The way she was portrayed at the start of Legion would have been fine had it been genuine. I saw her as that moody teen girl learning to interface with the world in a productive way rather than just snarling at everyone and making snide remarks underhand.
The only thing necessary for that development or evolution to continue would be her goal being something other than (seemingly) the eradication of all life.
I firmly believe they originally intended Sylvanas to be Warchief for at least 3 expansions before they just mashed the storylines and expansions together. Thatâs why they had to go back and retroactively say she was doing machinations all along, because otherwise it comes out of nowhere.
Her taking up the role of one of the most powerful political figures on Azeroth, only to slowly realize that she and all sheâs supposed to protect are still at the mercy of these vastly powerful beings, and coming to the conclusion that sheâs never actually been free, done over the course of a Broken Isles expansion, an Argus expansion, an Azerite expansion, and then an Old God expansion, would have been really well done.
As usual with a lot of things Blizzard does, the overarching idea of Sylvanas is a good one, but the execution was sloppy.
If I was leading the story or having a hand in it? I wouldâve made syl take a back seat after wrath cause her over arching story and driving motivation was through. Just like how velen is more relegated to the background cause his story is done with.
read 
the books
I make a Post on behalf of Faranoth here:
Iâm going to start out mentioning that as of Legion, the Forsaken and Night elves were my favorite races because of their respective positions in the factions. Both had a tempered ruthlessness that came to the forefront when it came to the defense of their homelands, or atleast that is how they were supposed to be portrayed. I have always been a fan of Sylvanas upto Legion, and I loved playing her on Legion and replaying wc3 missions with her at the helm. Over the years, there was a certain build-up of a more respectable Sylvanas, with the BC event, the Sunwell comic, the Fall of Arthas dialogue and her initial appearances in Legion.
I saw Legion as an opportunity for her to redeem herself in the eyes of both her allies and her enemies. Sylvanas has always been a fierce defender of her right to exist and of Lordaeron. For her to⌠âdevolveâ into the creature we saw in BfA with a huge amount of plot armor as the only way to justify her actions of making herself a target, throwing away the Forsaken home, a campaign of mindless slaughter⌠say what you will, but it wasnât the same character anymore.
I threw in the towel and abandoned any liking I had towards the character. At the end of Legion, the writers had a clear dichotomy of choice- build up on the noble yet ruthless aspect of the character as was hinted from Volâjinâs cinematic or take ten steps back to square one. Instead of building a character everyone can respect, they choose neither of these options and make a character that is worse than any incarnation of herself.
Perhaps in the future the writers will justify it as a means to an end towards something greater for her, but it will never, ever be the same Sylvanas who fought to claim Lordaeron and a right to exist on Azeroth. The character has different motives, different approaches, different goals and different allies. Say she does fix this cycle⌠who will she have in the Shadowlands? The Forsaken? Nathanos? Dead Sinâdorei? Sylvanas, dark ranger and queen of the Forsaken is effectively dead. I maintain that Sylvanas probably got it worse in all of BfA, but I think giving her a quick death is also the only way to fix this garbage, because any other story would just make it worse. If they could redo BfA it would be great, but that canât happen.
100% agree with your post.
Volâjinâs death was devastating for me as a troll fan, but I still had high hopes that Sylvanas taking the reigns at his request would mean positive future development for her character and in extension, the role of the Forsaken within the horde.
Yeah, far from it. Turns out Blizzard just wanted the next villainous warchief, and Sylvanas was the best-suited candidate for the job. And now the horde has lost three of their major characters for a story almost no one wanted or enjoyed.
Someone didnt read the books The only way someone can think like this if they just ignore every single bad thing sylvanas has ever done
This thread will go much smoother if we pretend Katiera doesnât exist.
Blizzard isnât George RR Martin so I donât expect them to necessarily be able to give us Tywin Lannister-like levels of smart rational competent evil, but surely they could cut back on the Joffery Baratheon spoiled psycho temper-tantrum level of evil. Eh, well, okay, maybe their portrayal of Sylvanas is better compared to Cersei than Joffery. Sheâs a haughty, temperamental, entitled b#### whoâs smart but not as smart as she thinks she is, and only saved in the later seasons by everyone else being written more stupidly rather than by her being written more intelligently. The big problem is Iâm not sure that the writers themselves realize that sheâs a Cersei, not a Tywin.
As a corpse. Well a more dead corpse. Either that or we give her exactly what she wants, she gets to live forever in the deepest hole in the maw we can throw her in.
Itâs like you didnât read the threadâs premise.
Yes, youâre right. I only just got up. Brain not working yet.
I didnât want what we got for sure. After Cataclysm, I wanted Sylvanaâs head on a pike, but the Legion cinematic gave me hope that maybe they were going to move her character to a place where she could be an adversary/occasional ally who could be respected even when she was on the other side.
Not going to go super in-depth, since others have already said it better, but mainly what sheâd been portrayed as in-game up to that time. More pragmatic, and not necessarily in-line with the honor Horde, but still an effective, competent, and respectable leader. The bit with the embassy was a good start. Also keep her tenure temporary, but have the departure a bit more amicable.
Also, and equally important, I would have kept Varian alive and Anduin sidelined. I do feel that Bliz trying to promote Anduin is at least part of why the Sylvanas narrative went the way it did, mostly because theyâve been unwilling to have Anduin do anything approaching morally alabaster. The whole two-faction narrative only works if the leaders compliment and play off of each other, and Anduin just doesnât work in that capacity.
I just came back to WoW after leaving right before 8.1, and got caught up on lore and uhhhâŚ
Well, not what they gave us, for sure. Iâll admit, Iâve never been much of a Horde player (Except for the duration of Cataclysm because of friends).
However, what they gave us is just trash. It feels like they had no idea what to do with her (and still donât). She always was evil, so I do not agree with all the ââMorally greyââ stuff people are talking about here. Weâre talking about someone who was having live experiments done on kidnapped human civilians. Thatâs not ââMorally grayââ, thatâs comically evil.
As to what I wanted, I would have either preferred the Teldrassil fiaso never happen and she steps down from Warchief but remains in the Horde in some capacity where she can operate in the shadows, or if they go ahead with the genocide, I wouldâve liked to see the Horde step up to her right away and not mostly carry on as if nothing happened and suddenly be outraged when she tries to mindcontrol a corpse. (Looking at you Baine)
Now please just donât give her a corny redemption arc in SL please.
She shouldâve been like her vanilla-wrath portrayal. And kept far away from the Warchief position.
Volâjin shouldâve only been severely wounded, enough to be taken out of the fight for the expansion but not die. Sylvanas can step up to temporarily lead the Hordeâs military forces until the Legion Invasion is dealt with, but she canât stay Warchief permanently. Sheâs too much a polarizing figure within the Horde to represent everyone inside of it.
As a corpse.
Thatâll be fine thanks.
Honestly I was hoping that sheâd somehow finally regain her humanity (become living again) and start to seek redemption, righting the wrongs that sheâs committed. Only to be killed by someone sheâs transgressed in the past, be it Tyrande or Genn.
A truly tragic character.
Blizzard has very few of these.
so, i might not have a huge leg to stand on here, since i was never present to play the game in legion or the beginning of bfa, and not mentally present back when i played pre-MoP. Regardless, since learning the basics of her lore, I always perceived Sylvanas as a morally grey character who cared for her people as their leader and protector, serving to prove that theyâre not like the Scourge and that they are their own people.
In an ideal world, I think that she should have stayed dead at the end of Wrath. I say this as a Sylvanas fan, too. If I had to ârewriteâ her story starting in legion, Iâm really not sure what I would do, but the current story plot and where iâm suspecting itâs going, while somewhat interesting, feels out of character. She went from the idea of protecting the forsaken to writing them off as ânothing,â along with the rest of the horde. She held no particular loyalties to the Horde other than out of convenience, so that much isnât surprising nor would i explicitly change that, unless it was like some of you are mentioning, her warming up to the horde and wanting to protect it too.
I loved Sylvanasâ character, especially up to Wrath, and I still love that character and the potential it couldâve had. I recognize that what we have now is blizzardâs development of that character and I accept that. People ask if sheâs going to be redeemed or if she even should be, and I have to say that even in my position my answer would be no. I wanna see her die a raid boss in shadowlands and that be the end of her story.
My answer is somewhat of an echo of others. I wanted the pragmatic Sylvanas that gets things done to be reintroduced to the living. I had hoped that being shoved into the spotlight and into the Warchief position would offer her some counterbalance to some of her worst impulses in the form of Saurfang. Now, letâs all laugh at how that turned outâŚ
However, I had hoped that she would grow as a character and realize that all the races of the Horde were her people and not just the Forsaken. There would certainly be some more extreme headbutting with the Alliance than normal because I wouldnât expect Sylvanas to just swallow some of the more questionable actions of Team Blue.
More than anything, though, I think I just wanted Volâjinâs dying speech to mean something and not just be him getting duped. Feels bad, man.