What are player characters as far as lore goes?

[Amnaught]

We step into the canonical roles of a bunch of different characters who are purposefully unnamed. Sometimes the trend is broken. Canonically speaking, for example, Faol is the leader of the Priest order hall.

[LemonDemonGirl]

There at the right time? Murder-hobos?

[Cathfaern]

When did the shift happen?

Going from a normal adventurer exploring the world to being the omgsaviouroftheplanet, mega-super-duper-allmighty-champion, supreme leader and embodiement of god.

It's really off-putting now.

I think it started at the end of WotLK where the Lich King sacrificed his whole leadership just to have a chance to enslave particularly us. I disagree with others that it started in Vanilla, because there the raids was 40 man, it was much like an army of powerful people than lone-wolf heroes. It was fine though during BC, WotLK and to mostly in Cataclysm too (maybe except for some quest lines. MoP was totally fine in this regard. I think it got particularly bad in WoD where we promoted to the leader of the whole faction's expedition. And made worse in Legion where we promoted to the leader of the class halls (which adds additional confusion where you can get all three artifact with the same character, which makes no sense lorewise. So there should be 2-3-4 leader of the class halls, but that's not what happened in the lore). Theoretically it could be a character development arc, but practically it just feels bad, because our character is a total blank slate without any responses or emotions or whatever.

I suspect though that we will get the Diablo treatment (we find out that our character is not just a simple member of their race).

[Lupinemancer]

Lorewise, we are just a random group of adventures (not always the same) who fights to protect whatever is currently at risk.