All this time I’ve hoped the story was going to eventually get somewhere interesting because there’s so much potential in a story that starts with something like Teldrassil. When you finally make the war mean something, when you give the conflict a tangible cost that really, genuinely hurts the player, that is a unique place to start an MMO story. I really thought maybe WoW was ready to take some risks with its story.
So now we’re here, and Sylvanas is a cartoon, and the Horde player is more mechanic than character, and Tyrande is frozen in Darkshore amber, and Jaina is a peacenik, and we’re all just WAXING about “how we must band together to fight the Lovecraft.” And now you tell me all that BS is all building up to fanservice for Thrall? Fanservice designed to undo his 4-expand long arc arc and to simplify the Horde back down to its nostalgic basics, so the…orcs can earn back their honor? Is that really the payoff, we’re just going back to honorable orcs, and all this BULL was just orchestration to get messy elements like Sylvie out of the way?
I’m probably not making sense, I’m sorry. It’s late, and I’m just angry. I feel kind of manipulated by this story, which is dumb because it’s just a game, but. Well anyway, yeah, I’m with the OP.
She was testing her blight all the way from Vanilla! One of the quest I recall vividly from Vanilla was how someone, from the Alliance no less!, tried to warn the Horde Sylvanas was not to be trusted only for him to be assassinated by the Horde PC under fall pretense by a Forsaken!
Are they? 15 years spent most of it going down the path she is now, is it really the writers fault people are blind to the signs? Or maybe its more that you didnt really like the character but rather the idea of some other character that she maybe could have been.
Isn’t that enough though? Sylvanas had good story hooks peppered through her tenure in WoW. Blizz danced around this premise of “Sure she melts innocents, but maybe the Tauren altruism and Orc honor will rub off and they can form a cohesive family!” for years. Wanting her tragic backstory to be the underpinning of an upward arc to redemption is kind of optimistic, sure, but it was a possibility.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable at all to lament that Blizz has apparently sealed off that hope now. Even if it was more obvious to some than others that they never intended to do anything with that hope in the first place.
I made the choice to avoid the Horde story when I saw the mustache twirling on the wall. Others didn’t. That doesn’t mean they were wrong to hope.
That hope was long seal ago if there was one. I recall when Warcrime was being released Golden mentioned how Sylvanas part in that book would help define her. In said book she was plotting on killing her sister and her nephews…
Seems to me everyone ignore here character, the only people who didnt are the people who like her evil they are just upset its finally coming to a end.
I like how this thread about people feeling depressed is full of people telling “Told you so”.
Humanity is great.
I am not a Forsaken fan but I totally understand you Vozul, Sylvanas could have gone in any better direction even if they are all pointing at the Blight and all, she could have at least be a villain for the Alliance but a hero for the Horde.
cause it comes from the attitude of wanting her to get away with war crimes so yeah lets ruin the story for everyone else, for the alliance and the honor horde
I’m pretty sure their lamentations run a little deeper/older. That it got to the point of yet more war crimes and not Blizz steering them away from that ages ago.
Like, again. For some Cata was our BfA moment where we saw lines crossed that couldn’t be taken back, and BfA is just Blizz driving that wedge home. But I don’t think that means others who remained hopeful are wrong for being hopeful.
Sylvanas can be evil without forcing the Horde PC to participate in mass murder.
Sylvanas can be evil without compromising the image and feel of her entire Forsaken faction.
Sylvanas can be evil without so much laughable obfuscation that she looks like she’s a few brain cells shy of earning her place on the Three Stooges.
Sylvanas can be evil without wrecking Night Elf fans for no story payoff.
The problem isn’t Sylvanas taking one path instead of another. The problem is that whole swathes of fans…people invested in Sylvanas, people invested in Night Elves, people invested in the honorable Horde, people invested in a morally gray faction war…they’re ALL being thrown under the bus, and it’s all for another Goddam dead-simple plot about the Horde finding orcish honor and the factions learning that war is always a mistake unless the enemy is an NPC.
No one wanted her to commit war crimes, honestly i wish they never wrote the Blight into being. The Blight is a story crutch for the Forsaken, and the writers used it and it’s creation to reduce the Forsaken into one dimensional villains. I blame the Blight, and the writer responsible, for destroying my racial narrative.
To be honest, you convinced me that I was wrong in thinking that. Didn’t know the best time to say that though, so may as well say it now. Night elves got done dirty, and being ignored in 8.2 of ALL patches is awful.
I think it’s moreso my complete nihilism regarding the writers which drove me to think it’s better to be ignored by them than to be targeted for increasingly terrible story decisions.
Did you ever stop to consider this from the Forsaken/Sylvanas/Undead perspective that eternal life with your family is a mercy compared to infinite cruelty that is life especially when you consider the existence of the Shadowlands that appears to be a form of Hell for everyone that isn’t a chosen of Odin or Elune?
Sylvanas probably sees killing her sisters as a mercy.
Sylvanas only saw the hell after being undead. Her first death was different. That’s what spooked her. Most people don’t consider undeath a mercy because the story has made it clear it’s torment that the undead hate being subjected to. This was not altruism, this was dragging others down with her.
The Shadowlands is portrayed in the lore as a place that is (much like Greek mythology) every soul finds its way to unless you are otherwise pledged to another Death god like Bwonsamdi or Elune. It’s reasonable to think Sylvanas believes undeath protects people from that horrific fate. If she believes that, then killing her sisters and nephews is not in any way unreasonable. That’s my only point /shrug
I’m still oscillating. Rage➡️ Apathy➡️ Depression➡️ Apathy➡️ Rage, etc. Though I’m coming by it from the opposite end. I gave up on Sylvanas in early Cata. I still remember a small RP event with a few friends after my Forsaken character found out she recruited the Val’kyr. He had a Ninety Five Theses moment at the entrance of Lordaeron city, decrying allying with the Scourge he fought so hard to end, before self-exiling himself to Orgrimmar. I knew Sylvanas would fall, I just didn’t expect her to take everything else in the franchise with her.
The Forsaken are little more than her personal hivemind, with the few shown to have good intentions and individual thought killed off in a novel. The Honor Horde just casually goes along with her atrocities, until suddenly they don’t. The Night Elves suffered genocide as a plot point to further the Orcish story, and their grand revenge is to kill a couple mooks, and ignite a non-resolving conflict in their own lands (and a set of edgy contacts as the consolation prize). And the Alliance as a whole will walk away from the heinous atrocities of the Horde, while leaving them the message not to be naughty again, but if they do, genocide is ok as long as you feel sad enough about it.
I just don’t even know what to say about it anymore.