So I’m still poking at this, and I noticed a weird juxtaposition.
Here’s the by-now-infamous quote from Travis Day on April 5, 2018, talking to Invenglobal:
But here’s Travis Day talking to Blizzardwatch, also on April 5, 2018:
How can he make both of those statements on the same day? What does this mean for the state of the story at that time? The second one lines up very closely with what we actually got: Sylvanas (with help from some of her supporters) burned the tree, but parts of the Horde didn’t support her. But I don’t see any room with that story to say “Sylvanas is not evil” and that she is not acting in a “cruel, mustache-twirling evil way.”
Also, I remember there being discussion at the time about his little cheat of saying “You’ll come to the conclusion that Sylvanas burned the tree.” It seemed like a very deliberate hint that things wouldn’t be the way they appeared, especially since he preceded that by saying it would be “open to debate.” So this was part of what stoked the theories about anyone but Sylvanas being responsible, although as I recall, those theories had been going strong since Blizzcon.
One last interesting thing, in light of the discussion about a possible reworking of “Warbringers”: Why does he describe them as “two-and-a-half/three pieces”? Which one is the “half”?