What was the point of Tyrande in SL?

Lore Story Forum
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She seems to really sever no purpose on her own, let’s look at what she does in Shadowlands.

SL beginning

In the beginning of 9.0 she is there with the other leaders and then jumps into the portal to shadowlands and then disappears from the game for the leveling experience and then appears briefly in the max level Ardenweld campaign for one quest and then disappears again.

Ardenweld Campaign

I’ve seen people say the Ardenweld campaign is 1/3rd about Tyrande, but it’s actually about the night warrior power itself, not really about Tyrande, sure Shandis is concerned about Tyrande and we want to get rid of it, but we don’t delve into Tyrande as a character we are just concerned with this power that has been used in other places in the universe. We do a bunch of things to try to understand the night warrior power but everything we actually do in the Ardenweld campaign for the night warrior power essentially amounts to nothing as of 9.1.

Sylvanas vs Tyrande Cinematic

9.1 Tyrande just appears in Ardenweld to fight sylvanas to a stalemate until Sylvanas runs away after Anduin gets the sigil because Sylvanas was just the distraction, Tyrande flies up and chokes sylvanas until she gets depowered. Nothing stating Sylvanas couldn’t have just smoked out before Tyrande got depowered either (as sylvanas just smokes out afterwards) and Tyrande needs to be saved by Ysera.

Elune Cineamtic

Then we have the Elune cinematic where Elune just takes control of a dying Tyrande and talks to her sister. Here you could say Tyrande’s main purpose was to be a communication device for Elune so she could talk to her sister, or a delivery mechanism for the tear of elune. Then Tyrande wakes up and she has different colored eyes.

We don’t get any internal reflection on her character, we don’t know what was said to her that had her change her mind so abruptly, she doesn’t even really seem to know what Elune said to her. Now juxtapose that with the Sylvanas/Uther cinematic where Sylvanas talks about her feeling and then wakes up, we entirely skip all that with Tyrande and it’s just Tyrande changing her mind.

This is kind of where Tyrande’s story ends in 9.1 so far, she is absent again for the rest of the patch, until the sigil is create but then she does nothing anyway and is just kind of standing there.

What was the point of the Ardenweald NW campaign?

So what did everything we do with learning about the night warrior and searching for Tyrande even do? Nothing, it seems to have been a dropped idea from 9.0. We don’t help Tyrande, we don’t even find Tyrande. Tyrande just randomly shows up to fight Sylvanas in 9.1 and then Elune controls the power for Tyrande by either letting her controlling it or taking most of the power away so it won’t kill her, who knows, it’s not explained. So essentially everything we do in regards to the night warrior in 9.0 was pointless. The night warrior power seems to have been shown to be pointless and not actually effective at doing anything. The deer used it to kill an old god, Tyrande used it to do nothing.

Tyrande in 9.2

So far as of the defeat of Zovaal, Tyrande is also absent from 9.2. She will show up for the judgement of Sylvanas, but so far she is entirely absent. Shandris has like one stealth quest in ZM and then just stands around in the home base.

Conclusion

So what was the point of Tyrande in Shadowlands? Other than to be another character that is thrown under the bus for Sylvanas’s story by being the night elf representation that “forgives” Sylvanas for genocide in 9.2 (or 9.2.5) in the form of some menial task for her to complete so they can forget about Teldrassil entirely going forward, because as they said in 8.1 “Tyrande got her revenge for night elves”.

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To finally sweep the ashes of Teldrassil under the rug and hope everyone forgets about it.

Blizzard hopes the average player is too enamored of Sylvanas, or ignorant of the real life legal proceedings to notice that forcing Tyrande to forgive Sylvanas and letting her roam free of repercussions echoes what Blizzard as a company has been telling victims of abuse within their company for years: Get over it.

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Yep, this was kind of my conclusion as well, this is kind of their attempt to put the Teldrassil storyline behind us completely, just like they really tried to forget about it in BfA, but people wouldn’t let them forget so they are hoping a token appearance from Tyrande will solve it all, despite her not even being relevant to the story.

Kind of a side thing as well, but I think if you are starting as a new player you don’t even know why the alliance is attacking undercity and it makes the alliance look like the aggressors, Teldrassil I don’t even think is mentioned for most of BfA questing and if you were starting as a new player you won’t even really kind of find out about it until a brief mention in the night fae play.

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I was hoping that, at the very least, she would defeat the Jailer with the help of the night elf souls and revive them, finally securing some semblance of justice for Teldrassil (and renewal).

Instead he was literally stabbed to death by random PCs while Tyrande is once again MIA, for the seventh (eighth?) time since WoT. And all the while she doesn’t care to confront Sylvanas, who is frolicking in Zereth Mortis with her armor and weapons. BfA 2.0 but worse.

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The current writers are between a rock and a hard place. They didn’t want the burning to even occur, that was flat out narrative sabotage by a departing dev.

While also dealing with low developer morale, COVID disruptions, and who knows how much cut content, they have tried to thread a needle between responding to the wreck of a story they have been left with, while making Kaldorei and Forsaken fans happy at the same time.

It hasnt gone so well.

Apart from the damage all the cut content has done, I feel this is a big part of the failings of Shadowlands, they are trying to keep too many diverse interested parties happy at the same time, and have not managed to keep any of them all that happy.

I think you are right though, they desperately want people to forget and move on for sure.

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I’ll never know what’s funnier.

That Tyrande tried to choke out an undead woman. Or that it actually worked.

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Withdrawing your boon from the crazy elf choking the undead elf because you didn’t want the crazy elf to die, which would have resulted in the crazy elf dying anyway if not for the intervention of others.

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I loved some of the reasons people came up to justify why it would work. Like even though Sylvanas is undead, undead needs lungs to breathe and speak. Ignoring the countless undead that do not have lungs, a voice box etc and yet can still speak. Such as Kel’thuzad.

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Don’t forget that they also told us that the Night Elves can never heal because justice has been denied to them…

So there’s your renewal.
The whole renewal thing only means forgiving your abuser because there was never going to be renewal for obliterated souls in the maw anyway.

Blizzard also somehow managed to make some players who don’t pay attention to the story believe that we saved the night elf souls, when in reality we only saved a small fraction while the vast majority was obliterated.

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I think tyrande will be the bolvar of a future expansion surrounding the night warrior story arc. If the night warriors power, elunes? power, found presence on other planets, then she serves as a bolvar type throwaway character who is in the spotlight but can still leave the player character to do most of the heavy lifting. If anything Jaina is the next sylvanas with how little mind we’ve ‘paid towards her internal pains’.

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I never understood how or why COVID could disrupt video game development. Can’t they just work from home? They have computers, don’t they? You can write a plot and dialogue anywhere, right?

I agree the choking was dumb. It’d make more sense and be cooler if Tyrande had been trying to rip off Sylvanas’ head Predator/Mortal Kombat style.

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Uh…

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Hey, I didn’t write or design that cinematic.

But I agree, Tyrande should’ve used one hand to grab the blade then rid us all of Sylvanas.

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How can you post images while I still cannot? Lol

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I wonder the same for Thrall and Baine. Both absolutely useless, except Baine is even more useless than Thrall.
What can I say, the writers hate the Horde.

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I worked from home this entire pandemic. It took my office 2-3 weeks to get us equipment, and that is on top of the fact my company supposedly had a business continuity plan assuming a pandemic would hit(which I barely thought of at the time and thought was overkill but clearly I was wrong). They would have order equipment/re purpose old equipment to make sure the security standards are up to snuff, then make sure said work from home employees actually had the internet capacity/get them the internet capacity to work from home.

Writing the plot aside, you would probably have to find out if said plot can be translated into a game format. And then you would actually have to code the thing.

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The power of Ethriel’s righteous anger will not allow the mods to take away her picture-posting power.

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I’m just surprised because I am pretty sure she unsubbed as much as I have to make it to trust level 3.

And was active before that for as much time or lesser than me.

Biased forum gods, you are hunted.

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Danuser (aka Nathanos IRL if you haven’t seen his cringe tweets) wrote Tyrande as a miserable vengeful character out to get Sylvanas and ends up only making Sylvanas look powerful, strong, cool and amazing. Tyrande, like all the other characters, throughout BfA and then Shadowlands were used to excel his waifu to godlike status. It made for a good redemption arc… For Sylvanas XD

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I didn’t realize Nathanos was Night Watcher Danuser in disguise

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