Let us put aside the pants-on-head dumpster fire that is the “everybody dies” “leak”.
What, dear reader, do you suppose happens in the following rough scenario:
Either:
– Sylvanas attacks Thunder bluff and is opposed, but defeats the combined defenders.
– Sylvanas attack Stormwind while the defenders are at Thunder bluff, and siezes the city.
I’d rather not get hung up on character deaths, as I’m not really concerned with who is a fan or hater of what character, but what actions do you suppose a victorious Sylvanas then takes?
Does she have designs on the Alliance? The Rebels? What happens with her loyalists? Blighted Lordaeron? Darkshore? Stormwind?
We have plenty of threads reacting to leaks, or gesticulating wildly about her 4d chess and/or the shadowlands, but I don’t see much about what people think she would actually do, should she win the war. (Yes, I know in BtS she wants to raise Stormwind as forsaken because evil, lets not over dwell on that!)
TBH … that is THE biggest question, and one decidedly difficult to answer without understanding her motives for this war in the first place.
We KNOW she wants to attack SW and raise its citizenry into Undeath. We DON’T know if that is meant to be the END of her goals, or merely an instrumental step towards them. We also DON’T know what she’ll do with the other Horde races in such a situation (I mean, she wont really need us anymore with her army bloated by the people of SW to that degree).
Will SW be the end of it, or will she continue to slaughter the Alliance? What will she do with the Alliance races afterwards? What will she do with the living Horde? I honestly have absolutely no idea…
We dont really know cause her motivations were never clear.
She goes from Isolationist in MoP to full on Garrosh in BFA in just a couple years because blizz is terrible at writing.
Even in BFA she goes from targeting SW in Before the Storm to willing to just smash them in the face and hope the Alliance crumbles from within in A Good War.
I feel we had two schools of thought at Blizz with different ideas on her story and both dont agree.
Seems to be fitting for the alliance to tap in a obvious trap. I’m sure Anduin will send his remaining main-army to defend Thunderbluff while letting Stormwind completley defenseless.
we don’t even know what she wants. like… is stupid.
So i will go ahead with my theory.
n’zoth has been using her to wage war and create chaos in the world, so, in this theory she would kill everyone who is not a servant of the black empire! horde, alliance, whatever! all death!
all eyes shall be opened
I agree with everyone else who said it’s almost impossible to know. In A Good War, she tells Saurfang that her goal was to get the Alliance to break apart on its own due to tensions following her seizing Teldrassil. From there, the Horde would make a separate peace deal with each former Alliance member state, thereby destroying the reasoning of the Alliance’s existence.
But we know from later on that this isn’t her true motive, and she always anticipated a world war would break out from her actions. Her only plan for the Alliance that we know for sure is she wants to kill everyone in Stormwind and raise them into undeath. Anything beyond that is a crapshoot.
We can thank Blizz for keeping the motives of the primary antagonist completely secret. Sacrificing story cohesion for a twist ending.
Honestly, a little part of me would be super happy if it turned out she was an unwitting agent of Yogg’Saron this whole time. That (like Xal implied) Heyla was “turned” by Loken (who was himself turned by Yogg). That Sylvie’s Val’kyr have been playing her for a fool, and their too-good-to-be-true deal to get her out of hell … really was JUST that “too-good-to-be-true”.
They are in the service of Heyla, and that afterlife that Sylvie experienced was a real place, but was not meant to be her destined local (and that like Vol’jin and Illidan, was stolen to a little horrific corner of the Shadowlands to compel her into moving in a direction another entity benefits from). She’s long overdue for some absolutely horrific Karma, and her realizing that she turned herself into Arthas to avoid a hell that was never meant to be … would be a step in the right direction.
Does she really “see the World as it really is”? Or does she just see the world “as someone wanted her to”? Perhaps the God who’s blood she splatted herself against to free her soul from the curse of undeath? Perhaps the self proclaimed God of Death? Perhaps the one titled “Hope’s End”, with her claiming "hope is a Disease and she must cut it out" and that she can “Kill Hope”?
Or perhaps … that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
But that’s what makes it so believable. Blizzard would be moronic enough to take a character that’s antagonized the Alliance for 15 years (and destroyed the founding identity of the New Horde by making it a warcrime simulator for 2 years) and tell all the Alliance/Honor Horde players that not only did they fail to outwit 993874D Chessmaster Sylvanas, not only did they fail to prevent her killing almost every notable character in existence, but they should feel grateful that they didn’t because the genocidal, baby-burning, civilian-killer is the true Hero of the story - deserving to be celebrated and elevated above the players and every other character we care about.
Now let me be clear - Sylvanas wanting to kill us all to fight a “greater evil” is a good decision. It’s better than just her wanting to kill us cause she’s evil. I just don’t want her to be presented as vastly more capable than every one us or for the narrative to shift from the factions opposing Sylvanas to supporting her on a dime.
Honestly they should have done it from the start that the one who burned teldrassil was n’zoth at least it would make us angry at the villiain. and we wouln’t have to deal with this dumb faction war.
Right now he is just an adorable octopus.
i feel the same, is blizzard really willing to throw under a bus every single character that we care about just for her?
like who is even going to be left playing after that apart the sylvanas supporters?
With the entirety of the OP in mind, this is what I would suggest:
I have often called it a “Galadriel moment”. A moment where Sylvanas has everything, and more - but she gives up total power for the sake of Azeroth. For the greater good.
Sylvanas wins the peace on the Horde’s terms. As she stated in A Good War.
Instead of killing and raising all of Stormwind, she shows mercy. Perhaps Stormwind is split in two, like Berlin. With a portion controlled by the Horde. To keep them in line, and counter any future “Stormheim-like” Alliance aggression.
The Shattered Mask hangs above the Alliance’s hearth, as a symbol of the Horde’s mercy and vengeance.
Or she goes the completely other way, slaughtering a large percentage of the citizenry of SW; and turning the rest into cattle for the harvesting of parts for her Forsaken. She will then proceed to use her self-replicating army to wipe out all opposition, and those races that cannot be raised will be eradicated from the face of Azeroth. She becomes the sole ruling power in all of Azeroth, creating a utopia for the Forsaken … and a unescapable dystopian nightmare for everyone else.
Would you people stop on this she doesn’t want to raise all of Stormwind, just part of it to ensure Horde dominance. It also makes logical sense to only raise part of it since, until they get more Valkyr, the Forsaken need people to keep living and dying to make replacement parts for them.
It isn’t even stated anywhere she wants to raise ALL of Stormwind.
What Slyvanas’ victory looks like its likely using misdirecting the Alliance to Thrunderbluff, while she invades Stormwind, and then raising enough of the guard and cemetery to swell the Forsaken ranks that a siege would be unfeasible. With Stormwind held hostage Slyvanas then forces the Alliance to agree to her terms in fighting Nzoth and then making peace that is favorable to the Horde, but lets the Alliance races have just enough that people don’t reject it out of hand.
You mean like she could have done with Teldrassil had she actually committed to holding it hostage, rather than burning it to the ground? You’re essentially stating she should do exactly what she was supposed to do with the big Elven Tree capital; with the Stone Human one?
One of these two things you can’t occupy sucessfully when your dumbass let the world’s most powerful druid live. I’ll give you a hint its not the stone city.
I really got the impression that she had just found a way to add insult to injury to the NEs for Malf going down (to “An Orc with an Axe”). I’m also personally guessing she got a bit too cocky on the eve of victory, and decided it was a good opportunity to answer that question of what would happen should she deny Saurfang his honor (that she spent like half a page pondering over)?
I don’t think for a moment that she thought he’d refuse to follow orders in such a situation, and would kill Malf and deal with the fallout of Saurfang afterwards.
