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

[Jameslold]

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.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

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:

See, the problem is that even if you're just one of the many who helped take out the Lich King, you were also one of the many who helped take out every other boss in the history of the game. You don't take part in that many major operations against world-ending threats without recognition.

[Jastall]

We stopped being random jo-blos in vanilla the moment we hit max level and defeated an elemental lord, two powerful dragons, a Wild God, an Old God, and the world's most powerful Lich. Since then we beat/killed Kil'jaeden (twice), Illidan, said Lich King, two other Old Gods, another elemental lord, Deathwing, Lei Shen, Archimonde (twice), Gul'dan, Azshara, and a nascent Titan. We have a bigger rap sheet than the most overpowered of NPCs. Being treated like a low level yahoo with a blunted sword still would be completely ridiculous.

They don't have to make us the Maw Walker general commander of the universe every time, granted, but we're powerful champions now, little else but the fantasy Avengers. We should get respect from NPCs.

[callipygoustp]

Add me to the list of people that feel the same as the OP.

[Schmilblick]

You can't keep people adventurers for more than 15 years.

[Tziva]

See, the problem is that even if you're just one of the many who helped take out the Lich King, you were also one of the many who helped take out every other boss in the history of the game. You don't take part in that many major operations against world-ending threats without recognition.

I'm complaint isn't against any recognition, it's with the degree of it. 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. It's so over the top, it it makes it hard to go anywhere but more and more ridiculous with each new iteration, and it just creates a bigger, more nonsensical divide between those kinds of quests and the ones where we are doing trivial tasks. Why am I killing 10 vultures for this guy when ten minutes earlier another guy in the same town acted like I was the most important person he's ever met?

I'm fine with being a heroic person who took part in great battles. I'm not really okay with being The Hero™ and just pretending that everyone else isn't the same. The choice isn't being between a total nobody and being god-tier; there is a huge amount of space on the spectrum between those two where we could have been written and stayed, where our long history is acknowledged and we have respect for the things we participated in, but we're not treated like we did it all by ourselves and are therefore the greatest hero the world has ever known.

But like I said, the cat is also out of the bag. It wouldn't make any sense to suddenly take that all away. They should have just written it more reasonable and restrained from the start so it didn't have to get more and more extreme every expansion.

[LemonDemonGirl]

I mean... It's been several years since the game came out, and many adventurers have come and gone, while defeating powerful gods and monsters. Unfortunately, we're also part of them.

For my character, I guess she's used to/expecting it by this point. Being the daughter of a high ranking priestess in her clan kind of does make others respect you lol

[cloudbuster]

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.

Yet weirdly, they have no problems with telling us to go pick up poop, collect bolts, pull turnips or whatever the day's menial task is.

I remember that time in Pandaria when they tried to get my character to run a friggin noodle stand. "I have faced invading armies of the undead, stood toe to toe with the Lich King! Battled dragons! And you want me to run a retail food outlet for you?" I did that mini-game exactly once and refused thereafter for the sheer insult of it.

(So why am I still providing cover fire for baby turtles?)

[Orby]

Our character has been adventuring for 15+ years, how long can you be called an adventurer before you get some renown. You want us to be Zorro? xD

[morrouac]

*Scrolls through giant list of titles* Pretty sure I'm a Champion.

[ymirsson]

Yet weirdly, they have no problems with telling us to go pick up poop, collect bolts, pull turnips or whatever the day's menial task is.

I remember that time in Pandaria when they tried to get my character to run a friggin noodle stand. "I have faced invading armies of the undead, stood toe to toe with the Lich King! Battled dragons! And you want me to run a retail food outlet for you?" I did that mini-game exactly once and refused thereafter for the sheer insult of it.

(So why am I still providing cover fire for baby turtles?)

And they are still charging full price for beer. What good is god killing if not for cheap booze?

[Zogarth]

I think the biggest problem started way back when they made Sargeras the size of a planet.

That’s crazy... clearly he was set up as the ultimate big bad of the universe at that point so making him this world guy floating around in space was a bizarre choice.

Player power inflation followed that.

lorewise some of the artifacts wielded by players during legion could blow up planets. It was just stupid. Seriously, we fought corrupted titan keepers as trash mobs in the last raid. You know, things that were normally big and tough bosses.

[Bigbazz]

Closer to a well known mercenary than an adventurer. Harrison Jones is an adventurer, our characters are hired guns or special agents who got recruited into official military positions and promoted to leadership roles.

[exsanguinate]

I have to cringe every time an NPC calls me champion or says "without your help we would never have made it", "oh make room for the big champion" "our champion will take care of it". I would have expected to be treated like a servant in the shadowlands, but too bad that is not the case.

[Fabled]

Take us to a place where people have no idea who we are, don't care about our previous victories and forces us to prove ourselves all over again. And don't make it be "kill so many random mobs and suddenly they all think we're god."

[Garybear]

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.

in ff14 you also feel like the hero since its mostly a sinlge player game

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Take us to a place where people have no idea who we are, don't care about our previous victories and forces us to prove ourselves all over again. And don't make it be "kill so many random mobs and suddenly they all think we're god."

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.

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I have to cringe every time an NPC calls me champion or says "without your help we would never have made it", "oh make room for the big champion" "our champion will take care of it". I would have expected to be treated like a servant in the shadowlands, but too bad that is not the case.

Your character has literally defeated gods.

[dunkl]

perhaps we've become champions in the eyes of our factions, but everything we're about to experience going forward has nothing to do with political, war, nor even known topics - it's all new - we're basically starting from scratch and so we rea nothing more than adventurers, journeyers, travelers, etc. we're discoverers now. tiny, compared to way of things, and it'd feel refreshing to simply be.

[ChairmanKaga]

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.

Time skip X decades into the future. "I think I've heard stories of you" yadda yadda.

[Kalika]

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.

Maybe if you had the Champion of the Naaru title you would feel more champion like! As someone else said we have saved the world countless times why would we not be a champion! If the US launched a Nuke at the Chinese government and wiped them out the rest of the country would be happy and willing to help the US especially Hong Kong.

[Drusin]

Can only be an adventurer for so long. Eventually you'll make a name for yourself and be a hero