Good question, we’ll never know now. He told it to Genn right afterwards and Genn did not believe it, and apparently he refrained from telling anyone else, especially after what happened at the Gathering.
What just makes me so angry is that some players still believe that she lied ( or want to believe it ) and that Blizzard plays right into their hands with statements like “Has the alliance forgotten about the betrayal at the Broken Shore?” or the big revelation at the Shadowlands announcement that it was seemingly Sylvanas’ and the Jailer’s plan all along and made perfect sense in retrospect, instead of just being a shameless retcon on their part.
I mean, how can you really believe her words or thoughts? She was already working for an extra-dimensional monster at this point, but that never comes into her mind. As players, how do you make sense of stuff that is ambiguous at the time but then is turned into something else years later. The storytelling is getting offensive at this point.
Then yeah, I guess the only question that remains is who did Anduin share this fact with. I assume he let the leaders of the Alliance know. But I’m not sure this really changed anything at all since shortly after, Sylvanas would go on to burn down Teldrassil, erasing any ounce of goodwill she may have built up.
Next up is an interview that isn’t exactly a feels-like-a-lie, but is interesting nonetheless. This is from Blizzcon 2019, and I could only find this Reddit summary link for it (thanks again to Etheldald):
The big picture arc is definitely laid out well in advance (months/years)
[Re: Tides of Vengeance cinematic] “…Horde players will have a questline where they are tracking down what became of Saurfang, and Alliance players will learn his mysterious escape from – one of the Horde heroes right in their midst. And try to understand how that happened, how does…the Horde escape from under the nose of the Alliance…”
“As creators of the story, there’s more than paying attention to what the community thinks of the story you’re telling and what is effective and what isn’t, what resonates emotionally. I think–Alex Afrasiabi, our creative director, has spoken on this a number of times in the last couple months and a part of telling a story involves invoking emotional highs and lows and there are some things that are deliberately meant to be a little bit frustrating - a little bit upsetting to some.”
Goes on to reference Game of Thrones, regarding emotional response and people saying “I’m never watching this again” after certain episodes - that emotional response is something they look for, but they have to balance highs and lows.
When they release content on the PTR and players are confused about storylines, that’s when they’re more likely to take feedback in real time and change things. Ultimately they feel that they need to trust creative impulses within the team and be story-focused, but they do listen to feedback.
My takeaways:
The “big picture” is laid out well in advance, but that might be something as simple as “Sylvanas goes big evil.”
Whatever happened to that bit about Alliance players learning of Saurfang’s escape? Did that ever actually happen? It kind of sounds like they were supposed to learn about it as a result of the Horde PC trying to track him down (i.e., the Horde PC would be the “Horde hero in their midst”).
DId they seriously think the events of BfA would only be a little bit frustrating or upsetting? The downplay is breathtaking.
The desire to be Game of Thrones is veeeeeery strong. And this was after the widely-hated last season. Is that why they decided to make Sylvanas “big evil”? Were they thinking, “Hey, everyone loves to hate Cersei Lannister, so let’s make Sylvanas our Cersei”–without taking into account the fact that longtime players had already formed opinions about Sylvanas that didn’t necessarily line up with how they felt about Cersei?
DId they actually believe the highs and lows of BfA were balanced?
I notice they only talk about changing things on the PTR when players are confused, not when players hate a storyline.
The horde didn’t do anything wrong. It is the incompetent writers taht forced them to do stuff that they didn’t want to do at all in the first place. It is pointless villain batting and it needs to stop.
This makes sense, especially given the hardcore Alliance players really did love to hate Sylvanas. I have been an Alliance player mostly since Classic, but the Forsaken has always been the Horde race that I play. I loved Sylvanas, part of me still does when I remove myself from BfA. Admittedly, I love Cersi too.
I had no issues accepting both as a Villain, but they are a particular type of Villain. They are both sympathetic villains. Cersi was a woman living in a male dominated society, forced to marry a man she hated and who abused her. She had a forbidden love affair, and three children she loved very strong, who she was destined to lose, according to an old prophecy.
People loved to hate her, but I am convinced that anyone who says they would have done thing differently in her shoes are lying.
Sylvanas is the same way. She was killed, and bound into servitude by the Lich King. Her Kingdom was destroyed, everyone she might of once called allies now hate her for the fate she didn’t choose or want. Her own people treat her with suspicion, despite being convenient allies. Justice came to the one who wronged her, but it wasn’t by her hand. She and her people are destined to “die” out, and any attempts to prevent that is seen as disgusting and immoral.
Again, people love to hate her, but I am convinced that anyone who says they would have done thing differently in her shoes are lying.
So they are similar in that way. So putting it into context, it might be seen as having Sylvanas mirror Cersi as a good idea. The thing is, they really didn’t have her mirror Cersi in any way beside they both set fire to something.
If Blizzard wanted to take Sylvanas down the Cersi path, what they should have done is have Vol’jinn remain as Warcheif in Legion, scold her for her dealings with Helya and her activities in Stormheim. Maybe even punish her in some way (Once again punishing her for any attempt to save her people from extinction).
Then somehow lay the foundations for her somehow being next in line for Warcheif, so she can kill him and seize control. I would need to think about how that would happen, but they have nearly all of Legion to lay that groundwork. Maybe Sylvanas kills Vol’jinn on Argus, but is painted as such a War Hero following Antorus that she is chosen as leader? IDK.
It doesn’t matter, point is, Cersi wasn’t just twirling her evil mustache, and commiting genocide for evils sake. She had a reason for doing what she was doing, and we KNEW this. It was never a “Wait and See” moment in GOT. We might not have known WHAT Cersi was doing, but after she did it, we all knew WHY she did it, both on a political and emotional level.
We didn’t know ANYTHING about Sylvanas’ motivations. Honestly, if we had known about her dealings with the Jailer from the beginning, the community might have accepted it more. We would have understood why she was doing it, understood that is was another ploy to save the Forsaken.
yet, Blizzard kept saying this was morally grey. But, even if everything Sylvanas did in BfA had good intentions, it’s still wrong. There is no grey area here, mass murder on a global scale for the sake of saving the Forsaken… That is not morally grey, that is just a horrendously evil person with a sympathetic goal.
There was an analogy BfA was the pointless war of the seven kingdoms Shadowlans is the next and its the one that maters.
Edit: I don’t know if it was meant that way
They’re the ones driving, taking the story where they’d like. Aside from selecting the next destination, they also know why we’re going there (and much, much sooner than players). I imagine being in control takes a bit of the edge off.
Yea, sodium is bad for blood pressure, and it’s hard to avoid saltiness in the Story Forum.
Regardless of her love for them, she was still by no means a good mother. And in the books it’s even more clear that she doesn’t really love them for themselves so much as what she can get out of them. Dunno if it matters but that could also be a decent Sylvannas comparison. Maybe. We’ll have to ‘wait and see’ I guess
I never said she was. It is quite possible to love someone and not like them or enjoy their company. A lot of people do not understand that.
And of course, you can parallel that with Sylvanas’ “love” for the Forsaken.
How Sylvanas feels about the Forsaken has been up for debate since WC3. Though, it really sparked in Cata. I think at the very least, we can say she loves them the same way someone might love a new car. Someone who loves their car also takes care of it. Changes it’s oil regularly, washes it regularly, drives economically and carefully to avoid damaging it in an accident and minimize wear and tear.
When we say that person “loves” their car, do they really? Or are they just taking care of it to maximize it’s use? It really depends. There are some factors we don’t really know. It could be strictly utilitarian, or perhaps the car has some sentimental value, either under the circumstances of it’s acquisition, or just developed over time.
Is one real love moreso than the other? Well, that is a semantic argument and it doesn’t really matter. In either case, Book or Show, Cersi feels such a way toward her children. Sylvanas feels such a way toward the Forsaken. The depth of which is not entirely defined, but the desire to preserve and protect is still there.
The horde didn’t do anything wrong. It is the incompetent writers taht forced them to do stuff that they didn’t want to do at all in the first place. It is pointless villain batting and it needs to stop.
Just because something happened that you didn’t like doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The Horde has done horrible things.
The sad thing is that from what I’ve seen on the board, I don’t think most NE players are enjoying hating her now. They’re just raw and angry and they want her gone so that feeling will stop. Or they think it will.
I agree with that, but only up to a point. I think one of the big problems with her writing at least since BfA (and it may have started earlier, but it’s hard to pinpoint where) is that it has drifted away from being able to say that about her.
I feel like that whole concept of “character in the other faction who we can love to hate” got weakened because of BfA’s polarization.
I think Sylvanas was the best example of that type of character up to and during Cata: She was evil to and effective against the Alliance, so Alliance players wanted her head - but she was too helpful for the Horde to want to get rid of, had enough sympathy that she wasn’t a clear-cut villain to them, and was too clever/sneaky for even her counter-Horde actions (such as using blight despite orders) to ruin her position.
So, she got to be the position of being a dark-to-evil (with just enough sympathy to dance on the knife’s edge of being a villain) force in the Horde, who the Alliance could hate (without the story shaming anyone for it), but whose actions didn’t paint the entire Horde with the same brush (shown in various quests to both Horde and Alliance).
BfA threw her off that delicate balance and right into the deep end of the villain pool, while also removing the plausible deniability that had kept her darkest actions from staining the rest of the Horde as well. And they didn’t even make a deep story about it, just a shallow MoP-with-serial-numbers-filed-off one that I have not seen a single person be satisfied with.
And in doing so, it’s increased calls for other villains-to-other-factions to also get turned into full villains and trashed, because if it’s happened so stupidly to a fan favorite just to make her a loot pinata, why shouldn’t it happen to those other annoying people I want to punch?
I’d figured that Jaina was being set up for this role when the Purge happened: Something terrible and 100% evil to one side, with just enough reasons and sympathy for the other to only verbally condemn her for doing it, and done independently by the one character so as not to make the whole faction complicit.
But then the story went “nah, everyone should love Jaina” and made the Horde work with her anyway while needling them for not liking her.
And then, Genn and Stormheim! Another action that was evil and unprovoked and downright petty and stupid to the Horde, but had enough sympathy for the Alliance to understand even if they disagreed, done independently by Genn (even if Anduin was an idiot for putting him and Rogers both on that mission). I’d thought/hoped that BtS would add a scene where either Anduin thinks to himself that Genn is too popular for attacking the Forsaken for Anduin to officially reprimand him without losing power himself, or where Anduin tries to officially reprimand Genn anyway and the other Alliance leaders stop him because they don’t want to allow the precedent for a single Alliance leader to be raised above another - either way, to give Genn that same curtain of “too clever/sneaky for their counter-Alliance actions to ruin their position in the faction”.
But then the story went “nah, Genn forgives the Forsaken and totally isn’t hateful to the Horde anymore, he’s just Anduin’s big fluffy uncle” and removed a big chunk of what made him a good love-to-hate character for the Horde.
So, now Jaina and Genn are in the most annoying spot for Horde players, who can’t love to hate them because the story keeps popping up with “but… but they’re good people! And you drove them to this! Why do you still hate them?”
In a very understandable reaction to this hypocrisy, many people are simply getting angrier at Jaina and Genn, because the story is trying to hide (not even resolve) all the reasons the Horde was given to justifiably hate them. And in doing so, combined with the usual polarization and steadfast partisanship that BfA has whipped up in the playerbase, these one-faction-villains are portrayed as either 100% villain or 100% misunderstood hero. (I’ve seen a few good beginnings of discussions, but generally some angry partisans jump in pretty quickly and everyone flees back to their ideological bunkers.)
I think both the in-story whitewashing and the in-forum reduction of these characters (though the latter is almost entirely fueled by the former) is disappointing, because these love-to-hate characters fill a really important function in the story:
They’re the reason why each faction can keep distrusting the other without forcing one whole playable faction to be villains just for conflict to make sense.
They’re the reason that a player can still mostly respect the opposite faction even while still fighting them, because these love-to-hate villains in that faction both let the enemy faction’s heroes be heroes without getting stained by the evil stuff, and lets the player know why the enemy is fighting them, because their faction has its own villains.
They’re the reason why the factions don’t just merge even though we group up every time a third major threat rears its head.
So, while it’s easy to take one of these love-to-hate faction villains and make them take the plunge into full villainhood, because the writers can point to past actions to say “look, they’ve done evil stuff all along!”, I think it does a real disservice to the story, the factions, and especially the players.
If Sylvanas was going to be ripped from her throne as queen of the one-faction-villains and made into a villain to everyone, it should have been handled a lot more carefully to avoid reversing those 3 points up above. They didn’t, and it’s caused horrible effects in the the story, caused a backlash against other one-faction-villains, and left lasting fissures in the playerbase.
