Sylvanas killing Zelling change anyone's mind?

Lore Story Forum
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Not to point out of the obvious, but when exactly did this happen? Nor was it even true back in Cata. What EoN literally says is that the Forsaken have now become her “Bulwark Against the Infinite”. Nowhere does it indicate that they are any less of tools than they were prior, they just serve a different purpose. Nowhere in that entire short-story does it indicate that the Bulwark was meant to protect the bodies that comprise it, either from others or the Maw.

And Cata hits, and if you just assume she’s putting on a show for the Forsaken (like she had apparently been doing since WC3), then a lot of her words come off rather empty. And if you look at her actions for what they are alone, then what she is functionally doing in Cata is sentencing hundreds of people to the afterlife she is desperate to avoid; in order to further build up the power of her bulwark. She is building up her “meatshield”, and reinforcing her motivation from EoN.

Then we have what she did to Koltira Deathweaver in Cata; we have her erratic behavior in War Crimes; and then her downright sketchy actions in Stormheim. All of this content does contribute to the Sylvanas we saw in BfA. That even if we didn’t know the outcome, this sort of extremely nihilistic, selfish Sylvanas (the one we saw in EoN) was still a very real path for her. A path where again, she’s just using others as tools for personal objectives, then discarding them the moment they cease to be of use. Just as she did with the Forsaken against Arthas. Just as she did with the Forsaken and Horde in BfA. Her Bulwark (which had grown to include the entirety of the Horde after she became Warchief) was no less just as tool than her arrows were.

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127

For some, that’s certainly an option.

My own interpretation is that the forsaken are basically supposed to be PTSD and trauma; the race. You have a horrendous thing happen to you that you will -never- be able to fully get over. You can try to hold onto the past or forget it, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. You’d never be able to separate yourself from the physical, emotional and spiritual damage that was done to you, no matter how much you wish you could.

Which made Cata Sylvanas raising more forsaken especially weird at the time, because that was basically the opposite message going on beforehand. And it would have been more sensible to say that more scourge were becoming sapient again after Frostmourne was destroyed. But that was basically the start of Sylvanas’s re-descent in the story. :confused:

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128

In earlier expansions, the Forsaken were all free to deal with the horrors of the past in whatever way worked best for them. There were no thought police forcibly cutting them off from their pre-undead life if they wanted to remember it.

I wonder if we’ll learn that this was Afrasiabi thinking he was setting her up to be the big bad, only to be told that Garrosh was going to take that fall instead.

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129

the thing is, i don’t

i may be a fool for it, sure, maybe it is my fault for think that the character meant what they said instead of just assuming everything she said is a lie, and i am being sincere on that

but i do believe that the speech she gave to the PC in silverpine is her being honest, that she believes that the forsaken are worth defending, that she doesn’t want to see them being thrown into a meat grinder like garrosh was doing

i think what she did to koltira was surprising because normally she would just kill him, but she wanted to keep the death knight useful, the writers just forgot about him. Remember, koltira was put in charge of taking andorhal and not only he didn’t focus his attacks on thassarian, he gave the alliance time enough to built up strength to retake the town, he didn’t just failed his assignment, he actively betrayed the forsaken

and yeah, erratic and sketchy, but she did try to love again, there was effort on her part to move into a better direction, and i thought that was set up for her becoming better (not good mind you)

she made sense when explained to the PC that the forsaken would die out without new ways to bolster their ranks, she was warchief now, adding more val’kyr to the horde ranks was a fine plan considering how powerful they are

the way new val’kyr are created is also very compatible with the forsaken, you volunteer.

also doesn’t help that she was 100% on the right during siege of lordaeron, the first moment that the players got a chance to see warchief sylvanas since she was missing during legion after stormheim

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130

It’s a smart move on their part. Otherwise they’d be open to charges of having stolen their ideas from others.

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Commiting genocide is SOooooo right, I love sylvanas

Its ignore all the torture, killing, blackmail, general craziness, sylvanas did before bfa

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Wow its almost like she is a villian, you know you are ALLOWED to like villians, it doesnt make you a bad person, justifying them tho does make you rather questionable.

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I did mention “during the siege of Lordaeron”

As a reminder, during the siege told saurfang to retreat and he chose to stay and commit suicide, baine cried “how could you abandon him !” And she rightly points out “he chose to stay behind, it was his will, you can join him if you want or you can help those who still want to keep going”

When she decided to use the blight on the field saurfang protested, but it was either that or lose the walls, again “do you want to survive or not?”

Like, do I have to mention every bad thing sylvanas did in every post now? Yeah she commited genocide, but I am not talking about the event wot, but the siege

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Generally, I just got lucky. I read EoN and took it in a very negative way, with how it framed her actions leading up to her drop off ICC. It revealed a character who’s actions and words could not be taken at face value. Someone who uses half truths and “false” narratives to manipulate people in directions that are convenient for her. And above all, she was a woman who used others as tools for personal objectives; then discarded them when they ceased to be of use.

She did this with Garithos, as awful as he was. We’re told she’s doing this with the Horde in the Forsaken vanilla intro. We’re told she’s doing this with the Alliance in the Northrend Campaign. And we’re told she’s doing this with the Forsaken, her “Arrows”, in EoN. The moment that story ended with her calling them her “Bulwark Against the Infinite” … I took it as her merely re-purposing a tool she thought valueless; because she found a new use for them. Nothing else.

I’m not going to sit here and say this sort of DEEPLY selfish, nihilistic route was the only path she could have gone on. Far from it. But it was always a major option for her, and sad to say that its the route Blizz built up to and chose. With lots of collateral damage.

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136

Doesn’t feel like it considering the way you reply to me and others who like sylvanas as a character

But I appreciate the point, larping and saying she was right to do what she did and is morally upstanding is as questionable as people who want to harm others because of their faction choice in a game

Understanding is not the same as endorsing, and sylvanas is an interesting character to interpret and understand

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137

It does not have to go that way though. Blizz implemented new rules in regards to ownership of mods / maps for SC2.

Besides, in the older days a minor company, Bethesda, used to take some ideas for the side quests for their games from the community. Not sure if Morrowing or Oblivion was the last one who did this. (sorry, I can’t provide the exact time from the interview that detailed a bunch of things about earlier TES games, but it’s an interesting podcast iirc).

I am not saying that is always a good idea, but gives how in older TES games sidequests were the highlight of games, and how amazing some community work done, say, for DotA2 cosmetics, even if only a little bit of the community effort ever ends up being useful in any way… why not?

My unpopular opinion: blight was used not to show that Sylvanas is evil.

I asked about it before, and I got contradicting answers. Some claimed that the capital city of Lordaeron was an amazing defencive structure.

But when I look at it… I have no idea, how could that be the case? It can be seiged and reinforced from the north and the west. It’s only source of water is also the source of the disease that was used to create the blight. If it would ever be surrounded, it is toasted. Plus it’s extremely hard to support and reinforce for the horde.

IMO Undercity is one of the worst places from a strategical point of view that I’ve seen in WoW. Maybe I am wrong, of course, but the moment the battle would move from the field to the siege, IMO Undercity would be, and always will be, a lost battle. So yeah, as terrible as blight is, I am not sure there was a realistic another option to at least run away from Undercity.

gl hf

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it is easy to get access to lordaeron, but to actually surround it, you need to guard the entire silvepine lake (that also had a foothold in one of it’s islands)

in a prolonged siege it can get reinforcements and supplies from the lake, which is not an option for the forsaken since they wouldn’t have anywhere else to get reinforcements from

but before third war there was dalaran and alterac nearby with access to the lake (and stratholme being a costal city very close that could come from the north beach)

but yeah, not a very defensible place, big fields in front of it is an invitation for a large army marching in with giant siege weapons, specially since there is no way to intercept an invading force from the north

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139

no. but then I hated her before it was popular.

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I did the Saurfang side of things on all of my characters, albeit somewhat reluctantly, but I felt next to nothing when Zelling died. Maybe a pang of regret for his family, but he was already dead to them and chose to assist Baine likely knowing there’d be consequences.

Sylvanas ordering Zelling’s death didn’t make me like her more, but I understood entirely why she did it, and put it out of my mind the very same cinematic when Baine got apprehended, which was far more important.

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I didn’t justify them though, that’s not the point I was making or what I wrote — Again, not reading the slightest sliver of what I stated makes you rather questionable yourself.

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