When it comes to players vs canon reality, I consider players to be their sole existence in the RPG world of Warcraft. By that, I mean this:
Taking Bretherezen as an example here, I, as the PC, playing Bretherezen, find that Bretherezen is the only current Champion of Azeroth in the current story. This means that there is no other person, save the NPCs, that are at my level of prowess on the battlefield, help as much as I do, go out of their way as I do, etc. I save the day; I lead the raids in to foreign territory; I seize the lumbermills, blacksmiths, destroy the fortifications etc inside of battlegrounds (even though they hold no lore significance at all); I am the one who confronted Deathwing, and so many other things.
Every other PC in regards to my character, Bretherezen, are roaming adventurers that aren’t even on my level. They are the essential rank of peon, foot soldier, magic caster in the military, so on and so forth. They hold no special rank. They have no dedicated service medals, blah blah (except for when it came to WotLK, and there was specifically Raids intended to find the most dedicated, martial prowess heightened honey badgers imagineable in order to raid Icecrown Citadel with. This is like… The SOLE exception to allllllllllll of the aforementioned points.)
Bretherezen is it. World of Warcraft is perceived from his eyes; It is his story, as one who treads the very Earth, and is seemingly, somehow, always–always–at the center of every major recent catastrophe to befall Azeroth.
That, at least, is how I see the playerbase being. They’re irrelevant canonically. Only your character matters, story-wise. Everybody else, every other player, is just party-filler (Except for, you know, that one exception I mentioned.)
