He said, “Thrall, Vol’jin? They were not the heirs to Blackhand’s bloody legacy. Sylvanas Windrunner is!”
It’s in the first cinematic with Anduin
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I have the exact reaction when I think back to the Warbringers trailer for Sylvanas when she burns down Teldrassil. As much as I think it’s an awful scene by itself, it enrages me that even what’s there is basically just a lie because of how little Blizzard cares about keeping a consistent narrative.
Why is the flashback to Arthas there? If this was seriously her plan all along to just kill everyone and rack up a massive bodycount, why didn’t she just burn the tree? That sequence is literally 100% pointless and creatively bankrupt with how it tries to present itself as having some kind of purpose to Sylvanas as a character.
All jokes aside about how she burned down Teldrassil to spite one dying Night Elf, there was at least some faint hint of thematic resonance there. Sylvanas allegedly wanted to kill Malfurion so that the Horde could occupy Darkshore without facing a spirited insurgency. With that having failed, she thinks back to what truly broke her: that it wasn’t getting stabbed by Arthas and his magic evil sword, but the fact that she did something heroic by sacrificing herself to save that mother and child fleeing from the Scourge, only to turn back and witness how it all had been for nothing. That is when she started screaming, and is presented as the reason why she burns Teldrassil, to take that away from them in the same way that Arthas had taken it away from her.
And now, it’s just outright dishonest, plain and simple.
e: the only thing I can think of to really compare it to with how shameful it is to the audience is Heavy Rain. Spoiler warning if you haven’t played it by now, but the entire crux of the game is trying to track down a mysterious serial killer. As it turns out, one of your playable characters has been the killer all along.
But in order for that reveal to work, the game actively lies to your face because the writer is a worthless hack who is completely incapable of writing the mystery without stacking the deck in his favor. You play as the killer during a scene, and are presented an entirely false version of events in a way that is 100% indistinguishable from the rest of the gameplay, then doubles back later in the game to show what REALLY happened during that scene. It’s not a clever twist of the perspective or showing you some new detail that went unnoticed the first time because you weren’t looking for the clue.
It’s just a scene from an entirely different story, put there purely as a way to manipulate you away from guessing the answer too early. Like objectively showing the hero of your action movie getting shot in the face halfway through, but then they show up again in the last ten minutes with a flashback that shows the gun jamming instead.
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I think it’s BS, too. Afrasiabi said it in an interview, retconning his own game, to try to justify where they took her character now. There’s no way that was their plan at the time.
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Back in TBC, I used to ask why the Forsaken were left out of the story. I was so happy when the Wrath news came out on MMOChamp and all the cool new forsaken stuff came out. I cheered during the Wrathgate Cinematic and the subsequent liberation of the Undercity.
The Forsaken of today are not what I remember. They are no longer the former heroes of the Second War who were betrayed by their Prince, died, and forced into slavery by their killers. A people who after being freed by their Banshee queen, banded together to rid the world of the Lich King in the name of vengeance.
Now they’re just monsters.
Knowing what I know now, I would have preferred if they were forgotten after Arthas died.
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Sylvanas didn’t commit the Wrathgate until Afrasiabi said she did. Cementing his own retcon as an example of consistent writing.
Y’all probably already read this, but here it is again.
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As much as I’m not unhappy with the story to QUITE the same level, probably because I want to see some more sides of the Forsaken represented in game, and Before the Storm did that nicely… I agree with you in that I think it would’ve been far better had Sylvanas NOT been Warchief. In an ideal world, she wouldn’t have been Garrosh 2.0. She would have continued to be a nuanced leader of the Forsaken. I do bitterly regret what’s become of her.
Lillian Voss is the most prominent Forsaken character.
She wasn’t even really a member of the Forsaken until BfA.
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Its not even wasnt really a memeber.
She was in no way shape or form a member of the Forsaken, she was completely neutral.
Its a problem for the forsaken and has been for a long while, Sylvanas (like the wrynns for humans) was a black hole for the Forsaken, any would be lore for that race was quickly gobbled up by not Kerrigan.
So, exactly how Blizzard did the War of Thorns?
I’m seeing a theme, here.
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It’s just pure narrative collapse as far as I’m concerned. You can’t tell a story without building trust with your audience that what you are presenting them has SOME kind of value. Once you’ve built enough of that trust, you can start to play around with it a little and do some truly interesting things by playing with their expectations or using sleight of hand to distract them from realizing something crucial… but if you don’t, then really, why would they ever trust what you’re saying now?
Looking at Sylvanas, I can’t stress this enough: it’s fundamentally impossible to trust what Blizzard is showing us.
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Yeah.
It’s why I was tolerant of Nathanos. I thought that they were building him up so that he could be betrayed by Sylvanas (or whatever) and then lead them.
But for them to build him up and then leave the faction behind? It means that Nathanos literally only existed for Danuser’s fantasies AND he took up space that should have been used by anyone else in the Forsaken.
And I think that’s disgusting on a lot of different levels.
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And even with the campaign done, HE’S STILL ON THE DAMN BOAT.
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“So guys, Sylvanas is the main bad guy of this expansion.”
“Cool, so what should she do?”
“I was thinking nothing for like a whole year and just have Nathanos yell at players whenever they ask where she is.”
“This is why Blizzard pays you the big bucks, boss!”
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Oh my god, is
Is Nathanos going to Jon Snow Sylvanas at a critical moment
On one hand, I get it. WoW has a terrible story already, may as well put in your self-insert as Sylvanas’s love interest.
On the other hand, how dare they.
That would require literally any semblance whatsoever of non-waifu motivation as a character
literally his only other drive is hating birds
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I have to assume Danuser didn’t write the bird-hating trait.
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Serious question: what specific criteria is involved to categorize a character as a self-insert?
It’s less about distinct criteria than a preponderance of circumstantial evidence.
But unless you personally know the individual in question, how could that evidence be circumstantial? It can’t be evidence at all because there’s no basis on which the evidence lies. I’m trying to sort this out but so far I’ve not been able to outline any criteria other than “I don’t like this character so it must be a self-insert.” That’s not directed at any one person in particular, just a trend I’ve observed.
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