Just don’t take her word for it on how involved she was if it’s an expansion that does poorly. Cause she’ll suddenly have had nothing to do with it at all. But if the expansion does really well then she was involved in every process every step of the way when crafting the story.
Oh no, like I said … she’s getting a bit of a pass from me on the writing of THIS expansion ONLY because of WHEN she took the position she currently is (considering it must have been fairly far in production by then). Next one, I’m placing a whole lot more weight on her apparent input (she’s had plenty of time to have plenty of control of that future story).
No, I agree with parts of what you say here and in that thread. Specifically:
Sylvanas is supposed to be smart, but BfA doesn’t make her seem smart; she just acts “mysterious” and then the plot pulls a twist out of its orifices when it’s necessary to build her up.
Sylvanas obsession with “hope” is both new and lame. TBH, I feel like it’s just a lazy way of broadcasting that she’s evil without “spoiling” her concrete goals.
Sylvanas’s tendency to lose her temper has been jarring and eye-rolling. She’s always been hateful, but she has not always had the emotional self-regulation of a kindergardner.
My feelings are just that fixing these issues wouldn’t have made her villain arc in BfA more palatable. She’d be a more consistent, better written disappointment. The real issue is encouraging people to invest in her character and then just playing her sociopathic throughline straight.
I get redemption is overrated, and some characters are irredeemable. But you shouldn’t make those irredeemable characters the icon of an entire beloved playable race, to name the first sin among many.
I agree—they could have written her a dozen different ways, many of which I would have liked better. I just don’t think her sociopathic throughline is inconsistent with her character since WC3, even if some of the details are badly realized.
Also, my favorite posters are Sylvanas shills. I like her pretty well myself. I don’t mean Sylvanas apologist as an insult, and I don’t consider you one anyway.
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For some reason it happens only in cinematics and books. In game and on-engine she’s always calm and teasing (as we love her). Her dialogue with anduin was amazing.
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Well for starters, the way her inner dialogue is written should reflect, or at least hint at ulterior motives. The passages that Pheandra posted show a character with very earnest motives. This same character will not behave the way Sylvanas has in BFA.
I am far from a Sylvanas apologist; it is very clear that she has been inconsistently written this expansion from her incarnation before BFA.
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Pulling the whole ‘you were in a dream thing’ at the start of bfa was just terrible to sit through and really just made things, not matter? Did anything in legion matter where her and varian had mutual respect? No. Did the speech she gave a vol’jins funeral matter? No. Like do I care that the horde now has a council? Lol no, not at all. They’ll just villain bat someone down to road, so its not like anything they do matters now. It really lessens the impact of the story down the road, and not once but TWICE they’ve done this to the horde.
Following a once consistent character, who just jumped off the deep end for apparently no reason what so ever, only to follow them around cuz ‘super secret plan’. Horde mop rehash was just all around irritating.
This is why im like 10000% done with the story, consistency does matter to an extent. Whats the point of even trying to like a character and learn about them if they’re just gonna change them on a whim anyway, only to agitate you down the road.
Ps, I love how now a bunch of people have just been arm chairing lulz she was evil all along, just now that started. Just stop, no you dident know that until the WoT happened.
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I can’t speak for horde and forsaken fans but she’s always been evil towards the alliance. Or leading evil.
[quote=“Veliina-moknathal, post:148, topic:327857”]Just stop, no you dident know that until the WoT happened.
[/quote]
Yeah we did.
We just thought Blizzard would be such horrible writers that they’d swing the opposite extreme way and cater to the professional mental gymnastics you loyalists like to perform.
And no, you were ignorant to think WoT was the start of the slope, or you just don’t give a 
about the other people she caused suffering to.
Not sure I completely agree, but there is a point to be made that the only real difference between Gilneas and Teldrassil is that at Gilneas the only reason that there weren’t MORE civilian causalities is that Sylvie was unaware of the evacuation method being used. She fully intended to blight that entire city (with its entire populous) into the ground. As such, Teldrassil (now that we FOR SURE know it had nothing to do with benefiting the HORDE in this War) is TOTALLY in character for the person she’s been for the last 9 years or so.
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Oh, no. Trust me Fondant, Perfectia isn’t joking.
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Well to be nitpicky, the nephews were never on her kill and turn undead list. She was only planning on killing Vereesa in her sleep (because that would be the mercy of a painless death unlike the one she suffered), and the turning her undead was because she knew the Forsaken would never accept a living ruler (and she was planning on having Vereesa co-rule with her…Vereesa was just incredibly naive to assume Sylvanas meant she could do so while still being alive). Vereesa asked about bringing her young sons to live in the Undercity with them and Sylvanas was all “umm, ermm, Undercity really isn’t a place for children”, and Vereesa realized she was right and that accepting the offer would mean leaving her children behind in Dalaran (and she never knew about the whole ‘being murdered in her sleep and risen as undead’ part of the plan).
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I can’t wait until it’s Tyrande on the chopping block and we’re making threads like these to compare when Tyrande was a wonderful addition to the story and a positive influence on her people, and how she gradually became more and more of an obsessive bastion of hate in the books.
Like, she’s been an antagonist to the Horde in all of Golden’s books, so now that she’s stamping her foot and telling Anduin off comes as no surprise to me. I wonder what Blizzard plans to do with her in the future.
And I’ll be in that thread, telling everyone I saw it coming the entire time, Tyrande was always written to be antagonistic, and no one should mourn her passing from the story.
Proceed with the Sylvanas hate.
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Thanks for being a fan.
Simply destroying the Scour- the forsaken who are totally not Scourge period would be a good start.
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I think you’ll still be waiting for Jaina to be on the chopping block.
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We were SO close Amadis!
5% close!
How foolish we were to even believe we, the puny slayers of Argus, Archimonde, Illidan, and the Lich King could ever hope to match her grandeur.
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I try not to get petty on here, but I’d be lying if I said a small part of me didn’t want Blizzard to bait-and-switch us to reveal the Sylvanas was always right. Watching some of the more obnoxious “Sylvanas was always evil, you just didn’t see it” posters combust would be delicious.
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Oh, I expect them to. I fully expect her actions here to be completely selfish, however I also expect them to ultimately shine light on an issue that needs to be addressed (and once addressed will benefit everyone in some way). After all … she did claim that she wants “everyone to see the world as it really is” (I’m guessing the Shadowlands have been corrupted in some way).
On the other hand, she’s still a selfish nihilist that cremated thousands of innocents in a Giant tree. An act intended to manufacture a war that existed solely to propagate as large a death toll as possible (from both her enemies and “allies”); presumably in service of exclusively own personal obsessive goal to thwart her own afterlife. She’s still EVIL … no matter what.
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I’m glad you made this post. I think this has been specifically what’s bugged me the most in the wake of the “I told you so” 8.2.5 circular jerk of posters who wanted Sylvanas gone no matter what. I never found it adequate myself - I didn’t think the writers did a good enough job of selling the turn to people who weren’t already inclined to believe the worst about her. I think the polarizing nature of her character clouds people’s judgement - and, let’s be honest, a lot of things are very polarizing nowadays.
A lot of people rationalize all the “heroic Sylvanas” hooks that have been dangled over the years as “oh she was just lying” but I agree that this is an extraordinarily lazy way to build this characterization, and it in fact undermines the claim that she has been written consistently over the years. Let’s be honest; NOBODY has been written consistently over 15+ years of Warcraft. It’s the nature of huge projects that span so much time. But if their MO going forward is to “foreshadow” multiple story paths so that they can pick whichever one they need to suit whatever whim they choose, it makes it extraordinarily hard to buy any character development they’re selling, especially if they want to try another “subversive twist” in the future. I think another good example of this “throw foreshadowing at the wall” approach is the whispers of Il’gynoth, which they seemed to ignore for over two years and then just slapped a few of the most obvious ones into the Azshara fight and discarded the rest, with no rhyme nor reason why those whispers were true and the others weren’t.
What is more concerning to me is the degree they seem willing to 1984 Sylvanas’ history in order to suit their current desires. Because I know few people have actually read 1984 and only identify it with a Big Brother surveillance trope, what I’m getting at here is that the job of the protagonist of the book was to change history, to rewrite old newspaper articles to suit the Party’s present message - and then to re-rewrite those articles again when that message changes. Blizzard seems as if they are currently set to rewrite the past now that they have decided to go with Sylvanas’ heel turn, to go back through the franchise’s history and erase the “heroic” hooks while emphasizing all the “evil” ones. There are many here who are willing to ignore what is in fact a very concerning precedent simply because they dislike Sylvanas. I know that right now these people are riding high on the hog because Blizzard has proven them right and all of these objections are generally dismissed as sour grapes, but this kind of lazy characterization and scattershot foreshadowing is not something that should be encouraged.
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The power of friendship wins the day. How could the Horde ever really bring themselves to kill their best friend Jaina?
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