Sometimes the same backstory can be consistent with wildly different conclusions. A character can be on a dark path for a long time and do all sorts of horrible things along the way but still have a redemption arc in the end.
And the crazy thing is, I still kind of want to see Sylvanas have a redemption arc. But I don’t think we should ignore that she was on a dark path in the first place, nor do I believe she can have a believable redemption arc in her current position.
No, I was trying to argue that you can’t fairly claim everything about her character has been an uninterrupted march towards villainization, as her detractors frequently claim.
I’m saying that her story thus far does not support a “she was always going to be evil” narrative. That’s all.
I don’t disagree with you there. But I also think the idea of her actually caring about the Horde was less something that was really part of her character and more something that some hoped she would become but never actually manifested.
I think that’s a pretty distinct difference, that while her evil traits weren’t all there was to her, they were there, as opposed to her redemption was mostly just Blizzard teasing possibilities that they didn’t actually end up choosing.
I mean, I think full redemption was always far-fetched, but the kind of mustache-twirling evil they’ve chosen in this expansion has also been a disservice. She was closer to the “token evil teammate” than a supervillain, until BfA anyway.
In my opinion, the problem was making her Warchief. As long as a sensible Warchief (Like Vol’jin, sob) kept her from being able to do too much, she could have stayed as some sort of anti hero. Give an anti hero who lacks any morals to prevent their fall to outright villainy leadership of a world power and it will become nearly guaranteed she becomes a super villain.
Physical age is not the same as having experience. Let me explain:
Sylvanas has lived for thousands of years, right? In all her years, what enemies has she faced. For years, the elves have faced skirmishes from the Amani Trolls, I’m sure she had a part in that. Then during the 2nd war, when the Orcish Horde allied with the Amani and attacked along with their enslaved dragons, and then finally Arthas’s invasion which was a fight she lost. Then she had participated in the war against the Lich King, but hasn’t really done much in WoW other than that.
So from all her experience, she’s only ever really fought 4 different battles; one was considered minor skirmishes at best, the next was essentially the same foe they’ve been fighting for thousands of years already and when the Orcs ditched them they were pretty easy pickings, especially with the backing of their alliance allies at the time, the one after the elves actually lost too even with most of their brightest fighters present, and the last felt more or less like token support. Though of course we all know how Blizzard likes to SAY that certain parties are participating more than they are actually SHOWN in game or in the story.
Saurfang and Eitrigg on the other hand have only lived for what can only be assumed to he less than 100 years since orcs are described to have fairly similar lifespans to humans if not shorter. However, they together have fought in a war against the draenei, a people who were way more technologically advanced than them, mind you. Then they came to Azeroth and fought in all 3 wars, being commanding officers in all of them as well, then Saurfang led the might of Kalimdor against the Quiraji(both Alliance and Horde), and then Saurfang was tasked as Garrosh’s senior advisor for the entire Northrend campaign.
Safe to say that the two of them together have faced many different foes across the span of they’re comparatively short lives.
Now while Sylvanas may be way older than them, she doesn’t have nearly the amount of war experience as Saurfang or Eitrigg. Quel’thalas lived in relative peace for thousands of years and was never really at war, and that’s without mentioning that Sylvanas never really left her homeland as her siblings did. Even after she became the Banshee queen, she didn’t really leave northern EK often aside from the occasional conferences with the Horde leadership and generally often sent someone else to represent her.
So while Sylvanas may have lived longer than Saurfang and Eitrigg, she hasn’t fought nearly as many wars as them.
That’s not the reason, he was just seen as too old for the job back in Cataclysm.
It kinda is, the Forsaken were created for the same purpose as all undead; to ravage the world of all life, to weaken the world and pave the way for the Legion’s invasion.
When you have someone like Nathanos on Banshee’s wail complaining about the Alliance’s “false” piety and righteousness, even though the Alliance had not only opened their hand in friendship in BtS, but the Forsaken have proven the Alliance right, time and again why they deserve to be despised and rejected by them.
Fair, but it was never explained that way. It was Sylvanas who made the call to use excessive force, it wasn’t something she was coerced into doing by any of her Forsaken followers who may have hard feelings over Greymane betrayal when they were still alive. Sylvanas herself, had no personal grudge with Gilneas up to that point. Now I know how Blood Elf players like to think that the Alliance abandoned the elves when the scourge attacked, but the truth of the matter is that the elves abandoned Alliance to live in isolation. The Alliance did not push them away, Anasterian simply didn’t care about the Alliance’s issues anymore. So unless Chronicles 4# somehow retcons in a revelation like that, Sylvanas had blighted Gilneas out of spite.
Yeah, that’s part of the problem, that’s what they USED to be. Individualism, free will, acceptance, those were core features of the Forsaken identity. Core features that were shown a bit in BtS and then have since been entirely discarded by Sylvanas who wants nothing but absolute obedience from her people. In fact, free-thinking is so bad that she’d sooner slaughter innocent, loyal, Forsaken rather than trying convince them to side with her.
Her actions in BtS go so far against what made the Forsaken compelling to begin with. She showed that Forsaken are not entirely a free people and that she needs to keep them in an extended state of misery so that they can remain unquestioningly loyal to her. Which is something she now seems to be applying to the rest of the Horde, keeping everyone in the dark so they would remain loyal to her.
Yeah, and so was Garrosh during the Cataclysm. The problem is leaving leaders like these on the throne for too long with unchecked power and free reign to essentially do whatever they like, and aren’t willing to cede the position if their people deem them unfit to rule.
A ruler who does not serve the people, is not a good ruler and Sylvanas has displayed multiple times her in inadequacy for the role.(at least in the realm of being Warchief.)
Saurfang and Eitrig fough easy pick enemies like the draenei, when they fought against the alliance, they lose badly and became slaves and WoW is a joke of what the RTS saga used to be.
Honestly Anduin and many of the current generals of WoW are bad strategist and field commanders, they would had been eated alive by any decent foe but since this is a mmorpg, they always win because the PC does all the job.
It will all lead back to whatever force was behind whispering its desire into Vol’jins ear on his death bed.
Its been left frustratingly vague but if I had to guess it will tie into the power Sylvanaus sought to snatch from the Valkyrie back in Legion. Perhaps it is something she needed to survive, that her mind along with her body so long severed from the Litch Kings control and stimulated by the return of her sisters that the tatters of her shattered humanity threatens to destroy everything that she is.
Whatever orchastracted her election to warcheif knew she would be desperate susceptible to the suggestion of temptation now that her only means of achieving her goal had been seemingly snatched away from her by Genn.
It would explain Teldrassil her questionable motives and the forging of Alliances wherever it convinced her in this war.
We do not know if this mysterious force has yet to fully claim her mind but seeing as how the Horde PC just handed over Xalatath to her and she’s hanging onto it, its just a question of whether or not the Banshee Queens will be completely overridden in favour of whatever goal this force wants and if she will go through with stabbing the collective Horde in its back when she is presented with the chance to do so.
Oh boy and here we go with downplaying the parts of the Horde you don’t like to ridiculous degrees just to put the parts you think should be the only part of the Horde ever on a pedestal out of petty spite for parts of Horde you dislike lol
So you have a canon source that says that there were only ever four battles in all the thousands of years that you’re talking about? You were there? You know every little detail? You know the exact dates and times that these four battles happened and know for a fact that nothing ever happened at all in the slightest between them? Or are you just blowing smoke to push “lelelelel sylbanana dum elf orc best”
But wait, wouldn’t thousands of years of fighting an enemy as ruthless and bloodthirsty as the Amani mean that she’s had, oh I don’t know… thousands of years of experience in war and fighting? Much more than Saurfang or Eitrigg? Shocking, right?
Except for, you know, pretty much consolidating all of the Northern Eastern Kingdoms that wasn’t inhabited by the Argent Crusade under the Horde’s grasp during the Cataclysm with minimal help from the Kalimdor Horde, who only sent drunk and incompetent sailors as “aid”, while managing to counter foes as cunning and vicious as Ivar Bloodfang and Darius Crowley, winning Silverpine and Gilneas from them by still managing to turn the tables after the Worgen executed their own well-crafted plans of turning the Hillsbrad humans into Worgen so they couldn’t be raised and leading elite Forsaken forces into traps like the ambush at the mines by taking advantage of Crowley’s love for his daughter to divide the Worgen forces into a much more manageable enemy after Ivar abandoned Crowley after the latter agreed to withdraw from Gilneas in exchange for his daughter’s life.
Let’s also conveniently ignore the more recent time in A Good War when Saurfang couldn’t even see a way to defeat the Alliance without Sylvanas leading him along the way of planning it out to the point that he was actually physically shaken when he finally realized what could be done.
“Then explain this ‘opportunity,’ Warchief,” he said. “Because I do not see it.”
“Yes, you do. You already said it,” she said. “Why is it impossible to invade Stormwind today?”
“We don’t have enough ships.” Saurfang looked at her suspiciously as he worked through the implications. How is that an opportunity? “We can commit our ships to transport or to war, but not to both—”
The answer slammed into him with such force that he literally staggered. His knees buckled, and he caught himself against the table with both arms. After a moment, he looked up at Sylvanas again, the blood draining from his face.
She had led him to a truth he had not seen, and it felt as if the entire world had changed. Only seconds ago, he had known to the very core of his being that war was impossible.
Saurfang is a capable warrior of course, but to imply that Sylvanas is some fledgling novice of war compared to him, as you have done, is laughably stupid. So I guess I’m not really surprised in the slightest.
Or because it was convenient and would assure a Forsaken victory much easier than bowing down to the whims of honorbound idiots who didn’t care about her or her people in the slightest while living an ocean away. Victory was more important than Orcish feelings over the Blight, plain and simple.
Geez, it’s almost as if BtS is a butchery of over 14 years of Forsaken lore whose sole purpose is to make people hate Sylvanas just because Blizz wants to push her into the role of being the big bad and slapping everyone who likes anything other than the Alliance in the face for apparently enjoying the wrong parts of the game since Vanilla.
What am I saying, you don’t care about that. You’re happy for it since you can use it to keep trying to push down the parts of the Horde that you don’t like because they don’t screech about honor and bow to the Alliance all the time. You probably want Calia as the leader of the Forsaken too, accompanied with a compelete 180 on everything that made them who they were across Vanilla, Cata, and even now in BfA just to spite the other part of the Horde fanbase.
Just go play Alliance already.
Cataclysm made people hate Sylvanas. Specifically Alliance players who were ambivalent to, or neutral to, Sylvanas even after Wrathgate.
Gilneas, Hillsbrad, Silverpine, and Andorhal really made Alliance players hate Sylvanas. Before Garrosh’s villainbatting, before Tides, many Alliance players wanted vengeance against Sylvanas, not the orcish warchief.
BtS didn’t change any people’s minds. The same people that insist that every sadistic, pointlessly cruel, action she’s taken since her attempted suicide was “necessary evil” are the same people who will defend her gunning down an interim civilian governing council of good/sympathetic Forsaken. All BtS did is help differentiate the Forsaken people from Sylvanas, that they’re more than just arrows to her quiver.
It’s almost as if it’s perfectly fine for Alliance players to dislike a Horde leader. Horde characters shouldn’t focus on appealing to the Alliance playerbase and Alliance characters shouldn’t focus on appealing to the Horde playerbase.
And thank god she did.
The Forsaken don’t need to be good, that isn’t the race’s identity nor should it be.
Also, why should what Alliance players want matter more than what Horde players want when it comes to the fate of Horde characters? More specifically, why should Forsaken fans have to put up with their race and leader being trashed just because she killed some blue pixels on a screen?
The Forsaken are defined by their free will, by having the choice between good or evil. They are more than a bunch of insane waifu worshipers and Sylvanas’s bulwark against the infinite. Long before BtS there were good Forsaken with their own minds, why does that not influence a races identity? The Forsaken are more than a collection of edgelords and Sylvanas fans
When the Worgen and human races are increasingly defined by suffering loss after loss by the Banshee queen are Alliance players supposed to put up with it?
Well, this is gonna be long.
Having played Vanilla’s questing content quite recently, and the Cata stuff involving the Forsaken before that, the identity of the Forsaken comes down to three main things.
Bloodthirsty vengeance against those who have wronged them, unyielding tenacity and unification in the face of both overwhelming odds and a world that hates and reviles them, and an unapologetic willingness to do anything and everything that would help them secure their continued existence as a people and slaughter those who would get in the way of that existence. That’s what appealed to me when I started playing back in Vanilla and it’s what appeals to me now.
The Forsaken see what they want, figure out what they need to do to get it, and then they do it. It isn’t always successful, but what matters is that no one is whining about honor or complaining and moaning about having to fight their enemies while they do it. The good undead who didn’t like this left, and they’re gone. We see this in the undead who joined the Argent Dawn/Crusade. The Forsaken, from their own point of view and reinforced by their interactions with the other races in the Horde, can only truly rely on themselves, so they hunker down, lock elbows with each other, and do what they perceive as necessary without a care for the opinions of those who care nothing for them as a people.
Some people would point to Lordaeron as the main Forsaken identity, but over my years of playing the race Lordaeron has only ever really been window dressing to me, extra decor for the ruthless personalities that truly make up the Forsaken. It’s also why I roll my eyes whenever someone tries to say Nathanos represents them better than Sylvanas, despite Sylvanas basically embodying all the most important traits of the Forsaken to their fullest while also being the most prolific and important of Arthas’ victims.
The Alliance can reclaim Gilneas and other parts of Lordaeron without completely trashing the race and killing off the character that both leads them and forms the foundation for everything the Forsaken have ever been.
I agree, and thanks for your explanation regarding the Forsaken. I appreciate your insight.
not by any means
we’re all squashed under sylvanas’ boot if thats what you mean
I could be 100 years old and only know up to 3rd grade knowledge or I can be 10 years old and know college level material. Age and experience are not the same thing.
I’m saying this is how much we know. I can understand that as a butthurt Sylvanas fan, you want to deny and downplay any evidence that can hurt the viability of Sylvanas as a leader, especially in comparison to other Horde leaders, but there’s nothing in canon that states that Sylvanas or Quel’thalas has ever been at war with any others entity than the ones’ I listed up unto that point in time.
Skirmishes are not the same as full-on wars, if you need an explanation on why or how this is not me simply downplaying yet again, I know a few former military personnel who I can get on on here to explain to you the difference in full detail.
I already know of Andorhol and Silverpine, any other notable consolidation going on? Hinterlands? Arathi? Eastern Plaguelands?
I choose to conveniently ignore everything involving BfA, because murdering a group of her own unarmed Forsaken civilians instead of attempting to convince them to stay with her, destroyed any credibility she’s ever had as a leader.
Not a fledgeling novice, but not as experienced as Saurfang when it comes to large-scale conflicts, no. All the edginess in the world isn’t going to change that, as much as you think it did.
And you think I downplay things? If she’s didn’t care about the Horde then, what makes you think she cares about it now?
No, having Gilneas as a FUNCTIONING Horde port was the goal of the invasion. Making a victory needlessly pyrrhic is not more important if it contradicts the entire objective of the invasion it in the first place.
The fact that you think this way makes you even worse than I am. If you think that people liking more noble Horde characters such as Saurfang, Baine, or Thrall or more heroic aspects of the faction are just people who like the Alliance then you truly are more ignorant than I thought.
Cailias, If think that is the case then you are a fool who’s vision is so beyond tunneled your eyes have essentially merged and you’ve become a cyclops.
First, I don’t “push away” anything, I simply strive for balance. I see the Horde being a little too dark, I’m inevitably going to have a problem with it, since the only rolled Horde in the first place is to play the “unlikely hero”. Following a leader who has no problems with massacring innocents to achieve victory is not what people like me signed up for when we chose Horde.
Second, I don’t care about the “preaching of honor” so much as upholding our moral principals. If you want to run around murdering civilians and claim that it’s for “the good of the Horde”, you can go do that. But me personally, I don’t want to do that because as a character of virtue i know that killing people who can’t defend themselves is wrong. So yeah maybe don’t have a problem with it due to your juvenile hatred for the Alliance, but I’m going to have a problem when I’m forced to perform such distasteful actions by the narrative that go against my characters’ beliefs.
Third, I already said this, but I know for a fact you don’t read a word a say anyways so I’m giving you a second chance to do so here. Just because I dislike what the Horde is doing right now doesn’t mean I automatically like the Alliance. That way of thinking is just plain ignorant and foolish.
No, no I don’t. I’d much rather have Steve Danuser’s self-insert as you so delicately put it last time or Lilian Voss, actually. Characters who show a genuine concern for the well-being of their people and put them before themselves, y’know, GOOD leaders.
Why don’t you explain to me what they were before? Since you seem to be such an expert on the matter, then I’ll share mine, and we’ll see how they match up.
Why don’t you just save yourself the disappointment and go play another game already? We both know from the direction of the writing where the story is going to end up. The Alliance and Sadfang/Bane are going to team up and depose Sylvanas, and then someone you innevitably hate is going to made Warchief, someone who you don’t care about is going to lead the Forsaken, and then the Forsaken are going to be relegated to a sidelines for foreseeable future. You’re better off bracing for the inevitable dissapointment and dipping before your favorite character is ruined forever, and continue to remember her for qualities you liked about her.
Everything about your favorite race is already going to be destroyed, but do you even remotely care to think about how other players feel about the portrayal about THEIR favorite races? Orcs have essentially become villainous henchmen with no clear representation, Tauren and Trolls are the same way. Goblins are just greedy and incompetent, Blood elves are always on the fence. The Horde doesn’t revolve around you, the Horde doesn’t revolve around the Forsaken. There are other players that are fans of different races who need to be thought of, and unlike you their desire isn’t to simply “hurt the Alliance”. Alot of them want to return to that fantasy of being noble monsters that first drew them in from Vanilla, not the generic fantasy villains they’ve turned us into.
Man, this is the reason I probably side with the “ugly ducks” of the lore instead of the all-mighty, pure hearted, impeccable, infalible Humans. And Orcs.
Despite being in disadvantage in terms of life span, magic power, cultural backup and other things. It feels lore wise, they are above and beyond anyone else.
Khadgar the only one I think sort of deserves being in the same level of an Belf arcanist (his master was a demon-powered Medivh, he takes incredible risks and has crazy ideas, which may be the only advantage vs a more conservative magister).
If they end up pulling that Anduin is far better (at war planning) than Sylvanas or more powerful than Malf, I’m gonna…side with the Old gods to destroy this world for good.
You people only like to read me trashing on the character instead of why I’m trashing on her.
I’m no Zerde, I understand why people like the character, I myself used to like the character. But with the trash writing, I can’t find myself able to support the character anymore. It’s not her fault, it’s the writers for destroying anything that ever made her likable or compelling. I trash on the character because there needs to be some urgent course correction before they irreparably tarnish the legacy of the character.
People who just sit there and support the character she currently is like CW or Cailias simply set themselves up for disappointment when the trashy writing eventually catches up to them, and destroys the character they love. Whether it’s through death or some ham-fisted Alliance wrist slap and telling us to stop being naughty, and having Anduin place an “alliance sympathizer” like Baine of Saurfang on the Warchiefs’ throne. You think I WANT that outcome? Like, hell no!
I’m not so naive to fall for Blizzards’ ploy, I know that they’e intentionally writing her this way to enable people who despise the character, I only do so only to seek the prevention of a worse fate for her. Time and again, I’ve stated on the forums that I Don’t want her to die at the end of BfA, or to be kneeling before Anduin, or whatever humiliating punishment the daft writers can think of. But to save the character, I just think she needs a break from the narrative. Go into exile, incarceration, something that stays’ the executioner’s axe while giving people who hate the character some time to recover. Then maybe 1 or 2 expansions later, they can bring her back into the narrative in a big way and put her back on the right track.
I try to suggest reasonable outcomes that are fair for both the people who hate her and love her, but some people are very short-sighted and don’t want to see the bigger picture, they only want to see the solution that benefits their side of the argument most. When Garrosh went nuts during MoP, It was the same thing, I wanted him to be brought low even though it was the writers who screwed over his character, but only for him to rise again a better character.(a.k.a. The redemption arc he was supposed to have) I’d like a similar result for Sylvanas. Do I want her to become a bland, good-two-shoed, fairy who sprinkles sunshine and love everywhere she goes? No.
But I want her to have a falling off, only so that she can rise again later and become better than before. Come back with a fresh coat of paint, get that foul taste out of mouthes that BfA left us with. At this point, it really is the only way she can justifiably exit BfA in one piece in a way that could be even remotely satisfying to anyone who still cares about the character.
Yes, but also no. As much as players and blizzard want the war to be the main story, other players and blizzard want to save the world as the main plot line. So that means we have to tolerate, or even like each other on some level.