I will admit I sometimes do enjoy characters that do have their hearts in the right place, but because of various reasons they exercise that the wrong way. Either from past trauma which made them view a might is right ideology (e.g. Baron Praxis from Jak 2) or they try and force that might is right ideology onto the protagonist because there is always a bigger and eviler fish right around the corner (Klesser from Infamous 1, which if you know the plot twist makes it even better).
Illidan, at least during the WotA does fit into this group of antagonists. Going so far as “joining” the other side to trick Sargeras to give him a power boost. The ends justify the means. Even if the means are just as horrible as the worst of endings.
While we’ve been strapped to the rails for the conducting of the Sylvanas mustache twirl express, Burning Crusade had the opposite problem of most characters or events just being there without answers to why. Back then it was even more of a gameplay game than a narrative.
So do you think that people would have ended up hating Illidan if we had the same story approach in TBC with Illidan that BfA and SL had with Sylvanas, strapped to rails and an anti-hero turning into a villain, also lets sprinkle in an obscene amount of plot armor.
I have to imagine so. If Illidan had burned down a WoW player capital and used the NPC souls to open a gate the the Legion home world, shouting about how it’s the only way, people would probably be as upset.
I don’t think Illidan got a redemption arc. His story got retconned to make him look more heroic. It also happened in a way that fit his character from Warcraft 3 mostly (WotA was also a retcon), with a couple of changes (he went from believing he was destined for greatness to being an edgelord obsessed with destroying the Burning Legion).
Take Illidan joining the Legion for example;
Original lore from the RTS games; Illidan joined the Legion due to lust for magical power and envy of his brother, but switched sides back to the Kaldorei resistance when the battle turned against the Burning Legion.
War of the Ancients retcon; Illidan pretended to join the Burning Legion to bring them down from the inside (without telling those close to him)
Legion expansion retcon; Illidan went to join the Burning Legion out of lust for magical power and envy of his brother… but had a last-minute change of heart and decided to use his position to bring them down from the inside (without telling those close to him).
While, to me, Illidan is an overrated fedora-tipper, he had a few good moments (his RTS games screentime before Arthas thrashed him, killing Gul’dan, blowing up the planet Nathrezar) and is still better/less bad than Sylvanas.
Because she’s one of the last OG Horde leaders left. I’m flipping tired of all our characters getting killed or villain batted. In my opinion, they never should have made a faction leader into a worldwide villain in the first place. It was rotten when it happened with Garrosh, and asking us to go through it a second time is just unfair.
So Horde can just keep blowing up Alliance cities and the people in them… and what? We all just laugh about it?
Fine. Sylvanas gets a redemption, she comes back to the Horde and the Horde players get to enjoy her continued existence.
The answer to that seems as if the discussion among the lead writers/devs went like this;
Dev 1: “People are complaining about Horde characters being killed or villain batted. What’s the solution?”
Dev 2: “Make story arcs with good character progression and introduce new villains or bring in old ones.”
Dev 1: “Get out.”
Dev 3: “Let’s kill or villain bat Alliance characters instead.”
Dev: 1: “Brilliant! We’ll go with that! We’ll kill Jaina and villain bat Genn. And I never liked Turalyon, so let’s bring him back because I’ve got something really nasty in mind for him…”
Its actually because Justice against Sylvanas was promised as the remedy of what the Alliance players and Night Elves had to suffer through for a Horde power fantasy storyline.
Which is fine… if they actually deliver it.
If Sylvanas will not answer for what she has done so that she can rejoin the Horde roster of characters what will the Alliance get instead?
The Horde player got the entire narrative focus during BFA, multiple cinematics, a whole new revamp to their faction structure. Yeah the Horde players have been getting a lot of good things for a long while now. Its been two expansions, I think Alliance is due their good things finally too.
You might get some sadistic pleasure from Blizzard treating Alliance players like crap but thats not good thing.
…I’m sorry?
You think BfA was a good thing for the Horde?
You think this ‘Horde Council’ bull was good?
You think an entire slew of cinematics thematically pointing a finger at you saying, ‘Be sad that you are the bad guy’ was a good thing?
You might get some sadistic pleasure from Blizzard treating Horde players like crap but thats not good thing.
