Khadgar is stated to be the most “accomplished” living mage to ever live, so I think this puts Khadgar in Jaina’s “Mary Sue” spot on the list, also a male Mary sue is a Gary Stue.
We technically are Mary Sue/Gary Stues when you think about it: self insert (we’re the player’s avatars so check), perfect? (we kill gods even in-game power houses of the highest caliber can’t kill so double check), Wish fulfillment? eh not so much but 2/3 ain’t bad.
That’s just bad writing on their part - player power level and god-killing hobbies is the content tunnel they have placed for us.
As for whether or not players are playing themselves, some do, some don’t.
The guys would be Marty Stu.
Nathanos looks nothing like Danuser. The only similarity is their facial hair.
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The term is Gary Stu.
Well, we did kill off Negative Nancy Sourfang.
I prefer to call everyone a Mary Sue, regardless of gender. 
Yeah, that term works fine for me - but if someone is looking for a masculine term, Gary Stu happens to be the one with the most traction. (See also: villain sue) .
I’ve never been a fan of that term, it’s a lazy catch-all used by lazy people who think fantasy heroes should be as weak and as flawed and as useless as they are. The heroes and the villains should be hard to kill, they should be greater than common men, otherwise what would be the point of writing tales about them. We build giants so that we can be led by giants, otherwise they’ll just be lost in the crowd
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That’s quite a feat considering Nathanos has been around since Vanilla and Danuser has only been at Blizzard for 5 years. 
You do know that the term Mary-Sue comes from one of the worst examples of Star Trek fan fiction in which the main character - Mary-Sue was badly written.
Well, one point is that the writing wouldn’t be bad.
Paragons are boring because they rarely if ever struggle. Lack of struggle is lack of meaningful conflict. Lack of conflict is lack of story.
The biggest struggle most of the wow story characters have is waiting around for us to do things.
Topper McNabb
Nobody ever calls him out on his burger scheme.
Nathanos got his new body quite recently. I’d say it was maybe 4 years ago.
I mean… He kinda was for the longest time… Cataclysm was peak Gary Stu for Thrall with him almost becoming a Dragon Aspect. I don’t care what Metzen says, I am 99% convinced the original plan was for Thrall to join the aspects and was only changed because of overwhelming negative feedback.
Dude literally, by himself, held an entire planet together while the Champion of Azeroth™ went and stabilized things. Guy literally stood at the Maelstrom holding the planet together. He was the focus on so many quests in the Cataclysm and was being turned more and more into the “Super Man” of WoW that could do nothing wrong.
I say all this as someone who LIKES Thrall. He is one of my favorite characters but Blizzard has no chill when it comes to their characters. They often do absurd things under the protection of “Rule of Cool” which is why Sylvanas, one of my other favorite characters, is now ruined for me.
I don’t get this one. I will agree, I don’t feel Yrel is a Mary Sue.
She is a bit absurd and has done a lot of wrong without seeing any real negative connotations. She has powers that no other mage seems to have and uses them in absurdly impractical ways just to look cool.
Like… She concentrates on levitating a boat not meant for flight while also casting zone wide frost novas and then to break down the city walls of Undercity she rotates the ship and creates arcane cannons to fire arcane missiles instead of just firing arcane missiles? Wat?
Her powers are absurd and she basically gets away being a brat and having been a very sour, horrible, person without any repercussions much like Grom from WoD (which I notice isn’t listed…) But at least Draenor is free, yeah?
I am not sure I even have to point out why this is true… I have made several posts in the past on this, but to summarize…
She is literally pulling powers out of her butt now. She can physically swing hundreds of tons of Saronite as if its nothing. She abruptly gained the ability to fly. She is entirely impervious to damage except for one scene where Saurfange gets a tiny scratch on her and all of these powers have come from nowhere with no legitimate explanation.
Yeah yeah, I get the whole “She had made a deal” bit but the timeframe for this absurd power boost, apparently narrowed down to after Ysera died, is silly.
Sylvanas was far better portrayed in Legion than BFA, far far FAR better. I made a post commenting on the absurd BFA opening cinematic and how it could have been done better instead of having her literally become a DBZ character.
I LIKED Sylvanas, she is a character that had been developed for such a long time with such an amazing story and character arc. I loved WotLK and beyond, how once her arc was finished Blizzard found a new arc for her that I actually really liked, “Staying Alive”. She has in the course of a single expansion done a full 180 for no good reason and gone from being a tactical genius who uses other’s for her benefit to being a full on Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain.
I get the word Mary Sue is used loosely, so I will stop using it and instead just say these are horribly written characters/character moments.
Sylvanas, post Legion, is horribly written.
Again, don’t get this one at all. I get people don’t like Anduin because he is excessively naive and optimistic but it usually ends with consequences. I wouldn’t say he is a Gary Stu but I get why people dislike him.
Also don’t quite get this one… She has not really done anything since becoming Queen…
I flat out disagree here. I think Tyrande is fine for the time being, as long as her actions have consequences and her power does not pull a Sylvanas spike of absurdity. We still don’t fully know all the details about the ritual she partook of.
In the books he absolutely is absurd but its because its Warriors and non-magic users constantly going up against him. He is also, for me, a very unlikable character with a “Better than everyone else” attitude about him.
I never liked the way he treated Illidan. Yeah, his tactics were always unsavory but he did what he needed to do to get things done. Malfurion does not want to compromise to the point of letting things get bad, Illidan makes quite a few compromises, er… “sacrifices” knowing full well that the methods are not perfect but get results.
I have seen quite a number of Naaru who have been cannon fodder for plot and who have been written in a darker light. Xe’ra was by far the best example of “Oh, wait a second, maybe the Light ISN’T as pure and perfect as we thought…” because, really, before Legion I would have argued that the Light was pure and perfect with no real negatives. Xe’ra proved that point very wrong and brought up a lot of questions, questions being good.
I disagree, he has gotten the short end of the stick time and time again and every time he does something he is in the wrong. Legion is the first time he has really had a “win” and that win was him spending the rest of his life as Sargeras’ Jailer… or until they need Sargeras to break free for plot.
I really do not think Illidan is a Gary Stu considering all the beat downs he has taken. Edgy? Sure. Gary Stu? Nah.
I think its a bit of both Column A and Column B but I would agree that the word is used far too loosely to describe what is just, in general, bad writing.
I disagree. A lot of them have bad writing but a lot of them have also had good writing.
Garrosh for instance, until his absurd turn in MoP was written quite well. The moment he was like “Im’ma willingly corrupt myself with this old god heart like my father did with Demon Blood” is when his character took a nose dive for me. For many of the same reasons I really dislike Sylvanas now, because the same exact thing has happened to her.
Ehhh… I mean, if we are being real, at the end of the day this is all subjective but for me I feel Khadgar has his moments…
That is not true at all though. Saurfang is a very good point on the matter, he was fodder to Sylvanas for example even though he was suppose to be the strongest living Warrior in WoW. In fact, Warrior’s in general have it rough and only even seem to manage and scratch their foes before dying (Broxigar). Heck, even Varian Wrynn got done dirty for being a Warrior. Yeah, he had his cool moment on the Broken Shore but man… Warriors seem to be WoW’s punching bag in the lore among literal gods.
Eh, but anyway, I personally feel Blizzard just struggles balancing characters and far too often allows themselves to be blinded by the idea of “Rule of Cool”
I do agree that Mary Sue is misused and overused but there certainly is a lot of bad writing.
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Hehe.
So many people here have no idea what a mary sue is and love tossing around the term like some kind of edgy insult.
Also funny, everyone one of us is a text book example of a mary sue.
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Demon hunters can’t be Mary sues cause they SACRIFICED EVERYTHING! Mary Sues don’t work that way.
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There’s only one genuine “Mary Sue” in canon.
That would be Med’an.
Thrall does come close, but Thrall actually did earn his station, and has screwed it up undeniably, so he does manage to just barely avoid the trope. Same with Kahdgar
The rest of what are usually called “mary sues” are in fact his either Naruto Power Fantasy Garbage Donkeys (Sylvanas, Tyrande) or just, like… extremely bad, one-dimensional writing (Baine, Anduin.)
Or they’re just a 1990’s Image comic book character that was rejected for being too edgy, like Illidan or Nathanos.
Wasn’t WOD one of his biggest mistakes he expected a genocidal orc to actually reform orcs from the past into a force to fight the Legion but they ended up trying to kill everyone and still joined the Legion maybe worse that time.