Apparently the Red Shirt Guy has found some more info
The voice actress for Alleria:
https://mobile.twitter.com/michelemorrow/status/1470817673097330688
Then
It certainly explains the sudden jump in her behavior. As most of us know, allegedly there was a major disagreement between Alex Afrabashi and Dave Kosak over the character of Sylvanas and Garrosh. Dave Kosak took over for Metzen as Lead Narrative Designer sometime during Cataclysm’s development as he in turn started focusing on Project Titan, which OverWatch would draw inspiration from.
That said, Kosak was recently outed as a member of the alleged “Cosby Suite.” So while he may have adored Sylvanas’ character, the sudden marginalization of female characters like Jaina and Tyrande to make room for newer, more masculine characters Varian Wrynn or Garrosh to take over the story spotlight.
This doesn’t make up for the current cringe-worthy story, much less the attempt to white-wash Teldrassil. Or the trauma and abuse Tyrande and her people are currently being subjected to in the current story.
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So did Afrasiabi hate Sylvanas because she was a strong female character, and have the Night Elves experience genocide due to them being matriarchal? That would be a sexism win-win.
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Alternatively, he could have a fetish for her as a villain.
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Well they’re going to be paying for letting personal feelings shape the story to such an extreme degree forever. The Horde is always going to have Teldrassil hanging over them no matter how much Blizzard tries to sweep it under the carpet.
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So what would have been the story without Teldrassil?
Factor in the knowledge that Kosak (took over as the Lead Narrative Developer when Metzen started focusing on project Titan) was also part of the Cosby Suite, and now Tyrande and Jaina’s character assassinations in MoP to make room for God-Emperor Wrynn’s Alpha-Male Human Potential™ suddenly makes sense.
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That is what we’ve been saying for a long time.
Sylvanas fans have been saying this for a while now. Her characterization shift was not “normal” it felt like she was thrown to the wolves.
And she was.
Vindication!
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Cory Stockton, another Cosby Suite dev, seems to have deleted all his tweets recently, which is interesting. He was responsible for “quest implementation,” among other things.
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That’s unfortunate.
That’s just so ridiculous. There was no way that the direction taken would have resulted in a good narrative at all. I’ve also, seen people say that he may have done this to be petty because of the legal issues which in a way was probably a “scorched earth” tactic (for the lack of a better phrase) knowing that his time was going to be done there 
Whatever it may have been specifically on his part it was with 100% awareness for how that was going to negatively impact the narrative from that point forward around her character.
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Assumedly mostly similar since you could just start the war in Silithus and still have Darkshore and Arathi be major battlegrounds.
Zandalar and Kul Tiras are also basically unaffected by no Teldrassil either since their reasons were essentially unrelated.
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Also, and I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade with this, but the upcoming novel may not do them any favors. At this point, it would be like trying to make feces appealing.
The narrative around her is mutilated and we’ve seen them trying to work around that and… we know how that’s been going.
Petty beyond belief.
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You know, I don’t really read into it too much when people say “you hate x woman character because you’re a misogynist” but considering what we found out about Afrasiabi. Well, I’ll just say it’s pretty sus that he had the Night elves suffer so many humiliations from the Horde, had Sylvanas called a female dog by Garrosh, and wrote the storyline that was going to be redeeming Garrosh when the rest of the writing team wanted him to become a villain.
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Massive understatement, Michele. Teldrassil is a cross the entire Horde has to bear for the rest of its days, on top of the other world war the other evil warchief started two expansions beforehand. If anything, Sylvanas and that sad orc who died are the only characters who have acquitted themselves of this unutterably disgusting storyline. The rest of the faction is not so fortunate.
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Well my dear friend, let me bring your gaze to a little expansion called Legion and the long standing relationship between Sylvanas and Genn.
It would have been a lot more interesting and fitting if instead of Sylvanas randomly burning Teldrassil like she did and the Horde randomly obeying without question despite the mistrust that Sylvanas had long garnered amongst her Horde compatriots.
She did something like went to Genn behind everybody’s back to taunt him in response to Stormheim. She could have used his sons death and acted like she didn’t care about what happened in Stormheim - that he hadn’t avenged his son in any meaningful way at all.
Now we know that Genn is willing to break a peace treaty and attack Sylvanas/the Forsaken due to his own emotions - he did that at Stormheim.
So then you have Genn leading the Worgen (who have legitimate reason to want revenge on Sylvanas/the Forsaken themselves) and gathering up others in the Alliance who don’t trust Sylvanas and the Horde - and he marches on Undercity.
Sylvanas goes to the other Horde leaders and points out that the Legion only was only just defeated and the Alliance already march on her lands.
Sylvanas would have actually manipulated the Horde as they’re not aware of her antagonizing Genn in private. The Horde would have had a believable reason for war with the Alliance. The Alliance would have gotten a turn to be the aggressor and respond to the crimes committed against them at Gilneas. There would have been an interesting divide in the Alliance for Anduin the pure to have to deal with.
And no genocide was required.
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This is also why they had Sylvanas “serve” someone since her character shift in BFA/war of thorns was not normal, and arguably one of the few possibilities to make it all make sense. Just a shame it was so badly executed.
Azerite springs up, and the Horde does have the goblins mine it just like usual, however, the unprovoked skirmishes between the Horde and Alliance in Stormheim during Legion would play as larger reasoning for the Azerite harvesting than just a one off line said in a web novel.
This increases the already high tensions and the flame on the war is lit. No burning of Teldrassil and the battlegrounds pretty much stay the same.
The last thing Metzen worked on was the battle of Lordaeron and he was surprised that the burning of teldrassil happened and what they did with Sylvanas during BFA.
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The Forsaken and the Alliance have been battling over Lordaeron for years. There was no reason whatsoever to scribble another war crime into the Horde’s naughty book just to provoke an invasion of the Undercity, especially with war hawks like Jaina and Genn heading up the faction. BfA was the time was an aggressive, proactive Alliance; now, even if Blizzard does contrive a war helmed by team blue, it’ll be entirely colored by the lore disaster of BfA.
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From what we’ve been finding out overtime including this recently, there was no real way to salvage that. They tried, but man from bfa into shadowlands where she had another major shift out of nowhere with her suddenly showing sympathy and regrets where it was never shown anywhere especially after what she did just previously before in bfa… that expansion alone put threw them into a narrative wall where trying to paint a prettier picture with her specifically was not going to cut it especially when the worst part out of this was seemingly putting justifications behind her actions in bfa and therefore making an (I’ll give them more credit for trying to make things right) attempt at genocide equally as gross as the action itself, unintentionally.
Ian did speculate that Blizzard may be going to write her out of the narrative for good based on what is being suggested through datamining in 9.2 for good or at least until they find a way to bring her back… somehow.
Also, I do remember his reaction to all that happened in bfa and teldrassil. I thought he had only worked on the bfa intro cinematic? Correct me if I remembered wrong. But, if did remember right then it would also put more perspective into why the cinematic and the in game questing (and the rest of the expansion) felt kind of disconnected
I should add that the Jailer didn’t even exist as a concept until the first half of BFA were already out, which is why the first mention of her serving anyone appeared at the end of the loyalist questline.
Sadly there are no public sources I can show for that so you have to take my word, but it’s what I’ve heard from two people that work(ed) at blizzard.
It really gives a greater understanding of what a sh!t show they got that they tried to fix.
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A cross that Blizzard has tried every conceivable way to lessen the load of. Unfortunately the Nights Elves and Alliance are still left holding the bag. The faction looks weak, dumb, idealistic, victims once again and rulers of ashes and ruin.
Meanwhile the Horde and Sylvanas hand in hand skipping across the mass grave while humming “it wasn’t me”
Next expansion I really want them to do right by Alliance and Night Elves. Maybe they should get several movie grade cinematics for their story like the depressed orc got.
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