I was called an adventurer when arriving dragon isles

[crejack]

I do want good storytelling. What this title of "adventurer" represents is a return to form, discarding the specter of the nonsensical lore that we've had shoved down our throats in Shadowlands. There will have to be some contrivances to escape it, but this abstractly represents something bigger than you seem to realize.

"Trust me, this bad storytelling that I'm celebrating leads to good story, you just don't see it." Sure thing guy. By the way I'm not knocking you, at least we both admit it's not good storytelling, but you ain't convincing me that lore is gonna start becoming sensical with this nonsense.

[Le Conceptuel]

Ah yes, the original setting, when we fought an Elemental Lord as our first major adventure and pushed him back to his Plane. Don't forget the Old God as well

I don't think a typical culmination of a fantasy adventure, in which an extraordinarily powerful, potentially extraplanar foe is pushed back or destroyed, is comparable to venturing to superspace to the factory where they made the gods to kill a threat described as substantially more powerful than the things previously established to be the most powerful race in the setting. There's a certain gap in terms of power and relevance there, and continuing to climb the tiers of power just diminishes the impact it previously had to face off against Old Gods or Elemental Lords. Back when those were so high up, it just felt sensible that they would serve as the final foes of our adventure. Now, we've got the Old Gods inexplicably reduced to Space Ticks and the Elemental Lords deprived of any meaning at all to go face off against villains whose only long-term relevance exists in diminishing the things that mattered in the setting as it once was.

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"Trust me, this bad storytelling that I'm celebrating leads to good story, you just don't see it." Sure thing guy. By the way I'm not knocking you, at least we both admit it's not good storytelling, but you ain't convincing me that lore is gonna start becoming sensical with this nonsense.

Give me an example of a good place the story can go climbing the ongoing ladder of "MOAR POWAH!!!" instead of asspulling us back to Azeroth. My point is that there's no other choice. If there were a way to fix it without sort of just brushing over it inexplicably, that would be great, but there isn't at this point, and we're not going anywhere good with the whole extraplanar First Ones wank.

[Stickiler]

I don't think a typical culmination of a fantasy adventure, in which an extraordinarily powerful, potentially extraplanar foe is pushed back or destroyed, is comparable to venturing to superspace to the factory where they made the gods to kill a threat described as substantially more powerful than the things previously established to be the most powerful race in the setting.

We went on an adventure to another plane, where we joined forces with, and became empowered by, the forces that existed there to destroy their enemies. That's also a pretty typical fantasy storyline.

The main driving force behind why I've never ever had a problem with the power scale in WoW is that we have basically never fought extra-powerful foes without an external assistance or empowerment of some kind.

Wrath - We required Tirion to shatter Frostmourne and Terenas to bring us back to life to win
Cata - We required the assistance of the dragon aspects and the Dragon Soul to even have a chance against Deathwing
MoP, WoD - The villains were pretty grounded
Legion - We teamed up with the mfking Titan Pantheon to defeat the final boss, and had extremely powerful artifact weapons assisting us
BFA - We required the HoA, assistance of Azeroth and a Black Dragon to defeat N'Zoth
SL - We were empowered by the Leaders of the Covenants, and Azeroth again assisted in defeating the end boss.


Without all the empowerments that we've sought out in each expansion, we ARE just "normal" champions, more powerful than most people on Azeroth, for sure, but not "lmao I solo'd the power of death".


All this told, I see zero logical inconsistency for us to come back to Azeroth and go on a normal adventure again.

[lordjust]

Yes, they will. And it will be the only instance in which it is justified because it will resolve the greatest problem with the plot right now, which is that everything has to consist of an increasingly-powerful sequence of Super Baddies devoid of substance pursuing nebulously evil objectives. If we're forced back down to being "adventurers", we're further away from Danuser's wild ride and back on the rails of the original setting.

We're back being adventurers who face the primalist who are primordial dragons infused by the elements and so strong that the dragonflights need our help to turn back on the titan facilities to be empowered by it. Again a world ending threat that none other than us can end. We help each flight to defend against the primalists and regain their power. By the end of the campaign we're again the champion of each flight who saved them from being eredicated by the primalists.

Nothing really changed. We're still these super powerful being that everyone relies on.

[GreenJesus]

In lore it's been 5 years. You're old hat now. Everybody's forgotten about you.

In 11.0 instead of Champion, they'll be calling us "ok boomer".

[Le Conceptuel]

We're back being adventurers who face the primalist who are primordial dragons infused by the elements and so strong that the dragonflights need our help to turn back on the titan facilities to be empowered by it. Again a world ending threat that none other than us can end. We help each flight to defend against the primalists and regain their power. By the end of the campaign we're again the champion of each flight who saved them from being eredicated by the primalists.

Nothing really changed. We're still these super powerful being that everyone relies on.

It's true that our objectives remain quite lofty, but the presentation and setting of our pursuit of these objectives is considerably smaller. Delving into a Titan facility as a major endgame to fight extremely powerful elemental dragons seems substantially more palatable than going to a plane far beyond any of those we've ever known into the underlying fabric of reality to kill something (allegedly) far more powerful than the deities which empowered the Dragon Aspects and defeated the elementals in the first place to save all of reality, across every single dimension from being permanently and fundamentally rewritten by the overlord of All Death Evarrr!!!!

Relative to this, it is quite tame to just kill a few giant elemental Dragons and help the Dragonflights regain their power as the custodians of the world, probably culminating in fighting a time-traveling Dragon with likely-loftier goals but which is relatively tame compared to the likes of Zovaal and whose domain is tame relative to the Shadowlands.

Add to that how this goal is one which can be feasibly accomplished by an army of talented, perhaps exceptional people rather than a demigod-level chosen one predicted by the precursors of all reality.

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We went on an adventure to another plane, where we joined forces with, and became empowered by, the forces that existed there to destroy their enemies. That's also a pretty typical fantasy storyline.

The main driving force behind why I've never ever had a problem with the power scale in WoW is that we have basically never fought extra-powerful foes without an external assistance or empowerment of some kind.

Wrath - We required Tirion to shatter Frostmourne and Terenas to bring us back to life to win
Cata - We required the assistance of the dragon aspects and the Dragon Soul to even have a chance against Deathwing
MoP, WoD - The villains were pretty grounded
Legion - We teamed up with the mfking Titan Pantheon to defeat the final boss, and had extremely powerful artifact weapons assisting us
BFA - We required the HoA, assistance of Azeroth and a Black Dragon to defeat N'Zoth
SL - We were empowered by the Leaders of the Covenants, and Azeroth again assisted in defeating the end boss.


Without all the empowerments that we've sought out in each expansion, we ARE just "normal" champions, more powerful than most people on Azeroth, for sure, but not "lmao I solo'd the power of death".


All this told, I see zero logical inconsistency for us to come back to Azeroth and go on a normal adventure again.

The issue is the nature of the other plane and the unnecessary hamfisting of superfluous scale—this would be fine if we, say, were empowered by the Light to kill a big evil demon in the Twisting Nether. This is all fair, and this is the high-concept story that makes sense for World of Warcraft. It's all perfectly fine despite being so extraordinarily OP and lofty. Conversely, it's far more objectionable to go to the SUPAR-SECRIT PLACE from which the already-distant and crucial plane of the Shadowlands emerged to kill the Super-Deity there that precedes every other deity we know about and prevent him from rewriting every possible aspect of reality.

The stakes are higher than "save the world" or even "save the universe". It goes from a sensible high-concept fantasy story to ludicrous superfluity.

[Dastreus]

It's a bit immersion breaking to be called an adventurer when I literally just came back from killing the Ruler of the Death Realm, and prior to that saved the planet like a million times, but sure

I've done more shit than the Dragon Aspects have at this point.

that's probably why there's a 4 year time skip

[Aresk]

We are immortal multidimensional beings all portraying the "one" the champion, THE adventurer, the one and only maw-walker, we are all this one together.

Even though they sometimes call us champions plural, wow has since vanilla always had the story of the one that got the legendariers and killed the raids with the help from the other champions, but after SL there is only one champion left, the maw-walker, and that's all of us.

There are canonically multiple maw walkers, and there are multiple NPCs that refer to "Maw Walkers" in the plural when intended to be completed in group combat (e.g. Grandmaster Vole in Theater of Pain, the Undying Soulbinder in the Soul Eaters Hunt). This admittedly becomes muddled when there are things that only one person would do, such as the Maldraxxus level-up zone story centered around unlocking the runes of the Primus' sword. Our characters are occupying this nebulous position of importance while also being surrounded by other great heroes with similar capabilities, based on the player count for which the content was designed.

[Nymrohd]

We've been personally invited by Alexstrasza to the Dragon Isles. We are not exactly adventurers.

[GoodMon]

Still waiting on the one goblin NPC to be added who calls you "homie" and "fam". :P

[Qnubi]

We went on an adventure to another plane, where we joined forces with, and became empowered by, the forces that existed there to destroy their enemies. That's also a pretty typical fantasy storyline.

The main driving force behind why I've never ever had a problem with the power scale in WoW is that we have basically never fought extra-powerful foes without an external assistance or empowerment of some kind.

Wrath - We required Tirion to shatter Frostmourne and Terenas to bring us back to life to win
Cata - We required the assistance of the dragon aspects and the Dragon Soul to even have a chance against Deathwing
MoP, WoD - The villains were pretty grounded
Legion - We teamed up with the mfking Titan Pantheon to defeat the final boss, and had extremely powerful artifact weapons assisting us
BFA - We required the HoA, assistance of Azeroth and a Black Dragon to defeat N'Zoth
SL - We were empowered by the Leaders of the Covenants, and Azeroth again assisted in defeating the end boss.


Without all the empowerments that we've sought out in each expansion, we ARE just "normal" champions, more powerful than most people on Azeroth, for sure, but not "lmao I solo'd the power of death".


All this told, I see zero logical inconsistency for us to come back to Azeroth and go on a normal adventure again.

But there is one big inconsistency you missed. We loot and equip the weapons of our fallen enemies, which the supposedly powerful entities wield themselves. How would you explain the sudden drop in power whenever we move on to the next adventure?

[Lazerbrain]

so there are canonically multiple crowns to break to get to shadowland too?

I'm 100% sure wows story is a single-player story.

[Le Conceptuel]

so there are canonically multiple crowns to break to get to shadowland too?

I'm 100% sure wows story is a single-player story.

The story is alternatively single- and multi-player depending on convenience. Much of it assumes multiple, faceless protagonists—only rarely does it sort of converge on a singular adventurer character.

[Lazerbrain]

The story is alternatively single- and multi-player depending on convenience. Much of it assumes multiple, faceless protagonists—only rarely does it sort of converge on a singular adventurer character.

Well only one instance is enough, even if rare, to push us all into that one right?

I would say at some point in the story in every expansion its been clear its only one player that really matters, and the closer we get to shadowlands the less of the rest are needed, until only one of us ones remain.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

At this point the player character should be the most renowned name on the planet, having saved the world from dozens of world ending apocalypses, is a war hero who participated in every military campaign, and is exalted with pretty much every faction on the planet. This is one of the things that FF14 and GW2 does right: whenever you go to a new land, the denizens there already know of you and are either begging for the great hero's help, or are trying to take them out knowing that the PC is going to be the greatest threat to their plans.

[Celement]

They can call me whatever it's to late to put the " I murdered gods" back in the jar.

[Heavionix]

I did some quests in BFA a few days ago and one of them was to collect eagle eggs.

I thought to myself, "god damn, my character is one of the most humble, down to Azeroth people this universe has ever seen. I've killed gods and here I am collecting eggs for some farmer."

[Corroc]

i thought the most hilarious thing was when i got told by the centaurs to prove myself against the apprentices

This is pretty normal fantasy trope after all.

"We want you to prove yourself to us"

"Prove what? I have killed gods and saved the world multiple times"

"Then this should be easy for you"

[Biomega]

i thought the most hilarious thing was when i got told by the centaurs to prove myself against the apprentices

Imagine an eager apprentice, looking for a chance to finally prove themselves.

And in strides the God Killer, Champion of the Cosmos, armed to the death with death-forged armor and soul-sucking weaponry.

Time to grow up, kid.

[Voidling]

To be called adventurer immediately makes me draw comparisons to FF14's story since those character just recently became adventurers as well.

That said, it would be neat if they could lean into this as it would benefit WoW's narrative a lot. As an individual get to exist outside of the factions and would get the opportunity to interact with both sides. Now we have justification for going on simple adventures like exploring ruins with Brann Bronzebeard or hunting rare beasts with Nessingwary. As faction soldiers we technically had to be at the warfront but as adventurers we can wander aimlessly. It gives more reason for older zones to be able to receive more content without the need for the zone to be blown apart like Cataclysm.