Not really. Could have just let us kill Belmont instead of Tyrande sparing him for no reason after complaining about having spared Saurfang.
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Which is really interesting in hindsight just how much of the motivations she had him build his plan off of where total BS. She implies she always figured she’d have to burn Teldrassil. She implies she always knew she’d probably have to kill Saurfang, because he’d turn on her. She’s fixated on killing Malf and Tyrande, despite her plan she pushed him to create depending heavily on their survival. She outright states she intended to destroy the entire NE civilization, despite it too needing to remain intact for Saurfang’s plan to work.
In short, she gave him a bunch of reasons she knew would work on him … that she herself didn’t believe for a second.
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That was pretty obvious from how she pivoted from point to point to try to find anything that would work instead of sticking to any one argument.
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In for a penny, in for a pound I suppose with Blizz. This is Afrasiabi’s work I’d wager. I smell his over fixation on edge without consequences all over that mess.
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I really don’t get why they are trying to make this so over dramatic when the only revenge the Night Elves ever got was to kill a Val’kyr.
No way in hell they’d let Sylvanas die, especially not to Tyrande.
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Honestly, I would laugh so damned hard if it turned out that Sylvanas’ deal is still in effect with them even now and all we need to do is kill those last three and even with the Jailor as her besty she’s locked in the Maw for eternity. She’s contractually obligated to go there once the last one falls. Even he can’t break a contract lol!
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Hasn’t blizz even stated that the Val’kyr are
A) Irrelevant to Sylvanas now
or
B) recreatable for Sylvanas with her new powers now?
Also, we’d have to kill her last 3 Val’kyrs AND her. I don’t think the Val’kyr deal is relevant anymore. I just hope that Sylvanas stays in Shadowlands after her redemption because damn I wouldn’t be able to endure more Sylvanas expansions, let alone working for her. That’s why I couldn’t play any Horde characters in BfA
They haven’t mentioned anything on them. So whether they are irrelevant or not remains to be seen. Also, no, as far as I’m aware from the contract Sylvanas’ soul only exists outside the Maw as long as at least one of her Primes remains free. The moment the last one goes, she goes. Or at least that would have been the theory. It was settup as a bit of a war of attrition with the Primes.
That was indeed from John Hight in an interview at Blizzcon 2019 when asked about the “Val’kyr” (we now know they’re actually Forsworn) during the Shadowlands reveal:
- Who’s to say she can’t create more? I mean she basically has the Kyrian at her disposal, and Odyn was able to, by sacrificing a single eye, create the power of the Val’kyr.
This is what I’m talking about though. The WoT is largly presented as a war of unprovoked aggression by the horde, rather than an extension of war over azerite. I mean in WoT they talk about starting a war as if they are oblivious to the conflict currently taking place over Azerite. It needs clarification in game that the alliance actions contributed to escalation that got completely out of hand.
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People have been throwing this around, so tell me if this is crazy, but… wouldn’t it be somewhat plausible if they just retcon the burning such that maybe just a bit of the canopy burned, but the fires were put out before too much of the tree burned? And that maybe most people managed to escape so casualties were a minimum?
I mean, it’s a little bit of a stretch, but it’s not so egregious that Blizzard has to say “ignore that burning husk you see in-game, it’s non-canon,” right? This seems plausible. In the end, little damage is done, but everyone else’s actions are still unchanged because attempted-genocide still doesn’t look very good for Sylvanas.
I’m pretty firm in my belief that the War of Thorns was not meant to be the pre-patch event for the expansion immediately following Legion. As I said in my tinfoil hat thread way back talking about how the last two expansions were meant to be four expansions, the expansion immediately following what ended Legion was supposed to be a more Cataclysm style expansion featuring Kul Tiras and Zandalar far more prominently throughout, and dealing with local threats therein.
It was also supposed to happen after Lordaeron, which would have forced the Horde forces all the way to Kalimdor and thus set the stage for the War of Thorns. And it also would have made way more sense for Saurfang to have been captured at that point.
This would have made the Burning work a lot better, and made it a bit more easily defended, and logical in a narrative sense. Still really bad, but a lot of the issues with it stemmed from there being no real escalation. The War Campaign is also super detached from a lot of stuff, especially the portion at BfA launch.
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I’d say leave the first part out but retcon the fact that most night elves died in Teldrassil because Blizzard never managed to properly address it.
Killing 1 Val’kyr would’ve made up for killing 1 ancient, but a genocide and destruction of nearly all of their lands? No.
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They did revisit it. In Before the Storm. And just made the fault look even worse for the Horde, not better.
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And I also hope that they won’t try to make a genocide look better or even good.
Other than making stupid statements in interviews, I hope there won’t be any more efforts to make Sylvanas or the Horde’s actions in the war of thorns look any good.
There is that weird mission table missions where Teldrassil is still being evacuated during the events of 9.0.
- Dentaria Silverglade in Lor'danel oversees the evacuation of the Teldrassian survivors to Azuremyst.
- A Horde army marches north to Lor'danel; Blood Guard Rockrain at the fore. Send our forces to stall his aggression, so the evacuation of Teldrassil can continue.
https://www.wowhead.com/mission=1882/teldrassil-evacuation
If one wanted to, they could take this as that there were Night Elves that survived the fires until they went out on Teldrassil and were making their way down and to Darkshore still.
We obviously never got to see any of that in game, as Teldrassil was made into just a skybox you couldn’t get close to.
I’m not sure it’s worth reading much into the mission table descriptions. C-Dev does not write them and in most cases they don’t seem to vet them either.
People forget, but the majority of quest and flavor text is written by staff who are decidedly not writers or in Creative Development.
It’s how you end up with weirdness like “tireless defenders of the living” or Rexxar rejoining the Horde because Jaina killed too many (??).
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This is Ion’s take on the mission tables at least at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN0MSAzupjw&t=44m34s :
- It’s viewed as it’s a flavorful, sort of thematic way if you do some world quests you get some extra resources from doing that, and then you can choose amoung a set of bonuses to further augment your rewards that you got in the course of getting those resources, and you’re doing it in a way that is tied into the story of the war.
Yeah, my only point is that Creative Development (writers, cinematics, novels, comic books) is its own department at Blizzard and they do not personally write and in most cases do not vet the flavor text in the game. That includes the leader dialogue for example when Baine gets arrested or any of the mission table stuff. Generally quest designers and level designers write that stuff and I think a lot of it ends up slipping underneath C-Dev’s radar unfortunately.
It’s just a strange byproduct of how Blizzard separates its story-telling and gameplay teams.
We also know that story decisions aren’t actually made by the story-telling teams, at least from this interview about thirty-five minutes in:
Metzen explained how the idea to burn Teldrassil and make Sylvanas dastardly came from up top from the game team, and then later they came to the story team to ask them to express these ideas that the game team had decided on.
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