How much pull does the PC have in the World of Warcraft Universe?

Lore Story Forum
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One of the things that I was curious about moving into this new age of WoW where the PC is more acknowledged within the story, “Highlord,” “Maw Walker,” “Champion of the Dragonflights,” and seemingly has some standing with the main characters.

How much influence comes with these titles for bringing up things we discover or notice about other characters?

Example would be:

Enemy Infiltration - Preface

In the Enemy Infiltration - Preface book we find in the Shadowlands, two excerpts from this book read:

The adherents to Life are the most insidious of opponents, perhaps because their nature is so antithetical to our own.

Still, we learned much from observing the link between their plane and Ardenweald, and we have high confidence that a vulnerability has been identified.

Our operative has already gained the trust of her target.

Similar to the titans, the naaru and their keepers are singular in purpose. Their adherence to a linear path is an obvious shortcoming.

They savor nothing more than being proved right, so if they believe they have converted one of us to their precious Light, they will trust that agent implicitly.

We have two instances where the Dreadlords have seemingly admitted to successfully infiltrating their spies into the ranks of Life and Light.

Light being probably the most notable one at this given time considering we’re going into the Void theme expansions.

While we, as the people who watch Blizzcon, know some of the things to come…

To what degree could (should?) our PCs bring something of this nature up to the likes of Thrall, Jania, Khadgar and Turalyon?

  • For example, as the Highlord Paladin, could I pull rank and banish Lothraxion from Azeroth?
  • As the Archmage would Khadgar respect the findings of this book and call a council meeting to discuss the matters within?

Obviously, the same goes with the books found for Azshara and Odyn, etc…

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My personal belief is that those kinds of books and reports aren’t something we necessarily find or understand in canon. It’s written as a means to give information/lore to the player in a kind of immersive way. In reality, “Enemy Infiltration - Preface” is probably written in a language we don’t know and in code we probably can’t easily crack even if we knew the language. But hypothetically if we could present what was written inside to someone? Yeah they’d 100% believe us. The pcs have been the greatest champions of the world since Wrath and we have only gotten more credibility under our belt since.

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Assuming the champeon is vaguely canon as a character: somewhere between a mercenary gopher, an aide de camp and a coffee-fetching intern

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That’s kinda the trouble you run into when you try to make the player the Chosen Hero of the Land in a MMO. Because there’s 7-37 other Chosen Hero of the Land standing around you at all times.

I get the NPCs have to call us something but it really does lead to luddonarrative dissonance. Nothing was funnier to me than BFA. Where my Undead Priest has been given enough authority to dispatch Deathguard around the world and order around a duck mothering Admiral.

But his presence on a secret Forsaken boat was suspicious enough to warrant attacking him on sight.

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Maybe.

Last time the Natherzim tried to infiltrate the Light, they were caught, which led to a Naaru counterattack of Revendreth in retaliation.

I’m not sure how the ranks work.

I think an Archdruid PC could call a meeting to discuss the infiltration of agents of Life.

For the Light, there’s several different organizations. Turalyon and Lothraxion seemed to be of equal rank, though Lothraxion has been MIA since Legion. I’m not sure where their rank compares to the PC’s Highlord, though, and between Xe’ra’s death (she gave Turalyon his rank in the Army of the Light) and no Naaru in the Paladin Order hall, I’m not sure who has the authority to adjudicate that.

We could also have whoever leads the Church of the Holy Light now, though that might fall under the umbrella of the interfaith organization led either by Alonsus or the priest PC. Saa’ra is a Naaru, but I’m not sure she holds a position of authority there.

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Those titles are your personal canon only. They give no meaningful distinction compared to a PC without them. They certainly don’t give you the ability to affect game and world canon. ArchDruids, Highlords, Huntmasters, etc. are a dime a dozen. Your PC’s true importance is being The Champion.

The game very rarely does reference your character’s history. For example if your PC completed the Serpentshrine Cavern raid in Burning Crusade, Vashj will acknowledge the fact that you killed her and commend your skill in doing so when you meet her in Maldraxxus.

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we are the high level war table pawn that the MC’s count on. we have all the strength. we do all of their quests, we go in and delve into dungeons and raids, fight creatures & see things no one else will ever get to see- because we are pawns, champions & adventurers. we aren’t directly referenced probably to have wiggle room for our made up canon.
If we tried to do anything against any characters:
they would immediately rally their closest allies against us, amidst the confusion the moment we tried to turn on them.

as a champion we can’t technically be beaten, but we can be bested but we overcome everything as we are written/supposed to. we rise to the occasion when it comes to war & battle- but wouldn’t have any actual pull in a legal or political way.

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I don’t have a ton of evidence atm, but my current working idea is that we are all vessels for the First Ones to interact with their creations in the form of mortals.

This is why:

  • We are brought back by Spirit Healers (Confirmed canon by Bastion where it’s confirmed that Watchers, what we call Spirit Healers, bring back those who aren’t deemed ready for death).
  • Adding onto out inability to stay dead, Fatescribe Roh-Tahl senses a “touch of a great power” on us, claiming that this force keeps us anchored to the mortal even when we die.
  • We are capable of interacting with First One waystones in the Maw that nobody else, including Zovaal (an Eternal One made by the First Ones), was capable of activating.

There could be more to this, but this is the current gist.

If the comment from Firim about the First Ones design never being meant to endure carries any weight, our longterm goal may be to be the catalyst for transitioning the universe and its cosmology from its current system to a new one, though this is speculative.

So to answer your question of how much pull we have, the answer would be yes.

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Likewise with Xe’ra when doing the Illidan questline back in legion. If you had defeated Illidan on that character (Regardless if that character could’ve even been around at the time, say worgen or pandaren players) Xe’ra would get angry at you for a moment. If you have not defeated Illidan, Xe’ra says other people did. And if you are a demon hunter, you get something completely different.

You could argue that has been a thing since Cata with Azuregos. Where the local spirit healer kept bringing him back to life because ‘it was not yet his time’. It was only when he got sick and tired of being killed soon after he came back that he said, “enough is enough” and requested to remain dead. Although as a spirit in the veil since he fell in love with the spirit healer and visa versa. And he still does. As seen in the Blue Dragonflight questline.

Prior to that part in the Azshara quest line, Spirit healers were seen as more of a gameplay mechanic instead of being part of the actual lore.

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