Yeah I’ll admit somewhere along the way they went from having her be a villain for the Forsaken to being a villain to the Forsaken and it probably should have been seeded earlier. A comment here and there about lack of loyalty, suggesting her people should think less and listen more, telling newly risen Forsaken they serve her not the Forsaken. Show her betraying the ideology so it’s not so out of left field when she stabs them in the back.
I’m just confused on who was still gungho post Teldrassil. The mood after the cinematic dropped was pretty low. Granted I’m on a RP server so you had a lot of people feeling it was impossible to reconcile their more heroic characters with this story direction.
And indeed even the professional writers couldn’t manage that. Rexxar sort of drifts in and out as he pleases, him turning up now seemed strange. At least Voss had the reasoning of knowing they’ll be an ishton more undead either way but this way she can help the newly risen avoid the self destructive path she walked.
And from there the heroic stuff the Horde does is with helping the Zandalari and Voldunai. Slyvanas isn’t party to that and Nathan’s is just sitting around at the port, very clearly just in this for the boats and annoyed this diplomacy thing is taking a second.
And what I find so insulting about the whole thing is the Horde and Alliance in a war caused by both a finite miracle resource and the mutually assured destruction via demons being taken off the table is a fertile ground for a good war story.
And we even had N’Zoth waiting in the wings who’s whole thing is exploiting fear and manipulating perspective.
This was as a silver platter for an excellent war story. Where neither side was right or wrong and we could’ve even scape goated the darker stuff by saying evil tentacles made them do it.
Instead we got this nonsense. Where Slyvanas’s plan only makes some retroactive sense when we learn she’s struck a faustinan bargain and is just in it to murder as many people as possible.
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This. All of this.
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Her model is gorgeous and her voice actress is pleasant to listen to.
I still hate her and don’t want her anywhere near the Foraken leader comfy chair.
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They also been told to grieve for her. Isn’t it contradicting to grieve for someone you hate?
I wanted more tidesage underwater exploration but that didn’t happen so they punted him
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kick the shaggy dog moment.
What is the worst in all that, is how they kept talking about faction pride and always tried to make us think that Sylvanas wasn’t evil and had reason.
Dev while in interview: Faction pride!!! No one is evil!!! Wait and see?? Sylvanas may have her reason???
Dev while making the expansion: why does they still think that Sylvanas ins’t evil???
Would be cool if blizzard word could match blizzard game.
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No, they were told that a very noble-hearted enemy grieved for her (and was then punished for her generosity of spirit). It’s not the same thing.
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It definitely reads like they were stringing Horde players along (see the I Feel Lied To thread) in the months leading up to the expansion’s release.
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I’m pretty sure everyone was lied to in BfA. Loyalists, rebels, Alliance, Horde. It was a cf on every level.
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As you say, they might not have planned on killing him when they started his story.
Additionally, it maybe was intended to just be a short character that showed what they wanted about the Forsaken experience these days.
Lastly, in my opinion in conjunction with the first, he was killed to get more people against Sylvanas since they might have become more invested in him by then.
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Yeah agreeing with everyone else Zelling was just used and abused and this was def not his original story.
On top of being an amazing example of why someone would choose to be Forsaken of their own free will and a further diversification of who is Forsaken in terms of origin, he was also a Tidesage, and a Tidesage who used the Void to his benefit on top of his water magic while also hating Lord Stormsong and the Tidesages who gave into Queen Azshara and Nzoth.
He was a perfect new Shadow Priest Hero for the Forsaken.
And he probably was supposed to be the Horde character who led us into Shrine of the Storm against Lord Stormsong. And the Crucible of Storms. And more present in the Zandalar Raid.
And he probably was supposed to be interacting with Brother Pike to demonstrate a mutual lack of understanding (why would Brother Pike side with the Alliance who couldn’t protect their own, why would Brother Zelling side with the Horde and become undead to protect his family).
Instead we got this crap.
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Unrelated, digging the new character look.
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That’s how stories are told, through the characters. I think there was some short of mind connection between Sylvanas and Delaryn in the cinematic, at that moment Delaryn knows more than anyone about what’s going on. Could be nothing, could be bad writing, could be that English isn’t my first language but I find it strange to grieve for “the enemy of life” “the destroyer of all” “the servant of the true enemy” considering that moments before: “This is hatred, rage”
Here’s the thing: for Horde players, Delaryn isn’t a character we’re supposed to identify with. She’s an enemy. There is no reason for us to want to feel a particular way about Sylvanas just because she does.
If anything it feels like her pitying words are directed toward us–like she’s telling us that we’re the ones she feels sorry for, and that makes me feel angry at Delaryn rather than sad for Sylvanas.
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God the more I think about, like when you do the Xalatath questline, Alliance goes to Brother Pike in the Boralus office who says you have to meet him in the Precipice of Oblivion in the Shrine of the Storm to get rid of the eyeball
Horde side? Nah just fly over to the Akunda priest within the city and he’ll just zap you.
?!??!?!?!?!?
This clearly should’ve been Zelling in the Shrine of the Storm in a parallel quest.
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What’s worse is I have a feeling they’ll pull a “he survived!” later
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This was also true with Garrosh. In both cases, the Horde has objectively been harmed more than the Alliance. But for a great many expansions now, this game has been written for Alliance players. We (The Horde) are the tag alongs, never, ever the stars.
Edit: Re: Alliance Star-dom: Even in this Death themed expansion: The Alliance had NOTHING relating them to the death cosmos. Look how powerfully the Alliance cast dominates Shadowlands!
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Which commercially doesn’t make sense since player base is like 70% Horde.
Unless the devs are majority Alliance mains, which given Golden and Roux and some of the other Story Devs we know of, wouldn’t be surprised lol
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