Yeah that was the quest where we find Saurfang in the swamp. After reading A Good War it was really hard to see Surfang as a hero, I still think he was a terrible character. I have zero sympathy for him. None.
It boils down to: he lacked tenacity. All he wanted to do was die, she showed more consideration for the Horde’s future, he just felt guilty over what he did in the past. There was no profound message in BFA. Saurfang accomplished nothing. The Horde and it’s playerbase is still irreversably split down the middle.
And ironically the best moment of Shadowlands is when Garrosh screamed “For the Horde!” As he died and I didn’t even like him.
We get a dark ranger toy. Not a dirty blanket. 100% worth betraying the Horde for. until they gave Dark Ranger customization to everyone and thier dog, no offence Micah you are the only exception.
Honestly I’m not even sure why they gave us the option to side with Sylvanas. Ya can tell it was tacked on because it only led to actually different content once at the very end. Otherwise it just offered you less content like in the Swamp of Sorrows were you leave before the big fight with a Dark Ranger.
Or the exact same content but you were now ‘under cover’. So undercover in fact that you help free Derek and Baine. So clearly that was all part of Sylvanas’s 900IQ 6D chess plan that she torpedoed by throwing a tantrum when her pointless grudge match with an insubordinate Lieutenant didn’t go 100% her way.
It was just bizarre because Sylvanas was both completely evil and completely failing the whole time. So it felt like deciding to side with Hitler as the Red Army is shelling Berlin. Might want to look into a different Dark Lord is all I’m saying.
I’m surprised at how popular the Alternative route is, especially compared to the Dark Horde. There’s so many people gung ho for Sylvanas who never even considered siding with Garrosh, when others thought they were pretty much the same!
One of the main differences I suspect is that Garrosh made no effort to hide his opinions and agenda, while Sylvanas was much more secretive. This made many not trust her, but others took this to mean she had a much grander goal. It felt like her actions were much deeper than they appeared on the surface, so they were expecting more of a curveball instead of her just doubling down.
I have found that many people who sided with Sylvanas did, and most of the people who sided with Saurfang didn’t.
A Good War was the reason I chose Sylvanas. It gave context to her “this Horde is worth saving!” That’s a heroic moment for Sylvanas. They really twisted her characterization up around 8.3.5. Working with Azshara, being manipulated by N’Zoth is where it all went down hill.
I wanted to be on the team with the person who cared about the Horde, and neither team lived up to that expectation sadly…
Vol’jin over Garry was easy-peasy for me, 'cause Garrosh’s fall from grace was like cartoon villain bad and you could see it coming from 500 miles away. Also, Vol’jin is just 3 billion times cooler and I will throw hands to defend that statement.
I did both routes in BfA on two different characters ‘cause I wanted to see the differences. It burned me (and still does) that I had to be part of Sylvanas’ descent into moustache twirling but the only other alternative was to betray the Horde.
Yea I went for this. Siding with Vol’jin was the obvious choice. Siding with Sylvanas was wrong, but it felt right – siding with Saurfang was right, but it felt wrong
Define “side” with Garrosh. I don’t think you can even meaningfully side with Garrosh? Even as an “undercover” agent?
Sure, you can proclaim Garrosh as best Warchief and say he should have won, but gameplay wise, your still drawn into Vol’jin’s rebellion. The only meaningful way to not to is just not to play?
Anyway, sided with Sylvanas. Mostly as protest to another Horde civil war story. Still fun to think of what might be going through your characters head doing so.
It’s particularly depressing now that it’s all said and done.
They blew up two cities and threw out one of the Horde’s last OG hero characters in a manner pretty much guaranteed to sick the player base on eachother.
All in service to lava eels and monotone crash test dummy devil. What a complete waste of everyone’s time.
Horde morale is at an all time low. We lost in the end, all of us, no matter what side was chosen.
At the end of the day there was an alterior agenda to our choice that we did not benefit from, nor we were rewarded for. It became something divisive within the playerbase that will likely last until this franchise is long finished.
The only path that made any sense for my characters to take.
I had to choose between the revered and trusted war hero of many campaigns, has saved the Horde multiple times, and who is committed(was*, BfA complications aside) to defending the Horde both within and without, and preventing the tragedies that he had once partaken in vs fairweather ally who’s loyalties have been in question since Vanilla WoW, has consistently shown little concern for the lives of her comrades(or really for the living in general), and was elected Warchief on the merit of saving the Horde once and by an anonymous spirit who seems oddly interested in Horde politics all of a sudden.
Safe to say it wasn’t a very difficult decision to make, the difficulty came with such a choice needing to be made at all and all the narrative baggage that came with it.
This is why I’ve said repeatedly the only solution is to magic Teldrassil and Tirisfal fixed then hurriedly move on.
Nothing good can come from this tangled mess of stupidity. I knew right then and there when Sylvanas’s heart grew three sizes that day we were completely screwed. Because it told me they genuinely hadn’t planned any of this ahead of time. At least I hope to God that’s the case, if someone looked at Sylvanas heel turning so often she might as well have been doing the robot and gave it a thumbs up then this IP is truly without a paddle.
And somehow it wound up even dumber than I could’ve imagined. I’ve said it before but I’m almost happy the Sylvanas novel was a hallucinatory fever dream where she rambles about post parental murder rough sex and depressed ghostly lava eels to a captive Anduin. Because nothing good could come out of this so I’ll take ‘so bad it’s funny’.
Seriously there is a scene that’s presented with stone face seriousness about how her ghost screamed so loud it immediately killed every artist in the vicinity. Thats not a plot point. That’s how you alert people to the fact you’re having a stroke.
I feel like that was some sort of metaphor for how criticism “kills” Golden’s “art work”. There is so much about artists and their work in that book that it feels like commentary from the author about how self-important she is.
I do think some fans have a weird mental image of Golden. And I’ve seen evidence that she blocks off critical voices on Twitter while being loved bombed by the sort of fans who’d think it brilliaint subversive storytelling if Kottick personally walked into their house and pistol whipped them.
But I’ve maintained that Twitter was a mistake and this same behavior can be observed by just about anyone. Because the nature of the site means legitimate and thoughtful critcism is coming in the same wave as death threats. And I can’t reasonably expect anyone to sift through unhinged insults to find the nuggests of legitimate points and then respond to them in an uncompromised manner.
That being said I do think she’s a limited instrument as writers go. A better poet than storyteller. And Sylvanas was a weird read as you had legitimately wonderful bits like Sylvanas’s growing horror at walking into a room and being treated just a bit too gently by everyone present and so you just know terrible, terrible news is about to drop in your lap. As well as her slow but steady therapy with Nathanos which is bound to strike a cord if you’ve ever had a loved one who suffered severe head trauma.
And then she turns around and writes the most laugh out loud dumb tripe I’ve ever read in a published work.
Just keep her writing humans or human equivalent races. Sylvanas’s life and times in Quel’Thalas was fine. Went on a bit too long and I’m really at my limit for reading about people who’s biggest injustice is having to wear fancy clothes and bite their tongue. Horse girl problems - the book. But I wouldn’t call it bad and was amused by the family interactions.
When she had to write a now undead Sylvanas though. Oh boy. Thats where things went wrong. Keep her on human story duty or pair her with a better editor or outright second author, would be my solution.
Considering she did only one interview about the Sylvanas book and just talked about herself being the only female writer in a male dominated industry. Nothing about the character or the book…
I see why now, she needed to remind us ahead of time that she’s a good writer so the book she clearly ‘phoned in’ wouldn’t tank prematurely.
