I don't feel like a "champion" I feel like a Mary Sue

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I have never once bought the idea that our character is as great as the game keeps trying to tell us they are because it can never be reflected in gameplay.

I remember the first time I noticed how little sense this made was way back in Wrath during the Lich King fight where he tells us that we were Azeroths greatest champions because we defeated his mightiest servants. Like yeah… but only because we ganged up on them one at a time in 25 v 1 fights.

He speaks as if we took them all on at once but the most generous interpretation is that each of us is worth 1/25th of those servants. If this was his plan the whole time it was incredibly stupid because he is definitely trading down here. And honestly it’s probably worse because a raid of 25 DPS Warriors with no healers would not have been able to defeat any of those bosses.

There would be plenty of these “lolwut?” like that afterwards where it feels like the player character is getting a little more reverence than they really deserve.

But Warlords of Draenor was when things really went off the rails. When they announced Garrisons at Blizzcon I thought it was just going to be the one fort. But no, we’ve been put in charge of the ENTIRE campaign in Draenor. Excuse me, WHAT?! What are my qualifications?! I just hit things good! And I’m not even the best at that! There’s tons of NPCs that have more leadership experience AND could kick the everloving crap out of me!

And it would get worse from there in Legion when you get put in charge of an Order Hall and a bunch of characters who are canonically stronger and more experienced than me suddenly declare me leader. And it’s not like you ever feel like a leader because nothing actually changes. You’re still doing all the grunt work and being told what to do by everyone else. Why call me the leader if I don’t make any decisions and still have to do do everything myself?

And then it would get EVEN WORSE in BfA where Magni shows up, gives me a necklace and tells me because I’m the greatest guy on THE ENTIRE PLANET I am being tasked with the sole responsibility of healing it. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of other players running around or the Alliance NPCs that I need a group to kill making them objectively stronger than me and therefor probably the person who should’ve gotten the Heart of Azeroth instead.

All of this special treatment because I am AT BEST 1/25th a raid boss.

Now I’ve brought this up before and the comeback is ALWAYS:

“Oh would you rather just be some ‘literally who’ that has to kill 10 boars?”

First, that’s a moot point you have to go do menial crap regardless of how important you’re being treated. Second, there IS a middle ground here that I don’t understand why people don’t see.

I remember in the Horde intro questline for Mists of Pandaria Garrosh tells Nazgrim to find his “best veterans” and the Nazgrim immediately recruits us. See, that’s good. It recognizes that we’ve made a name for ourselves without treating us like we’re the only competent person in the world somehow.

And in Wrath of the Lich King when you arrive as an Alliance player to Valiance Keep, there’s a line of people signing up to enlist for the Valiance Expedition and you’re about to get in line before you’re recognized and allowed to skip the line. See that’s good too, you’re being recognized and getting benefits for your previous achievements without everyone bowing down to you.

As for the Garrisons, they could have just given us the one Garrison and a small army to command an acknowledgement of our achievements instead of just telling us we’re in charge of everything.

And for Order Halls why not just make us one of the champions of the order instead of inexplicably making us the leader. It would easily make the presence of other characters less immersion breaking since they’d be my equals instead of somehow being my subordinates.

I just don’t understand why they choose this form of storytelling when it’s so out of the spirit of the MMO. This is a MULTIPLAYER game, the player shouldn’t be the only star of the show, it should be all of us together coming our strength to achieve feats none of us could on our own.

I want to feel like a hero, yes. But I don’t want to be the ONLY hero because that doesn’t make any sense and breaks my immersion because then there’s no explanation for why all these other players are here.

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You can kill Ragnaros in one punch, so you can’t be all that bad.

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your thinking way too hard for an mmo. this is what books are for.

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It’s kinda the WoW formula at this point and by extension the entire MMO industry going this whole “hero of fate or destiny” approach in terms of tying your created character into the plot’s narrative.

It’s what works in the RPG Genre of videogames as a whole tbh with its trademark emphasis on narrative but personally… I’m more of a traditional RPG kinda guy who likes creating his own character stories within more of a sandbox setting rich in backstory and lore.

Like vanilla was.

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The answer is very simple; game mechanics =/= lore.

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So which is it?

They made us the leader of the class halls presumably because we were the one going around retrieving/using all these fabled weapons. Nevermind that being made the leader of some organization doesn’t mean that you’re the “ONLY hero.” Especially since…you know…all those other heroes “who are canonically stronger and more experienced than me” are literally standing right next to you. A president isn’t the only citizen of a country, nor are they necessarily even the most important when stacked up against the various people/positions that they delegate power to.

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Why I prefer a good early leveling story. To emphasize the journey to become a hero or champion.

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have they called us gods/goddesses yet? i shall accept these titles since we’re just going down the line lol.

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What would the game be like if the player is not the hero? Perhaps we could be a hero’s assistant and get achievements for washing Jania’s laundry and making Tyrande’s lunch and go on a quest to pick up Fyrakk’s dry cleaning.

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I mean…we do get quests like that. We were bussing tables at that world tree celebration not too long ago. But we also hang out with gods and stuff.

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Gameplay wise its a bit tricky to nail down because theres definitely some blizzard gameplay buisness that makes raid bosses far more powerful than they should be for example in bfa horrific visions you defeat thrall/aleeria windrunner solo despite leaders like them being “raid bosses” heck earlier I soloed the emerald dream world boss that is supposedly a “Wild god” does that mean my little human paladin is as powerful as a god?

Lore wise player characters are held in such high regard because they are on the level of the faction leaders its just that gameplay wise you cant really have that.

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Only some of them.

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You are the chosen one. Without you there will be no more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches hero!

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Because, at a fundamental level, Blizzard wants to straddle the narrative line with our characters between two opposing forces.

We’re the Chosen One destined to save Azeroth <----> We’re the Faceless Adventurer who just happened to show up.

It’s why I’ve always argued we aren’t characters but moving plot devices used to get the real characters, the NPCs, into position for whatever cutscene they are going to be in next. And Blizzard can’t really make us characters because they design their story under the impression that you can jump in and out whenever you want, and it’s completely possible you’ll start the expansion on the last content patch, where presumably everything that you were supposed to instigate has already happened.

I don’t think there’s anything that really can be done unless Blizzard made a change on how they present their story and our character’s actual roles in it. If they want us to be the Chosen One, then the story needs to actually be about us. If we’re just the nameless adventurer, then they need to stop pretending we are super important.

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you can’t be the chosen one when every other player is the chosen one too
it was a mistake to write the story like that i guess
sorry everyone

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I think at least with Dragonflight they tried to go more on the side of you’re a champion there to help them achieve their goals. Not exactly a clueless adventurer but not the chosen one and commander of all armed forces either at least.

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I mean, I hate to bring it up but you actually can lol.

XIV does it by making your character, first and foremost be the center character. Every other player around you is either a buddy you drag along to help kill a local god or kindred spirits summoned to your side to aid you.

Now that wouldn’t work for WoW for obvious reasons, but you should get the gist. It is possible, you just can’t do it while trying to have your cake and eat it too, like Blizzard wants.

It was still them trying to straddle that line though. We’re important enough to get a direct invite to join the Dragonscale Expedition, but unimportant enough to actually matter in the grand scheme of things. We were just a body doing the grunt work for NPCs that actually mattered.

Nothing encapsulates this more, to me, than the final cinematics of Amirdrassil, where the Aspects who as far as I can gather are only around buffing the player or something are the only ones blessed by Azeroth in the end, despite the raid you know…actually fighting Fyrakk.

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It is reflected in gameplay though. The player is a god among men in this game. The average joes of the Warcraft Universe aren’t the players. They are the NPCs. Especially the ones we kill in spades every day without even noticing.

I created this toon 17 days ago and I’ve already killed 16306 mobs. IRL, that amount of kills by a single person would be insane, even if you imagine the worst cases of war imaginable. Yet it was so easy for my character, because she is that powerful.

Even the worst WoW player imaginable kills quest mobs like they are ants, and that’s why the WoW player character is the Champion.

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I believe Azeroth knew who we were and didn’t have to empower us. It is never stated, but I think we’re her immune system in a way. The last line of defense against all else and were empowered by her long ago which is why we’re unique.

It likely is one of the biggest reasons for the Titans to keep us ignorant of various aspects of history so they can get us on their side.

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