WoW would stop treating players as "Champions", and instead just "Adventurers"

[Claymore]

I love FFXIV and all, but its approach to storytelling is VASTLY different than WoW's Because of that, I think treating the player as a "Champion" or "Hero" of their given faction can often times feel very frustrating.

Now, when I say "players should be treated as Adventurers", what I really mean is that we should be treated as random mercenaries. That's not to say main characters dislike us or anything, but our involvement in our factions should be something that is largely left to our own devices. If I am a Dwarf, it might be IMPLIED that I serve Ironforge and by extension the Alliance (thus justifying the opposing faction treating you with hostility), as an "Adventurer", you would function largely outside of it. You are not a soldier, you did not sign-up for the army, you are an adventurer whose goals are your own to define.

This serves two purposes:

First, it makes it more believable that NPC's of the "opposing faction" would be willing to work with you. If the President of the US launched a nuke at China, then it is unlikely a Chinese General would be willing to work with an American General. However, some random American bounty-hunter or something? Possibly. Case in point; it wouldn't make sense of Tyrande to work with a "Champion of the Horde" who could've prevented the burning of Teldrassil. Some random mercenary who couldn't have stopped it even if he wanted? Far more plausible.

Second, it gives Blizzard the freedom to make more bold decisions on behalf of the factions at play. Sylvanas burning Teldrassil pissed a lot of Horde players off, too because as Warchief of the Horde, they were also culpable for her actions. As Adventurers who were simply "paid to be there, in case they were needed", players would have the freedom to condemn Sylvanas, without feeling like there characters are obliged to follow her blindly.

It may seem a minor point to stress, but I truly think this distinction between "Champion" and "Adventurer" would just really absolve a lot of the ongoing issues with WoW's storytelling, and how it often affects players and their characters.

[ONCHEhap]

I agree,I feel like it's more engaging to play as a bunch of bounty hunters,adventurers,mercenaries,and that kind of stuff. If a player wants to pretend they're a soldier of their faction,that's cool too,but it shouldn't be forced on us

[Tziva]

I've bitched about this before because I hate it, but the unfortunate truth is that the cat is out of the bag here. They've already escalated players to god tier in the storyline, and it would be weird and nonsensical to suddenly have NPCs act like you're some rando adventurer after all that. They should have not done this ongoing escalation of individuals to begin with, and treated players like the impact they had on the world was real but less personal and more part of a general effort of the population to defeat whatever the current evil was... but that's not what they chose to do.

recycling last time I complained about it:

I preferred the days where I was just an adventurer or mercenary. I feel like there is room in that universe to be apart of big stories without being The™ fucking champion of everything. Like, you took down a big baddie... as a joint effort with everyone else. Your raid in ICC was just one of many teams.

I don't like that the storyline treats you like some massive hero now and all the NPCs laud you like some kind of diety. It part because there's no where to go from here but make it more and more extreme every expansion, when it already feels ridiculous. I think it was a story misstep from the beginning to go down that path rather than emphasise accomplishments in Azeroth as a joint effort from all PCs.

I don't take lore seriously, but I do appreciate story in game and escalating godliness is not interesting or immersive to me.

[Kumorii]

Easy solution would be that every new expansion we are a new adventurer.

[Edward Wu]

You really can't do it unless you hard reboot the game's story and world. We've accrued too many accomplishments as characters for NPCs to realistically not know who we are and treat us as simple mercenaries.

Maybe they have something special planned for 10.0? Who knows.

[Zogarth]

I think that ship sailed when they gave everyone godlike legendary weapons to fight a literal god. Even if we were still just 'adventures' at that point, we would have to be treated as champions. To play into your analogy, then it would be like you were US nuked China, but you would still be a 3rd nuclear power all on your own.

[Nnyco]

Nah, infact we should be treated even better in general. We killed so many massive forces by now, they should kiss the fucking ground we walk on for saving the world every year basically.

[Lochton]

I've been complaining about this since Warlords of Draenor.

[Varodoc]

My Void elf is an exalted champion of the Ren'dorei who proudly wears their heritage armor, so I don't want her to be addressed as a random filthy mercenary with no ulterior motive or aspiration besides petty money.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I think us as "champions" can work. It works in XIV after all. I think the problem is just Blizz doesn't know how to write a good "Champion Storyline" and it just feels like we have DBZ God Powers while NPCs with even more Godly God Powers do all the work for us.

[ymirsson]

It started in vanilla, where we already killed an elemental lord, several dragons, an old god and a lieutenant of the lich king.

[FelPlague]

You're the reason we go from "Kill the lich king" to "Pick up rat poop" within 20 minutes.

[Ticj]

only real way to fix this is to have us go somewhere we are unheard of (like we did in pandaria) or to have a fairly large timeskip.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah, I'm pretty tired of the "Champion"-stuff too... I preferred when we were cogs in the wheel. Maybe the next revamp of EK/Kalimdor can bring us down a few pegs. I really wish they'd make it so that after SL, we've come back as time has moved much faster on Azeroth, meaning we'd be "nobodies" again to those new generations.

[deviantcultist]

Go play Vanilla to feel "humble". If your char is carrying 10 years of backlog, you expect that to be reflected somehow.

[temp2021ph]

They should have text to speech option on the names, with custom phonetic setting / character, to manually correct pronunciation (like i have seen it in TeamSpeak)

[Aleksej89]

WoW storytelling imho was most fun when players were nobodies.
Just some random self-funded adventurers that were barely equal to footman/grunt in rankings.

Ever since blizzard started the whole champion/chosen drivel its made storytelling a lot more boring and unrelatable.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

That stopped when we went to super dangerous places...like AQ..no I'm not an adventurer.

[Krekko]

WoW storytelling imho was most fun when players were nobodies.
Just some random self-funded adventurers that were barely equal to footman/grunt in rankings.

Ever since blizzard started the whole champion/chosen drivel its made storytelling a lot more boring and unrelatable.

I'd personally disagree, but mostly due to the fact that it was a slow burn getting here. We slowly ramped up to this point.

I DO however wish there was a way to opt for an alternative name, to appease the fantasy for some other people.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I definitely preferred being less important. I didn't like how Legion made us the head of our order, to me it would have made more sense for player characters to have been like a special ops team or something along those lines.

Sounds like a few hundred years need to pass while we're in Shadowlands, so the players exploits can become myth and legend.