An expansion with Baine and Anduin as the main characters would actually work fine considering how I would prefer the story being told.
(in this example)
Anduin and Baine would be the eyes we experience the expansion through, their interactions with other characters and the trials and crap they go thru would carry the narrative from the expansion launch to the pre-patch where the story concludes and gets handed off to a new set of characters.
Which I would find a lot better than the shotgun approach of “Ok now we’re following Jaina but now she’s in prison so here are a dozen other characters you may or may not see again until you rescue Jaina with her mom. Oh and here’s Talanji you will follow her through the expansion except not really because as soon as her daddy dies she takes a back seat because really wtf does she have to do with that huge war that started over blood rock that diamond man keeps banging on about? Speaking of, whats going on with the night elves bet they pretty pissed about the tree? Oh that can wait until next expansion. Hey Undead lost their city too that should be important, so lets never speak of it again.”
Even the expansions actual protagonist, Saurfang is barely around because we’re too busy mucking around with other stuff lol
I feel like that one should consider the benefit FFXIV accrues because they mostly write one (1) main story, not two stories or four stories or twelve stories. In terms of the amount of work it takes, it’s always going to be easier to write one tight story than a wide variety of different experiences. Don’t get me wrong - this can be a drawback, too. I feel like the ability of the player to be every single class in FFXIV definitely lends to a feeling of homogenization, although with the game is structured the prospect of leveling alt characters is incredibly cancerous (though I suppose they’ve cleaned that up lately).
They’re also never setting groups of players against one another. No worry over which side is winning, or which side has gotten more spotlight, or which side has been make to look weak/foolish/immoral/etc. Everyone plays as the one hero, which is actually something else I’ve found to be a bit strange, as you could read it that technically the other people you group with to do dungeons and see around in quest hubs don’t actually exist. (I dipped into the RP community briefly and there’s a surprising amount of restriction on things because of how the game’s canon is set up.)
It’s an interesting story, but hardly perfect. Especially early on, it’s pretty rough, and not really all that compelling, and takes a fair bit of time to become compelling. However, that can be a benefit, too - it took a very long time for me to like Alisaie. But because they’ve kept using those same characters for so long, they can develop. (I will never like Alphinaud.) Blizzard’s writers have a bad habit of slashing and burning their characters, and then over-focusing on a very few of them, which makes them read like writer’s pets, whether or not the accusations are justified.
That’s actually something I liked about how XIV did their hero thing, which WoW already kinda sorta did before chucking it out the window with “Champion!”.
You are in fact the Hero. But you aren’t the only Warrior of Light. Several times in quests they bring up how you should probably go grab some buddies and do this dungeon. WoW does this by just ignoring our characters entirely and just refer to thing we do as “works of brave adventurers.”
Yeah, them and the Hrothgar, Au Ra, and Highlander Hyurs are nowhere near what I would describe as noodly, they are built like brick houses. Viera women have six pack abs like Night Elves do as well because they represent a similar theme of being Amazon warrior women.
And all of this is part of what I love about the game, I can pick a variant of Human that isn’t too roided out or ogre looking. I also like the game’s handling of subraces a bit more than how WoW has gone about it.
I know they manage to work around it, but it definitely seems to get more complicated than “A bunch of adventurers went into the dungeon to kill things for loot.” The drawback to the “Your character is the primary conduit of power” approach.
It’s weird if you think about it, because if you’re in a 4-man group, you’re presumably the WoL and the other three are randos with the Echo… except to them, they’re the WoL and you’re the rando with the Echo. All four people are simultaneously the WoL, and not.
I shouldn’t be trying to logic through this so late at night.
I guess I’ve been playing videogames for so long that it just doesn’t seem weird to me. Blizzard did this with Legion: There’s only one Deathlord, but everyone played him.
That was actually something I did find weird about Legion (and about SL, where there are apparently many Maw Walkers… or we’re the only one?)
I dunno. To be quite honest, I don’t really need a “Your character is the one and only super special unique hero destined to bring peace to the world!” kind of setup. I’m actually pretty okay with a BfA “cog in the machine” approach. But I surmise that actually makes me kind of unique in this regard.
FFXIV has done a good job in keep most of its reality grounded.
That and the presence of the Galen Empire always keeps you looking over your shoulder.
Warcraft doesn’t have any of that. We just shoot up into the sky without caring to notice how many holes in the floors we just ripped through to get there.
I don’t think it’s any different from WoW’s approach. It’s not like that sleeping druid in Wailing Caverns had to be woken up eleventy billion times or Whitemane keeps getting back up after dying (okay bad example).
I think of it like characters to save files in single player games being played simultaneously, since that’s basically what everyone is. You just happen to see them as you play.
I think we should have more novels, comics, and short stories detailing life on Azeroth and beyond while the players go on our adventures. But people would be mad that their favorite characters are relegated to outside media.
I kept away because i was always told hoe the story and the whole world is designed as a single player campaign, and that other players are from alternative realities and whatnot.
I don’t want that in a mmo, i want to be part of the story, not the main character of it.
Whomever ever told you that other players are some alternative dimension fever dream was either a liar, never played it, did play it and just didn’t like it, or all of the above.
Now that being said, you are the main character lol.
FF14 is fine, but sometimes I just despise its pace, unvoiced cutscene after unvoiced cutscene, most of which is banal filler, characters only spit one sentence at a time and sometimes they force this awkward pause while zooming in on their robotic facial expression while I’m gritting my teeth in impatience.
In WoW boring quests/zones you can just glance over and move on instead of flat out skipping it entirely, meanwhile GW2’s method of doing exposition while action is happening beats both.
