In this case, I’m saying that if you’re going to tell the player they are the “Chosen One”, then the rest of the world has to support that at all times or else the illusion is shattered. If it can’t, then this endeavor fails.
This fails as soon as a Paladin with Ashbringer sees another Paladin with Ashbringer. This fails as soon as any player with the Heart of Azeroth sees another player with the Heart of Azeroth.
The world does not support what the narrative tells the player. The player is not stupid and notices this. Whether they’re happy with it or not, the immersion in this tale is broken, the facade is lifted.
The narrative becomes a lie.
This is why it does not work in this setting.
A story should never ask the player to discard what they are plainly seeing.
Ok, so your problem is that you’re not able to separate going through the story on your own character vs being in a shared world with other players.
The problem is, regardless of how the story handles it, it doesn’t change that multiple people would have the same gears and have the same titles and the same mounts, etc., unless you want everything to be generic or you want to forego the story altogether.
At this point, it’s a matter of suspension of disbelief and separating story and game play (to a certain degree, it’s nice when game play is supported by story reasons).
No, my problem is I expect the world to support its own story. A single player narrative cannot be supported in a multiplayer environment.
This is irrelevant. The vast majority of this game’s armor, mounts, and titles are generic.
Suspension of disbelief is something you need to tread carefully around. Players are willing to buy into orcs that come from another world and that there are magical forces that allow you to summon demons and reanimate the dead. There’s clearly some growing dissonance between the Chosen One power fantasy, and that’s because it has always been the forcing of a square peg into a round hole.
Single-player focused story telling does not work in a shared world.
Well, I have never seen any MMORPG that does that to the extent that you seem to be asking, as my Westfall example shows. It doesn’t matter if not every player goes to Westfall as it’s just an example. There is always a disconnect between the story that the quests are telling and the fact that there are other players doing the same quests. Having a “unique” gear like Ashbringer doesn’t change that when multiple characters are bound to do the same quests (even if not all characters did those quests just like not everyone have Ashbringer).
You haven’t been playing very long. Most MMOs treated you as just an adventurer. The world did not revolve around you and you were not the Chosen One. So, sure, multiple players could take on the same quest about the same murder mystery. Many players did the epic Plaguelands quest involving the Redpaths. These were stories for adventurers. It didn’t matter.
When the game literally revolves around a one-of-a-kind necklace and treats you as if the world dies without you, we’ve gone well past that. Sure you’d concede that.
Ok, so your issue is not with the single-player nature of the narrative, but with how important your character is to the world.
That’s a valid preference.
For me, it doesn’t matter. I just take the rising importance of my character as a result of the progress my character has taken throughout the story. The story can be good or bad regardless of my character’s importance; I just want the story to be good.
It also depends on where they want to take the player character. If WoW is a story about an ordinary adventurer who deals with the occasional monster problem affecting one village or a pirate/bandit problem affecting another village and they want to keep it that way, they can. But if they want that adventurer to have a journey of becoming strong enough and important enough to deal with enemies that affect more than just a village, they can also do that.
You can if every player experiences their own version of the story, which is what I’ve been trying to tell you with the Westfall example.
In other words, I’m saying that’s how WoW has been treating the players regardless if you’re tasked with killing a rabbit or a titan, even if you don’t realize it until you see some other paladin having some legendary weapon that your paladin also have or whatever.
So, whether or not you like it, it’s up to you how you want to reconcile that.
So you want the player character to just fight regular mortal enemies then? That’s a valid story preference. WoW just didn’t take that route since Classic.
Video games as a whole have ALWAYS been a power fantasy given all the crazy running around Azeroth doing God knows what, it’s pretty unrealistic to think we’d stay nameless murder hobos forever. We helped expose Onyxia and fended off the likes of Ragnaros and a scourge invasion in Vanilla,fought off the Burning Legion in BC,Helped take down The Lich King,put Deathwing in his place and succeeded in sealing away the sha and executed a political coup in MoP to the point we kinda earned a bit of noteriety/clout to carry the title of heroes.
We fought and got stronger with each battle so the praise and promotion aren’t exactly just handed out but a legit award gained. Plus with the heart and other items no longer being a thing next expansion,I fail to see how this is an issue HOWEVER,given we’re thrown various powerful enemies our way the extra power boost is always great especially the agency is actually OUR agency rather than a lore character coming in to steal our kill this time.
TLDR-Seriously dude,this much salt and constant spam for self validation isn’t good for a person. Let it go and move on if you hate this game and company so much.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I like fighting demons, undead, and eldritch monsters. I don’t like being told I’m the Chosen One. That kind of story doesn’t work in this environment.
I get that. You don’t need to keep repeating it because I’m not arguing against what you want or don’t want. It’s irrelevant to me.
As for this part, you may be clear about it, but you’re still ignoring what I said about why the story can be told that way.
If the story says you killed someone, you can’t complain and say the story cannot work like that because other players will get the same story and millions of people can’t kill the same guy.
Obviously it doesn’t work like that, so obviously the millions of other players get their own separate version of the story and your story doesn’t affect their story.
So you may not like being the chosen one, but if Blizzard wants to center the story around your character, it still works because Blizzard also centers the story around other players’ characters in their version of the story.