Bad Interpretations of the cinematic - 9.2 spoiler

Lore Story Forum
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NEITHER! I don’t want to see anything about the Alliance or the Horde. I want a single whole expansion where we focus on the people of Azeroth as individuals, as characters with their own problems and whims and needs that don’t involve a small cast of six characters dragged out for each expansion, or the all caps HORDE and ALLIANCE that are never allowed to be a union of individual races. Neither faction has culture anymore, because Blizzard has homogenized it to be HORDE and ALLIANCE.

I want to explore what’s going on in Northrend’s various regions; I want to see how the Forsaken are settling and what their next steps will be; I want to see how the humans in Westfall are coping with the alleged end of decades of war; I want to see what the gnomes will do now that they have new friends, and what the tauren and orcs will do now that the Barrens are starting to sprout new life. I want to see where the Mag’har will settle, and if they bring their culture to Azeroth. I want to see the Draenei rebuild and start asking questions about what’s next for themselves now that the Legion is gone.

I want stories that actually explore Azeroth and give us variety, instead of ramming the same old boring, world ending threats down our throats time and time and time again.

My characters, the ones I made back in Vanilla and still play and roleplay, are adventurers; they’re not world saving heroes who punched a space god - they’re the people who go on meaningful adventures that propel genuine character development on a scale that doesn’t impact the world, and those are the kinds of developments I want to see all across WoW.

The Star Wars movies got boring for me because they kept hashing out the same “Galaxy Threatening Super Villain” every week and expected it to feel new. “Oooohhh, a NEW death star. OOOOOH, a new super evil darth vader look alike. OOOOOH, the republic has been destroyed again and the galaxy is about to be enslaved by the sith again.”

It’s why I think the Mandalorian is so popular and successful; it’s small, it’s contained, and it’s accessible and relatable to a degree. It focuses on a rational, nuanced storyline with well developed layers.

Back to WoW though - and most importantly, telling smaller stories doesn’t force the same cast of six characters to act against their personality in order to serve a larger story.

Imagine an expansion where Jaina didn’t have to flip flop to justify another faction war, or where Anduin didn’t force Alliance players to entirely disregard the latest genocidal war started by the Horde, or where Thrall didn’t have to show up do his self pity routine all over again.

Imagine an expansion where we got actual development for the Forsaken that wasn’t attached to a single character whose motivations have never been consistently developed.

Imagine an expansion where the tauren and every other Horde race didn’t get villain batted so that a Warchief could set up the next expansion where super villains in another realm or dimension try to destroy Azeroth.

Imagine an expansion where we, as the player, actually get to choose which adventures we go on for a change.

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62

They are literally werewolves and zombies, and they should be able to be bad guys once in a while.

I like blight, and I love the evil Dark Iron who lava-melted three times the population of Darkshore worth in Goblins back in BfA.

Let both factions be detestable so each can be the hero, and the villain of their respective stories.

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So far her PTR presentation has been exactly this. All her mannerisms and whatnot are relatively untouched, she just seems more introspective.

When you merge your soul fragment back into the rest of you, its perceptions of you and your choices get integrated into your whole; it gives you the rare chance of being able to objectively review your decisions from a quasi omniscient third person perspective and see where things went wrong.

For Uther, it showed him where his mistakes in handling Arthas were; he put far too much pressure on the prince, playing down his doubts and puffing up his ego to unhealthy levels; then he faced him as an enemy instead of as a mentor when he went astray.

For Sylvanas, it allowed her to come to terms with the fact what she has done isn’t forgivable and she is going to have to pay the piper. That was something the Banshee Queen was already wrestling with, which is why she kept desperately trying to convince others (but really herself) that this was the only path.

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64

So, did Sylvannas know about the Jailer before or after she threw herself off Icecrown?

And did she know his full plan and what it entailed or just a general idea that she headed towards and only knew of its details when he needed her to?

In other words, was Sylvannas gradually corrupted by the Jalier to the point where she would do pretty much anything to achieve his goals? It would explain her dark turn in BfA.

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Frankly until the next patch or, more likely, when the Sylvanas novel comes out we won’t know the full story 100%, but as of right now it looks like:

After she threw herself off ICC, and it was a matter of him telling her “I’m TOTALLY going to tear down the machine of life and death and build a new, completely fair and just system to replace it.” and her being so bitter and disillusioned with said system over what happened to her that she believed he was telling the truth (despite, you know, his behavior and methods screaming to anyone with an ounce of rationality that this probably was a lie and he shouldn’t be trusted…).

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Ironically the book might give us our best insight into Zovaal we get, if they cover his conversation with her in the Maw where they strike their accord.

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I hope we get some insight into that. My headcannon though is that RG sylvanas was always buried deep down and sometimes a bit of that good conscience came to the fore. Would help to explain some of her more irrational decisions and behavior at times

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oh she was, you could see how much selling Anduin on turning to team Zovaal was as much about her as it was him. She has been desperately trying to convince herself this was the only path as much as anyone else.

Reintegrating with the lost part of her allowed her to remember what it was she died for, and to clearly see what she has really done.

One of her new lines is “We are more than our torments.”—That is a big shift from her old perspective of “What are we if not slaves to this torment” . She has moved past seeing things in terms of being a slave to her past, and wanting to be free no matter the cost.

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It doesn’t matter if she was tortured more.
That isn’t what he is saying.

That she suffered is not more important than the fact that anybody else suffered. Her suffering does not elevate her choices and actions just because she was tortured more or worse.

Her suffering does not make her special.

It does not elevate her above everyone else who suffered

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70

But it does help explain her rather erratic behavior

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I do find it funny how some of the most generic and bland antagonists in the Warcraft games are given actual depth and character in the secondary material. Deathwing being the prime example.

So basically that whole “The last piece of Arthas was holding the Lich King Arthas back from unleashing the full might of the scourge” thing.

le sigh.

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Yeah. Only thing that makes sense to explain her erratic behavior later on. That she was fighting her good half for control. :wolf:

But that’s purely my headcannon as I said

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I wouldn’t say it was something you could “see” and more like if you missed it did you even watch the cinematic? Since Anduin basically calls her out on it directly. Which is why he said whatever she decides with, he will do.

I mean it will fit with the Sylvanas has become another Arthas like character storyline they were doing with the War of Thorns in BFA.

Which is why I sighed. As I know that is what Blizzard will go with since the current writers love copying and pasting storylines from previous expansions.

BFA was MoP

Shadowlands is Wrath.

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I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

What do you classify as “elevating her above everyone else who suffered”?

If we’re talking about the way she suffered, then yes, she canonically suffered more than others at the hands of Arthas. That’s literally the narrative we were presented with, that he singled her out. Most who suffered at the hands of Arthas did so as a result of his actions, it was not his specific intention to cause them suffering he simply didn’t care that they did suffer. With Sylvanas that wasn’t the case, Arthas intentionally acted to cause her torment.

So yes. Narratively Sylvanas suffered more than the thousands of unnamed citizens that also suffered. She suffered more than any of the Death Knights that Arthas raised.

Does that make her actions justified? No, that’s not the point. As I’ve said a couple of times here now, it simply helps to explain her character. If her suffering wasn’t meant to be highlighted, Arthas would not have targeted her like he did. We were given that to help contextualise her and her goals during the early arch’s. That’s where her burning hatred of Arthas stemmed from and while others certainly wanted to bring Arthas down, none more so than her. Soo pivotal was it to her that once Arthas had fallen she threw herself from ICC because his downfall was her reason for being.

I’m not sure if you just don’t know the story, which is entirely fair as a lot of the context surrounding it existed in books and not the core games, or if you just dislike Sylvanas and for some reason don’t like her having reasoning for her motives; preferring instead to see her as having no reason at all.

Either way, this is the story we were given.