I mean, Sylvanas sounded the retreat as soon as it became apparent that the Horde lines had broken, and they were about to be overrun. Varian had just as much time to retreat as the Horde did, it was his positioning that screwed him and the Alliance. But, truly, there was nothing more the Horde could have done by staying there … and the very fact that they blamed Sylvanas was super weird. She wasn’t the Warchief, we held a public funeral for Vol’jin, the Alliance had to have realized what had pushed her to sound the retreat.
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The progression of the Sylvannas story is so disjointed that it smacks revision of decisions, perhaps multiples of such.
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Honestly, I think it was less that they didn’t plan to villain bat her, but that the path to doing so was only one of several. Sort of like Cata Garrosh. There were elements of her character that absolutely played into what we saw in BfA. Maybe not her “Death” Powerups, but nothing truly could be more Sylvie than using others as tools for personal objectives; then discarding them when the ceased to be of sufficient use. She’s been doing that since WC3 for goodness sake.
There are these very conflicting characteristics and portrayals between the Sylvie that could have led to BfA Sylvie, and the ones that lead her somewhere else. Granted, its also true its stupid hard to judge her actions on face value, since EoN made it canon that she’s someone who absolutely will say and do one thing while thinking or intending something completely different.
It would have at least made more sense if they hadn’t featured a wildly more heroic and self-sacrificing version of herself in the Legion/BFA cinematics than the one they went with even in those same expansions. Diving into an enemy siege tower and then the front lines isn’t making good use of your Bulwark, Cinema-Sylvie. Isn’t she meant to be terrified of death?
(I remain the saltiest son of a brick at the BFA cinematic’s bait and switch. I will continue to whine. I have no shame on this matter.)
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Oh absolutely friggen lutely. It was bonkers.
Like, even I, one of the most skeptical people when it comes to her actions went into the Legion intro and was like “Huh, why is she being treated like Warchief? Oh, because Vol’jin was going to die … and a really lackluster way, Got it. Oh well, seems she’s acting pretty gallant right now if nothing else”. Thinking maybe we might OK, and just being immensely salty that they killed my favorite Horde character to Trash Mob after doing nothing with him in the Warchief spot he truly earned.
And then I made the mistake of going to Stormheim … and all that optimism of what they planned to do with her vanished entirely. Only cemented by the fact that Stormheim is quite literally the only things she did in Legion after the Broken Shore intro… She was being settup to stir crap up and do something horrific on a larger scale than she would have been able to as just the Forsaken leader. Just like the BfA intro, the Legion intro was a damned lie.
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Mind sending me a link to the copy of BFA you’re playing where the Alliance were officially victorious, because it sure as S-HIT wasn’t the one I played. We ‘stalemated’ with the Horde, just as we did in MOP.
Alliance aren’t asking for reparations because we think it’ll fix what BFA did, we want reperations because we’re so jaded from BFA we believe it’s the only compensation we’ll get.
It’s like someone losing a loved one from a crane collapsing on them because of negligence from the company it belonged to, money won’t bring them back, but the company can’t get away scot free.
Oh wow, golly gee f’ing wiz I can’t even begin to describe how pathetic that is.
“The Horde may have utterly dumpstered one of the Alliance races and received no penalty whatsoever, but this time the Alliance gets to be top Janitor in cleaning up the world’s/Universes mess”
Seriously I just played an expansion where I am apparently the chosen one with a magical necklace to fix the world’s problems while the Horde still tried to kill me and I couldn’t focus all my efforts to stomp them or save my allies because the world needs me.
I want the opposite, I want an expansion where the Alliance becomes fully self centered and focuses all our resources on fixing all our local problems while the Horde can focus on world ending issues themselves and all reap all the rewards from it(Absolutely nothing).
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I mean, if it were up to me, I’d let you have them.
…when the rest of the NEs get the **** out of Kalimdor.
Not me. My takeaway from Stormheim at the time, was that she was trying to obtain a new, more stable way to allow the Forsaken people to multiply. Like “If I control the Queen of the Valkyr, I’ll be able to make all the Forsaken into Nathanoses”, or something. Whole beings instead of falling apart corpses.
Which was doing right by her people as far as I was concerned. And exactly the kind of behavior I wanted from the new Warchief.
Other than losing our coolest ****ing lore character.
Hey, me too!
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I really hope you don’t mean Sylvanas, losing her wasn’t a punishment as she was evil, a detriment to the Horde, that is Horde cleaning out.
I’d love if we got rid of Anduin cause he does nothing but drag down the Alliance.
If you mean Saurfang he pretty much got the best conclusion to his story he could get.
I agree with all of your post except the Saurfang part. He was supposed to be the Chuck Norris of WoW. He should’ve been on a battlefield on his own fighting a massive crowd of enemies who couldn’t bring him down because he kept cleaving them apart. Since they couldn’t kill him they’d have to drop a nuke directly on top of him to succeed. Not have him give up to Sylvanas.
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Nah son. She was easily our coolest character up until BFA. Our little edgelady was far more interesting and entertaining than the parade of noble savages and the guy who leads my race who’s name I didn’t even learn until MoP.
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I might have thought this … if the Forsaken even knew why they were dying for her in that zone. Which they don’t. I also might have thought this if I didn’t decide to jump on my one Alliance Alt for the first time in ages just out of curiosity, to see her mutter some nonsense about “A New World Order” in Helheim. Something she does not do with the Horde PC. You know … the exact same damned terminology Arthas used when he killed Terenas. Yeah, several events in the WoT were certainly not the first of many Arthas parallels she was given.
It was at that moment that I realized that they did not kill Vol’jin out of some misplaced belief that she could fill the role of “Good, Competent, Nuanced Warchief” better than Vol’jin. They did so because they could not figure out a way to ensure Jin worked with whatever horror story they were cooking up for the Horde, and that the horrific version of Sylvie from EoN was still alive and kicking. Hell, she was thriving. So … I took a few months break from WoW right after Legion Launch, and then spent all of BFA just waiting for her to betray us and leave.
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I just assumed they did it because she was the most popular Horde character once Thrall left. And Blizzard wanted the best known character to be the face of half the player base.
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Except Vol’jin gained immense popularity of his own during the MoP days, and was the last of the original WC3 leaders left. So, no, the only people who thought that was the case were Sylvanas fans. Even if Blizz’s writing is trash, there is normally a functionalist method to the madness … and the only reason that Blizz would do what they did with Jin on the Broken Shore was that Jin’s character as Warchief was an obstacle to the story they wanted to tell.
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Dude, no. We’re not just talking about the WoW playerbase. In terms of overall popularity and recognition, Sylvanas was probably…I’d say 6th in all of Warcraft. After Thrall, Jaina, Arthas, Malfurian and Illidan.
Thrall was gone, and the rest were either Alliance or villains. She was easily the best known Horde character at that point. Vol’jin had made huge strides in his time as Warchief, but he is still always kinda viewed as Thrall’s right hand. Sylvanas had basically become Warcraft’s Kerrigan.
Blizzard knows. They had the hard data. They knew who was getting the most charm bracelets every year.
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So your argument is that people who traditionally don’t pay attention to the story and like Sylvie cuz “Hot Edgy Elf” were the reason they: Killed off the sole remaining WC3 Leader in the Horde, who spent nearly 2 expansions earning that Warchief spot; Rendering a PC race completely without representation and inert in Story relevance; Replaced him with a character who has never in her history ever represented the Horde well, in fact its stated she’s outright using the Faction in the Forsaken intro; who quite frankly only had any real relevance in WoW within Cata; and then proceeded to do nothing with her in Legion but have her go off to some zone with ONLY her Forsaken on some secret shifty mission that she only knew the details of?
No. Blizz may be really iffy writers, but no. They put her in that position to do something that they couldn’t justifiably get Vol’jin to do.
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I think his point is that they probably put Sylvanas there because she’s way more marketable, and spinning her as a villain in that spot means further marketability and drama for the next expansion than if the character actually played the role straight.
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I agree, but don’t count out maybe some internal discussions among Blizzard about not wanting to too publicly advertise Vol’jin, who has… some prominent cultural baggage associated with his aesthetic and themes. Blizzard has quietly been cleaning up the Troll roster’s more egregious stereotypes and I expect Loa’jin to emerge looking a lot less, uh, Vol’jin, if you catch my meaning.
Sylvanas certainly was needed for a plot purpose, but I suspect there’s a reason, at least to some extent, Vol’jin was kept out of expac cinematics.
Sadly, it turns out that was just fanon all along.
With the playerbase. But he wasn’t recognizable to people who didn’t already play, while Sylvanas might be.
Sylvanas led the Forsaken in WC3:TFT. And as for “original,” the Forsaken have never had any other leader since they became Forsaken.
It’s plausible to me as a marketing decision. Obviously it was a terrible idea from a story standpoint, but we know that the story department at Blizzard is at the mercy of upper management, and upper management may have decided “Hot edgy elves sell.”
I’m not saying your theory is wrong; I’m just explaining the alternate interpretation I put on it at the time.
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But then they went and made two cinematics of the same quality featuring Zekhan. Who isn’t much of a cultural departure from Vol’jin, besides being a dewy-eyed kid.
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Not that they aired super widely outside of game-related media, though. And Zap’s got what we might call ‘a face for camera’, along with a less atrocious VA and none of the warpaint/shrunken heads witch doctor thing. Trolls in general have been around so long that they’ve got a kind of soft pass and have become their own thing, but Vol’jin really is a standout relic.
Not that I don’t think the witch doctor vibe is cool, just that Blizzards handling of race issues has never been particularly deft and without an understanding of the context Vol’jin and the gnarlier Darkspear aesthetics are a bit rough as a first point of entry into the game.
Again, I agree with Droite’s take on the narrative function being the primary motivation, but I think there was also the image angle. The slow process of nudging the Darkspear into a more presentable state, and adding in the very wakanda-esque Zandalari beside them, has been underway for a while now. Bwon really stands as the new standard for what Blizzard is out to achieve in this regard, way more cartoony and leaning on Disney-inspired vibes, with quality VA. Not abandoning the legacy of WC3, just… rounding the edges. And I think it’s fair to assume that Vol’jin’s relative absence as warchief may have been a part of that. Looking forward to his new incarnation, though.