Out of curiosity, do you have text stating Sylvanas is the best archer?
I’m curious on this one, because I’ve seen Jaina referred to as the, ‘most powerful, living, mortal sorceress.’ In other words, she’s not at Azshara’s level, but she’s not immortal so that still holds technically true.
There are none.
And golden introdused jaina as this. Seemengly both now
“It wasn’t good enough to be the best hunter in her family.” page 3 of EoN.
Alleria’s whole nightmare in Shadows Rising where she’s afraid she can’t beat Sylvanas, because Sylvanas was always better than her.
In War Crimes, Sylvanas shoots the knocked arrow out of Veressa’s bow. I imagine that takes a great deal of skill and precision. And Veressa notes that only one person she knows has that kind of accuracy… it’s not Alleria.
Alleria has her own skill set, Alleria is passionate about what is right, and she’s also a better people person, she’s more agreeable and well liked. And she probably would have made a fair leader, but when it comes to pure skill Sylvanas is the clear winner.
I am a sucker for that trope.
It was a good scene too “Careful sister, this is one banshee you don’t want to kill.” Golden can be good sometimes, which makes it all the more disappointing when she’s bad.
in this novel it’s very clear that the reason Sylvanas is excellent skillwise, is due to her cold pragmatic ability to disassociate emotionally from her prey. A skill that makes her a cruel Banshee Queen when she’s dead. But it also makes her cold and detached in relationships, as we know that makes her a strict tiger mom of a leader.
Liressa was strict and demanded perfection. Sylvanas surpasses her mother in that regard. Sylvanas is Liressa’s legacy. She tells her mother after Alleria refuses the position of Ranger General, "I may have been your second choice, but I will prove to you, I am not second best." That’s a pretty badass moment for Sylvanas.
I think shes a poet. She has wonderful prose. Her dialogue and the way she can really make you empathize with the characters.
I think that has some downsides when it comes to driving a nuanced narrative. Especially one that doesnt end when you close the book. Namely, when she makes the reader feel something independent of the characters.
It is fair and fine to have differing opinions. There are folks in the Alliance Playerbase who want Silvermoon and have wanted it for years, even before Void Elves were a thing, just so they could RP their Humans as High Elves in it.
Since the return of Alleria and Turalyon, at least there is a lore basis as well as Characters in the setting expressing the desire for it. I don’t mind it, because these discussions about claiming Silvermoon were already going on among the playerbase, anyway.
Sort of like the notion of “dislodging the Alliance from Kalimdor” is not a new thing. After all, this is a game about war and conquest. I am not opposed to drama in Quelthalas, as long as it is a fun and interesting story.
Some posters want immunity for their favorite races and locations… but I am not like that. If Blizzard makes the Alliance victorious and they conquer Silvermoon… or Alleria wipes Quelthalas off the map on accident with the Void… or Sylvanas defends it successfully and becomes a Horde Hero, again… I just want an interesting story. And High Elf Drama is a big part of why I started liking Warcraft during WC 3.
There seems to be a ton of Blood Elf stuff coming. That makes me excited and also nervous. It feels like they are gifting us (the Blood Elf Playerbase) with content because we are about to take one for the team, so to speak -like they are prepping us to take a big loss for the sake of high powered narrative drama.
I hope we Sindorei fans can comport ourselves better than the Night Elf Playerbase. The Sindorei are used to tragedy, as a part of their introduction, so the fanbase might be a fan of it.
If you are right, I hope the devs dont pull the ripcord on their story because of some complaining. It’s not a real complaint, cdev. Its just bloodelf victimhood identity.
Yep. It’s kinda a joke at this point.
Also if you don’t like PvP then you probably wouldn’t seek out a WPvP achievement.
The fights are actually quite boring. The threat of players turning up is what makes them interesting. Otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward fight with just an unusual beefy guard with three abilities.
In BFA they upped their damage at least. Which was needed I’d seen Blood DKs straight up solo the likes of Tyrande and Sylvanas.
I didn’t notice this until I saw Baine giving a group quite a headache. They didn’t notice me which gave me just enough time to Mind Control the tank which sicked the big man on the rest of the party. I promptly died but so had they by the time I ghost walked back.
Didn’t really feel like a dick move. They’re attacking Thunderbluff. I’m kinda supposed to do something.
It’s not like it was made for night elf players either, considering the blight moonwell with the Forsaken banner over it, Horde in overkill mode even with the NW buff active or other nonsense once again spitting on the night elves, not to mention a complete absence of Tyrande and Malfurion in their own Warfront.
Maiev also lost her teeth trying to earn back a traitorous coward, instead of wanting to tear her to bits.
What ever. I have made posts about maybe Alleria accidentally turning the Sunwell into a Void Well. Which could turn every Blood Elf in Quelthalas into a Void Elf against their will, making the few Blood Elves who were not there the last of their people. Or this new Void Well consuming Quelthalas entirely and removing it from the map.
It isn’t that I want this bad stuff. Bad stuff is going to happen, so I hope it has a good story. And I don’t want my favorite Characters and Races and Locations immune to bad stuff. They can participate.
I like the Dwarves, but they have very little story and screen time. Maybe because more folks play Night Elves, Blood Elves, Orcs, and Humans, these races get all the focus. Some Dwarf fans see that as a blessing.
It seems that way because its a relic of a game with more focus on the open world. An alliance invasion was something everyone could get involved in, when you couldnt queue up for random dungeons and raids. You didnt need a big active guild. It was spontaneous.
Its essentially non-instanced AV, and saying you shouldnt try to stop it is like saying you shouldnt defend Drek or Van.
I miss the World Defense channel. I really used to love attacking towns and Classic reminded me why. The guards were an actual threat. They could quickly overwhelm you with numbers if you weren’t careful.
Today though they’re just a token presence. If you want to attack say Raven’s Hill or the Xroads the guards can’t stop you and it’s unlikely any player is going to come around because they’ve no way of knowing.
Interestingly the Argent Dawn has actually scary guards. They’ve a knock down ability so you can and will be stun locked as they take turns stomping you to death.
Just giving certain guards some stuns, roots or anything really would immediately make them more effective.
This is the same character that kept throwing temper tantrums in BFA. Because over the top shrieking prick is the only way they know how to write villains apparently.
Circling back to this because it touches on an opinion of mine that is likely not shared by many. I have always felt that WoW has suffered from not properly addressing the sins of WC3. I understand that WC3 is beloved by many, but as a lead in to WoW as a two faction game based on the Horde/Alliance it created many problems that Blizz has never, in my view, properly addressed.
What did WC3 do?
First, the good - it gave us the foundational narrative for the Horde in WoW - outcast races banding together against a world that seems to determined to hate them. A narrative that resonated and still resonates with many players. It gave us the Night Elves as a mysterious powerful race determined protect Azeroth against the demonic hordes. A race that clearly struck a chord with many players and one that they wish WoW could recapture.
Second, the bad - it absolutely utterly destroyed the Alliance. Everything that had been build up over the course of the first two games was pulled down and destroyed. Arguably there wasn’t even an Alliance campaign in WC3. What was sold as the Alliance campaigns in WC3 and TFT were functionally the origin stories for the Forsaken and the Blood Elves.
So now, we jump to WoW - Blizz wants to have two factions - Alliance and Horde. Problem - coming out of WC3 and TFT, all that we know is left of the Alliance is Jaina’s ragtag band in Theramore. So Blizz has to cobble together an EK Alliance and some rationale as to why the EK wasn’t completely overrun by the Scourge. So they plop down SW and hand wave that the Scourge never got around to doing anything about SW or the Dwarves or the Gnomes. Fair enough. But they don’t flesh out SW or even the Dwarves in any way to give them any depth to create a sense of player attachment to SW, in particular. And even those little bits that in Vanilla hinted a deeper possibilities are excised in subsquent expansions - House of Nobles? Irrelevant. Brotherhood of the Horse? Who? Silver Hand? Neutral. Dwarven Senate? Irrelevant.
At every step, Blizz has chosen to write the Alliance as more and more bland. The downfall of races like the Worgen and the Night Elves is because they got put on the Alliance, they get put into the bland blender. In my view, they just don’t have any passion for writing the Alliance or the individual Alliance races so they write them in the most generic way possible.
So when some Alliance fans cling to the Seven Kingdoms or Lordaeron, I have sympathy for their position because Blizz has made limited to no effort to give those fans something to invest in.
tldr: Blizz never properly addressed the fallout of WC3 for the Alliance and it shows.
Well… Sylvanas is a shattered person with an extremely toxic personality. She is a shrieking banshee.
Her temper tantrums, denials, emotional swings, and dual personas have been a part of her character for a long time. At the very least, as long as they have been giving her character more depth, it has been bi-polar.
I hear ya but the 7 Kingdoms really aren’t all that interesting. They all got assigned a color and one thing. Stromgarde has its army and Kul Tiras it’s navy and Lordaeron its churches and Alterac its crime and so on.
Now as we’ve seen from Kul Tiras these can be retroactively made fascinating. I love Kul Tiras. Its the first human faction that feels human. There’s corruption and folk songs and superstitions. A lot of it looks like it’d reek of stale smoke and rum.
And I mean that in the best way. It seems like a place where you’d hear
“Oi yew looking at me bird?!”
Before getting head butt by a drunk who felt a random act of violence would impress his girlfriend.
But it remains weird that between intergalactic holy crystal goats, Victorian werewolves, fae wild amazon warriors and a fun sized nuclear power with Star Wars tier tech, they keep making it the human show. And only very recently made the humans actually interesting to learn about.
I think the Horde’s handling in BFA can best be summed up by the Vulprera unlock quest.
When they send you to go sort out a peon worker’s strike I immediately felt a sense of dread. Because I figured they were going to make me brutally suppress their protest and force them back to work on threats of pain and death.
This is about cute Fox characters joining the Horde
In retrospect I probably should’ve known it was going to be light, low stakes fun. But as BFA was mostly saying
“Dear God what are they going to make me do now?”
I was fully prepared I’d have to commit yet another act of wanton cruelty.
I personally don’t really care about Quel’Thalas being taken by the Alliance. For the Void/High Elves, i think Dalaran is a better capitol for them and makes sense. They can work without Quel’Thalas.
But i could potentially see them using that as a possible point of conflict if there’s ever another faction war. The roots for some kind of conflict based on Quel’Thalas has already been planted to some degree anyway.
Which was really funny the first time.