Nah the story can be driven by npc. It just doesn’t have to be around saving the world, you only need a leader that wants to save his/her people from local threats and see her grown in both power and as a person which is what we got with Talanji and in some extent in this expansion.
The PC barely can push a plot and only one most people want is about race agency but Blizzard will never do that much content related to specific races
PCs push the plot just fine in WoW Classic.
I run a D&D campaign. It would really suck if I told most of the story by narrating what NPCs were up to and just let the players contribute to the fight scenes.
If you let the players contribute to the story, using their imaginations, they will. That’s what makes RPGs fun. WoW has moved strongly in the direction of canned entertainment to be consumed passively rather than allowing players to feel like they have a personal stake in the story.
They put the players first for nzoth and look how that turned out
I don’t follow.
Thing is, it’s more how they did it. I don’t think OP’s idea for “putting the player first” is necessarily the same as having the PC go super Saiyan and Kamehameha the big bad back to Oblivion, queueing a cutscene from a bootlegged Lord of the Rings knock off produced by the Scifi channel.
Like honestly, if they added some Kill La Kill soundtrack, along with some exhibition from the PC, something about how friendship or hope or whatever gives us power, topped off with an epic DBZ scream with the finisher… It honestly would have been an improvement.
At least -my- idea of putting the PC first, would be telling the BfA story from the PCs perspective. The perspective of some half-way competent sell sword who participates in events, but isn’t the main dude. Yet, nothing we do isn’t underplayed as unimportant, because the story is from our perspective.
Like, sure. Have the major lore characters doing things, but don’t make that the main story. Have that happening in the background. Make the story about -our- adventures. Kul Tiras is a good example here. It was a major character arch for Jaina, but she didn’t really do anything. The entire experience was us trying to save her. That was the most enjoyable part of the expansion.
This.
/10 chars
I think you are misinterpreting me. The pc can’t move forward the narrative in the world saving as Blizzard tried in the 8.3 because it renders the rest of the cast as useless and the PC doesn’t have any agency in how to approach those threats because of the mmorpg nature(aka the writers will always tell put you in 1 path and you have to accept it like it or not)
Although I have to say I would love more features that put the players in the forefront to decide things to do or not during questing and I would too that Blizzard stopped to copy DC and Marvel narrative and character archetype.
One of those examples is that I would like to chose to help certain “enemies” rather than kill them because a questgiver says so and face more neutral ground. I find very stupid and carefree from Blizzard to make the darkspear often at odds and help to kill others tribes, Orcs during the whole WoD.
A lot of people have forgotten about it. Which is too bad, it’s a top notch game from a great company. Sure, Bioware has it’s hiccups, but overall they are one of the best gaming companies with some of the best stories the gaming community has ever seen.
– In a sense.
I love the lore and I’d rather a known established written characters do X major event than:
"And alas 'XxpussyslayerxX’, single-handedly used the ‘Heart of Azeroth’ amongst everyone else - as a nexus point - Managing to banish N’Zoth, forever." — Because, needless to say most of us HATED that (I personally entirely loathed it).
I enjoy us being the formidable army. ‘The right-hand man’. The bestie. The ’Aaaaaye, there’s my hero of the hour! Just the one I was looking for!' - This was played out well for Rogues in Cataclysm; when Wrathion hired you to assassinate Black Dragons across Azeroth, ultimately leading to his father. We were involved but the story didn’t revolve around us.
I feel the story flows very well to how it rolled out from ‘Vanilla through to Wrath of the Lich King’ - Although you worked in or as a team-force / army, you were still a vital & special character + factor in the major event.
The problem with this game is that its only ever focused on the big stories these days, and the smaller, human stories, that establish lore and world depth are seen as an inconvenience to get stomped on for the bigger picture. They need to spend a bit more time crafting their stories, and allowing them to develop organically. The reason we see the faction chiefs so much is that they’ve crammed three or four expansions into one.
What we need is to create a new set of NPC’s assigned to be rulers of their respective nations. Kind like this:
Wrynn - Lothar
Terenas - Arthas
Antonidas - Jaina
Anasterian- Sylvanas
See? We were able to interact with the characters on the right be we rarely meet those on the left
Even though I keep writing this, I will try again: I am NOT suggesting that the story turn the characters into the main players of Azeroth. Not doing that. Nope. Think that is terrible.
I am advocating that the narrative be written to focus on the the stories from a player’s perspective. That is a totally different thing. Right now the story is told from the NPC’s perspective.
My OP was about the perspective of the narrative, not about the role of the PCs on Azeroth. I actually think we should be more like wandering adventurers who come together to solve problems that come up.