How an expansion could break from "you're the hero mould"

[Schattenlied]

Last expansion we were collectively the order hall leaders. Does that count?

Last expansion the order hall leaders were NPCs lorewise, there was only one player leader, you... Look at the quest where you use your artifact to drain power out of Sargeras' sword, named lore characters are holding all the class artifacts except yours. Eitrigg has Strom'kar, Liadrin has the Ashbringer, Valeera has Garona's daggers, Rehgar Earthfury has the Doomhammer, Darion Mograine has Apocalypse.

Canonically only one PC, you, is an order hall leader.

[Trollokdamus]

Swtor you literally become the emperor of the universe, like what the ffffff

For a very short while, and you didn't get to do anything in that capacity. You're now an equivalent to the WoW Order Hall leader there if I'm not mistaken. That said, I like how Swtor does it. Their approach is pretty unique for MMOs. Your character is clearly defined and part of the canon (not canon canon though... it's complicated) so they will live on beyond the game as established personalities.

[Nevcairiel]

In lore it was simply "faceless heroes of the Horde or Alliance" who downed certain things. I remember they announced a bit ago which faction fought who. Like the Archimonde fight would be described as "Velen, Illidan, and the order hall leaders."

But we still were the heroes all along. We did defeat all the evils, NPCs where mostly not even present.
That the NPCs didnt recognize us for that doesn't really matter to me. If anything the entire humble adventurer thing felt totally odd when you just came back from defeating a big bad evil and now you go collect bear behinds for some farmer.

That loop between killing bads and doing chores definitely got better in newer expansions, as we typically have a clear agenda why we're helping common folks, and those common folks also recognize us for it and tie into our story.

If anything, Vanilla was worse because character and power growth was never recognized by NPC interaction. It was fine when you just created a new character, but after you killed Onyxia, and put her head up in SW for everyone to see? Still no recognition whatsoever. That only came over the expansions.

[Nnyco]

Just lock your exp at lvl 10 if you wanna be a small fry. Even back in vanilla we fought elemental lords and old gods. We always been heroes.

Last expansion the order hall leaders were NPCs lorewise, there was only one player leader, you... Look at the quest where you use your artifact to drain power out of Sargeras' sword, named lore characters are holding all the class artifacts except yours. Eitrigg has Strom'kar, Liadrin has the Ashbringer, Valeera has Garona's daggers, Rehgar Earthfury has the Doomhammer, Darion Mograine has Apocalypse.

Canonically only one PC, you, is an order hall leader.

I always saw it rather as the Leader just not being arround and the second in command came instead. Especially since the deathlord gets mentioned when you do the paladin 'quest' for corrupted ashbringer.

[Knslyr]

During Legion this literally happened though, Illidan himself tapped my Demon Hunter to lead the Illiari, my paladin became the leader of the Silver Hand and my Monk was the Grandmaster of the monks of Azeroth.

Yea I think it was a bit much. I liked the rogue class hall though, it felt more like the best of the best worked together rather than one commanding all the others.

If the player characters take too much of the spotlight its harder for new characters to be introduced into lore, or for existing ones to grow.

[Triceron]

To be honest, I just wish there was a way for them to fluidly tell the lore through a circumstance of events rather than linearly decide what happens.

One example of this is how Games Workshop used to decide huge campaigns. They would get players to officially partake in a giant campaign played in their stores, and the total record of wins/losses would inform how the story progresses. Which territories were taken, which were lost. All of that changed the landscape for the story moving forward, and it felt really involved since there was something to work forward to and you can see the immediate effort of your changes.

I'm not saying Blizzard has to do the same thing on this level, but some sort of mode or level of player-involved lore and interaction would be nice. It would take the story away from the same old 'Champion! Explore this new world and defeat the evil and save Azeroth!' type story that we've gone over thousands of times.

Something like a Siege of Lordaeron could have a permanent shift for the duration of an expansion based on how many times players participate and beat this place over the span of all the servers. And then in the next expansion, Lordaeron would be in control for the faction that wins.

[Deferionus]

My solutions to 'reset' the players power\recognitions would simply be to have a sizeable time-jump forward where all are accomplishments are unheard of or irrelevant and we're back to adventuring days. Extra points for new planet\dimension (hell, have Azeroth blow up!).

My solution would be similar, but different. Take an expansion such as Shadowlands, where we go against a major character such as the jailer, but we lose the final boss fight of the expansion. When we lose we get trapped inside of a soulstone or some other device and we get freed by chance by some random NPC saying mother teresa or some crap 5 times in the mirror. We are then 500 years in the future, everyone we know is dead except maybe some dragon aspects or other major characters, and Azeroth has been majorly reshaped in our absence. Factions are gone/different, Ruins of Stormwind is a high level zone, night elves have a new tree city on Eastern Kingdoms, etc. It would be a major reset to the entire franchise to breath fresh air into it. We can even find old statues built to honor us after our deaths and other major lore figures.

Best part? Due to Chromie you can still travel to the past to do old content so you do not lose anything like you did with the Cataclysm revamp.

[HateTrain]

As unreasonable as it is to think it, I thought you could get there with Shadowlands time fuckery. I'm talking like a 1000 year jump. A handfull of npcs and the PC pop out 1000 years, or 5000 years later. No one believes who we say we are, nearly everyone that existed before we left is dead. The game becomes less about saving the world from a huge threat and more about trying to find our new places in it by starting over. I mean, it would be the same shit I assume. Collect 25 bear nutsacks for me adventurer. Now that I type it out, that's a huge undertaking. Like, WoW 2.

[Koward]

So your solution is to have major, earth shattering events happening on one side, while players are over here attacking random Gnolls and stealing candles from Kobolds?

What on earth makes you think that this would be a good thing? That having a major story play out that we simply don't participate in and get to occasionally see from the sidelines would be fulfilling?

While I agree with you for WoW, being on the side of major events works sometimes very well. For instance, in a Witcher game you can tackle side problems of big scale wars (bandits, monsters feasting on corpses, small tyrants trying to profit, etc). But obviously it needs to fit the theme of what story you want to tell, and it might not suit WoW.
Although Classic and Mists of Pandaria were sort of a bit like that for the most part.

[Nynax]

we just did, it sucked.

It sucked because Blizzard kinda has no idea how to write a war story. If you really look at the lore, Blizzard has never actually written a war story start to finish. They start a war, easy, and then halfway through there's suddenly demons and undead out the ass and creating an existential threat that forces enemies to allies for awhile.

Even BFA, we didn't get much of a "war story" we got a rush to acquire new allies/territories, some border excursions in those new places and a total of 3.5 major battles that have actual significance (Darkshore/darnassus, Lordaeron, Dazar'alor, Darkshore again). Then BOOM! Nazjatar, Old Gods, oh shit the existential threat is back!

[dope_danny]

Well FFXIV just took you to a place where the light was the source of the evil monsters, given whats been teased the last few years "the light bad, time to go edgelord" isn't that big a stretch there either.

[AngerFork]

I've never fully understood this urge some players have to downgrade us to "just another" fighter. Like Blizz definitely goes over the top with it, but becoming just another guy after taking out beings like N'Zoth and the like would just feel weird.

That being said, I feel if Blizz did want to go in this direction, the best way to go is away from the lands we know and towards those that haven't heard of us. Other side of Azeroth? Other planets? Different timestream? If they haven't heard of us, they have no reason to believe we're anything special. The key to this though is that we need to leave our factions behind. We could've had a soft reset in Draenor, but the Alliance/Horde insisted on making us Commanders and pretty much killed that. Kul Tiras/Zandalar could've had a similar thing (especially Zandalar), but we had to be the emissary/ambassador for our factions putting us again in a big role.

AU Azeroth could be really interesting here, especially if in that world we died early.

[Oneirophobia]

A transmog ruining eye on my head for 6 months. What do you even get for keeping it?

A transmog ruining eye on my head for 6 months.


That's literally it.

[Icaras]

My solution would be similar, but different. Take an expansion such as Shadowlands, where we go against a major character such as the jailer, but we lose the final boss fight of the expansion.

They did that already. The Lich King fight. You're literally fully defeated (To the point where you even got a rejection message if you tried to release after he cast the spell that killed you).

We only end up winning because of Uther and the spirit of King Terenas. (And as others have said ion the thread, it's not the only boss, final xpac boss or not, where we only win because existing lore characters were helping us already, or they intervene.)

I also recall a few instances during questing where the player is bested, and other characters have to intervene to give you a chance to save yourself. One chain in BFA for example, your character is captured and you actually have to play as the NPC to save yourself. So we are again, literally, defeated and captured and only saved because another character saves US (I really liked that quest chain, i thought it was clever).

The problem with proposing "What if the boss actually really beats us! For real!" is that if they do beat us....well that's game over, we're 100% dead....I dunno about you, but I don't fancy a game that forces my character to be deletd when they die (outside of optional hardcore challenegs/modes ).
Otherwise if we do lose, it just means we wipe and the encounter resets so we technically never lost. Or as I stated before some other character or event intervenes and either helps us win, wins for us, or at least lets something happen so we live to fight again.

On a slightly elated note, I also believe that "canon" is that the majority of the bosses we defeat are defeated by us...I think only Onyxia (It was retconned to align with the wow comic story involving Varian) and Van Cleef (Based on the cata quests, which imply a bunch of randos killed him now, not the player anymore). Maybe a few I'm missing, but really not that many.

[Varodoc]

Stop.
Trying.
To turn my character.
Into a beggar.

My Void elf is one of the first mortals to successfully defy the shadows' whispers, has the Heritage armour of the Ren'dorei, and has a friendship with Alleria Windrunner and many other legendary leaders of the Alliance. Very clearly it wouldn't make sense to refer to us as random mercenary garbage.

[bowlink]

To those who just want to be the adventurer, i would recommend playing on a Rp server if you aren't already doing so, also nobody is forcing you to do those raids or raid quests. Let other people be the DBZ characters if they want

[Super Kami Dende]

I think a very simple way for WoW to feel like you're adventuring again would be for the next big bad to simply be fought against by major lore NPCs and their NPC armies, whilst we're just spending time aside doing lower end quests and shit, like we used to in pre-BC.

Protip: Classic exists. if you want pre-BC. TBC was over a decade ago. either get used to being the hero, or quit and play Classic.

- - - Updated - - -

Last expansion we were collectively the order hall leaders. Does that count?

16 years and People are still unable to separate Gameplay mechanics of an MMO and the actual lore.

Do you also believe that every week every big bad guy we ever killed, respawns in their legion of doom base and await to die again?

[Justintime328]

You nerds need to chill. Flaming one another for simple misunderstandings and paragraph construction. Upset about being too powerful or not powerful enough. What happened to you dammit, do none of you remember the days of yore when we stood together against game devs and web devs alike? Did you all have kids and get wives and husbands and lose your nerve? Final Fantasy community takes a massive shit on ours because we can't refrain from bickering at each other for one moment. You have saddened me this day brethren, I expect more from you.

[Varodoc]

You nerds need to chill. Flaming one another for simple misunderstandings and paragraph construction. Upset about being too powerful or not powerful enough. What happened to you dammit, do none of you remember the days of yore when we stood together against game devs and web devs alike? Did you all have kids and get wives and husbands and lose your nerve? Final Fantasy community takes a massive shit on ours because we can't refrain from bickering at each other for one moment. You have saddened me this day brethren, I expect more from you.

This is just precious.

[Lord Pebbleton]

So your solution is to have major, earth shattering events happening on one side, while players are over here attacking random Gnolls and stealing candles from Kobolds?

What on earth makes you think that this would be a good thing? That having a major story play out that we simply don't participate in and get to occasionally see from the sidelines would be fulfilling?

I mean, Kingdom Hearts 3 did it and the game was a huge success!

wink wink