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

[Neversage]

"Thank you, Thrall, I'm okay. We wouldn't have made it without the help of THIS CHAMPION." They could do this better.

Just address the player more casually.
"Thank you, Thrall, I'm okay. We wouldn't have made it without our friend, here."

Address the player directly, then address the named NPCs.
"Thank you. We wouldn't have made it without you. Thrall, I'm okay."

Make a joke of it now and then.
"Thank you, Thrall, I'm okay. I owe it all to... uh... what was your name again?"

These aren't great, but things like them would at least break the monotony of CHAMPION champion ChAmPiOn!

[loras]

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.

My own headcanon is that i'm just some merc with a soft spot for the alliance and a mild distaste for many horde races (forsaken in particular, due to wc3).

So yeah, i'd appreciate it if they spent less time bothering to define my character for me, but before BfA but didn't really bother me much as the Legion invading is enough for anyone to start taking on whatever responsibility they can handle without too much fuss, and invading an alternate timeline and becoming a local commander also didn't seem like too much of a stretch.

But practically i'd prefer to be a bit more low profile, well known enough that it's not weird for the leaders to take me along whenever, but also that it's not weird to send me out to die in some battleground or on some crazy adventure. A bit like Rexxar, basically the original player character.

[shadowmatrix]

AH yes FF 14 where your character is the WARRIOR OF LIGHT simply because some rando crystal shined on your during the opening cinematic.

[Fabled]

Go play a newer mmo then. The story in wow is that we are champions since we've saved the world and fought gods at this point. Go find a game where the story just isn't there yet.

Wouldn't be a problem if most MMOs, if not all, are quick to build the player character up into something more right off the bat. WoW was probably the only one not to do it early on. It's bound to happen, it's easy enough to fix going on through expansions, but they won't do it.

[Thrif]

I remember making a thread about this when hearing about us being class leaders Legion, because before WoD it hadn't been that bad, we had been powerful adventurers but not really the leaders of anything.

I've gotten used to it by now though. Don't really like it but the cat's out of the bag so to speak.

[Eric Arthur Blair]

Champion isn't quite as bad as Commander, but Adventurer is probably still better.

[Soon-TM]

There's a difference between someone who helped accomplish some really important things and contributed to noteworthy causes, and head paladin, wielding Ashbringer, who is homies with Tyrion and constantly encounters NPCs who react with OMFG ITS YOU THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD all the time.

Basically this. That's why I think that WoW, or at least its story, needs some kind of soft reset. E.g. we return from Shadowlands and find out that the Scourge has decimated most zones and races, with only a group of fierce survivors trying to fight them.

Because the way things are at this moment, it's very strange that the PC has saved the world, idk... 4, 5 times at the very least, yet he/she has NO political influence at all. It's quite jarring.

[TheRevenantHero]

It's getting to the point where they will start addressing us as "Messiah". How they handle talking to your character now makes roleplaying realms insufferable in a handful of ways.

[therealbowser]

To be fair the FFXIV protagonist is an enigma because they are treated as both. They are the hero and champion of the realm but they are also just a common adventurer at heart.

But digression aside, I completely agree. The thing I loved most about Mists of Pandaria, and the early part of BFA (the leveling experience) is that we felt like adventurers for a while again, instead of heroes. I don't want to save the world from being destroyed every expansion or whatever, so it was a nice change of pace. Too bad in BFA they ruined the experience with the awful war story.

[Claymore]

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

This is true, and I'm not necessarily suggesting we are *nameless* adventurers/mercenaries. But rather, that we are ultimately independent of our factions.

Maybe Anduin is like "I'm glad to have you here", or Tyrande says to Hordies something like "I heard you were present when Sylvanas burned Teldrassil". You can still be a big deal, but ultimately sort of as a "one-man faction" unto yourself. You can be respected, but not necessarily beholden to anyone else.

I feel like mentally, it also frees players up to have their own canon. "I didn't approve of burning Teldrassil, but I was hired to be there", or even "These fools have no idea I'm actually working to amass my own demonic army, but sure I'll tag along with this stupid blonde kid since they're paying me".

[Deathrange]

The problem with WoW is that it's playing out like a Battle Shonen Manga. We fight an enemy, we beat him. We find a new enemy that is stronger than the previous one, we train and grow stronger, defeat that enemy, and the cycle just continues.

We are at a point where we defeated a Titan (at a weak state after just manifesting), and now we're going to Shadowlands to try to kill more enemies that are full Titan level if not higher. Where does it stop in terms of how high can we get?

[prwraith]

Pretty sure my character is a literal god at this point. Most wow NPC's should just bow down

[cparle87]

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

Would Sylvanas had trusted a new adventurer to accompany Nathanos to rescue Saurfang? Your argument breaks down pretty quickly. Like it was said before, cat's out of the bag. Even in Wrath npcs referred to those blessed as the Hand of A'dal, and even the Scarab Lord, coming to aid them.

[Onikaroshi]

I've killed god's, I'm a champion.

[McNeil]

I still think that the player characters should not be canon in the lore. Just have NPC’s adress us as a class champion who is just doing their work, and when it comes to defeating a big boss we are just soldiers fighting alongside major lore characters.

One of the things I really didn’t like about Legion is how much praise my characters kept getting. Its gotten so bad that at times it rather looks comical.

[fatgunn]

I still think that the player characters should not be canon in the lore. Just have NPC’s adress us as a class champion who is just doing their work, and when it comes to defeating a big boss we are just soldiers fighting alongside major lore characters.

One of the things I really didn’t like about Legion is how much praise my characters kept getting. Its gotten so bad that at times it rather looks comical.

Thats mostly how it is. Its just not addressed in game. The chronicle books lay out that one faction assaulted Ragnaros, the other Nefarian, etc.

[La]

Is it not the goal of adventurers to attain fame and fortune above all else, the most common reason they do it? When you take down and do what we've done, it's hard to just be what you want us to be at this point.

My biggest issue with us as the "heroes" is that we always have help. We always have some item that gives us all our power. And we very often always lose it. So at the end of the day while we do inherently amazing feats, the fact is we didn't really kill Deathwing, we didn't kill the Lich King. So what's the point in being the hero when we're really just the sidekicks to the people with the true power? Borrowed power is boring from a lore perspective if it's a constant.

[ShmooDude]

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

I still think that the player characters should not be canon in the lore.

This is pretty much the only way to keep us as just "adventurers." For the most part, you wouldn't necessarily have to do a "full" reset, but treat the player as having not participated in any of the previous expansions' raids or dungeons as that's essentially what takes us from "adventurers" to "champions." The raids and dungeons were defeated, just not by our character.

As far as factions, we've always had extremely strong faction ties, even from level 1. Just watch the classic intros, you're defending your faction against local threats while the armies are away. That's a bit more than just an unconnected (or loosely connected) adventurer, you have a purpose. We've always been faction loyalists (even if we don't always agree with our faction's leaders e.g. Garrosh/Sylvanas).

And that's the big difference here, is moving from local threats to global threats. So long as our characters are considered as having handled local threats, but not the global threats, you might be recognized sometimes, but not known to your entire faction.

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All that said, that solution may cause issues for people wanting continuity. We have enough people complaining about the level/stat squish taking away from their sense of progression. To have a "lore" squish take that sense of accomplishment away is going to be way worse because it's more than an arbitrary number. But it's really the only long term solution. We can probably get away with a soft reset in 10.0, but it'll come back and I think multiple "lore" squishes would be even harder to swallow than level/stat squishes.

[MrLachyG]

I totally agree. However I, like a lot of other people in this thread, think that train has well and truly left the station

[MCMLXXXII]

I cringe every time I meet Magni, calling me champion all the time.