its gonna have to be Thrall and Jaina. to this day i giggle whenever i watch the Baine Escape cutscene and Thrall asks whats different, and jaina responds that they are. and yet, her saying that is the physical manifestation of her character going in a complete loop.
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Almost feel like they should have said “deja vu is a B*tch”
Sylvanas Windrunner.
She has more or less been ‘in character’ but the results of her progression have some unfavorable developments as a consquence of her actions.
1: She Weakened the Role of Warchief
By being shoe-horned into the role of Warchief because of “plot”, she has weakened what it mean to be Warchief.
Traditionally an Orcish role, no one thought it odd that Thrall or Garrosh held the title. It was weird when Vol’jin held the title, but that was easily excused because trolls as a race are very similar to orcs (in the ways that matter, at least).
When Sylvanas was placed into the role showed us that there’s really nothing about the Warchief other than being at the very top of the Horde totem pole. There’s something super incongruous about an undead elf taking top spot in an institution like the Horde. You can pretend otherwise, but your brain knows it. Although the Horde’s theme has always been about disparate groups banding together for survival, it’s clear that Sylvanas values and motives have run counter to the Horde.
There’s also how much the story shows about how flawed the Horde’s most powerful position is, how unclear it is what would happen if someone were to challenge the word of a dying Warchief’s appointment, and how no one had any reason to stand aside as Sylvanas was nominated. Vol’jin earned unanimous support from the other leaders because he’d just mounted a successful rebellion. This was a moment culminating Vol’jin’s story over the entire expansion. Syvlanas rallied a retreat, but had a history of distance and dissidence toward Horde leadership.
She did not earn unanimous support because she successfully rallied one retreat, and if the players had suspicion that Vol’jin was either delirious on his death bed or that the voices he interpreted as the Loa were what they were presented as, anyone in the room could have presumed the same. Since when was the leaderhsip of the Horde up to the Loa, and not the people in it?
Why was a successor not appointed beforehand? Warchiefs already had a trend of having an expiration date.
Not only was the role of Warchief shown to be the most powerful but most easily transferrable role in the Horde, it’s not important enough to either make sure the right person for the job is being chosen, or that the person is chosen well enough in advance that in the event of the sitting Warchief’s death, the choice doesn’t need to be made on the spot.
Under Sylvanas and Garrosh, the supposed primary objective of the Warchief is to usher in armed conflict. “I’m a Warchief, not a Peacechief,” some imagine Sylvanas to say as she instigates conflict. Teldrassil was not entirley unprovoked, but players have since misunderstood that being Warchief does not bestow upon the person an obligation to make war where it doesn’t exist, but to coordinate the entirety of the Horde when war inevitably comes.
2: Yet Another Civil War
The Mists of Pandaria storyline was met with suspicion at first, but is maturing into one of the better titles to some. The idea of a Horde becoming fractured and fighting for the chance to redeem itself by mounting a Rebellion hadn’t been done before. The previous iterations of the Horde have had infighting among its leadership, but never along broad swaths of its population in a drawn-out conflict.
The Horde story in BfA is just a worse version of a story we already had, and now its closer to establishing that every other Warchief is just going to end up doing this. Once is happenstance, but twice is a trend, and the Horde has demonstrated that it’s more likely to empower a divisive Warchief than a unifying one.
Despite Blizzard doing everything they could to convince us to ‘wait and see’, this outcome was predicted back when BfA was announced at BlizzCon 2017 and Teldrassil was correctly surmised to be Theramore 2.0, Sylvans to be Garrosh 2.0, and for the story to end with Rebellion 2.0.
Fortunately, the flaws with the Warchief (which are only there at the behest of the writer’s, not because the position is actually inherently a problem) are going to be dealt with by establishing a council. That works well enough for the dwarves (because the writers have said so), but that remains to be seen if it’s a sturdy enough foundation to prevent a third run of a divided Horde.
3: Displaced Players and Unrewarded Loyalists
Like with any worthwhile story, players got really close to the parts they identified with. Some players became staunch supporters of Garrosh, and others became rebels for Vol’jin. I began my roleplaying guild at the time to align with the rebellion, and we’ve carried on ever since.
That didn’t mean it was all good for all players. Some were fed up with the conflict entirely, and Garrosh supporters tended to view the game and their faction as the flawed, less preferable outcome, no matter what Blizzard did to portray their favored Warchief as a villain and a tyrant. And the Horde, in their eyes, is lesser to be deprived of that vision.
It leaves them feeling punished for their loyalty, and that never feels good. Blizzard may pretend that what they’re doing with divisive characters is that they’ve created a character generating passionate reaction, but they’re missing the forest for the threes. In a faction-based game, the divisions are already clear. The game is good when they focus on the team-based tension between Horde and Alliance. It’s less productive when they create divisions like this within their own factions. Turning Horde players against one another is alienating. The Horde’s energies should be directed outward its rivals in the Alliance, not inward toward each other between accusations of fanatically worshiping the ground Sylvanas steps on or calling Baine and Saurfang Alliance plants.
Not only was the rebellion against Sylvanas a much more rushed and unpolished story, it’s going to have the same affect on players who feel like their loyalty is going to go unrewarded. An experience where Sylvanas speaks to you as she goes off to ‘master death’ is not a satisfying payoff when players are wondering whether or not their character even has a place in the Horde without her.
4: Her Story has Lead Us On for Years with No Conclusion in Sight
Since Legion, questions about Sylvanas’ development and actions have been met with “Wait and See”. These started out with pretty understandable questions to which it was a reasonable response.
What kind of Warchief will Sylvanas be?
“Wait and see!”What was the deal she made with Helya?
“Wait and see!”Why is Sylvanas standing before a smouldering Teldrassil? She didn’t, did she?" “Wait and see!”
Why is Sylvanas trying to assassinate Saurfang? She’s not going to be Garrosh 2.0, will she?
“Wait and see!”Is this going to end in another rebellion? Didn’t we just do this?
“Wait and see!”These questions started when Legion was released in 2016. BFA came out in 2018. Some of these questions had such obvious answers that the players predicted them within days of the expansion’s announcement. Some of them will remain unanswered by the time Shadowlands releases in 2020, and may not be answered until as laste as 2022.
We’re looking at six years to get answers to some very critical pieces of character motivation to make sure try and determine if the pay off is worth the wait, especially when guess correctly doesn’t soften the blow of how ludicrious the outcomes are.
And it’s critical story beats, too. It’s not niche or obscure details players have waited a long time for. Players waited years to see what was behind the gates of Uldum, years to see what was significant about that village of dancing trolls in Darkshore, to see what would happen to Magni after he became a living diamon in Cataclysm. They were intriguing, we wanted to know what was going to happen, but they weren’t focal points to the story. Sylvanas is.
MMOs are not a film series, a saga of books, or even a well-produced television serial. Story is delivered in small-to-medium drips over long stretches of time. And while longer-standing book or film series, like the Harry Potter stories of the MCU film universe are building toward a decade-long conclusion, every step along the way is careful and competent enough to be as close to universally satisfying to the people drawn into those worlds to keep them along for the while while stumble slowly toward the final confrontation with Voldemore or Thanos. They’re very well aware of how much time it takes to produce these chapters, and it feels like they’re mindful of it, while Blizzard is taking our attention for granted.
We’re going to wait at least six years to see if Sylvanas’ central place in the story will amount to something that is engaging, interesting, and satisfying. So far, it’s a near miss.
5: Neglected Forsaken
The Horde’s got a recurring problem of having entire groups of people making up its racial groups with no identifiable leader. For years, while Thrall was out of commission and absent from the story the first half three quarters of MOP, the last half of WOD, and nearly all of Legion outside of the Shaman Order Hall, he was still billed as the Orc “Paragon” because it wasns’t important enough to put pick out who was seeing to their needs. No one could be bothered simply to declare if it was Eitrigg, Saurfang, or literally anyone else just to allow Orc players the satisfactio of a role model that felt like they were being taken care of.
The Darkspear Trolls, who had just fought a dogged rebellion for their Chieftain for his next major story to be killed by a trash mob in the first hour of Legion, were left without a declared lead until the end of BfA when Rokkhan is finally declared the new Cheiftain.
Being without an identifiable, relevant racial leader sucks. For the most part this is a problem the Alliance has never had to deal with. Magni was quickly replaced by the Council of Three Hammers because apparenlty only the Dwarves understand the urgency of filling a power vacuum, Anduin’s rise after the death of Varian was never once in question, and Geblin Mekkatorque is going ot spend a measly two patches out of commission before being returned to his people.
Before the Storm showed that in Sylvanas’ absence, the Forsaken had to rely on themselves and their own communites while she was going off to be Warchief. Anyone who’s read the book (or the summary on WoWPedia) knows how disastrously this turned out in the end.
There is no clear stand-in for Forsaken leadership, and the vacuum Sylvanas is creating has left a lot of divisive (read as: Blizzard once again confusion ‘tedious’ with ‘passionate’) argumentation about who should lead, who’s qualified to lead, what the Forsaken identify even is, and all because in one sweep, the two most prominent Undead characters in lore are both popping smoke to twist their mustaches. There are a bevvy of undead characters with mere fragments of development. The stand-in is unclear, when in the past, previous candidates had numerous claims deeds. Eitrigg, Saurfang, Rokkhan, and the like dated as far back as Warcraft 3, while the most noteworthy Forsaken are introduced and dropped.
Apothecary Faranell was introduced in Vanilla, only to have him spontaenously outranked by Putress in Wrath. Apothecary Lydon was introduced to us in Cataclysm, but we haven’t seen him since. Shademaster Kiryn was a charming companion in MOP, but we haven’t seen her since. Batrider Cullen was fun to quest with in Legion, but we haven’t seen her again, either.
Commander Belmonte (From Cata Shadowfang Keep and Silverpine story) and Apothecary Faranell are shown to be up to something in BfA with brief appearances in the Darkshore Warfront.
The other standout is Lilian Voss, whose powers have fallen under an even long “wait and see” question-and-answer game that has been more bearable because she’s only been relevant since the very end of Legion.
We’re doubtless to get our answer (eventually) but because none of the Forsaken who are presented as suitable candidates have any clear establishment over the other, this seems like it’s going to see a deluge of arguments about why the chosen head of the Forsaken isn’t good enough, why it should’ve been someone else, and endless conjecture about what the Forsaken should or should not be.
TL;DR: Sylvanas’ story arc is fraught negative impacts on the Horde, the playerbase, and characters around her, and has been drawn on too long for any of it to be satisfying. Characters with unsatisfying progression are usually when otherwise well-established characters get mistreated by a badly-written world. No, Sylvanas is a badly-written character actively damaging to an otherwise well-established world.
14 Likes
i think, jaina when she says the she is different this time, i think that she refers that she understand that not all in the horde is their warchief and that there are some good people still. i mean, she pretty much said this in war crimes.
She understands that thrall and baine aren’t monsters who deserves to die, she understand why they did what they did and baine showing good faith to her,like she did before is what creates this opportunity put and end to it and stop the deaths of innocents.
and probably realized that they weren’t responsible for the death of varian.
i think that she feels identified with baine because she has been in the same position before, trying to “do the right thing” and be treated as a traitor simply because wanting to put a stop to the bloodshed.
or that is how i see it anyway. i think that i understand what the writters tried to do.
If only Thrall and Baine were remotely representative of the Horde.
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Hush Tyrande.
You just need a Little Patience™.
But I am coming, my love!
Yeah, they kinda made her into a joke that very few people respect because she’s consistently made a fool of in their writing.
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No version of Broken would be as popular as draenei(I think 3rd most popular Alliance race), but if they had options for something like Akama’s current design, they’d definitely have a dedicated fanbase.
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With that in mind, I would argue it is semantics.
The Broken being released first would make the pretty Draenei being released later a “version of Broken”. That could have lead to the same end, as far as numbers and player choice.
But with the major difference being Playable Broken defeating Illidan alongside Akama in BC. As well as aiding in Argus.
The Broken deserve better.
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Nobundo’s one of my favorite characters, and he’s still using a 13 year old model and a 15 year old dress.
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Kael’thas and Garrosh for sure. That said…
I can’t really identify anything really out of character for Saurfang this expansion, but he used to be one of my favorite characters and I just did not care when I saw the 8.2.5 cinematic. Like… at all. And I nearly named my dog Saurfang.
But that could just be BfA’s story in general bringing him down more than anything.
Oh, I guess the “dishonorable blow” thing was really stupid.
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Kael
Garrosh
Tyrande
Sylvanas
Even Thrall , Green Jesus himself
There is no shortage of available options. Blizzard’s world-building is pretty top-notch but their character writing has always been kinda awful. That is perhaps too harsh. They are engaging, hence why we care so much, but once you start digging deeper, it falls apart.
Take Jaina; I’m generally in favor of how her character has been handled, but with how uneven, and at times heavy-handed its been, I can’t blame anyone for disagreeing.
A better who question would be who has the Best progression.
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Did you play WC3? she was useless all along, if anything the writers are being congruent.
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Kael’thas: He was treated like a Raid Boss than a actually lore figure but he died.
Tyrande: Treated very terribly and horribly. Legion made her not only hostile to the Horde helping her in Val’sharah but also would cry out for Malfurian all the time. Then it gets worst in BFA when her so called revenge ended up being pointless and dumb. She turned into a raving and raging mad woman for nothing and of course even threats to leave the alliance there for broking the faction of two elf races left. Just very cringely and terrible. I used to like her but now. I have strong mixed opinions on her.
Sylvanas: Gone from being a Leader that somewhat cares about the remaining undead survivors to a insane manaic who wants to kill all life on planet earth on azeroth just to stay out of hell. Plus she didn’t even care about her Forsaken People after that cinematic. So yea that’s Sylvanas in a nutshell. I have mix options about Sylvanas. One she can do some good interesting things but on the other hand She has been done to death alot since Legion and to Shadowlands. I probably wouldn’t put her on the list if she was seen often like the other characters.
AU Grom Hellscream: Started off being Awesome and Cool as a Savage Villain to basically giving up on killing Draeneis just to be friends and allies again against the Legion. Wod’s Story was very messy.
Yrel: Started off really promising and good until BFA ruined her as a character by making the Draenei go Light Zealot of killing people. Also I really hate the idea of making the light evil for sake of doing so called evil things. Just Terrible Writing.
Bonus: Me’dan: Because He ruined the Guardian Lore in the Middle and also ruined Valeera’s Art and Arc as well. Plus to this day we never get to even know how Khadger got Medivh’s Staff in the First Place…
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Tyrande, Malfurion… Velen …
Velen was really amazing in Legion … but in BfA… 
Tyrande and Malfurion… it’s started with Val’sharah… and than BfA . 
this is the worst character progression. If you don’t know how to continue a story, just end it …
I think Grommashs change in world view about the Draenei could’ve done better. WoD needed one more massive content patch tbh. It only got the one since 6.1 is a poor excuse as a massive content patch. He was getting manipulated by our Garrosh, who was still bitter about his defeat.
I find it refreshing compared to the generic “this new force of Darkness is evil”. Reason why I like Yugioh GX, where the main hero is a champion of “good” darkness while the main villain is an evil light demon. Said evil light demon even turns our heroes guardian into its pawn. While GX did have “new force of darkness is evil”, they were secondary villains over all. Not the main one.
The light in WoW isn’t an evil force, nor is blizzard making the light itself evil. Just those who use it can be evil, like the scarlet crusade. Compare Xe’ra to other Naaru like A’dal. A’dal isn’t zealous and misguided as Xe’ra.
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Indeed, she easily ranks among the best of the best, all this build up throughout Legion, then she disappears, now she is back, and what does she do? Command a Battleground? Talk about wasted potential.
I think Warlords of Draenor could have gotten more content and story to explain more of Grom’s Story instead of being rushed. I mean Expansion did really felt very rushed in terms of fewer patches. Plus Grom also died of Old Age too so yea that’s kind of shame.
As for the Light. I mean Light can be used for good but at the same time it can be misused for the wrong reason such as the Scarlet Crusade. I get what Blizzard was trying to do in terms of the Draenei using the Light for good but still doing wrong things. It just came out kind of forced and not really giving more reason and information to why Yrel and Draenei turned Lightbound in the first place.
Was it for revenge against the Orcs after what they did during Warlords? Is all of the Naaru Zealous and misguided unlike A’dal? These are things that are left unanswered.
She disappeared in Legion because that gruff voice ruined her voice actor’s throat to the point that she needed surgery.
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Garrosh because they did not explain enough in game why he would receive support from a significant amount of the orcs and he gets some development that goes no where like in cata stonetalon.
That is Maiev for you, but my point was, given…well…everything about her, you would think Blizzard would have done more than just leave her on a Battleground.