Why is it that Blizzard can’t tell one coherent narrative, why does the player have to be in the middle of all the worlds drama, and problems? I’m so tired of this same ole can getting kicked down the road, when is blizzard going to deliver a solid RPG narrative, that we can play through and not suffer through as the main protagonist.
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What exactly are you asking Blizzard to do?
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Tell a story without dragging my character into everything, just tell a story
So…we wouldn’t play?
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so… I’m not following you. Would you be playing elsewhere while that story was going on… or not playing at all? How would you separate that? please explain.
Err… how though? And why? They could be better at storytelling, but I don’t see how or why you’d want to be separate from the narrative like you’re some common NPC.
No the story would play out without my character being in the middle of all the drama.
It would make more sense if we were. It’s not easy to suspend “reality” and be THE champion, the ONLY one who can do this or that, while your friends are also doing the same exact thing. If everyone does it, we’re clearly not the ONLY one who can do it.
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It would be a story to follow, and not be in the middle of everything having to sit through 1000 cutscenes, without my character just plopped in the middle of nowhere.
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I liked it better when I was just an average, albeit heroic, joe or grunt walking around in a big world where everything felt much larger than me. Now I am commander, The Hero, savor of the planet (and another planet), leader of my class order (all them actually, just one at time depending on who I play). This sounds all and well, even Heroic. But…
It totally shatters the forth wall and not in an interesting or good way say like deadpool. I mean, that other pally in my guild (ya, and the other 12 or so) can not be to hero or the leader of silver hand because I am. But wait! They wield the ash bringer!? That’s my sword bro. In current context, one mortal was chosen to use the shattered helm of command to enter in the Maw and then escaped the jailers grasp to set things right in the shadowlands. Cool story, nice beats. But, um, can the other million+ players please let me go do this so we can all walk around and tour this new land
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Unfortunately at that point you’re just playing a VN than an actual video game.
Blizzard wrote the player in as the force which makes the story go (the champion/hero) and without the ‘hero’ it kind of just falls upon you to just eat some popcorn and watch more dialogue occur.
Big changes would have to be made to the narrative to make it where the player is simply running around fulfilling small side quests with a bit of renown besides them, and sometimes stories like that have a good tendency to fall flat on its face because people like feeling like being the center of attention sometimes.
Humans are pretty selfish creatures overall.
I agree tbh. I don’t like being the focal point. Wrath was way better in terms of freedom and environment. In wrath you weren’t called by varian himself to go on an expedition to northrend and kill arthas. You went there yourself. You had multiple similar lvl zones that you were never forced to do in linear fashion and each zone had many quest chains that you couldnt just do it all without out leveling the zone which made it replayable. Like maybe you wanted to start at howling fjord then head up to dragonblight to do quests for the tuskarr and azjol nerub. After that you can do grizzly hills or zuldrak. For the last zones you could do many quest chains in ice crown, storm peaks, sholozar basin. Or maybe i could do the many fun quests in the borean tundra and do it again in a different way on another character. The linearity and forced rp in shadowlands is horrible. And to top it off there weren’t many cinematics after every action you do. Instead you get to see what arthas has done to each zone and learn about it through the quests. And towards the later quests you help set up assaults on the lich king via the argent crusade and ebon blade. It’s never about you only. Even though people downplay it, there was even a raid to prepare for the lich king which was epic in its own way when arthas shows up to demolish the floor to face anubarak.
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There is definitely a balance to be struck. One one hand, being the focus of the plot means actually getting to see the interesting plot threads, but if your character is too important, it can start to feel like nothing at all.
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TBC, Wrath, and MoP all had solid narratives.
Sooo make a game that has no player interaction? Ok
It was bound to turn out like this eventually. If you were powerful enough to regularly influence events you took part in, it wouldn’t make narrative sense for you to remain a no-name wallflower forever.
I much prefer the side where your character actually matters to the story rather than you being a random pleb aimlessly wandering about that has zero impact on the world.
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That’s the problem they went overboard on power creep right off the bat.
Instead of the first raid being Molten Core and fighting all the major powers inside we could of instead had a raid on something much smaller in scope. That way we weren’t literally traveling through space on the first expansion and fighting demons.
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I agree, I liked things much better when I wasn’t “The Hero” but rather I was the person who showed up for whatever reason to help “The Hero” stomp bad guys. When the Main guy is an NPC and I’m just helping I could be helping because I really believe in their cause, maybe I’m just doing it for the money or maybe I just like killing things and “The Hero” is a good excuse for doing so in such a way society won’t hate me. Switching the focus to an NPC also prevents the dissonance that occurs when your character has do do something they wouldn’t really do. By shifting the focus to an NPC hero it’s less yeah my character would never do this to Lord Bob over there did something I don’t agree with but he’s in charge so whatever or he did something dumb and I’m going to go bail him out for whatever reason.
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Aren’t we supposed to be part of the story? I am really confused.
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Huh? Look, I’ve killed Rag, Illidan, The Lich King, DEATHWING, Corrupted Garrosh, carried and sacrificed one of the legendary weapons of the world to save Azeroth, killed all the old Gods, and been the chosen of Azeroth.
When Azeroth is in danger, they come to ME. To not come to me would be foolish. To not enlist me on suicide impossible tasks would be ridiculous. Who else is better?! Who else?!
If you want to play some insignificant person who does odd jobs for other people, play a brand new RPG. I have over a decade of history on these toons. I AM the champion of Azeroth. I’m a big deal! We can’t just pretend I’m not.