Warcraft is a story about hatred, strife, dominance. The quest for power, where nations and cultures vie for supremacy and influence, which is why I found Arthas story to be as good as it originally was. It was a kind of irony that in the eternal conflict for power and dominance, Arthas put the CROWN of dominance on his head.
It was the story of a man who had to emerge, born out of the turmoil and wars and strife of the eastern kingdoms, whose own instability and insecurity had to escalate.
But Sylvanas measures this irony, Sylvanas was not a product that had to happen - so to speak. This is a big difference between Arthas and Sylvanas. Arthas was fun, made fun, even while he was doing darkest deeds, you could always understand him and feel for him.
You could do that with Sylvanas for a while, but Teldrassil turned it around, all sympathy was lost with this event, because she is not Arthas, because she doesn’t have the history with a soul devouring weapon, because she is NOT a product of the eastern kingdoms and their history.
She is Arthas product, but Arthas was passe, every deed which she accomplishes now, will turn against innocent people, and thus she becomes from the victim to the perpetrator. And when she did the same as Arthas, only worse, she lost so much sympathy that at this point Sylvanas deserves to die, finally, and forever.
Now that said in advance, Blizzard has not just one writer but many. And each of these writers had different visions for Sylvanas. Danuser will not give up Sylvanas, I doubt she will really even face serious consequences for her actions, Redemption will happen, but one reminiscent of Grom, no character in all of WOW has ever had to endure a real Redemption, it’s hard, it’s incredibly harsh, and it’s almost unattainable, because for that to happen the other side would have to be willing to forgive, and that’s where we hit the problem.
The alliance is no longer willing to forgive as a playerbase, it’s against their dignity at this point, it feels forced and I can fully understand it.
If Blizzard chooses a way that Sylvanas really has to redeem herself, without a sacrifice in the form of die and be done with it…that lasts years and makes it clear to Sylvanas that everything she has done since she became undead is wrong…really EVERYTHING and that publicly over and over again…and tries to stand up for it and take responsibility, only then, and only then…would she truly experience redemption.
But her fans wouldn’t want that, because that’s demeaning to Sylvanas, which is the whole point of redemption. They don’t want their fan favorite to stand for years for one thing: “I was wrong, everything I did was wrong, and even though I can never make it right, I try to live my whole life now working and trying to find redemption in the end”.
It would humiliate Sylvanas in their eyes.
And now there is blizzard, trying to somehow still manage to draw a round circle with Tyrande, although it started as a square. It’s not about Tyrande, that’s the real cheek, it should and should have been about Tyrande, but it’s about Sylvanas, and the playerbase against and for her.
Tyrande is…not even second fiddle, she’s fourth, fifth fiddle…and actually absolutely irrelevant in blizzard’s eyes at this point.
