If not Sylvanas, then who?

Lore Story Forum
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So, one of the bigger issues with BFA’s story is the Horde’s current Warchief, Sylvanas Windrunner. She’s a great character, yes, but she’s at her best when she’s a shadowy manipulator in the spotlight. As Warchief, however, she’s once again making the Horde into the bad guy faction, arguably more than Garrosh ever did. I think some of us can agree that making her Warchief was a mistake.

So…if not Sylvanas, then who? Who, assuming you were writing the story, would you have Vol’jin appoint Warchief with his dying breath, instead of Sylvanas?

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Saurfang, Eitrigg, Lor’themar, and Baine would’ve all been valid options, in my opinion, but if I were writing the story, I would’ve just, you know, not had Vol’jin die.

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Lorthemar, Thrall, Saurfang.

In no particular order.

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To be fair, “If not Sylvanas, who?” seems to be the Horde motto from the Broken Shore, onward.

She is bantering about with Varian from the start of the Broken Shore, then she carries out Voljin’s order to retreat, using her ships and Valkyr to get people moving.

Later, she sends the Horde player to get the Aegis from Odyn while she works with Helya, playing both sides.

She also gives the Horde a fighting chance against the Night Elves and Malfurion. Saving Horde lives and taking Alliance lives personally.

She then sends the Player to free Talanji with her most trusted boy toy and a few eager scrubs who are looking to prove their worth (Lasan and Thalyssra).

She is the one making all the crazy plans that are giving the Horde any semblance of a shot. So far she still has Ashvane and Xalatath up her sleeve. And she is arresting Baine on Kul Tiras, where the Alliance can see, for some reason. She is also sitting on knowledge that Saurfang and Zekhan are plotting against her… and she has plans for that too!

The only people who can fill those shoes are:

A returned Warchief Loa Voljin Godking-thing.

A returned Cairne, who was able to use his Tauren Ultimate to reincarnate, free his son, and save the Horde.

If there were no shadowy force involved, Baine is the safe choice. Lorthemar might accept it to be polite, just to give the title to Baine anyway, as soon as possible. They are both B Team sorts, though. Sylvanas plays in the big game.

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#Lorthy4Warchief

But really, Baine or somehow Vol’jin.

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Me.

I don’t trust any of the Horde leaders to do it right.

But anyone would have been better than Baine.

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Vol’jin could have chosen Lor’themar for some reason, and I would’ve been interested to see a ton of development from a character who barely gets any.

Vol’jin could have chosen Baine and I would’ve been interested to see if Baine grows into the position and how he’d be forced to react to Alliance transgressions.

Vol’jin could have chosen Ji, and we probably would’ve went to Zandalar an expac sooner to go do some dinosaur punching.

Vol’jin could have chosen Gallywix and the Horde could have been turned into a piratical/mercenary organization that fights purely for profit.

Literally ANYONE else would have made for a more engaging Warchief than Sylvanas, simply due to the fact that none of them are murderous, self-serving, sociopaths.

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Gallywix literally blew up Kezan to harvest a fragment of Azerite, he’s also killed countless minions not for tactical advantage but just because it would make him money, if EVEN THAT. He also tried to sell his entire race into slavery and remarks with pride he’d do the same to the entirety of Azeroth if given control of the Dark Portal.

And worse then any of those things, he pays his workers below minimum wage. I could handle the Garrosh historical revisionism that people have been fond of to make him look better by comparison, but I refuse to defend an Ancap Horde.

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I remember the days back in the lead up to Cata when there was much discussion in the Horde between whether Garrosh or Abasic Kamphir would make a better warchief. General consensus back then was Kamphir would be at least more useful.

The list of worse options compared to Sylvanas is rather small. I think Gallywix, N’zoth and Anduin would probably be the few worse options and I am pretty borderline on the last two being worse.

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If not Sylvanas, then who?

Sylvanas, but not written like a clown and absent from all of the Horde content where she has a massive part to play but no presence.

It’s a wild change but it just might work.

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So Sylvanas, just not any of the Sylvanas since “Edge of Night”? That’s how long she’s been off the deep end. Also, no, she shouldn’t have even been Warchief even if she was still that idealized version from pre-WotLK. She represented a fringe faction within the Horde that openly stated they were just using the “Primitive Races”, that doesn’t make for a particularly good faction leader.

As to the OPs question. Preferably they wouldn’t have killed Vol’jin in the first place, but Thrall returning would be acceptable if he actually takes some accountability over the Garrosh fiasco. Outside of that (prior to BfA), Saurfang and Lor’themar would have been acceptable choices.

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I’ve had this argument plenty of times and I simply don’t see post-EoN Sylvanas as past her prime. She has plenty of humanizing touch points after that and a renewed rationale for her involvement in the Horde. She has been criminally underused save as the antagonist for the stories for others, but the warmer (relative) moments in the most recent novels/novellas/comics demonstrate that while the writers appreciate that she is flawed and deeply unhealthy for herself and others, there has been character growth along a trajectory that doesn’t point towards BfA.

In both the Legion and BfA cinematics we see a Sylvanas that aligns far more with my interpretation, and while I concede that this is not the version we see or that those may have been happenstance moments that do not reflect her true whole, the fact that they exist and were used in Blizzard’s most popular marketing material shows me that they knew how to take her down a different path but didn’t. And that is disappointing.

I am not interested in having this same discussion again, however, so I’ll preemptively concede that the Sylvanas we are getting is very much a reasonable extrapolation of her character - my point is that it was not the only way things could have gone and it’s sad that they did.

I want the Sylvanas from the BfA trailer, damnit ;_;

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I could’ve accepted that if Lordaeron hadn’t happened. But it did. Then she doubled down and tried to kill Saurfang.

Now anything that allows her to avoid punishment is unacceptable.

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Its fine that you concede that, and you’re definitely not the only person that feels that way about Sylvanas. Its very much a “what could have been” situation. One that is understandable, but also one that stands “mostly” against nearly 8 years of development for her. She’s been on this route for a while, so unless they found a motive that outweighed her established fear of her own afterlife, nothing was going to deter her from her chosen direction sadly.

Personally, I like Sylvanas as she is now. She’s got a very Circe Lannister sort of vibe, and she certainly makes things progress when she takes action. I also sort of find her fascinating (and sad) that she’s very much a victim of abuse, that became an abuser herself. The power disparity between her and Arthas was so severe, that she now seeks to never feel that powerless again (so she craves control, and can only really trust those she has total authority over).

There is an interesting character in current Sylvanas … she’s just a horrible person. But I also understand the hope of some that she had been allowed to go down a different path.

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Thrall as warchief or don’t bother… everyone else will just be hit with the villain bat. That being said, not just anyone can become warchief. It must be earned or should of been. Voljin leading to warchief was great. Sylvanas and Garrosh not so much.

At least with Sylvanas she should of only held the title while we were fighting the legion and should of been revoked right after.

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Leaving aside my arguments against your interpretations of those events you mentioned, I don’t think a retcon or re-contextualization of her current image is off the table. And that’s awful.

The thing is, I’m with you that her current expression is unacceptable as Warchief. I’m not a moron, they’re signalling hard that something has got to give and every finger is leveled at the Banshee.

But given it’s so blatant, and there’s so much of the Horde story that the Horde players (and the Alliance, but this isn’t blue team’s business) haven’t been allowed to see, I am worried that their big mid-season turn is going to try and reveal that Sylvanas’ motives were ‘DARK BUT NECESSARY’ or that she was manipulated into things. The Devs are harking on about her evil, but always in non-conclusive ways - their evasiveness on the issue speaks to their wider commitment to leaving the future of the expansion in the dark, which just screams ‘Awful Twist’ to me. A twist should come out of left field and seem obvious based on clues that you had all along, not be signalled hard and never developed to avoid detection.

And Treng, honestly I’m with you on this; Sylvanas as she is and with what she’s done can’t go on. But if they retroactively justify her, or have her be someone’s patsy and use that as absolution, that won’t fix these problems you identify.

But with so much left on the table, from Azerite, to Azeroth herself, to the Alliance’s overwhelming moral integrity in an expansion billed differently, the Horde civil war plot that they swear isn’t another civil war plot… I can’t help but feel that the final dagger in Sylvanas’ back might be a hamfisted last minute rallying of her character, when what she needed was to be present like Jaina was and developed through whatever twist or revelations await.

The Horde have been kept in the dark on their own story, and potentially the motives they should have been rallied behind (if I am right and those are being kept secret) when we needed it in 8.0 and not as some ‘masterstroke’ in 8.2.5 or 8.3. And even if you love Saurfang and his aims, he has been done this same disservice - if we’re meant to be rallying behind him as our champion, what the dook is blizzard thinking, keeping him so absent from our questing and experiences? Why the hell isn’t he leading us in Dazar’alor or serving as a boss to taunt and frustrate the Alliance?

It’s temping to blame Sylvanas for intra-narrative reasons, but letting those dictate such a blunder of nearly every Horde character’s presence and tone is such a writing flop.

Just to clarify, my argument is and always has been that this alternate path was already present in content we play, see and read, but was discarded for the other themes present in her character. I am bemoaning the loss of a real entity, not it’s failure to manifest. I understand you may not agree with me that it ever existed, but if I am to be considered wrong I’d rather be considered wrong for the opinions and perspectives I actually hold. Not that I think you were misrepresenting me deliberately, mind you.

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Well, I won’t argue that there aren’t elements of her character that don’t support your vision of Sylvanas. They were certainly there in some capacity … I just don’t believe they ever overshadowed the elements of her character that caused her to go the route she has. They bluntly weren’t strong enough to take precedence over her more negative personality traits; and the established motives she has feed on and augment those negative traits far more than the positives.

I’ve stated before that I’m also pretty sure that she’s been planned to have some sort of connection to Yogg for a LONG time (what that connection is, I don’t know as of yet). This probable narrative link between the two characters also likely weighted the routes Sylvanas could go far more than people like to give credit (and it will likely continue to shape her story moving into the next expansion; I just don’t see Sylvie losing BOTH her remaining lives in BfA).

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I’m only quoting a small part of your post as to not flood the thread.

Sure, there are lingering doubts that they won’t pull an eleventh hour hail mary switcheroo that she was always right all along. It won’t be remotely satisfying. Do you remember how she shut down Saurfang and Baine, who were the stand ins for players who didn’t agree with how she handled it? Her words can be boiled down to one sentence:

"Serve me and deal with it or faction switch."

So, she was used to insult the playerbase who built the Horde since vanilla. Fantastic. and we should, then, just accept that we’re trash for her to use as pawns like the Forsaken? Just because – in this hypothetical scenario – she was right in the end?

It’s not only deeply unsatisfying, it’s offensive. Insulting your playerbase is a dumb move. If their plan is to turn around and have her be the eleventh hour “I was right all along” then they definitely went around this in a way that will serve only to infuriate their playerbase.

And that says nothing for the Alliance who actually care about Teldrassil. (Which, admittedly, are few and far between. Most just like the moral high ground card it offers.)

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Or she’ll turn out to be the laughing Shepard from Ogmot’s visions, “Leading her blind sheep off a cliff”.

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@Droite

Fairly said on all points. I’m not going to argue about the things we perceive differently, we both have more valuable uses for our attention. I definitely see the Yogg connection there, although I hope it’s not all building to something about her being mind controlled.

The thing is, I don’t actually disagree with either you or treng on most narrative points, just seemingly a lot of the most contentious ones. My argument is far more based on the meta-narrative at play and how it is destructive. And, quite frankly, I don’t see why aborting it to salvage beloved characters and themes is any less jarring than continuing to crawl across the broken glass that is the current story.

#ForTheQueen #ElfLivesDontMatter #SpiteForever #NothingWrong

Not at all. Hence my condemntation of this kind of 11th hour turn. I’m with you.

The thing is, given this whole narrative is absolute garbage and is running the Horde into the ground, I don’t want to have to lose Sylvanas when I see her as a victim of the writing as much as the rest of the red team I love. And I don’t see an in-lore conclusion like killing Sylvanas fixing the gigantic mess that is the state of the writing that caused these issues. If you’re going to fix those, I say, get your hands off a vanilla Horde leader and admit this was a stupid place to take us again.

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