But what I can say is I am certain, I can say is when they put together the Legion cinematic they were probably looking to change Sylvanas’ character for the better, as her Legion blurb implied she would be learning the lesson between her own selfish desires and that of the Horde.
Considering how long it takes to make the cinematics it’s likely they finished the Legion cinematic, wrote the blurb and then did the BfA cinematic before stopping and going “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to take a steaming pile on top of this and just do Garrosh again?!”
And yet, regardless of what path they chose with her they decided that the fans of the WC3 Horde were meant to be dumped on no matter what.
They kill our last WC3 leader to Trash mob. A character who without question earned his Warchief spot. A character who was probably the single most multi specialty melee fighter on either faction. A character who’s Troll regeneration was so powerful he was able to survive getting his throat slit with blade coated in toxin meant to mitigate Troll regeneration. And a character notorious for being deeply untrusting of Sylvanas, and who’s patron Loa hates undead. To shoehorn her into the Warchief spot, by having “The Spirits Whisper” to him. Hell, the game is already treating her like the damned Warchief in the Broken Shore intro, before Vol’jin died for gods sake… Quite frankly, unless you care more about Sylvanas than the rest of the Horde, that intro was an insult.
The writers told all of us that they hold nothing but contempt for everything WC3 and its races in that moment; but it wont stop them from using that same Horde as a safety net to justify why a faction of inferior, evil, monster races aren’t just eradicated every time we relapse and go bad. And you may be right, that at the creation of the Legion cinematic they were on the fence about what direction to take her … but IMO they knew exactly what route they were taking by the time they wrote Stormheim. Expansion Cinematics have been misleading and lying to us since WoD, its nothing new. And Sylvie is portrayed as a character who’s actions and words can never be taken at face value; so even if its BS … Blizz can always fall back on that excuse.
I miss Vol’jin too, and I will never forgive Blizzard for offing him so casually (no, making him a loa does not make up for it)–but as I said before, Sylvanas is also a WC3 leader.
Do we know for sure that Stormheim was written after the Legion intro stuff? I’ve seen people say that it was written before the decision to make Sylvanas warchief, back when Vol’jin was just going to disappear, but I don’t know what the evidence is for that.
Also, the BfA cinematic definitely came after Stormheim, and if all the devs had already agreed that Sylvanas was going super-evil, then I don’t know why they didn’t hint at it there. Or tell Metzen about it, for that matter.
Overall, I think this props up my “behind the scenes argument” theory better than showing that the devs were united.
It’s pretty obvious the devs are at war when it comes to the story, constantly tugging to win.
Some moments you have sylv being overly ruthless and sometimes you have her being beyond heroic knowing the risk.
Garrosh being hot headed vs Garrosh being beyond honorable and not wanting to needlessly involve inactives into the war.
Jaina being a furious icy blizzard vs she’s calmed down and is willing to give you hot coco and a coat before you go outside
Anduin used to be less annoying I guess and actually “fight” against the S:I7 in order to complete a goal despite his fathers wishes aka he knowingly put himself in harms way and would suffer the consequences compared to just everything going his way all the time now.
Best example is bren and how it was changed from quilboar to horde but, they just went over the top about it leaving alliance and horde players alike disgusted, compared to horde side where you’re actively trying to be a hero and do the right thing in questing.
It’s honestly pretty annoying at the end of the day where it’s pretty clear there are two sides in the dev team where one actually wants progression within a story and able to better define its characters, and the other is just relying on cheap emotional shocks with their actions, blowing through characters left and right.
Sadly I think the second team is winning with the first one being left to pick up the pieces and try to salvage things into something digestible.
In Warcraft 3 she was one of the more interesting and nuanced player characters. She continued being an edgy leader of a Horde faction, all of that was thrown in a dumpster fire of wasted opportunity and spurious retcons to Flanderise her evil. I have the impression that Sylvannas was being written by very different authorial teams over the last couple of years who paid very little attention to what each other was doing.
It was mass heal to be precise. And yeah Besides draenei prancing around, nelf archers and spell casters and some dwarf riffleman I can’t really really anything big on Alliance side. Although Genn looked quite decent. First CGI worgen
The problem with this is, EoN was like 11 years ago, and it did just a brutal job of recontextualizing her character and especially her relationship with her Forsaken up to the fall of Arthas. They weren’t “Her People”, they were her “Arrows in her Quiver”. Tools meant to be used and built up exclusively in her attempts to gain vengeance against Arthas; and then once complete … meant to be discarded like trash. “A Mongrel Race of Rotten Corpses”.
Despite this very clear messaging within this story, people were desperate to give her the benefit of the doubt on what her “Bulwark Against the Infinite” really meant. Claiming this implied she now cared about her people, and not simply her repurposing a tool she once thought worthless. On top of this, it portrayed her as a character who’s words and actions should never be taken at face value (as her persona to the Forsaken prior was just a mask she wore.
So, we found ourselves in a weird place where if you looked at her actions in Cata, in War Crimes, in Dark Mirror, in Legion, in BtS, in BfA … through the lens of the character displayed in EoN … it portrays a very different person to the one a lot of people saw. A selfish nihilist who was a master of putting on a good show to rally the troops and push them in the direction convenient for her; but the risk was always there that her Bulwark may one day become as valueless as her Arrows.
There were other “Sylvie’s” portrayed, of course there were. There were other paths for her, of course there was. However, even if we didn’t know her end goal, THIS Sylvanas we saw in BfA has been around for over a decade. The parts of her that could lead her to this destination. And thanks to how EoN revised her relationship with her Forsaken leading up to Arthas’ death, that Sylvanas has canonically existed from the start.
Droite, you just choose to emphasize that one aspect of her character and discard all the other times she didn’t act that way as the aberration, when it could have very easily been the other way around. It’s just a trifle irritating when you claim an “inevitable” result over what was much more likely simple writer fiat.
Not at all, I will freely admit that there were other elements of her character that could have taken her a different direction. What shocks me is that there are so supposed Sylvie fans that dogmatically refuse to admit that there were parts of her characterization that could send her on the type of path she went on. Largely because it seemed like they didn’t want them to exist, because those elements of her personality infringed on their own image of her.
I would have preferred Sylvanas going on a different path, but I refuse to sit here outraged pretending that BfA Sylvanas came out of friggen nowhere. Even if we didn’t know the end destination, the Sylvanas who could lead to it has been around for over a decade.
Not neccesarily. Again, many in the Horde seemed to try and bury their more shameful portion of the past. Others were not part of said past(Vol’jin was not part of the Horde in Warcraft 1). I’d say that is a recipe for repeating the past.
And generally I agree. I would say you are probably right that there was a tug of war between two visions of her, but honestly … Stormheim was the point where I’d say one side won.
You just do not have Sylvie pulling an homage to Arthas’s line to Terenas when he murdered him, but ONLY to the Alliance PC, if you intend for this character to do anything positive for the Faction she’s just been put in charge of. Then, proceed to have her do absolutely nothing else for the rest of the expansion.
It has been about 50 years give or take since Kil’jaeden first appeared to the orcs.
Hell, if you want more recent examples, apperently the world learned nothing about pandamic preparation even after things like SARS, MERS and a whole host of other very infectious diseases that literally just happened a few years ago.
If 2020 is proof of anything, it is that unexpected thing happens can and do happen and that people are just that dumb enough to not do/make it worse.
But they only became heavily free of it a bit less than thirty years ago. And even faced attempts at the same manipulation in the third war. Quite a step away from a hundred years ago.
None of which had nearly as significant an impact upon our world as the manipulation the Legion had on the Orcs.
