The original reason this whole thing was brought up, though, is because of suggestions of that being impulsive. I don’t think it was.
We could go into a whole lot of things it was; I’m not trying to sit here and tell anyone Sylvanas is a nice lady. But as you pointed out in your post, there’s a level of methodology there. It doesn’t read as rash impulse to me.
Planned revenge. Not impulsive.
This wasn’t impulsive either.
This book was trash.
This was the only thing that was impulsive.
This also was not impulsive.
There is a difference between planning things and having them go right, planning them and having them go wrong and actually being impulsive.
For most things Sylvanas did, she did plan them out. But eventually she was just made into what they did with her after Cataclysm to become the one to scream burn it.
Sylvanas if they played it right could have been an amazing tactician. But they decided let’s go with shock value.
96% of the time Sylvanas is a tactician; there are just a few buttons if you push her irrational anger as a banshee bubbles up and clouds her judgement. Unfortunately, the 4% of the time she is impulsive she does monumentally unwise things that get easily remembered.
Yep, especially since one of them was the main catalyst of an expac that kicked off a saga. I still hate that they thought it was profound to make her just like Arthas.
At some point, she stopped being a coherent character to me. It was just too obvious that multiple different authors were yanking her in different directions. She was just a set of pixels embodying a plot device, doing whatever they needed her to do in order to take the story where they wanted it to go. Story algebra, as a wise forum poster pointed out a while ago:
“He who fights with monsters” is a tried and true trope, but the leap from aping Scourge tactics and personnel to recreating the doom of her people on behalf of the Lichier King, invented for expansion 7 and assigned retroactive credit for her actions in expansions 3 through 6, was way too dumb.
It was already way too dumb when they made her Warchief. I mean the character was great prior to the conclusion of the Arthas saga, but even after that she was still interesting. The faction was still interesting. They might have not been Scourge but they were undead, mostly insane, but interesting because they were similar to the Scourge in many ways. But for some reason that made certain people uncomfortable and the whining started. When they made her Warchief it was pretty clear that she wasn’t long for the job. But nobody actually taught they’d pull another Garrosh. But they did.
Yeah I mean, I still liked Sylvanas when they made her Warchief, and I thought it was a bad idea. She fits being the Forsaken leader better. She doesn’t fit being a leader of the overall Horde. And I knew, they were only gonna take this in a bad direction because they had already been heading there.
Plus I was pissed off that they killed off Vol’jin. Especially in the way that they did it. Especially since he didn’t get much time to be Warchief.
The only positive thing that came out of that story is that they killed Vol’jin in my opinion. I found that character so bad and boring. I don’t mourn him one bit. But they should have made someone else the Warchief.
I felt he had good potential with his rebellion. They just didn’t build on it.
They didn’t do a good job of putting enough of a spotlight on him, I feel. Of all these characters we’ve talked about; Arthas, Thrall, Sylvanas, Anduin, Jaina, Alleria(although parts with her are still building.) At least to my recollection - they all had more screen time than Vol’jin did. Vol’jin just hadn’t had enough forefront storytelling to make him much of a big deal in my opinion, and I wonder if maybe that’s why you feel that way.
Like, I don’t hate Vol’jin, but I can definitely say that Zul’jin left a much bigger impression on me than what Vol’jin ever ended up doing. Now that I think about it, they definitely shouldn’t have killed Vol’jin off. There’s a whole lot more they could have done with him to make him consequential and compelling.
Kinda goes back to that whole reason I made this thread in the first place. Sacrificing Horde characters on the altar of story progression.
**Shameless edit: I STILL want playable Amani. I went back and rewatched the Zul’aman trailer and MAN, the Amani are SO COOL.
They did a bad job with him period. I found him very annoying during MoP. Especially cause I wasted the money on his book. Not complaining about the money, but it felt like wiping my rear with that money would have resulted in a more satisfying experience than reading that book.
But what did it for me was when he started taunting Garrosh for no other reason than because he was such a Thrall fanboy and Thrall retired, right? But Jinny acted like Garrosh forcefully took leadership of the Horde and started threatening him with murder. And of course Garrosh responded, I mean who wouldn’t? And Jinny was so surprised, totally caught him off guard. WHAT? Anyway, good riddance. Sorry I know some people like him, but I don’t.
I mean, he’s not my favorite character. As I said before, I liked him well enough, I suppose. But he’s not one I’d put at the top of my list.
I could argue all day about how much I liked Sylvanas early on in Warcraft stuff. Write lines and lines about how interesting her character was to me. You wouldn’t catch me doing that with Vol’jin.
Again, I didn’t dislike him. And I felt there were some good directions they could have went with him. But he’s certainly not on that Sylvanas level, for me, personally.
Most people seem to like the Vol’jin novel, but of course no book is going to be for everyone.
Hot Take: They should of let Sylvanas rest in peace after she jumped off ICC. They could of taken the forsaken down an entirely different path without her there.
They were just scared to because the pretty undead lady sells merchandise well.
So. Much. This.
And now, instead, they have to take the Forsaken some other way after all of the shenanigans from Shadowlands.
Eh. In retrospect, that would have been better than what they eventually did with her. But at the time, I was really hoping they wouldn’t kill her off because she was interesting and I didn’t want to lose her as a character.
Anyway, a character being dead doesn’t mean they can’t sell merchandise—look at Arthas.
Hahah. I don’t really think that was so much the point other than the fact Sylvanas has so many fans and is so marketable. I don’t really think the dead/undead part is really that important.
**Granted, I’m not trying to speak for someone else - my opinion may not be what Kaileath was implying.
No, you were spot on. They had just got done adding blood elves to the horde in BC expressly because without a pretty race the populations were wildly lopsided. A lot of people who did play forsaken did so because of Sylvanas. Getting rid of her must of seemed like shooting themselves in the foot at the time.
That’s what I mean. Arthas is still popular (and marketable) despite being killed off in-game.