That reminds me. Does this address at all the statement (dont remember where from, Chronicle or an interview or something) that the Wrathgate was her idea?
She just wanted to use the Wrathgate to kill the Lich King. Attacking everyone else was done by Putress without her knowledge and he tries to kill Sylvanas immediately afterwards.
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It was Afrasiabi, responding to critics who said Teldrassil was out of character for Sylvanas. He said that he has written Sylvanas for a long time, and it was completely in character, continuing “…the wrathgate, she was behind all of that.” It was at the time not even clear what exactly he meant, and if it was even cannon.
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Apparently she also says internally that she probably would have considered the living casualties acceptable if it had worked
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Sylvanas fans leaving that out she also told him to attack and that he shouldn’t hesitate
Oh good thank god. We can put to bed “All according to plane” and Afrasiabi’s nonsense.
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Yeah, but there’s a difference between thinking achieving a major goal is worth some degree of loss and the weird idea that she was pushing to attack both the horde and alliance using Arthas as an excuse. She really wanted to kill Arthas, and was willing to be brutal to do so. It’s a dark action that has a logic behind it that makes sense (it can be disagreed with, but you can at least see a logical process behind it that’s grounded in the world’s reality, and not just she did it because evil like the idea that she was more interested in attacking the assembled forces more than Arthas)
It’s like how Genn thought that it was worth losing an airship to attack Sylvanas. It’s not so much that you want to lose the thing, but that taking out whatever you’re attacking is worth risking it.
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Sylvanas was willing to do ANYTHING to kill him. she would of sacrificed every single forsaken, in fact her continued caring for them was subject to their continued usefulness to her ability to get her revenge.
To Sylvanas the loss of soldiers to kill Arthas was worth it. They had signed up to die in the name of that duty. Not killing him meant the ends failed to justify the means, which is what angered her.
And that’s why the idea that she planned the wrathgate incident made no sense. That thing was an attack on the Horde and Alliance (and Sylvanas) with Arthas mainly being the excuse to have the weapons handy. If Sylvanas was behind it it would have been more about waiting for Arthas to be really stuck into the battle so that he’d have more trouble retreating from the blight used against him.
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she likely would of wanted to somehow incapacitate/stun him so he could not flee the field before she did so.
Putress was just insane, and elected to start killing everyone in general.
I’m not arguing that she did anything right, just more wanting stuff to make sense. Just to have some decent motives behind it.
Like Genn in the Stormheim intro, he did something bad there. There was a big threat to everyone and he started a fight with people who were fighting alongside him against the bigger threat. But he had motives that you can look at and see a progression of thought that explains why he did it. He has a motive that from the standpoint of being a plot point made sense to the reader.
Too many times in the story lately they haven’t seemed to have bothered to think up motives for characters or factions for why they do things. Or like Sylvanas and WoT, they just handwave away a huge action that has upended a lot of the story with “Oh, it was all part of the evil plot all along”
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Genn wouldn’t have had to do “something bad” if he wasn’t the only one who recognized Sylvanas for who she was.
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That’s nice.
I’m still talking about having the story make at least a little bit of sense and have characters with clear motivations backing up their actions and not just “And then they got whacked with the stupid stick and did evil things for no reason”
Point being, when Genn attacked the forsaken fleet in Stormheim (which was doing what it was supposed to) whether you agree with it or not, Genn had a clear motive for what he did that makes sense, even if it may or may not justify what he did in world. But as written for the reader/player it was set up properly and makes logical sense for him to be written that way.
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Yeah. But I just cannot believe this. In my own mind, I can’t believe that any writer planned it like that. The only thing that makes sense is rewrites that contradicted an already determined but unrevealed mystery motive.
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Yeah, I don’t know if it was a grudge or just a “Hold my beer, this is gonna be AWESOME!” moment. But the BFA story just seems to come out of nowhere and actively denies all the stuff that I thought were put in place to set it up. I mean geeze, I never really liked the forsaken or Sylvanas, but even to me BFA made no sense for her, it felt completely out of her character.
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I mean, the explanations make less sense than the build up. Oh… the Jailer, is the guy in Jail? Helya was dominated by Odyn, but now she just dominates people? The guy who put the jailer in jail isnt the jailer, and he’s a good guy and hes not responsible for the lich king or the scourge, or rune blades, even though he invented domination magic, and arguably necromancy, and plague. And we side with him, and not the guy locked in hell or the Titan-violated Valkyr?
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That’s the thing that gets me. The Primus should’ve been an antagonist and should’ve been responsible for creating the Scourge and blight.
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So basically the way it always was until that drunk comment by Alex that hinted that the whole thing was “part of the plan”.
lawl.
It was clear from vanilla to wrath that the Forsaken’s “new plague” was meant to be mainly used on the scourge. I mean the Forsakens main motivations was to kill the Lich King. They entered a loose alliance with the Horde to help achieve that goal. It is why in Wrath you test out the completed plague on the scourge (and some Scarlet Crusaders) before it was shipped to the Wrathgate. We also know from the very first quest of this story arc from vanilla that the “new plague” was Sylvanas’s idea.
It honestly wouldn’t make sense to unleash it on her allies (that being the horde) and the Alliance. Since there could be a possibility that it might fail to kill Arthas. Which it does. At best it just gave him a nasty cough. Plus it would be weird that Sylvanas would be involved in a Burning Legion plot to summon a form of Sargeras from the Undercity. Since she overthrew the Legion’s forces in Lordaeron during the civil war of the plaguelands.
It was clear that Alex wanted to retroactively claim that the Wrathgate was meant to foreshadow something like Teldrassil but it made no sense. Thank god Blizzard reverted that terrible comment. So while using the new plague (now called blight cause reasons) at the Wrathgate was Sylvanas’s plans. Using it on the Alliance and Horde’s forces were not. That was clear from day 1.
creating the new plague was her idea and thus using it only on the Lich King was as well.
Lady Sylvanas has called upon the Royal Apothecary Society. The Dark Lady believes our knowledge coupled with the newfound magic will provide the key to Arthas's demise. She has challenged us to concoct a new plague, a plague deadlier than any ailment on Azeroth. This new disease will bring Arthas's Scourge Army to ruin.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/A_New_Plague
Using it on the Alliance and Horde was not. That is when the coup happens.
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I dont think it was clear, exactly, except that in Cata the 3rd person omniscient narrator states that it was a coup and the forsaken were wrongly blamed.
Sylvanas’ pearl clutch “I barely escaped with my life!” quote seemed incredulous at the time.
Yes… thats why we tested it on the living… death to the living.
(Im being sarcastic for humor, not to ridicule you. Your perspective is valid, you’d have to really read into it to see it otherwise.)
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Yeah it always felt weird that you would test it on the living when it was commissioned to be used on the scourge. I provided the quote that says as such in an edit.
But I guess you could argue it was to be used on the Cult of the Damned. In which majority of its members are living.
No point killing the undead with it if the Cult of the Damned can bring them back.
But there is also this bit from the fourth quest in the Trisfall part of the chain.
It contains a subtle hint of what The Dark Lady has planned for the rest of Azeroth.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/A_New_Plague_(4)
So I guess the seeds of Sylvanas becoming the “Lich Queen” were always there. But there are a lot of seeds that Blizzard planted during vanilla that wouldn’t see the light of day for many many expansions. To the point that EoN contradicts this bit of foreshadowing.
Which is funny as WC3 - Wrath Sylvanas was all about “undeath is a curse. We will just kill the Lich King then move on”. So why would she want to turn everyone into undead or flat out kill them?
Ah vanilla WoW.
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