I’ll give you the Mr. Bald. 
No, it hasn’t been hinted at all, but I do see parallels. Our anima is basically fuel for the Shadowlands and the Arbiter (like some monarch) decided how to divvy it all up.
And the alternative is Mr. Bald redirecting all the souls to the Maw to be tortured forever. Not that great if I do say so myself.
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Only to break the system and set things right… Maybe… I’m just sayin’ …
I don’t really know., but it’s a possibility and I’m keeping an open mind as to how it could play out at this point.
Was the system that bad to begin with? The only thing that makes people say it’s bad is Sylvanas saying it’s bad. Sure it wasn’t perfect, see the civil war in Bastion, but what if you break it? Okay, say the Jailer kills Azeroth and everyone on it. What happens then? What’s the point?
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Idk, maybe we ascend to a higher state of being with freewill and not controlled by the realms of the Shadowlands (which does seem a bit screwed up) or the Jailer? The story could go in so many ways is all I’m saying. I’m not ready to make the call on who is evil and who isn’t.
People are also forgetting we’re seeing the realms at their absolute worst with the anima drought and all.
The realms aren’t normally like this and I’m sure are quite lovely and the inhabitants less…well less inclined to murder you on sight.
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Hey now, I never said I hated Sylvanas. I actually quite enjoy her as a character. I just never liked her so much I ignored or handwaved away large sections of her characterization to ensure she fit my image of her. I will also freely admit there were other parts of her character that could have led her other directions; its just the parts of her that led her on the one she went on did exist. I also stopped giving her the benefit of the doubt after EoN, because that little short story really portrays her as someone who should not get such.
As for “interpreting her actions in a way that best conforms my pre-existing conceptualization of her” … its hardly hard work. The story has largely done that for me in the last few years lol! I wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the stunt she pulled in BfA, just that she wasn’t pulling it for Yogg-Saron.
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At this point I don’t even think the Devs know what they are doing with her. Just about everything she says contradicts things she had done. In one cinematic she tells Anduin “ through the Jailer control of our fates with at least be possible “ and then 10 seconds later “ join us willingly or be made to serve “ ??? So you are going to give people control of their fate but make Anduin serve the Jailer if he refuses to willingly?
That cinematic also makes it seem like Sylvanas thinks that everything she did; burning Teldrassil, plaguing her own troops, killing thousands, etc, were things she had no control over and she “ had no choice” because we are apparently controlled in life and death. If this is what Blizz is implying then Sylvanas is “ playing the victim” and that is just awful.
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Just typical shifting the blame from herself.
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I’ve seen this before so you aren’t the only one, but I have no idea how people think she is making excuses for doing those things. I don’t think she really feels all that bad about doing them in the first place.
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There’s also examples like Qadarin and Thiernax…they died together and they were both sent to Ardenwealde.
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Souls that didn’t get sent to the same place can have the ideal of searching at their leisure for their loved ones’ Afterlives in order to reunite with them whenever they desire(provided there isn’t an Anima Drought cutting in or the Souls aren’t being punished by Revendreth)!
Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald and Revendreth of course are the first places to look!
The Arbiter merely sends Souls to the most fitting first stop on their journey across the cosmos! It’s the Soul’s choice to decide whether or not that stop will give them a Body for a job!
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But she is doomed to the Maw upon her death, because she’s a truly terrible person who deserves every moment of suffering she finds there.
She wants to break death because the other option is accepting the consequences of her actions.
Yes, because that was the way the game lore was at one point before it got retconned.
No, because there was no Maw at that point in the rewrites, just “WoW hell.”
Also, it may not matter because undead can be undeaded again, I think? I don’t remember there being a limit on the number of times they could be brought back.
Prove it. Prove to me anything that actually shows this. Because EoN doesn’t do that. None of the Primes ever suggest that all Undead are sentenced there. This was always an assumption of people who wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt; just like they twisted “Bulwark Against the Infinite” to do the same. Because the alternative would be … she was still just using them, and all she had done was repurpose a tool she would have gladly discarded if she still need them.
You are looking for reason behind a poorly written plot device. or
You are looking for reason from a person with significant mental issues.
Of course, those two statements are not mutually exclusive.
Sylvanas is NOT a hero. She is a narcissistic malignant sociopath. She got that way because of severe trauma starting with Arthas, but that is what she is. That is why she can simultaneously talk about “freedom” and free will" while denying it to everyone else.
A sociopath doesn’t just dismiss the feelings of others. They are INCAPABLE of even understanding the concept that others have feelings that are just as valid as their own. Sociopaths can rationalize ANY horrible action so long as it will benefit them, and the benefit to them is, in their mind, enough justification that others should help them: because only they actually matter.
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I dunno what the source is. It just used to be one of those things “everyone knew,” until it wasn’t.
There was almost nothing tangible on her hell she experienced, even less tangible on her Primes.
People largely assumed that all Undead ended up there for the same reason so many people just ignored or twisted “Bulwark Against the Infinite” into her coming to care for her people. By cherry picking a handful of lines from a smattering of reading material to give Sylvanas the Benefit of the Doubt. In a pretty big way.
In hindsight, “Everyone Knew” essentially boiled down to “Everyone Wanted” … because alternative the would be that the truly awful person Sylvanas was portrayed as of EoN was who she was. Thus her actions in Cata would be seens as pretty horrific. And since that version of her infringed so much on the version everyone had built up for her since WC3, it was an easy “Everyone Knew” default to fall back on. If she was doing what she was doing for all her Forsaken, then the default WC3 image of her could be returned to; and the deeply selfish nihilist of EoN could be largely ignored as the anomaly.
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I took this as, Join us, Or serve [them]. Her entire argument is we’d have to serve [them], and have no free will – so the system must be broken.
I also took her, “No Choice”; to be a belief the only way to break the system was to carry out those actions. Not, I’m a victim and he made me do it… rather… those were the requisite casualties to end this.
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Meh. “Edge of Night” really was no big deal, as far as I’m concerned. It was hardly a smoking gun that was obvious to all the world except those who willfully blinded themselves.
(shrug)