I know it was swarming with Mawsworn.
Couldn’t even kill Sylvanas when Tyrande had a killing stroke.
Ardenweald objectively has the least to do with Mawsworn. What you’re thinking of is the invasion, which ended as soon as its objective was complete.
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So I’ll approach this from a very different angle:
Given what we know now, which isn’t the entirety of the implementation of Shadowlands story-wise, but which is almost everything - which would you prefer?
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They pursue the duck method. They try to portray everything going smoothly while frantically kicking underwater to move beyond this current narrative into basically anything else, with the assumption that once away from this dumpster fire, not mention it again and hope people forget it. To lend credibility to this methodology, see the transition from WoD to Legion.
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They pursue the ostrich method. Shut out all the critics, bury their collective heads in the ground, and focus on delivering their product, with the assumption that without any of the relevant distractions (ranging from fighting devs and lawsuits to COVID) they can do better. To lend credibility to this methodology, gameplay has improved since 9.1.5. They can do better, but they have been doing better than before. And we can only point out how low the storyline has gone, by looking at other previous storyline successes.
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They pursue the killdeer pretend strategy and make everything undone. Everything we’ve seen in four years has been pretend. It never happened. At the 10.0 pre-patch we have a Brady Bunch moment (via this being a vision from N’zoth, or the galactic rewrite machine, or the First Ones, or just having everything reconciled, Teldrassil rebuilt/Sylvanas finishes her dailies/Elune sends all the Night Elves back to life/etc. and everything resets to the end of Legion).
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They pursue the Deadpool strategy and break the fourth wall to level with us as people. They release a statement saying (loosely), “We had a lot going on vis a vis lawsuits, personnel issues, and a pandemic. Even with those hinderances we should have done better with respect to the game, for you the players, for the story of Warcraft, and even for our own developers. We’re focused on doing better in the future, but please bear with us as we try to remedy the issues we caused. We’re open to any/all constructive feedback on how we can do that, but we ask for your patience as it will likely involve retconning a lot of things that happened.”
I honestly don’t know which strategy is best. I want to move away from this story as much as possible. I want them to go back to delivering some of the products we used to see - Goblins and Forsaken are a recipe for comedy. There are serious storylines, but in between there are also storylines like the Zuldazar Goblin quest to get two dinos to mate (it was pretty funny). I want this whole thing to have been a bad dream that we unwrite. I also want to see them admit that it was a failure, they know they screwed up, but they will do better, mostly because it means they aren’t actually proud of the product they produced (regardless of the current party line).
I honestly don’t know.
More like Chardenweald. Amirite? Amirite?
Wait. More like Voredenweald.
Seriously, they’ve produced more seemingly unintentional jokes from this dumpster fire that I don’t know how they don’t notice.
Not sure if this meant Tyrande had a stroke or Tyrande was in position to kill Sylvanas. Both actually fit, which is hilarious. Toss it on the pile.
Trying to deliver the killing stroke to Sylvanas, via choking an undead banshee, caused Tyrande to have a stroke at the storyline.
I wonder if Malfurion would need to eat her if she had become a vegetable. Alas, we missed out on another great plot point.
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Personally, I just want a mechagnome scenario. Maybe a group of high elves left before the Scourge/someone had a vision about it. They decided to create a town/city somewhere and were living in relative peace until something bad happens. Boom, Alliance comes in, saves the day and now we have a high elven/void elven capital. Done.
Again, this is stupid. Alleria, probably one of the first Female RTS characters ever made was in Warcraft 2. Heck, if you want strong female characters we had the like of Agwynn, Alexstraza and Garona being part of said lore.
The vore thing isn’t that bad.
The book is great. Don’t let random criticism from people who haven’t even read the book, just reacting to spoilers, influence your opinion to not get the book.
Not getting the book was mainly just to spite book sales.
I don’t like hiding (basically) the entire narrative outside of the game.
I don’t like the story they’ve decided to pursue - even with the caveat that they’ve tried to provide some justification within the book.
I don’t like the end result with the justification in the book because it’s an awful precedent. I like that they made it clear Arthas = evil, he didn’t just not follow the Jailer’s plan due to his own quest for power, he sexually assaulted Sylvanas and tortured her. Except in-game, none of this is covered (I’m not advocating for depicting sexual assault in-game).
I really don’t like how they’ve handled everything related to said assault:
- She’s violated and tortured and then commits suicide when her abuser is dead (an awful message to portray).
- After her suicide, she’s taken to the Maw, and it’s left uncertain as to whether it’s a byproduct of a ridiculously awful system, or whether it’s due to the machinations of a villain (yay, suicide = hell).
- She makes a vague deal with the person who empowered her abuser (even if it wasn’t his desired goal - according to him, WoW Satan who allowed her to be tortured in hell) - maybe to just get out of Hell or maybe because she believes the system is horribly flawed.
- Due to some ability for the Jailer to basically see the exact specifics of the future, she’s convinced to become worse than her abuser (playing into the trope of victims becoming abusers).
- The afterlife system does appear to be horribly flawed (Zovaal’s machinations aside) and in fact her actions help fix it (not to justify those actions, but at least to make them seem a believable reason to follow a certain path). Forget being separated from your loved ones - you’re also put to work in the area that the magical sorting robot with a soul thinks you’re best suited to do.
- Oh and the scale of said crimes seems pretty off when compared to the entire universe. Still no clue why however many Night Elves on Azeroth were murdered matters when we’re talking about the universe at-large. I understand the Burning Legion scoured lots of life, but literally this was the most empowering way to do it? Adding to the fact that all deaths were already flowing there, no one knew, and it ticked off the murder hobos that omniscient Zovaal knew would defeat him? What?
- It already makes it that Sylvanas has actions, inner monologues, and goals that do not match at all. If she raised all of Stormwind into Forsaken… then their souls do not go to the Maw. Raising more Scourge would be counterproductive to the Jailer, right? Is she playing 4d chess against herself inside her own mind lest anyone read her thoughts?
Instead, in-game we’re left with Sylvanas’ soul split, but she still basically was just unjustifiably evil. The rest isn’t explored with any depth and is practically not mentioned. To be honest, given how horribly they treat sexual assault victims
Wowhead providing the ending was sufficient for me to feel okay with skipping the book and reading spoilers online.
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Arthas’s allegorical SA of Sylvanas was always present in the narrative, even in WC3 he denies her consent to be raised, he says he’s going to do things to her, he tells her it’s her fault that he’s doing this to her.
Arthas has always been a pure villian.
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I’ve heard that Dreadmoore has been seething in the story forum discord about you buying the book.
More people should buy it to piss him off.
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As a Sylvanas fan my reading of the book is heavily biased in her favour, maybe all the anti-Sylvanas folks should buy the book to get an “honest” reading of the story. /s
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Only BG I think I outright dislike. Those pillars spawn so randomly there’s a dumb luck factor to it that really makes it unfun at least as a rated BG.
Like in AB by contrast if you coordinate it right you can get a sizeable force to paratroop into BS from LM by having a Mage cast Slow Fall on already mounted players.
Beautiful if pulled off well but there’s the risk of people jumping at the wrong angle or everybody not doing it together so they just float in one by one to be torn to shreds. So it’s a high risk, high reward tactic that requires a solid amount of group cohesion and discipline to pull off. Do it wrong and you could suffer a game losing setback.
With SS though it’s just kinda a Chaotic run around. And more than once I’ve seen the pillars just appear to be in cahoots with one side as they keep spawning closer to your main group of players.
Definitely fun for unrated. Especially on my Hunter where I feel like a commando using tracking, camouflage and ice traps to snatch the nodes. But it’s frustrating rated as there’s no real grand plan to pull off.
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The ending reminds me of Batman.
The Banshee Queen isn’t completely gone. One day she may be the hero we need.
I think the most controvercial aspect of this book will be that it destroys some Alliance established opinion on Sylvanas. Like the Wrathgate, she’s innocent of the Wrathgate, her excitement of the plague was all aboit hiw it can be used to kill Arthas and the scourge. She was hestitant knowing this weapon could also be used against the Forsaken. Basically it confirms what Forsaken players knew to be true about our Queen.
Until she met the Jailer, she was the ultimate protector/defender of her people and she loved the Forsaken. They were her people.
The Jailer could be meta representation of Alex Afrasabi.
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Oh please, if anything that was just a soft retcon. Heck, she had no qualms about using the plague/experimenting on Forsaken in the Arthas novel.
With any luck she is gone for good. Heck, the only time I want to see her back so we can march her straight back to Pelagos to get his final judgement on her soul.
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She experimented on Forsaken criminals in the Arthas novel. Only the bad criminals of the Forsaken were given to the Apothecaries for “punishment” aren’t you anti-Sylvanas types all about punishment and justice?
C.R.I.M.I.N.A.L.S.
No she didnt. In fact the novel made it quite clear she did not know if said Forsaken was truly a criminal/did not cared if he was innocent.
This was from the prespective of Sylvanas.
The same Apothecaries that served the Legion? Yes, I am all about justice and from the looks of it Sylvanas did not care one bit about it.
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Why does that even matter?
Her first resoponse was to make sure the Apothecaries were expirimenting on criminals. then she says “even if they are not they are still serving the Forsaken.” Killing Arthas was in service to the Forsaken, it didn’t matter how many of them died as long as they were free of him forever afterwards.
You fail to understand that “by any means necessary for our continued survival” is NOT “EVIL.” She’s a character who has been focused on the survival of her self and her people. The parameters for that survival is by whatever means necessary. That being said, she still hopes that they are only experimenting on criminals and not regular law-abiding Forsaken.
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I’m sorry if my post didn’t convey this, but my commentary was mainly aimed at people who were saying, “Oh, but it’s not spelled out. Arthas really wasn’t that bad. People are projecting with sexual assault and reading into something that isn’t there.”
I’m very glad they made it quite clear. Hopefully folks stop with that garbage.
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The diehard Alliance Arthas fans won’t because they have already ignored canon this long, I doubt they are going to stop now.
Cdevs could outright come out and say “Arthas is evil.” and some people here will say to them “Do you have a source for that? Is that explicitly stated somewhere?”
It’s wilful ignorance and nothing more.
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Funny, I seem to recall a blond prince who decided it was not evil as well to do whatever it took to defend his people/get vengence on the person who did those awful things to him/them.
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And I recall The Accuser saying “Failing your people is not why you are here.” or something like that. Not even the Venthyr consider doing what is necessary for survival a punishable sin.
That’s what makes the Venthyr as a covenant so damn interesting. They are not Biblical when it comes to sin. Kael’thas’s greatest sin was his pride, not that he turned to the Burning Legion to save his people, his torment was that he failed his people.
Did you even play Shadowlands?
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Many_Sins_of_Kael%27thas_Sunstrider`Preformatted text`
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I cant believe I have to spell it out. I wasnt talking about Kael(although we do have a good deal of blond princes falling into darkness) I was talking about Arthas.
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