World of Warcraft started with the player engaging in a ‘Zero to Hero’ story and it made a good point to make sure that the player understood that they were in a world filled with heroes. That you were not the center of attention
However, Blizzard didn’t think ahead which has been a core problem since the beginning. Simply adding on 10 levels with every expansion until we are at this point where max level is 120 and leveling, as well as many aspects of the game like professions and class trainers, are meaningless.
Blizzard wrote themselves into a corner with every expansion ramping up the threat to the point that you the player were killing Gods.
Now the players will most certainly be fighting the old gods and quite possibly the void lords - fighting to the very origin of creation itself.
Welcome to Power Creep. Where they just keep escalating with no end in sight.
Perhaps they have learned their lesson to think ahead and address an issue early rather than waiting for it to get out of hand
BUT the Real Reason the Game calls you THE Hero…
it’s a business decision
It is cheaper to simply call the player by one name than to record multiple versions of each line that addresses the player character.
WoW aims at the dopamine effect of accomplishments. achievements, and making one feel special. This is done in order to make the player to feel like a winner at all times.
The more you FEEL like you are winning, the better you feel, and better you feel the more you play - simple animal behavior programming. It’s about creating addictive habits that makes you want more of that product.
It’s a power fantasy - that is part of why it is addictive
Honestly I was mostly irked throughout Legion any time my character got called out as something special instead of just letting me be a part of the story in my own sort of way…
…like, it got old hearing about how so and so was wielding the doomhammer in Orgrimmar. We all became heroes in some awful way.
That didn’t give me a fix.
The real “magic moment” happens every time I forget myself completely in the game.
Higher ups often have no idea what players want - they are just looking at the trend of games that treat the player as “The One”, which is high these days
They are looking at younger demographics who are exposed to games that treat them like they are special so they seek to appeal to that.
I don’t mind being a hero. The problem is the true, established heroes in the universe keep saying “we can’t do this without you” instead of “we could use your help”. Gross. I miss being a soldier and earning promotions, but I guess that only goes so far.
How in the world do you dream up this nonsense? Nonetheless you’ll get a bunch of other haters to come in and agree, no matter how stupid the premise. (Sigh)
It’s basic marketing of many stories
plenty of Books, Movies, TV shows and now video games have the chosen one in order to make the audience/player feel special.
Being a special chosen one or THE hero of the story is a form of power fantasy.
I agree - the game should acknowledge that you are in a world with other powerful people that you can work with.
At this point it would be ludicrous not to be heroes. I mean at least game wise we (our character) has been there for every major fight. I can understand wanting to be normal again but you can only get so many promtions for killing this or that before they run out of medals and ribbons.
Edit: tho i do agree that people of near godlike power should not be begging us for help.
This is one thing I do like about FFXIV. The first thing we do is go to the Adventurer’s Guild…because adventuring is acknowledged as a job in-universe. Yes, it builds up to where you discover you have uncommon abilities, but even those aren’t unique abilities. Somehow, even as the game builds us up to the “chosen one”, it remembers there are other powerful adventurers out there (almost) like us.
WoD made the mistake of putting us in charge, and Legion kept that going. BfA stepped away from the title of commander/head of class hall, but it’s still treating us like the singular Hero, rather than a hero among many.
And I still think Legion should have been saved for the final expansion. Anything after beating the Burning freakin’ Legion was going to feel like an anticlimax.
But, yes, power creep is a thing, and having to fight more and more powerful creatures comes from having a level cap that moves ever upward.
A 120 char should be more powerful than a lvl 110 char. People want that, and they want to notice it. It’s what the blowback on mob scaling is all about - that lack of power.
But that’s the problem. You can’t go back and take away everyone’s toy, and you can only pull a “Surprise, it was Hogger all the time!” once.
I’ve seen this happen in some of my favorite fiction, and there’s no easy solution that isn’t drastic.
After 15 years, multiple threats^, and all the work we’ve put in why anyone would still want to be known as some rando scrub from insert starting area here is beyond me.
^ Let’s not act like this “killing gods” is a new thing. C’Thun was fought in Vanilla and Yogg in Wrath, which people claim was the pinnacle of WoW.
no it’s not. it’s because it’s the easiest way for them to refer to your character in all the voice acted scenes without having to develop some sort of speech-capable AI system to synth our names and translate XXD-JIMBOB_UBER1337 into something pronounceable. that’s why the voices say “take our champion with you” or “take the hero along” but the text in the box and the chat log says your character name.
if the NPC’s actually tried to speak character names every single person in wow would roll something with a name designed to troll the everloving shart out of the system with names right out of adult rated movie scenes(really blizzard? can’t even have the word p orn? wtf is up with these filters?)
It’s like when I go through the drive thru of Chick-Fil-A and they want to know my name before they’ll even give me my total (often they’ll ask me to come around for the total), then they use my name when they’re giving me my order. Do some people really like that? I think more who is this guy acting like he knows me?
It seems they could write the discussion without using references to the person, like I’d prefer them to fulfill my order at fast food drive thrus. Maybe after I’ve done them a few favors they can address me in a more personal way.
Well Dr. Dalmar … I can call you Dr. right? because you do have a degree in psychology correct?
Well anyway I completely disagree with you! I don’t feel like a “winner at all times” I am a winner at all times! I play the game because it’s fun! and a lot of what goes on in the game makes me laugh!
Amusingly, I recall seeing many a complaint here on the forums that the character wasn’t shown enough respect…and that the major npc’s never seemed to remember the hero that had just finished grinding their way to exalted in the previous expansion. Now Blizzard gives us what we asked for, and another segment of the player population complains about that. There is just no winning for the developers, is there?
Perhaps there should be a toggle for us to flip. On = treated like a savior, Off = treated like another face in the crowd.
How many times can we be directly involved with saving the world before that worlds leadership decides they need us?
I mean think about it, so far (canon wose) we’ve beaten 3 old gods, one being possessed directly by an old god, a dragon aspect the size of a city, the lich king, the entire burning legion, including its 2 most powerful members twice, and a literal titan, to name a few.
It only makes sense that we’d be viewed as demigods after all this time and what we’ve done.