Cant remember where I read it, but I read where the original devs put the focus on AZEROTH (or gameplay world if you like) as the focus of the game, and the player characters were a part of it. Now the player characters are a apart of it and the world is just the sidekick.
I know its not popular, but I would have preferred if the real legendary heroes kept the legendaries and we god our own legendaries that could never measure up. Keep guys like Cairnage, Baine, Thrall, Garrosh, Jaina, Anduin Varian Uther as Gods above us mere mortals.
If I am this dang powerful, let me have my garrison every where and use it to take over the towns around me - build my own keep and country!
What are you talking about? If you want a character that doesn’t do anything, then you can still do that, but that has nothing to do with the story of the game. If you want your character to be involved with the story, then it doesn’t make sense to not be the protagonist.
In all honesty I think the level of npc buttkissing is at its most intense in Legion, like when I basically became the new Illidan on my demon hunter. I almost laughed, tbh, I mean I could see there being many archmages or whatever but the new leader of the Illidari? That was a bit much.
Magni does kiss your heart of azeroth ring at every opportunity as well, but it doesn’t seem like you interact with him as much as you did the class hall. He’s super annoying but I feel like I can avoid interacting with him more than a few times once I’m set up.
SWTOR did a much better job (early on) at putting the character into the story, you actually had dialogue to justify why the characters treated you well (or not, as the case was in that game). Most of the dialogue in this game feels like clutter and getting crowned just for getting out of the noob zone did feel downright silly.
At least SWTOR took you through the entire expansion before putting you in a place where powerful characters showed you respect, there was, you know, an arc to it. Basic storytelling really. Even that’s fallen to wreckage quite some time ago, they couldn’t keep up that kind of intimate character-centric storytelling, at least not in a way that continued to grip me as the expansions felt like increasingly bad (and perhaps unnecessary) sequels to the original cool story. An MMO shouldn’t feel that way, so maybe making the world too specific to the character is more suited to single player games?
You don’t have to understand them. You just have to respect that that is how they feel. In an RPG game, the beauty is that people can CHOOSE how to play.
15 years ago I was some guy with a sword venturing into the burning husk of Stratholme looking for treasure with 9 other people doing the same thing.
Now the planet itself has selected me as its saviour and bequeathed me with its very essence to fight the incomprehensible nightmare threatening to ruin the very fabric of reality itself.
You don’t see the difference between how the game treats those two types of ‘hero’?
It’s because deep down, those players feel like their characters being labelled a hero is a joke. They know they’re one of untold numbers of other characters being told the exact same thing, all of them being non-canonical while being praised as the central savior of the universe.
Then you can double and triple that sense of it feeling like a joke when you consider how mindlessly hero status is achieved. The big zone story quest chains? Brainless activity that ends with NPC’s praising our characters for dealing with threats that we could take down spamming a single ability. “Hero! None of us could ever stand against that threat! How did you do it!?” “I spammed smite?” And raids? How many people experience the conclusion of these stories in LFR of all places.
With a single player RPG, it’s different, because there you’re not seeing some non-canonical story figure, you’re typically watching a story actually built around an established character, and if there’s an easy mode, the story at least feels like it makes sense still because it’s just about the ease with which you watch someone else’s canonical story unfold. But with MMO’s? It just feels like a gigantic farce. WoW’s story tends to work better the more the established characters of the world are given dialogue that doesn’t even acknowledge our existence.
All that said, there’s one area in WoW that retains the more fitting atmosphere where our various characters actually make sense in the world. One area where seeing all the other players doesn’t break the sense of canon, and that can still deliver on the general premise of existing in the world at the ground level. And that area is… PvP.
Want to feel like a common grunt who won’t get fake, unearned praise for being a savior, and instead will probably even get blamed for minor screwups? PvP is where you do it.
Blizzard CANNOT do an overall story well. They have always done small scale stories well. Zone level stories.
Questing stories are ok as long as its not here are you 5 quests, now take 5 steps to the right, do those 5 quests now go to next quest hub. Its also why I HATE phasing. I hate the fact that in an MMORPG there Is only “One True Path TM” to complete the game.
Lastly - I would take no story over what we have gotten from Cata on (outside of MoP). Legion had great gameplay but it ended up killing Vol’Jin to begin the Sylvanas storyline (worst in WoW - even worse than Deathwing in Cata)
Ok, so that’s a different complaint and I actually agree with you that the story should (and can) be better. But I want a story in my RPG, and zone stories aren’t enough. The solution is to have better stories, not to ignore them.
Right but I’m saying how the story itself has adapted to our characters is what a lot of people don’t like. My character has been through a lot yes, but my character had been through a lot already when I was killing Onyxia or driving off the scourge in Naxxramas. You were viewed as a hero, but one of many. You used to be the main character of your own story, now you’re the main character of everyone’s story.
I understand this is an inevitability of a game that has you going through 15 years of killing existential threats. I don’t even have a problem with it. It is what it is. I’m just trying to explain why some people have the “I wanna be a regular adventurer again” feeling.
You can do zone level stories, Like every version of WoW has. Classic had them, but you bounced around if you wanted to. Not locked anywhere.
It wasn’t like in FFXIV where there is a list of the storyline that you have to go through in order to progress. I have a level 50 in that game and I am trying to unlock a new job but I have several hours of “busy” work for the story till I can get back to play the game. That makes it “not-fun” to be so lock in.
If WoW forces you through this quest hub to this quest hub, through this quest than this, its no different. Also “not fun”
