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

[Maljinwo]

I've been a general, the champion of the Tirisgarde and they even send for me during Horde leadership meetings

The Darkspear need a Chieftain? Well, of course I'll take the mantle... Oh wait... Ok... Rokhan... Suuuure...

[Wheeler]

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

These are the kinds of problems you get when you try to keep a persistent game universe with a persistent character through 20 years of MMO.

A true sequel to WoW should have launched after Legion, and Legion should have taken place instead of WoD.

[pinkz]

reminds me of parents that drive around with a bumper sticker that says "my son/daughter/kid is a A student or Honor Student at Dilligaf High School"

sadly have a friend IRL who did that, even claiming how great he is in school, etc. the kid did get to graduate with his class, but did not get a diploma till 11 months later due to having so many failed classes in previous 4 years.

sorta like WOW, with the catch up mechanics and systems, and pre patches since legion that give gear negating 90% of the exiting expac

[deenman]

no thanks,the skyrim aproach is beyong stupid,im the dragonborn,have godlike powers,i control every major faction in the game,and yett people in my own factions...that i lead....treat me like some new comer...to be fair this is mostly because of bethesda's sheer incompetence and lazyness and not some design choice

its normal for our characters to evolve and change and advance

however i do agree with the sentiment...my solution would be when someone makes a new character that they could chose some RP options regarding their character,maybe even have special different/extra quests for what you pick

[Surfacin9]

As far as I see, its not that bad. We are called champions, but only by a number of NPCs. Many call us "champions" (with quotation marks, implying insignificance of our status to them), some see us as a random hero. Like in Voldun, you meet with Vulpera and the Snake people, who have no idea who we are and what we accomplished, same for Nazjatar and many other zones and NPCs. The once that call us heroes and champions are actually the ones who participated with us, witnessed or are completely aware of our accomplishments - and they are the major lore characters or our fellow NPC "adventurers".

In Shadowlands they don't care for your status on Azeroth, they kbow nothing about Azeroth. So at first you are treated like a nobody, until they realize that you actually are not a dead soul. That obviously raises their interest and once they learn that we've been to the Maw and escaped, they realize that we're not just a random nobody. As the events of the storylines unfold, your status rises in the eyes of NPCs, since our characters help them a lot in dire situations.

In Legion they did go overboard with all the praise coming from NPCs, but that was done in order to cement your status as the leader of your class, which somehow was forgotten as soon as BFA launched, but w/e.

If we were just mercenaries, then by this time we'd be elite top most sought after mercenaries anyway, because no matter to what extent, we did participate in so many 'saving the world' events that it would dumb as hell not be recognised by the 'general population' of Azeroth. Soldiers get medals and recognition for participating in battles, now multiply it by 10-20-30 big baddies that we killed and then by another 100 because they were threats to the world and everyone's existence. You want to be an adventurer, then deal with Hogger-like bosses and let the big bois handle Arthas, N'Zoth and the rest. I am sure that soon enough you will want to kill someone more meaningful and threatening.

[Adam Jensen]

I agree.

It makes no sense to give us a title that is obviously also shared by thousands of others in the universe. The game doesn't really pretend we're the only player, and even if it does, it's shitty at it. Throw away all pretenses and don't treat us like were special. "Champion" is too special of a term to use. Adventurer is more like it.

[WarTV]

I miss being an adventurer. Being a Champion story telling is less exciting that being an adventurer.

[Alteiry]

The idea that players are mercenary nobodies went out the window the moment they killed the physical manifestation of the Firelord Ragnaros in vanilla. And now, 16 years later, we've reached the point where we have physically destroyed every last Old God on Azeroth, defeated an actual Titan and imprisoned the WoW equivalent of Satan in a pocket dimension.

[Dalheim]

I'd prefer to be refered as ''Veteran'' over anything else. I don't want to be the leader of anything like in WoD and Legion.

[Kaver]

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.

Back in Dragon Soul people were complaining (rightfully so) that Thrall came in and stole all the glory by killing Deathwing. Some decison makers at Blizzard misunderstood this as the players saying they all individually wanted to be the Hero. Which was never what the players wanted. But this line evolved into the mess we have today where every single WoW player - good or bad - is THE hero.

[alt-ithist]

You do realize in FFXI you are the champion of the light, the savior of the world who has reincarnated since the beginning of time. You are only labeled an adventurer because there’s only really one faction for players, it’s an alliance of 3 kingdoms.

[Kaver]

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

Well it’s already not really reflected when leveling in a new expansion. We went from Legendary/Artifact wearing demi-gods in Legion to absolute pieces of shit in BFA. No glory about that. They gave all Paladins the Ashbringer in Legion and then sent them out to fight freaking Pirates in BFA... WoW already doesn’t make any sense because of all this “almighty hero” non-sense.

[breadisfunny]

so in rpg games usually when time passes and you do stuff your character gets stronger becomes more experienced,etc. so if you don't enjoy this aspect why are you playing a rpg? it's one of the cornerstone foundation of both pen and paper rpgs and crpgs and rpgs in general.

- - - Updated - - -

no thanks,the skyrim aproach is beyong stupid,im the dragonborn,have godlike powers,i control every major faction in the game,and yett people in my own factions...that i lead....treat me like some new comer...to be fair this is mostly because of bethesda's sheer incompetence and lazyness and not some design choice

its normal for our characters to evolve and change and advance

however i do agree with the sentiment...my solution would be when someone makes a new character that they could chose some RP options regarding their character,maybe even have special different/extra quests for what you pick

the godlike aspect of wow and skyrim and other similiar game stories is more a problem of terrible storytelling than the rpg aspect itself.

[Scifix]

Definately on the "hoping for a timeskip" wagon here.
Say we return from the shadowlands, time works differently there and the world as we know it has gone say, a thousand years thinking we would never come back, so new evil has risen, maybe the scourge overpowered the world in our absence, and we come back to a world with smaller, broken up factions just trying to survive 1 day at a time, and we are just someone who was once considered a great champion, but are no longer more than tales of a time long lost..

I know this wont float everyone`s goat, but personally, this is my dream

[VinceVega]

I think this is over.
We are allready known by EVERY Npc ingame as the saviour of XYZ.

The only way would be a timejump of say 50-100 years. People don't believe in us anymore etc. onyl long lived individuals with whom we had much contact can remember us like tyrande malfurion, lorthemar etc.

But they allready said, that there won't be a timejump after SL. Sadly because they could have revamped the whole world with a staggering release of old zones as new content without having to resort to outlandish enviroments again. And we can run around as an unknown guy rescuing little peons.

[Pawpurr]

We've defeated several gods at this point. Not going to happen, Wow's story is about to teach us why we are the ones going on cosmic adventures...

if you want to be a "forest and cave" adventurer, go play classic or another game. But that's a little played out, isn't it?

[MoanaLisa]

That boat has sailed and would be difficult to recall. I can think of an approach though: Jump the expansion forward a few years, make an elaborate farm like in Mists but /more/ and start off the pre-patch with all of us 'retired'. Then we could be called back into service in a way that wouldn't necessarily be written to suck up to us as much as in the past. It could even insert something simple that would require us to get back in shape again with respect to fighting skills etc.

I think it's nonsense to believe they would ever do something but if they wanted to reset the 'importance' factor of the former heroes, something like this might work.

Then there would also be another nice farm to maintain as well.

[Raghnar]

A solution would be to make the current title of your character reflecting his only one achievement :

A character with "the Kingslayer" title would be recognised by NPCs as one of the guy who helped Tirion to defeat Arthas, but not one of the heroes who defeated Argus (the "Titanslayers") or N'zoth (the Uncorrupted). So your character can achieve a great thing, but only one and so not being a godlike savior who defeated every threat accross each xpac.

[Aktavite]

From WotLK:
https://www.wowhead.com/quest=11672/enlistment-day

"You've come to enlist, right? Normally you'd have to stand in line like the other recruits. Normally you'd be out of luck because the recruitment ledger's gone missing and I can't process anyone until the new books get here.

Fortunately for you, <name>, I've heard about you and what you did in Outland. To be honest, you're a cut above these poor saps. Lines aren't for you.

Go to the barracks and speak to General Arlos. He'll be more than happy to meet with someone of your caliber."

Nah. I'm happy being different.

[shise]

It makes sense tho.

No ordinary adventurer defeats the one who would otherwise destroy life on Azeroth. Maybe he does, but he does it over and over again, he becomes that, a champion or hero.

It would not make sense to be plain adventurers.. no ordinary NPC ever went into a raid and defeated a boss.. time after time for years