I can’t remember where but someone said something along the lines of “Sylvanas isn’t a character anymore but a poorly written idea” and that really nails it down.
this is what not properly setting up and building toward an expansion does. saying she was in on the plan to become warchief and everything else were decisions made in hindsight to get us to shadowlands. thats why sylvanas REALLY breaking bad doesnt feel natural but forced. it just came out of nowhere
I feel indifferent about all the leaders. Lor’themar is the only one I respect.
I honestly find Sylvanas to be an amazing character in Warcraft. The fact no one knows what her intentions are has me wanting to know what the future holds for her.
Me personally? Unpopular opinion* I want a redemption arc. She has gone through some serious business and for some time just wanted to feel the freedom of death and couldn’t.
As far as I can tell even death isn’t an escape so for Sylvanas I empathise with her need to change things.
I also play as Horde on Oceanic so anything that goes against Alliance heroes makes me super duper happy.
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More like Blizz trying to make one character be too many things.
It is like they go well for this xpac the character will be like this , then when doing story for the next xpac and now the character will be like this and so on . It is like they creative juices as far as story for the game goes has gone down to that little bit at the bottom of the cup that you try so hard to suck out but you end up mostly getting air.
To be honest since BfA the story has been pretty much mostly air .
how the hell do you replace a character like sylvanas with calia 
even if she doesnt ‘die’ and takes up some shadowlands role. lets just throw this character away so we can get to shadowlands, what a waste
I would argue against this. She changed dramatically in Cata after committing suicide after Wrath and discovering she would go to WoW hell. Originally, she was tormented by her existence and her and the forsaken’s goal was to seek revenge against Arthas for killing and raising them.
Immediately after her realization, she changed her goal to be survival, a complete contrast to who she originally was. She began killing and raising people just as Arthas did and was even compared to him by Garrosh. From Cata-Legion she was consistent in this though.
I agree with the over all point, though. Blizzard hasn’t been planning ahead since MoP at least, and since Legion they have decided that shock value is everything. Since the end of WotLK the lore hasn’t been worth investing in. It, like everything else in the game, is purely a mechanism to improve profits.
I think that’s a pertinent point to remember. Did they realise way back then how it would go 10 years in the future? Of course not, but we know from past interviews that expansion storylines are worked on years prior to their actual release; I think it was said at one point that story development started at least 2 expansions’ worth of time prior to the particular expac. So a lot of what is happening now certainly started back in Legion. I believe at that time they took a look back at Sylvanas’ suicide because an expansion set in the WoW afterlife could link back to a number of important character deaths. Sylvanas would have been a perfect fit with her whole suicide-pass Go and proceed directly into the Maw situation. I seem to recall she saw Arthas there, as well, so there is another hook to the current story.
So they would have had a basic premise - leaving Azeroth and adventuring in the WoW afterlife aka the Shadowlands. They had fertile ground for characters because a great many characters in previous lore had died, either permanently or died-and-reborn, so they could be incorporated into the story structure. I mean, I will be entirely unsurprised if Varian returns and is implicit in Anduin’s future.
Sylvanas’ story and character development probably really changed from the start of Legion. Me personally, I think she was pretty two dimensional prior to that. I’m actually a lot more interested now in her story than I was before.
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The changes her character underwent were logical and consistent given her narrative. I didn’t mean to say that she was an immutable and unchanging presence during that period. Apologies if my brevity came off as such.
I don’t actually agree with this at all. For a troll, the idea of a loa giving you a message is huge. And with how involved the loa are in their lives, defying one could end terribly. It’s not as simple as “Well make your own decisions”. The darkspear are heavily devoted trolls of faith, who saw hellish acts of defying loa previously, and how well that ended. I feel like this is overly simplifying something without taking into account the actual importance of what Vol’jin had experienced.
if its important enough for the story it should be in game.
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Indeed.
When a god speaks, particularly your god, you listen.
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