Why does so many people hate her? Do people realize she got her soul split in two while trying to defend Quel’thalas? I will always admire her character for her role in the 3rd war. I think she deserves some leniency. Also the jailer had her soul, and is the the sole reason she died. yadada, but people will still hate her. 
6 Likes
Yeah, the ‘h’ word works for me. She burned down the tree and killed all those people my main has known for years and years. If it’s any consolation, she’s #3 on my list after Malfurion and Tyrande.
I don’t think hate is an accurate word, to be honest, because the character isn’t even a character so much as a barely coherent collection of conflicting ideas at this point. She hasn’t had a single action in the last four years that I could point to and go “that makes sense for her character” because I don’t know what her character is.
It’s difficult to say I hate any characters in the narrative for the last four or so years because most have become cardboard, and those that aren’t get their reactions undermined by a hamfisted overarching plot.
42 Likes
Sylvannas was a great, unique character until the writers turned her into a cartoon. Either as an edgelord villain that has a plan no one can fathom, or breaking the lore to explain why she’s actually a good person.
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In a few words? Cause the writers’ need to make her guiltless has utterly destroyed Shadowlands as a story. In trying to make her look like a gullible victim they tried to make the Jailer a 20D chess master and galactic master mind and it just doesn’t work…
Even beyond Shadowlands, as far back as WotLK and TBC is ruined just to try and justify one character’s actions.
33 Likes
Haters gonna hate.
7 Likes
I don’t think there is anything wrong with liking her, I like her too. But we have to understand that this is an evil character who has done horribly evil things with little to no justification.
The reason why the hate for her seems to be unending is because of the endless debates that one side of the community tries to cast Sylvanas’ actions in a better light or rewrite the actual events to justify her actions or even a victim of circumstances.
No other character in the game gets this kind of defense from the community… well maybe except Arthas but even him no one argues the facts that he has done. The only question with him is how much control her had when doing what he did.
Unfortunately, even the writers aren’t sure what do to… right now they are throwing everything they can at the wall and see how they can salvage a character that burns women and children alive for a god of death.
There is just no coming back from that…
41 Likes
She’s simply not interesting enough to hate.
What has she accomplished other than getting a lot of people to kill each other? She’s full of pride without having anything to be proud of and wants to turn us all into a Path of Glory in a vainglorious attempt to escape her inevitable death.
2 Likes
I think it’s hard to continue to hate her now that we know she was missing the best part of her soul all this time.
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To be clear, I hate the way she’s been written and the way she’s been portrayed, not her specifically.
If they had sporadically given us more insights into her ‘background deals’ with the Jailer, instead of throwing it all at us after the fact, I might be more sympathetic.
As a writer you need to structure your reveals to have the most impact, otherwise people just resent them.
Imagine if in Harry Potter Professor Quirrel had absolutely no ticks or indicators that he was a bad guy. If just, at the very end, we see him in the chamber and we’re supposed to buy that, this whole time, it was HE who was in league with Voldy. It wouldn’t have the same impact because it would have felt out of no where.
Sylvanas, we’ve been told, has been working to keep out of the Maw due to what she saw. That is the story we were sold. She did some bad stuff that was immoral, but it was all tied to the goal of not winding up dead.
This crap, where she’s secretly in league to unmake the afterlife and everything has all been according to the plan (which, news flash, has not been coherent or well laid out) is just garbage and it’s not working. She gets no sympathy because none of this has been set up; it’s just shoe horned in because they didn’t know what to do.
18 Likes
I was never the biggest fan of Sylvanas but I was more wary/distrustful of Sylvanas when it came to her darker moments like the ordering the plague and kidnapping Koltira. My dislike of her really started at the start of Legion when Vol’jin was killed, after barely doing anything as Warchief, and Sylvanas getting appointed in his place. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Sylvanas was then the only Horde faction leader to have a story presence for Legion until the allied race content had Baine and Lor’themar apart of the Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne recruitment chains.
It really rubbed me the wrong way and turned that dislike of Sylvanas into a wariness towards Blizzard because they excluded the other Horde leaders from Legion content that would have made sense. For example Baine being involved with the Highmountain Tauren, Lor’themar leading the Blood Elves in 7.1, opposite Tyrande over Liadrin and Rommath, or Saurfang being on Argus confronting the Legion/interacting with his brother’s grave.
Battle for Azeroth is where the line between my dislike of Sylvanas and wariness of Blizzard blurred together and Sylvanas became a symbol of my issues with the writing, with the actions, the fact the Horde was going through another civil war, and the ease at which Blizzard uses recons.
Like instead of having Sylvanas meet the Jailer in Edge of Night, it would have been easier to have declared that Sylvanas met in at the end of the Silverpine questing experience when she was killed. Edge of Night would have stayed the same and it would have allowed for Sylvanas’ lines about seeing darkness and how the Val’kyr are the future to be seen in a different light.
Not helping matters was how inconsistence Blizzard got during this, such as when Lor’themar says that Sylvanas has the loyalty of the people but Sylvanas’ loyalists have to secure Orgrimmar before the battle because the people are not behind her.
14 Likes
I think this was kind of an afterthought on the people currently writing the story compared to when this originally was written.
“How are we going to explain away all this evil she’s done?”
“I dunno, how about we do like that episode of Star Trek when Kirk got split into two people?”
“Bob, you’re fricken brilliant, remind me to give you a raise.”
“Hey boss, don’t forget to give me a raise.”
“NO, NOW GET BACK TO WORK STORY MINION.”
23 Likes
I think people hate what has been done to her character since the end of Legion. Before that she was widely loved if anything.
There were still some controversies regarding Cataclysm and human experimentation.
But yeah Legion onwards it kind of got compounded much further.
5 Likes
Oh I have plenty of reasons. !) She is the reason why the Alliance lost capital city(admittedly, a Garithos lead one is probably just as bad) 2) She has been antagonistic to the Alliance since Vanilla. why wouldn’t I want her dead any more then say Arthas or Garrosh? 3) You make it sound like she was the only one who has had her soul split. Varian had his split and for the most part he still managed to keep it together enough not to do something monumental evil/stupid.
I don’t. Or more precisely I think she needs to be treated as well as Arthas, either both get damned or both get treated with leniency.
3 Likes
The soul split, along with the necromancy, created Banshee Sylvanas, the evil actions of which are entirely hateable, and a mockery of Ranger General Sylvanas, who is now trapped fused with the monster made from half of her soul. There’s plenty to sympathize with Ranger General Sylvanas, and not any real reason to hate her, but the sins of Banshee Sylvanas outweigh anything else Banshee Sylvanas has done, enough so that even Ranger General Sylvanas would sacrifice herself to see Banshee Sylvanas face the consequences of them.
7 Likes
The soul split thing just makes me dislike her even more. It’s a cheap and lazy way for the writers to absolve her of all her crimes. This thread’s OP is basically making that same argument, that you can’t blame Sylvanas for all the horrible crimes she’s committed for over a decade IRL because of this brand new soul split plot point. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. As a primarily Alliance player, Sylvanas has been a villain in the narrative since Cata. An eleventh hour retcon pulled from the story team’s @$$ doesn’t wipe that away.
30 Likes
Sylvanas is an incredibly controversial character and the story would be better if she were gotten rid of.
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I think it’s character burnout to be entirely honest. Look at how characters in past expansions were received when they were story centric.
Lots of players were sick of Thrall come the end of Cataclysm, and he was not well received in his appearances in WoD (culminating in the Garrosh kill steal). They stripped him Doomhammer and left him MiA until late BfA.
Khadgar was a driving force for both WoD and Legion, and to be honest, a good one. However he had two expansions in the spotlight and people were happy to see him take a step back in BfA.
Sylvanas on the other hand is a little more complex. Unlike Thrall and Khadgar, who were Neutral Forces, uniting the Heroes from both factions to face world ending threats. Sylvanas was the world ending threat for one faction. She’s not neutral through Legion (Stormheim specifically), BfA or Shadowlands. She’s the driving antagonistic force for the Alliance for all three of those, and technically she’s supposed to be antagonistic to the Horde in Shadowlands, but she’s not without her fans.
Basically, from the start roughly half of the player base is in a position to be openly opposed to her as a character. If it seems like there is a lot of Sylvanas “hate”, it’s because, by design, there is supposed to be.
13 Likes
Sylvanas has kicked puppies. Too many puppies, literally. First in Gilneas, then at Teldrassil.
(Holds up 8 year old worgen girl in a little dress, pink bow in her hair, big moist eyes, and a ‘Size 6, Woman’s, Elvish Style’ shoeprint across her face).
Won’t you be an angel? Donate today. In the arms of the angel, fly away from here!..
12 Likes