts down shadow traps and you defeat Illidan. Except it apparently wasn't.

In the flashback of Xe'ra questline you clearly see Illidan casually oneshotting every player, healers at the back constantly resurrecting and jazz: But the big difference is that Maiev showing up seals the fight. Maiev who in TBC just set shadow traps and does 1k dps kills Illidan in a duel.

Moral of the story is: The npcs showing up in raid encounters who do no dps aren't actually doing no dps, it's just a gameplay mechanics beacuse if Khadgar at Gul'dan did seven million dps like he would've then there wouldn't be a player-driven raid encounter.

tl;dr: Npcs doing no dps is a strict gameplay mechanic, it does not trivialize npc power level.

You know, that fight shows a parody of illidans power in that scenario. He is killing players like they are nothing and yet he looses xD You can wipe the entire raid except 1 character and they will still win, dealing 10% of illidans health from random abilties xD Maiev might from a story standpoint change the weight of the fight, but in the flashback, she does not seem that important

But to direct at your overall subject, you are doing a pretty good job explaining why having characters do no dps is a good thing, but you are not really countering my main point at all: That having NPCs do 0 dmg, loses alot of their importance and pressence in the game, because it seems like the world would be completly lost if the players werent there to do every single thing.

And in the end, if 90% of all the power moments we have with NPCs is when they fight beside us and do 0 dmg, it gets quite hard to suppress those moments when somebody comes by and says that the NPCs are really powerful yet not showing it at all.

Like Lahis pointed out earlier, you can easily have NPCs interact in a boss battle without having them do 8 million passive dps and Blizzard have done it before to great succes. All that i am pointing out is, that it would not harm anything if we could actually see the NPCs of Azeroth fighting for their planet and going against enemies, that match their strenght. Having an increased dmg period be activated by an NPC would do nothing bad and help players feel like they are not alone in this constant battle and that the world is a bit more alive.

[Swalload]

One of the things that often baffle me when it comes to WoW, is that despite them proberly having one of the most well-payed and educated teams in the world, they still make fails at the same lvl as some newbie and indie teams does all the time. You would imagine that all the experience and time they apperantly use on the game, they should be able to awe us sometimes, yet they still can't find a good way to make NPCs fit well into the world.

Not gonna say, that i can do it better, but i seriously would be pressing for better performance if i were their supervisor.

There's no "supervisor", there are team leads and directors, they are the ones with the most experience and they are the ones throwing most ideas around. These ideas are then put in a production pipeline where they undergo prototyping, testing, iteration, more testing, more iteration, until it reaches a point where they say "yup that's good" or "we're out of time on that thing, this will have to do". More often than not, the latter happens because unlike releasing a new game, patches are on a tighter schedule with a deadline, so they have to cut some stuff to make it in time.

In this industry, experience doesn't have as much influence as people would think. It's not like building a house, following a plan or protocol set in place since hundreds of years. Video games are barely 50ish years old and every single year there's a LOT of new things to learn, it's constantly changing and evolving. I'm not even talking about the technology. Just the ways of doing things, the concepts and thought process, the philosophy of creating fun, everything changes every year. So experience really doesn't have the same strength on a project compared to many other fields. That's why we see veteran companies sometimes making shit and indies coming out strong, these things happen.

The only people who would be in a position to press for better "performances" are the producers, but they see performance as profit. WoD was shit, bad performance in every sense of the word. Producers pressed for better performance like you said, and they made Legion, which is easily 2 to 3 times better than WoD, can't even argue with that.
As much as you and I would like to see NPCs power represented in stats and combat, we have to face the fact that something like this has to be extremely low on their priority list.

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This thread's premise is completely wrong and I'll tell you why: Black Temple flashback.

So everybody pretty much knows TBC BT and how it went. Dps tonk heal dps tonk heal then Maiev shows up and puts down shadow traps and you defeat Illidan. Except it apparently wasn't.

In the flashback of Xe'ra questline you clearly see Illidan casually oneshotting every player, healers at the back constantly resurrecting and jazz: But the big difference is that Maiev showing up seals the fight. Maiev who in TBC just set shadow traps and does 1k dps kills Illidan in a duel.

Moral of the story is: The npcs showing up in raid encounters who do no dps aren't actually doing no dps, it's just a gameplay mechanics beacuse if Khadgar at Gul'dan did seven million dps like he would've then there wouldn't be a player-driven raid encounter.

tl;dr: Npcs doing no dps is a strict gameplay mechanic, it does not trivialize npc power level.

That's true but it would still be possible to represent their power in battle without having them carry the players. For exemple, while we fight Avatar in the last phase in the green lava, KJ and Illidan are fighting by the portal. We could then start the KJ fight with him at 50% hp, showing that Illidan did that much by himself, then we take over, fight until KJ is at 30%, he heals a chunk of HP somehow so the total dmg we do is the same as right now and no class benefits from insane execute phase exploit (ok spriests get 5% worth of execute, call the police) but you get the idea. Right now it's just pointless animations of Illidan going punching bag mode on KJ for 5 minutes and doing zero dmg =/

[MasterHamster]

The game is no longer designed to ever challenge you outside of raids or high level mythic+, and that is reflected with important NPCs trying to make fighting these demons seem like a losing battle while you're plowing through them like nothing. Bit similar to that feeling when in other games you're killing bad guys like nothing then a cinematic cuts in and oh suddenly 2 guys somehow manages to subdue you, lel.

[Typhoria]

Both Malfurion and Illidan have cast spells that would have destroyed the world if they hadn't been interrupted. There is no evidence that the PC is able to do this.

Also would you prefer on every boss at 1% we get brought to our knees and some Npc bails us out?