The point of my thread was to state that the latest cinematic at the time of me posting this has Sylvanas canonically abandoning the Horde. It was however nice to gloat a bit when tons of people told me for a full year I was a traitor to the Horde for not backing Sylvanas and had to hear how precious and great of a Warchief she was and to just go ahead and roll Alliance if I didn’t like it.
I’m not convincing myself that I was right all along. I don’t need to. If you didn’t see which direction the story was going with the Teldrassil cinematic, I’m not sure what to tell you lol.
Vozul and company are still holding out hope that Sylvanas is redeemed in some way. There is a cultish fan base around Sylvanas. That being said, I’m glad she was revealed as a traitor to the Horde and is no longer Warchief. It was a step in the right direction of making the Horde great again.
Although we took a step back with 8.3 with the introduction of Vulpera into the Horde… Horde is becoming a faction of Elves, Undead and small little furry creatures. It’s like Blizzard doesn’t even care. They just give Horde whatever they think is cool and what will be the most popular and draw in the most people to play Horde. Lore and aesthetics be damned.
I imagine in that simplification you’re attaching a world of motives, but sure, I agree with this statement on the surface. She’s one of my favorite characters, a unique archetype, and fascinating to me in general. I think I’m just naturally drawn to b***hy base-breaking characters and the way her storyline is headed feels like a total waste—
…How do these two statements line up. She’s my favorite character, and she’s been attached to a storyline which many people on many sides have despised for the past year or two. I’m angry that she’s getting this crappy treatment.
Why am I suddenly a member of a cult? I’ve seen Sylvanas fans with a million different opinions from my own. I imagine you could ask me about any assumptions I’m sure you’ve made about me and you wouldn’t even be half right.
EDIT:
…Elves and undead have been a part of the Horde, now, for the majority of its history. Its primary aesthetic is still orcish and traditional, I don’t necessarily see why the Horde can’t have more than one aesthetic in the entire faction. I mean, Alliance gets woodsy elves, stony dwarves, gnomes, humans, draenei, etc. They all have their own unique aesthetics but nobody complains that the humans are getting drowned out—in fact, it’s usually the opposite. The Horde has a better track record of repping its different racial aesthetics, I think that’s a strength of the Horde. Sure, elves may not be your thing, but from what I’ve seen (and I play on an RP server so YMMV) there’s a good spread beyond the chunk of belves running around.
The Vulpera…I dunno how to feel about them. Lore’s okay, I’m just not into furries at all. Best case scenario, maybe a bunch of Alliance players will swap from worgen to vulpera and they’ll become convinced that maybe the Horde isn’t so bad?
Yeah, that sucks to get shot down and dismissed. I wish SF had a better track record of being less about roleplay and needless hostility and more player-centered. I try to balance my story opinions around how many players it might make happy, which is why this entire faction-sundering, fanbase-shattering expac feels like a bad fever dream that I wish never happened in the first place. We’re here, though. So I’ll be damned if we lose any more characters to contrived writing. (RIP Saurfang. Though you got yeeted in life, may your soul get yote straight into whatever orc paradise looks like in death.)
I was, ironically enough, holding out hope that maybe Blizzard would give the Horde a different direction than literally just MoP 2.0 beat-for-beat. How could anyone have possibly predicted that’s just what they were going to do, completely straight-faced, after telling us explicitly that things were going to be different and the Horde would still be a united entity and there were no “wrong answers” for one side or the other? I held that hope most strongly immediately following Teldrassil and it’s been whittled away like cutting fingers off somebody clinging to the edge of a cliff.
Aren’t you at least a little mournful about what’s happened to the Horde this expansion?
Then I think you did yourself a disservice, everything about that moment and cinematic made it terribly obvious the direction they were gonna go. They don’t make a faction leader genocide a player character race without giving them the famed “villain bat.” It would have been so jarring and absurd for them to like, not follow up on that. (Even then, they kind of swept the whole thing under the rug as if that was not the pinnacle of Sylvanas evil actions during the whole thing, as if “violating forsaken free will” was the true crime lmao)
“I use to think the Horde was a tragedy, now I realize it’s a comedy.”
It might surprise you but even I have shown sympathy with Sylvanas from certain points of view:
Don’t waste your time with Trivel. He’s exposed himself as an Orc supremacist who thinks the Horde is only for Orcs, or races that have adopted Orcs’ way and skewed sense of Honour.Noticed how he dislikes any races that doesn’t have the honour thematic tied to them?
Lies. My best buddy plays a Troll. I just don’t like Undead and Blood Elves who abused the Horde for their own advantages and were more loyal to a High Elf than the Horde itself. The Horde was never meant to be the edgy version of the Alliance. I have no idea what Blizzard is thinking with the direction of the Horde they are taking it. Blood Elf Paladins, Undead, “Nightborne” all loyal to a High Elf. That is not Horde. That belongs in its own faction. A faction that wants to look like the Alliance but actually not have to play as the Alliance.
At least the storyline of Sylvanas as Warchief is over and we can finally move on to make the Horde great again. If it were up to me I think a good purging within the Horde would be required to root out all of the traitorous Undead, Blood Elves and “Nightborne” and their bootlickers. They are not loyal or attached to what the Horde stands for. They do not care for the pride and honor of the Horde. All they care about is following a High Elf because they think she’s hot and believe that it’s somehow the more “anti-Alliance” thing to do despite the fact they want to look like the Alliance aesthetically.
Vulpera are pretty thematically similar to the Classic Horde races. They’re scrappy lil’ survivors who have learnt how to live in a harsh, unforgiving landscape.
I would have thought Trivel was all about that, I guess they’re more into the more muscly furries, thats cool too.
Granted, it wasn’t “my Horde” that turned Red Alliance. Every single race you hate in the Horde all fit the core thematics established in the WC3 Horde. Well. Maybe beside “Honour”. But why care about a concept poorly represented and is just an empty, meaningless husk in this game? What seem to bother you is the curtain. Not what is behind. Pretty much a superficial take of what is the Horde.
Saurfang knew that some defiance thrown in her face would have made her lose her cool. It happened on Darkshore with “You can’t kill hope” and it he used that to his advantage.
It’s a tragically poor use of a good character. On one hand, Sylvanas was the vengeance driven leader of the Forsaken who helped them escape the Lich King’s servitude.
On the other, it was plain as day since Wrath that she would someday go mega-villain.
Eh Sylvanas and Azshara are up to something. They both saw something coming and decided to use each other in a partnership.
Remember Sylvanas hates one thing above all else and that is being chained and forced to serve a master.
She figured out what was up with the maw and decided to play the long game. The whole show at the gate was so that she could warn us and still maintain her cover as a loyal subject to the Jailor.
I mean I wrote this scenario off the top off my head right after the last part of the campaign was released. If Blizzard writers can’t write this with all the setup they have then they are too horrible to remain in the industry.
Think about it for one second, she has never “lost her cool”
In life she was the most brilliant tactician of the Blood Elves faction and under the Lich King she was his greatest champion and also his most brilliant tactician as far as his Commanders go.
She never “lost her cool” with the burning of the tree. That was spite and malice which are completely different. Burning the tree was gonna happen anyway, the tree was a fortified strategic location and therefore a prime target for either capture or destruction.
Thusly, her actions after beating Saurfang are either a ruse or completely out of character an bad writing. She had already beaten Saurfang and the “resistance” was crushed. Saurfang’s pitiful attack after all that cool cinematic DBZ like pizazz barely scratched her and was already healing.
There is no way such a brilliant General would freak out and scream REEEEEEEEEEE at the sky to begin with and much less of a chance after she had already won.
This was clearly meant to make them suspicious of something darker and to prepare.
I suspect Sylvanas had discovered the truth of the circle of life and death and that the Jailor was making moves and that the only way to beat him was to send the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance against him.