Jury is out for me regarding Villain Sylvanas. It really depends on how she’s going to move in the future. I am very prone to like unapologetic female “villains” in general so I want to think I’ll like her, but it really depends on which Sylvanas we get. If we get the Sylvanas who was clowning Genn and Anduin in Lordaeron I’ll love her. If we get “tACTicAL GeNioUs. No fun allowed!” I might be meh on her.
We will see…
And Gul’dan 2.0. I guess Blizzard just thought they’d rehash everything all at once.
Putting aside the fact that they DO feel other emotions besides those ones; I think anger would definitely be an emotion that’s responsible for outbursts. So yes, it’s still in character and makes sense lore-wise.
Speaking of which, you’re now saying that she not only needs to have previously displayed the exact type of angry outburst, but that it has to have been caused by extremely similar stimuli? Don’t you think that’s kind of missing the forest for the trees? She has displayed that she slips up due to the fact that she lets pride and anger cloud some of her decisions, and she has showed that she definitely gets angry when things don’t go exactly how she wants them to. That’s all very well established at this point.
That said, since you want examples of similar outbursts; when Vareesa backs out of poisoning Garrosh in War Crimes she loses it and goes stomping off like a crazy person. Before that, she had a meltdown on the Frozen Throne when she saw that there was a new Lich King.
Again, we don’t know what she’s dealing with, or the dynamics of her relationship with it. You’re trying to say that something is out of character/stupid for her to be doing when we don’t even know the situation yet.
But not to the degree she does things now. Back when she lost to Arthas, she swore vengeance; she didn’t turn into a petulant child.
In War Crimes, she did it under the eyes of no one; she let herself loose in the forest. She knew where to get away with it.
Upon seeing the new Lich King, she ended that day with killing herself.
In all of these situations she either knew how much to give or where to go to do it. Current Sylvanas is an emotional moron. She didn’t used to do it like that.
Anything regarding an Old God and a relationship with it is dumb. Period.
Meh. It seems like you just don’t want her flaws to be something that she suffers negative consequences from, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having character flaws.
At this point, I’ve given you plenty of canon examples as to why it makes sense for her character to move down this path. She has a history of letting anger and pride get the better of her and it has become progressively worse overtime. If you don’t/can’t accept that, then there’s nothing else that I can really say. Whether or not you want to be objective about the character is up to you.
If only her anger and pride would show for the right reasons. Not improvised storytelling.
Since I’m Alliance, Sylvanas has been a villain type character ever since Vanilla. I don’t see that it’s a change that she has a sympathetic backstory but is still the ruthless monster Arthas turned her into; that’s always been her story.
I don’t really get the idea that she made some kind of a mistake. She knew her Horde had to fight N’Zoth. If Anduin had taken Alleria’s good advice, she’d have had to lead that bloodbath. Instead, Anduin and Saurfang give her the opportunity to wash her hands of responsibility for what will be at best a pyrrhic victory, and Anduin and Thrall get to take the fall for it instead.
After that bloodbath, Sylvanas will be in a position to call on her loyalists and take back control of the Horde - she won the Makgora, so she’s still Warchief, after all. I’m not saying the Blizzard story writers would ever have the guts to write that natural ending, but from where we stand now, Sylvanas’ actions make perfect sense.
Even before that, more than half of the Forsaken quests were pretty evil, “go murder this whole farm village”, “go find ingredients to this new plague”, “go test said plague on these innocent humans we captured just because”. Sylvanas was just better at feigning ignorance and non-involvement, I think, letting her demon and Putress take the blame. She no longer had that excuse after Wrathgate, but still kept doing all the same things. Then as now you could say the Forsaken were just fighting to defend themselves against a world who just saw them as a second Scourge (rightly and wrongly), or you could say Sylvanas went mad and evil after her death. Both seem to apply equally well.
That said, I don’t think they’re trying to make her an evil character. I still think there’s a kicker coming to this plot, like she was secretly doing something to deter the Old Gods or something. (Pet theory: she knows Azeroth “hatching” will kill all life on Azeroth, so she’s trying to kill Azeroth and make pacts into the death realm to keep control over the titan there, too.)
If so, I think they could’ve handled the slow reveal much better than they did, though. At the least, I would have wanted a Forsaken-loyal plotline that gets more into Sylvanas’ head and motives (and the motives of her followers–why did so many go evil apothecary in undeath, and what about those undead Wardens??), but I guess from a mix of MMO mechanics really not being a good vehicle for player choice stories and that it would all be leaked prematurely made it not possible. If there IS a twisty plot behind all this, they haven’t shown enough of it to keep us willingly suspending our disbelief that she isn’t exactly what she seems to be on the surface–a giant jerk.
Sylvanas has always been a bad guy. It’s just that should used to be ‘Tywin Lannister’ bad instead of ‘Joffery Baratheon’ bad.
I’m saying her flaws weren’t presented in the manner they are now, hence why it doesn’t make sense.
And I’ve specified as to how those instances are different than what we’re seeing now.
In either calm(ish) collected ways or in private, not ‘ruin everything with my own outbursts’.
Been being objective, specifically. You’ve been listing instances without context.
She’s still playing her 5D chess because of the “Dark Lady anticipated this as a possible outcome” bs. They need to get HIGH SCHOOL interns to replace their writing team. I am sure they’d come up with better story lines than this cliche disaster.
She’s a Forsaken doing Forsaken things. She was never a “good guy.” Even Saurfang is corrupt af no matter how much Blizzard tries to spin his character with the “muh honour” cringe.
Agreed, Sylvanas rol was never to fit one like Baine or even less Anduin as a nice intentioned Leader. She was reborn in bad magic, a banshee a monster that resents life, Forsaken are meant to be this cold hearted, moked-by-life creatures. BUT that tey somehow managed to pull out of that full-evil mode and try to half harmonize with the living world. They are meant to be sort of like pragmatic while the rest of races are more like dogmatic.
In her own Undead way Sylvanas was doing what she considered was needed to be done (for herself or for w/e, I don’t know).
I’v never had a issue with her being a Villain. The issue I have is Blizzard thinking she had to be the Warchief while being the villain.
Exactly, this could have been its own self contained Horde story where she wants to take vengeance on the Alliance for Stormheim and the Horde refuse and they boot her from the Horde. Leaving her free game for the Alliance to hunt and deal with.
The Horde isn’t dragged through the Mud and keeps most of its characters. They alliance gets to go after this protagonist without the Horde losing something.
Wasn’t Sylvannas’s Horde the only force that could challenge N’zoth? And now that Horde has recombined with Saurfang’s forces? Pretty sure the Horde won’t have to fear the Alliance for a while.
Sylvanas… bad guy…
That’s just an opinion.
For me, Thrall and Co are the bad guys.
Then you are lost!
Or maybe you are the lost one.
You see how it works?
Quite frankly, I’m very dissapointed that both a potential good plot and one of the more interesting characters of the Warcraft universe were thrown away to give us a slimmed down story.
It’s comparable to the savage treatment given to the original teleplay for the Star Trek episode “City On The Edge of Forever”, which was considered the best story of TOS.
A comparison of the original teleplay to that which was actually filmed an aired reveals the latter to be a tattered caricature of the original.
I’d rather use a different word because caricature is actually too kind to describe what was done to the original script, but that’s what BFA feels like to me compared to what I had hoped we’d get.
Difference here is that what was actually filmed is still nigh-universally beloved.