“Just play along”
Sylvanas has gone from pragmatic to “Sadistic Old God Cultist” this expansion
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Blizzard has found how they’ll finally seperate players from Sylvanas.
It’s brilliant, really, they’ve worked out how they can sink her to the lowest possible level in the eyes of everyone; Make her like Baine.
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Until you realize “Pragmatism” is one of the most subjective things out there. What is considered pragmatic by (and for) one person, may not be considered the same for another. And (in the case of Sylvanas) what is considered pragmatic for an individual … may in turn prove to be absolutely disastrous for a group.
Its sort of surreal. While we still have no way of knowing what is going to happen, the idea that Sylvanas could betray the Horde in a massive way (and the Forsaken as well) in the pursuit of her “True Objectives” is … at least a strong possibility. Yet, people default on the idea that she’s either going to just get Garrosh’d, or she’s going to Kerrigan’d.
Why? What about her character suggests she would die for a Warchief spot she’d exploit, but never wanted? What about her suggests that she’d NEVER use another person (or group) in the service of a personal goal? Who knows…
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And save face for the Horde. That it’s palatable for both sides is why it might just be the default option. Also, I know they have a somewhat suggestive relationship but I don’t think there’s any signs that they’re actually romantically entwined.
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Has Sylvanas been a part of the loyalist plot since the initial quest? I could be wrong, but it seems it’s all routed through Nathanos.
Given Nathanos’ doubt in three scenes throughout WoW’s media, I’m wondering if he’s actually on Saurfang’s side and tricking the player into participating in a Forsaken-led coup against Sylvanas.
Yes, you talk to her after the Saurfang quest.
Which one? Because unless I’m wrong, the only quests in which you attack the Forsaken are the ones in which you are working with Nathanos and don’t interact with Sylvanas at all.
The first Saurfang quest where you can tell Zappyboi you won’t betray her. You report back to her and she tells you to keep your hands clean basically.
So I just cracked the code. Loyalists are working for a traitor, too.
At least I hope that’s the case. My god, the tears.
If we had tears, they were in 8.0 when this started. Since then, our eyes have been too busy rolling to weep, and any grief ended with the disassociation of the plot from any of the narratives we were invested in.
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Since imo it’s clear she wants to unleash N’zoth at this point, can we all agree that at minimum she won’t be part of the Horde at end of the xpac?
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Mate, at the start of it she was Warchief. At the start of the last one Vol’jin was alive and was Warchief. Now he’s a ghost vision with terrible spooooOOoOoOOky voice acting. I am so in the dark on what’s possible that I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a Val’kyr Princess Deity in 9.1.
So much of what she’s doing, and why, are hidden, as are critical details about almost every plot thread that’s currently running. Add in meta-narrative doubt about them axing a beloved character in any long-lasting manner and I genuinely am not certain she’ll even be off red team come 9.0, if they do a Kerrigan or Kerrigan-lite move. I admit that it’s startlingly unlikely based on what we know, but I’m not scratching it off the books as a chance because we haven’t been allowed to know anything yet, three patches in (Counting 8.0 as a patch).
‘It was all a dream’ Isn’t happening, but given all the references to how we’re supposedly N’zoth’s favoured and the hints towards some unspecified coming calamity, I can see a 9.0 expansion to un-dook the world (Go get Azeroth’s ghost from the Shadowlands?) or something including the second half of a Fall/Redeem arc for Sylvanas - so who the hell knows?
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This is one of the most perplexing things about BFA’s story.
It would be bad writing in a movie to leave the audience in the dark as to what the plot is until the third act. It’d be especially bad in a TV show where you have to wait a week for the next episode. In an MMO where you have to wait months between tiny updates? No wonder the story is tremendously panned, there’s no hook. What is the point of anything that has happened between the end of Legion and 8.2?
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That’s a very good point. What’s the screenwriting rule about when you should have the audience understand the premise? ‘10 pages, 10 minutes?’
I feel like if Blizzard had sold the red herring plot of the faction war better then this might have slipped under the radar, but they goofed by obviously signalling that these hidden motives are the foundation context of that faction war. Which means that not only was the faction war a tragic pantomime in the setting, but a tragic pantomime from a storytelling perspective. Yikes.
Contrast with, say, Game of Thrones - A story that, at the beginning, sold itself as being about a Good Man setting out to Right Wrongs in a corrupt kingdom. The whole reason that the book ‘Game of Thrones’ and the first season of the show worked was that it presented itself well as the story of Ned Stark cleaning up King’s Landing.
The fact that the story twisted out of shape into an entirely different narrative was fun and subversive because the red herring protagonist was believable.
Blizzard has… not achieved that same level of misdirection and narrative complexity.
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The worst part for me is that I’m one of the only weirdos in the world that likes a faction war plot because of the change of pace from Big Ancient/Interdimensional Evil of the Week and I would have loved to have seen a full embrace of a faction war in an expansion.
Like, both sides are justified and we see what happens when there’s no greater evil at play. For instance, Sylvanas blew up Teldrassil to break the stalemate then vanished so the Alliance would (justifiably) try to steamroll the Horde and the rest of the expansion is both sides beating each other to a bloody pulp, gaining and losing ground, then after one last explosive raid they declare peace because they just can’t fight anymore. Alliance finally retakes Lordaeron, Horde finally has a permanent, uncontested home. That would have been baller as hell!
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I do. And have considered what her ulterior motives might be. But until she has her “Haha! This was my plan all along!” moment, we don’t have alot to go on. Just that the Forsaken (and probably the Horde in general, now) are her “bulwark against the infinite”.
And it’s not very practical, for that, to have her champion tell one of her other champions to “just play along”, and kill loyal pieces of said bulwark.
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Imo, saying that you need to wait until we see her plan to judge her on it seems like a cop out. She sends the Horde fleet to be sunk in Naz’jatar where the prison of an Old God is. We are told by Azshara that she deceived us and led us here and then we free N’zoth.
There is also a ton of foreshadowing and hints that her goal is just evil.
There is no possible way this ends well for her position. There are way too many signs.
As an aside, I think a very similar thing about Anduin being the Boy King. Way too much foreshadowing there for it to be anyone else.
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Oh, the new plan is spooky and evil, for sure. It’s just hard to say if Sylvie’s bringing her signature pragmatism to it, without knowing what it is. Starting a global war, and setting up the Horde PC to clash with loyalists seems reckless for someone bent on not dying.
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Keep in mind that her goal to live forever is a subsidiary goal to her desire to not go to turbohell.
She might be fine with dying if she’s secured a place in a tolerable existence forevermore. Whatever that looks like. I mean, she might even be fine with turbohell if she can go there as staff, not a victim.
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