With Danuser out of the picture, I want the legions of mouth-breathing Sylvanas haters who branded him a ‘simp’ to finally admit that they were absolutely, unquestionably wrong. Can we agree that what Danuser accomplished at the end of SL was definitely NOT ‘simping’, but rather completing the utter deconstruction of Sylvanas that began in BfA? He made her COMPLETELY AGREE with the perspective of her former enemies. She called herself a MONSTER, her actions UNFORGIVABLE, her loyalists GULLIBLE. Her “merciful” judgment is about her being DENIED the mercy of death to serve the Night elves for all eternity, and the Forsaken heritage questline, which I’m nevertheless very fond of, ends with her proclaiming that her time to rule is OVER. This whole meme was just a bunch of Alliance mains and even stupider Saurfang fans having an aneurysm. Disingenuous parrots.
One problem I have with this is that Sylvanas’ judgement wasn’t to serve the Night Elves for eternity. It was to rescue all the Night Elf souls sent to the Maw with the Burning of Teldrassil and sending them to the Arbiter for a proper judgment. At most, it was freeing every soul sent to the Maw to be re-judged. After that, Sylvanas herself would be judged by the Arbiter and then sent to another afterlife.
Plus, Sylvanas’ writing was a tug-of-war between a dev who loved her (ADDENDUM: It was not Danuser who loved her and was in the Cosby suite Crew, but David Kosak) and a dev who hated her (Afrasiabi), though - ironically - ADDENDUM; both Kosak and Afrasiabi were part of the Cosby suite crew.
Yeah, the simp thing was always blown out of proportion. Imagine the WoW community exaggerating things. Preposterous!
You don’t simp for a character by metaphorically killing her off (retconning the character we knew since TFT as some unbalanced half-soul that now no longer exists) and then having the “complete” character self-flagellate and then be subjected to a punishment determined by WoW’s ultimate Karen character.
The Burning of Teldrassil was very obviously a knee-jerk attempt at something ‘shocking’ to garner subs for BfA and Sylvanas’ descent into uncharacteristic buffoonery was just collateral damage. The writing team was just given a ‘We gotta burn this tree tho’ and then were left with trying to do a 180 of her past characterization so we got… well, what we got.
If it wasn’t her, it would’ve been another character being thrown under the bus to give us a ‘Game of Thrones’ moment without the actual good writing. If anything, Danuser was just a simp for terrible storytelling.
Lava eels tho, amirite?
I don’t think Danuser was part of the cosby suite crew. I know Kosak was, the person who was also a Sylvanas fan boy and the writer of her short story (Edge of Night).
It is believed that Afrasiabi, who claims that he wrote Stonetalon horde, wanted Garrosh to have a positive character arc. Hence why he was horrified that one of his high ranking officers would nuke a school and kill members of the horde to cover it up. While Kosak wanted him to have a negative character arc and we know which one won that hypothetical. So when Kosak left to join the Hearthstone team, Afrasiabi saw a chance to sabotage Sylvanas as a way to get back at Kosak. I don’t know if any of that is true though, but given the culture the two of them were involved in… would not surprise me if it was.
You’re right! I am sorry. My mistake. It was Kosak who was the Sylvanas fanboy and Cosby suite crew member. I’ll amend the comment.
Afrasiabi was in the director’s chair for WoD, Legion and BfA. The Burning of Teldrassil was his last big middle finger before leaving. Illidan’s arc in Legion was his work too. Afrasiabi likes toxic male characters, what a surprise! (side note, there are toxic male characters and toxic female characters).
Danuser didn’t create the burning of Teldrassil, though. All behind-the-scenes sources agree that specific event was Alex Afrasiabi’s brainchild, and that he insisted on it over the objections of a substantial part of the writing team.
My post wasn’t about Danuser creating the burning (I didn’t actually know who created the plot before this thread), just more commentary on whoever’s idea it was. Sorry, it was a bit unclear now that I’m reading it back.
I guess my point was: Danuser clearly liked Sylvanas no matter where the bad story took her. Calling people ‘simps’ for being ride or die about a long beloved character is a bit of a stretch, IMO. I don’t think him being a fan of her really impacted where the story took her in the grand scheme.
It seems to me that many in Blizzard were Sylvanas Simps for a very long time. This doesn’t just apply to Danuser. She has quite a significant role in almost every expansion, appeared in many game trailers and CGI movies, not to mention a lot’s of books and stories about her.
Just like people like to blame Afrasiabi for the whole BFA mess. For unhealthy favoritism of Sylvanas in Blizzard people like to blame Danuser
Would have been nice to see other women characters got that level of attention sans the forced genocide part. Really annoying that the majority of characters advertised are the hypermasculine dudebros.
Look at the people who often write these characters. These people probably never talked to a real woman before
Its real noticeable Alliance side, but with some fedora.
Blizzard is also quickly running out of a lot of it’s more popular flagship heroes. With Sylvanas being a fan favorite I think it was inevitable that the story focused on her for a period of time and it’s just unfortunate that they opted to do what they did with her characterization up to and after the Burning. I think because she is super popular they were being careful to do damage control near the end despite diehard Alliance players calling for her head.
I always find it curious how Blizzard/Danuser/fans were said to be ‘simping’ for Sylvanas but characters like Anduin have been HEAVILY featured in the narrative even when it’s barely warranted. We also had Garrosh’s arc/downfall spanning over multiple expansions but I don’t recall ‘Garrosh simp’ being something that was thrown around. (I feel like that term is so oddly out of place in a scenario involving a made-up character, honestly.)
I’m really hoping to see some cool character development for Alleria, honestly. I don’t want to be TOO hopeful, but her new design gives me a spark of excitement for an awesome female character!
I agree with everything you said but in particular this part,
Characters at the end of the day are just that, characters in a story. Authors can have favorites of course but there is a difference between that and being a simp.
Xalataths new design is super cool too. She’s one of the few villains that I actually hope survives the world soul saga. She has a ton of potential for future conflicts
Yess! I was going to add that but I keep editing the same post over and over! 
I’m really hopeful for her as well! She is giving me Azshara energy so far, who is my absolute favorite character in the Warcraft franchise. I hope they have some sort of interaction in one of the upcoming expansions at some point!
Anduin is a favorite character of several influence people on the WoW team. You could argue that he’s the “main character” of Warcraft now. They’ve screwed over a lot of established characters and lore prop him up.
I wish I could understand the appeal of him because it would really help me to actually enjoy the storytelling of the past few years.
Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I enjoyed him when he acted as a foil/conscience to reign in Varian’s more violent tendencies. It was when he became a character in his own right instead of part of Varian’s story that it started to lose me.
I largely agree. I thought he was utilized greatly in MoP as a friendly but opposing perspective for Wrathion to interact with.
As Anya stated, he has since morphed into the main character of WoW. That doesn’t work in WoW which, by its very nature of having many playable races, needs to be an ensemble cast. And it definitely didn’t work in the context of a faction war.
I like Anduin, but I do agree that neither he nor any other character should be the main character for a game like World of Warcraft. If this were an RTS or even a normal RPG I could easily see him as a main character. But, in an MMORPG having a main, nonplayable, character takes away from the overall story rather than enhances it. Because instead of being a guide or an asset to the story he becomes a character that the rest of the must bend to. A solution might be to have him take up a more background role after his story is resolved in the next expansion.