Recently had this conversation with Imerus, and hopefully this covers how I feel on the idea of tying to change your mind:
In short, no, I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m just sharing the lore I see as well.
To nitpick, you said “original” plan, and with chronology the layout in A Good War is Sylvanas’ original and placed well before what was offered in the in-game event. Which changes the crux of the matter, as Sylvanas’ original plan was not to devastate the Night Elves, but to splinter the Alliance. By burning Teldrassil she does throw away her original plan, as following Sylvanas’ thoughts she doesn’t establish any way that burning Teldrassil would actually splinter the Alliance, and rather she admits that she unites the Alliance more as they’ll unify to attack Lordaeron, when the original plan was that holding Teldrassil would not allow them to do that in the first place.
I do not consider it deliberate sabotage, either. I consider it her having an emotional breakdown and not thinking clearly and sabotaging her own plans in a moment of lack of sense and inhibition. I did a long breakdown analysis of the passage of A Good War where Sylvanas is focusing on Malfurion surviving, if you’d be interested in me sharing it again here. If not, I’ll leave it at that.
Change of plans is the problem. She changed it from “hold Teldrassil to splinter the Alliance” to “get into a war of extermination and hope the Alliance slips up.”
To be fair, this was actually Jaina. Anduin says the still have to fight. Just that fight has to be taken to Sylvanas to end the war, not the Zandalari:
- Lady Jaina Proudmoore: Press the attack as the Zandalari mourn their fallen king? That would make us no better than the Banshee.
Master Mathias Shaw says: She's the real problem here. I imagine she is already finding ways to turn this to her advantage.
Anduin Wrynn says: We must continue the fight. But as we push towards victory, we must never lose sight of who we are and what we stand for.
Now why we don’t actually see the Alliance go after Sylvanas again right away? And instead we spend our time talking with Baine, watching him get arrested, getting Xal’atath, and then falling into the Nazjatar trap? I think you covered that pretty well already: