Keep in mind that prior to SL the implication was that Sylvanas had a reason for what she was doing. We were supposed to learn why and what her big plan was.
It just soo happened that all along she didn’t actually have a real plan and was just simply a pawn despite the fact that her being a pawn like that is the complete antithesis to the entire premise of her character post her resurrection by Arthas.
There’s a world where the NE souls weren’t wiped out and Sylvanas was actually working towards some greater goal for the world instead of just being an absolute moron (despite Blizz trying to paint her as a “genius”) and blindly following a blatant bad guy.
Like was that “I don’t serve” line of hers supposed to be cool? She didn’t realise long ago that Mr. Nipples who lived in WoW hell (how she apparently met him), used WoW hell to blackmail her (definitely a good guy move) and just generally reeks of stereotypical villain is in fact a villain?
People who act like this story serves Sylvanas are out of their minds. She’s been made into an absolute fool and has betrayed everything she represented.
And that’s what I mean when I say that these recent storylines don’t benefit anybody. There are no winners, Blizzard have somehow managed to create a story that spits in everybody’s face. Which is mind blowing.
She has been made into a fool from a meta, viewer, perspective.
But in the story until the epiphany that she does not in fact serve (GASP!) she was treated as this genius. In pretty much every cinematic and character interaction she is in control, super smart, super awesome, all according to her keikaku.jpg as she smirked and ninja smoke cleared back to her super awesome lair at Nippler’s.
Meanwhile, from my observation, most people are scratching their head dumbfounded and the sylvanas fans at the back of the room can be heard with great cheers of yaaaas queen and jubilation as they tell others to QQ.
To be fair, in the context of WoW characters I’d say that Sylvanas was one of the smarter ones. She did make some clever moves and lets face it, there really aren’t many WoW characters that actually are all that smart. In the world of Azeroth I’d have put her up the top intellect wise given her actions.
But that’s the point, that this is what they came up with after trying to build a narrative of her being intelligent is genuinely laughable. Nothing about her story with Zovaal gives any indication as to why she would think he has anybody else’s wellbeing in mind, including her own. You don’t get blackmailed with WoW hell and think “you know what, I think this guy is going to fix the world”. That’s not even being dumb, that’s just outright insanity.
I’m interested in how Christie Golden plans to spin it all; because it doesn’t make sense outside of Sylvanas either being influenced by domination magic, which would strip away her agency and cheapen everything, or her just outright not ever soo much as thinking about any of it and just blindly following along (even if that means causing mass death on Azeroth), which is the complete antithesis of her character (something Blizz themselves did nod to with her “don’t serve” line).
I don’t think that’s true, just a sweeping generalisation.
Forsaken have been my race since I started playing in Wrath and in turn I’ve been a Sylvanas fan as well.
Obviously I don’t enjoy where they’ve taken her. I think right up until BfA and the War of Thorns she was an interesting character. She had some really cool moments in Legion that made me hopeful for her story. The stuff between her and Genn in Stormheim was great.
BfA onwards she was turned into a pretty bland villain with the addendum that we were told not to worry because she’s not Garrosh and we’d see what her big plan was in the end.
They were sort of right. Shadowlands handled Garrosh infinitely better than it handled Sylvanas.
I guess people who just want to continue seeing Sylvanas are happy? For a lot of fans that were actually invested in her story; Shadowlands (and BfA in tandem) have butchered most of what had been built there. Her actually interesting and understandable motive of avoiding the fate that she saw awaited her has been completely wiped away and replaced with the illogical motive of her blindly serving Super-Arthas.
Whatever happens, I do want it to acknowledge Sylvanas’s greatest sin.
Which, for my money, isn’t the brainwashing, or the unprovoked war, or blowing up her peoples’ home in a pointless fashion, or even the murder of her own people who dared express unsanctioned emotions. It’s the betrayal of her own troops.
Sylvanas knowingly fed as many loyal Horde soldiers as she could into the worst fate in WoW for her own ends. And personally, the narrative brushing off that sin grates. She fed her troops into a meat grinder, not For The Horde, but for the stupid ambitions of WoW Super Satan. Blech.
Could you tell me about this smart moves of hers? Like are we talking about genuine smart or just being told she is smart? Or are you saying the level of stupid displayed by the other characters puts her in the smart category?
Not very well at all. Her writing is poor on any good day but the task she is being given is impossible by any writer but I doubt her fans would care much. Any drivel is a revelation from god and all future lore debates this is going to be used like a legal document to win debates… whatever those debates may be.
It has been my pleasure to reach that conclusion every time i had the opportunity to speak with a Sylvanas fan. Their adoration is closer to zeal that they are ready to let the rest of the narrative burn just so Sylvanas could walk amongst the rest like a god as she goes from one victory to the next. Whatever she wants she seems to get and if it doesnt turn out 100% exactly as she wanted she gets win in a different way anyway.
To be fair, Sylvanas has committed a number of sins over her tenure. The point to me was never whether or not she was wholly good as I don’t believe that every character needs to be an Anduin.
But at least it made sense. The blighting of Gilneas made sense. Her raising new Forsaken despite knowing the difficulties that came with that sort of life made sense. Even her trying to kill her sister made sense (although it doesn’t really now, once recontextualised with the Jailer retcons).
Nothing she’s done post Legion has made much sense, it seems like sins for the sake of sins with the nebulous idea that this obvious bad guy might fix the world as the haphazard justification.
It’s a bit of both. There’s no point in comparing her intelligence to people in the real world because she doesn’t exist in the real world. Her intellect can only be measured in the context of Azeroth, the world she inhabits.
But as for relatively smart moves?
The death of Detheroc was off the back of some pretty good tactics. Instead of just trying to storm the bases, Sylvanas had the guards possessed in order to forge an opening that could be snuck through. The bases were then swept through using subterfuge and had been pretty well dealt with by the time they’d come to raise the alarm.
The blighting of Gilneas, while not morally correct, was the smart tactical decision at the time. Garrosh was attempting to kill two birds with one stone by sending the Forsaken into the meat grinder at Gilneas. By using the blight, Sylvanas minimised Forsaken casualties while achieving the goal of neutralising the area of Gilneas.
Sylvanas using the Val’kyr to raise new Forsaken was smart. She realised that the Forsaken cannot reproduce and that if the numbers of the Forsaken dwindled, they’d lose their hold on Lordaeron completely. She needed the Forsaken as much as they needed her, without the Forsaken she had no army and no political power at all. So her using the tools she had at hand to secure the future of the Forsaken, and in turn her own future, was smart.
Her actions at Stormheim were clever. She realised that Eyir would provide her access to essentially an endless supply of Val’kyr which in turn would allow her to stave off death near indefinitely (her major goal at the time, I’m not sure what the point of it was now that the whole deal with Zovaal has been “revealed”). So she pursued the subjugation of Eyir in secret and would have succeeded had it not been for Genn Greymane and his obsession with avenging his son; which led him to follow and attack her/the Forsaken in Stormheim despite the tentative peace that had been established between the Horde and Alliance at the time.
None of this is “genius”, but we’re talking about a world where very little “genius” actually seems to exist.
The books are certified canon, so they absolutely are relevant to any kind of lore debate. Whether or not any of us agree with what is written in them. The books = lore.
Doesn’t really seem to be the case, you’re speaking to one now that isn’t like that.
Seems you only want to acknowledge “Sylvanas fans” that fit your narrative and so of course that’s all you’ll see.
I believe that’s what is referred to as “confirmation bias”.
Its kind of like Andiun being a genius and focusing his forces in Arathi because he knew Tyrande would capture darkshore without her.
Or him freeing Saurfang because he knew Saurfang would cause the Horde to fracture from within. In wow characters have this natural ability make reality bend around them so no matter how unlikely a scenario they still get out on top. Sylvanas is simply the most used character so she gets it her way more often than everyone else.
I don’t disagree, like I said this will be the only use for this book. Very few but the staunchest Sylvanas fans would be reading this and telling themselves “My god it all makes sense now… this is explains everything!”
I disagree you see all though you call yourself a Sylvanas fan I have come to know on these forums I would not categorize you as one. I like Sylvanas too. Among many other characters but both you and I realize has massive problems as a character in this story.
The Sylvanas fans I am talking about are the sort of edge lords who are unlike any other fanbase in this game. Fanboys if you want to call them.
I have been around. Its hard to not notice the trends. Most of the normal and what I would call real Sylvanas fans probably quit the game already.
I’d argue that the difference is the level of control that each had with respect to these examples.
Anduin had no way of knowing that Tyrande would succeed, he could have hoped but he had little control over what Tyrande would do and in turn what the outcome would actually be. Tyrande could have made a serious blunder and failed, that would have been beyond Anduin’s control. What you’re talking about here is that he trusted his ally to succeed.
Similarly, Anduin couldn’t know what freeing Saurfang would do. It seemed more to me that Anduin found Saurfang to be an “honourable” orc (thus “why did you spare me”) and so wanted to help him, as opposed to it being to achieve a tangible tactical result. Once again, Anduin himself had little control over Saurfang or how the Horde would react.
Whereas in the case of Sylvanas, she played a much more active role in the events that I mentioned and had a lot more control. She knew that blighting Gilneas would neutralise it while reducing the casualties the Forsaken suffered, because that’s how the blight functions - it’s all quantifiable, she knows what the blight does and she knows that using the blight instead of sending her Forsaken to fight for every square inch of Gilneas would result in reduced casualties. She also had full control over whether or not the blight was deployed.
Similarly, she knew that the Val’kyr could raise Forsaken and she knew that Forsaken couldn’t reproduce, she also knew that a dwindling Forsaken couldn’t hold Lordaeron as she spent a lot of time early on securing their position in Lordaeron in the first place - which included turning local inhabitants to their cause and securing an alliance with the Horde. She was clearly aware of how precarious their position was from early on and so worked to combat that with the Val’kyr. Once again, the aspects are known and within her control.
Same deal with Eyir; she knew that Eyir raised Val’kyr in Stormheim, she also knew that with Val’kyr she could escape death and had done so in that fashion on multiple occasions before then. Once more, there’s no hope or chance involved here nor wholly unknown aspects that needed to go right. She knew that if she subdued Eyir she could raise new Val’kyr as needed and stave off death; she had control over whether or not she sought out a way to subdue Eyir and once that method had been secured she had control over whether or not she would attempt to capture Eyir.
There will always be people that like things we don’t. There were people that seemed to enjoy the whole “split soul” situation, while I find it to be pretty awful.
You have a pretty narrow definition of what a Sylvanas fan is then.
What you’re referring to seems more like “fanatics” than “fans”.
Tyrande should have been a raid boss. It should have been revealed this whole Night Warrior business was secretly tied to Zovaal’s plans, because Zovaal is so very interesting and well written. More should have been done to inflate his importance to everything in Warcraft, and being secretly in control of Tyrande’s transformation would have been a nice way to do it.
Sylvanas fans did not quit the game Smallioz (although I’m sure some did), they stopped interacting with the community on the story forums and on Reddit because of how loud the anti-Sylvanas toxicity became after the Warbringers. I continued here for the longest time because I’m a contrarian.
Your pre-conceived notions about Sylvanas and her fanbase prevent you from having a genuine conversation about the character. I noticed in our recent back and forth that you have trouble separating the character from the real-world frustration you feel toward the game and the story. A lot of anti-Sylvanas types are stuck in that paradigm.
All I can say is the game is moving forward without you, and you’re going to get left in the past, griping about Sylvanas while the Light and the Old Gods are invading Azeroth for years to come.
Night Warrior Tyrande was the perfect character to come along at a time when all of the Alliance and all of the remaining Horde characters looked like Anduin clones at the end of BfA. Here was a character that was interesting. At least interesting enough to hold my interest until Sylvanas was returned to the story in a positive way.
I still think far too many of the cast are a little too peace-and-friendship Anduin clones. How do you create an interesting story out of that? No wonder Blizzard leaned so heavily into Sylvanas when the rest of the cast are as interesting as dirt.
Especially when you consider that they rarely ever return to a zone without completely destroying the whole place.
Blasted Lands became “relevant” again when they destroyed Nethergarde Keep and wiped out the Horde place nearby, Silithus became “relevant” again when they destroyed the entire zone with the Sword of Sargeras, Darkshore became relevant again when they destroyed all of the Night Elf settlements and destroyed Teldrassil, and Tirisfal Glades became relevant again when they destroyed basically everything and covered the entire zone in poison gas along with Undercity.
Blizzard’s idea of returning to an old zone for new content is apparently “DESTROY EVERYTHING!!! EVERYTHING!!! ”
Arathi Highlands is one of the few zones to NOT get completely ransacked or face Old God invasions.
Pandaria actually faced multiple cases of this, with Garrosh wrecking the Vale of Eternal Blossoms in the very expansion it was introduced - ironically the N’Zoth invasions in BfA actually cleaned up the Vale at least half of the time now. But even in Legion for Monk players the return to Pandaria was just to see the Peak of Serenity decimated by the demons.
You are essentially offended by other people’s joy. It’s the most petty thing to be offended by, and explains why this forum is so toxic to Sylvanas fans just enjoying some developments or attention given to her. You are the toxic one in this situation.
Aww did Blizzard take away your toy and make you share it with someone else? Do you need some time to process your big boy feelings?
If you act childish, expect to be treated like a child. I hope you work on yourself and grow up, and become more emotionally mature. I’m rooting for you!
The Sylvanas fans that just like Sylvanas no matter what Sylvanas does are cringe. At least have the integrity to be outraged that this story completely subverted who the character used to be. I’ve never liked Sylvanas but if I did I’d be pissed at what Shadowlands did with her.
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