Oh, Just One: Danuser, You Have Turned Sylvanas Into a Mary Sue

I agree.
Forbidding magic makes no sense.
You’re basically restricting Mak’gora to a specific subset if you do so.
Isn’t it meant to be something anyone can challenge?
To then remove the weapon (that being magic) of one of the combatants makes no sense.
If a mage is to challenge a warrior, are they supposed to just grab a stick and hope for the best?
It’d make the most sense to allow combatants to use whatever weapon they are skilled with. Magic or steel.

Exactly. Forbidding magic basically means that no magic user (who traditionally aren’t warriors and would not be able to stand up to one without assistance) would be able to win a challenge.

The entire idea of forbidding magic is stupid, which is why it was never forbidden.

Even if you want to claim that it was ‘traditionally’ forbidden, the only reference to the traditional rules is the Cairne/Garrosh fight which does not mention magic use at all.

We have multiple examples, dating back to 2008, of magic being used in mak’gora without anyone declaring that the magic wielder was cheating. The use of magic in mak’gora is consistent throughout WoW. The only medium where it’s specifically outlawed is the Warcraft movie which is non-canon.

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A “Mary Sue” is when the writer bases the main character on him/herself and the character becomes an extension of the writers persona and life experience.

Honestly, looking at all the encounters, it seems more like the ‘rules’ are just something set by the fighters ahead of time. Cairne and Garrosh went old school with loincloths and a single ‘buff’. Thrall and Garrosh allowed shamanism. Those two others who fought in the comic both used magic.

Saurfang vs Sylvanas though… Sylvanas clearly went against the ‘spirit’ of the challenge at the end there. That it mirrored the non-canon movie fight was likely intentional given that Sylvanas used abilities that drew from the same power source as an upcoming ‘big bad’. I doubt anyone expected Saurfang to win but the guy didn’t really come off as the same threat that he was portrayed as in gameplay.

My problem with Sylvanas is that pretty much everything has been in the background with no real player input. We never really get to see how she behaved in life to compare, only get the barebones about her second death and that wasn’t even in-game, and were given multiple examples of Scourge-made undeath making people lose morality, if not become outright evil. This is including characters who are immune to the negative aspects, constantly fight it, or take a while to succumb. That makes the whole incomplete soul thing seem last minute even if it makes sense in the long rung. It just really wasn’t foreshadowed well, particularly when Arthas had a questline showcasing him having to remove his heart both literally and figuratively to be as evil as he wanted to be.

Honestly, I think this whole storyline would’ve worked better if the Jailer gave Sylvanas her missing soul piece back when we were looking for Anduin in Torghast. That way his conversations with her and her attempt to attack the Jailer would’ve had more weight. At the very least it could be portrayed as the Jailer both rewarding her for bringing him a suitable vessel while testing her conviction before he revealed his full plan. This would give the players a chance to see a change in behavior with a direct cause, and make it seem like Sylvanas would have natural character growth. At the very least it would’ve allowed for the game to avoid a bunch of infodump conversations.

Anyway, this path with Sylvanas just comes off as a flawed attempt at recreating the Sarah Kerrigan SC2 storyline. What really bugs me is that it kinda looks like they’re gonna repeat this with Azshara and maybe Yrel in an expansion or two.

I am the true Mary Sue.

She will not steal my thunder!!!

I thought a Marry Sue was typically a female character that is unjustifiably perfect with unearned abilities and no personal growth or real character arc.

Rey from Starwars is the usual example. Just inexplicably perfect at everything. Flying spaceships, fixing things, using the force, fighting with a light saber. It’s like she just downloads it all matrix style.

I don’t really think Sylvanas is a Mary Sue. She is just very badly written like all of the other characters in WoW

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Not sure ‘Mary Sue’ is the right term but Sylvanas definitely is someone they can’t let go of. This whole expansion is the fault of Danuser and this need to make the stakes bigger… rule of cool…

I have zero hype or interest or faith in 10.0 being remotely better.

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An unjustified redemption might be considered unearned and maybe an attempt to shed responsibility and flaws.

But I agree, not sure that would make her a Marry sue. More jumping the shark to keep a character.

Total side note: Anakin kinda did the same thing when it came to flying, fixing, and force use. He was doing all that as a pre-teen. Pretty much every major Star Wars protagonist is a borderline Mary Sue/Gary Stu going by the generalized overuse of the term. SW: Legends is just full of em.

For WoW, Thrall (until Cata) and Rhonin really hit the mark there. They were essentially overpowered author mouthpieces.

Sylvanas though? She’s not a Mary Sue. She just has enough plot armor that she might as well be piloting Plot Gundam. She’s bad at a lot of things, including staying dead (seriously, has any character died more than she has?).

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Is that more armor than a bear though?

You do know that using literally in an ironic hyperbolic sense has existed for a long time right? It wasn’t something “millennials” (whatever that means exactly) made up.

I thought the Oculus dungeon was?

Maybe people are using it that way but that’s not really what it is. It has to do with the author and if the character is an idealized version of the author or the author is pursuing wish-fulfillment through the character. It could be argued that most typical fantasy main characters are the author putting him or herself into a fantasy.

From wikipedia

A Mary Sue is a type of fictional character, usually a young woman, who is portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses. Originating in fan fiction, a Mary Sue is often an author’s idealized self-insertion. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.

Looks like we’re both correct. But I always thought that the defining characteristic was the “portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses” because without that how can you even start to define or make assumptions about what the authors internal idealization of themselves is.

Any character could be an authors internal idealization of themselves because that’s entirely relative and dependent on the author internal self image.

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Kinda suffers from the same problem with WoW stuff. It’s explained but not in the main media piece people are consuming, it’s elsewhere.
One of the few things she had to pass time in her life was a scrounged flight sim. It is convenient though, but similar to Luke. I passed time flying this crappy little ship, but now I can rock it in a fighter!

Kinda part of why it was odd they didn’t make her a biological Skywalker.
Anakin and Luke were both that way.