The inciting action for Shadowlands, as I understand it, is that Sylvanas has torn Azeroth a new one and opened a portal into the Shadowlands.
For reasons I don’t know, every soul sent to the afterlife has been funneled straight into the Maw. In her trailer monologue, Sylvanas claims she’ll “set us all free”. Has Sylvanas planned to rescue all of these souls from the Maw after all? I mean, she’s seen the afterlife, likely the Maw. Is it impossible to suggest her plan may have been, from the start, to gain the Jailer’s trust, gain power from him, then give the Champions of Azeroth the chance to rescue these souls?
I just don’t understand why she would rip the Shadowlands open and leave her boss’s crib vulnerable. Is the portal allowing a ghost army to attack Azeroth or something? Is this not comparable to when Illidan opened a portal to Argus? If her only motivation has been to be immortal, that would’ve been much more easily accomplished by just…laying low and staying with the Horde, not making an enemy of the entirety of Azeroth.
Any “Nooo she’s Illiganroshrom 2.0 and I want her to die!!!” REEEing is acceptable and expected. If your reply is useless to the discussion, please have the decency to either keep it brief or format it as a saucy fanfiction. Thank you.
TL;DR: I can’t wait for Sylvanas to crush all of you and shower little kissies on me since I’ve been such a good orc all this time. Discuss how many kissies you predict I’ll get in the comments down below.
From what we know, she wanted Azshara to kill the Champions of Azeroth in her palace which would’ve sent them (us) straight to the maw too.
Also I think it would be very far fetched if they said that Sylvanas planned every single step of what happened and will happen in Shadowlands.
If they come up with things like “She planned that Azshara wouldn’t be able to kill the champions” or “She planned N’Zoths death by the hands of the champions” it’s just going to be ridiculous.
I’d much rather have Sylvanas be evil and attempt to gain immortality, then we kill her and free the souls ourselves. She still doomed thousands of innocents and heroes to suffer eternal torture after all, and even if others undid that, it wouldn’t make her any less evil.
Still possible that they say that she planned literally every single thing that happened in the past years and call her a hero.
Throughout BfA, I often stated in my posts that one reason I chose to be a Sylvanas loyalist was that she is aiming towards the issues concerning the afterlife. Issues beyond the here and now.
There is clearly something a miss, and it needs to be addressed. In sort of an RP fashion… I felt like my character would see it as vital to secure the afterlife before he died, while he could. Because if he died, then he would be a slave to the mysterious machinations of Azeroth’s after life.
I still agree with her, in that sense. In Warcraft, our souls are used as currency and fuel, or judged and ordered. Or we can sell our selves out to people like Bwonsamdi and Odyn, and dwell in their little enclaves or their pocket universes or what ever.
It certainly does seem like this world is a prison, from a certain perspective. Now… what being “free” from that prison would mean… I guess we will see.
“Nothing” can be freedom from sensation and obligation. So if she sought to end existence… that would be bad. But… if she wanted to break the afterlife and replace it with something else? Eh, why not? I am not too fond of the current system.
I almost see it as a retirement plan. I want some say and some stake in my after life, and I can not blame her for wanting command over hers.
She will wear lipstick made of the blood of her enemies, and give you so many kisses, you will look like one of those red orcs.
I’ll be honest. She’ll say that she doesn’t trust you enough not to destroy the world with a Azeruclear Bomb after the way you’ve behaved for the past week. You will then proceed to send over 1000 letters of apology, before she gives you “the Bestest request in the world.” You will be the Ring-Bearer for hers and Nathanos’ wedding, and when the vows have exchanged and the bride (nathanos) has been kissed, he will proceed to kiss you on the cheek, while you wear a huge smile. Eventually, you’ll grow up to be a priest, and help other troubled Horde see the ‘right way.’
The reason why Sylvanas did what she did is simple. Like N’zoth’s defeat, the writers are unable to write themselves out of a wet paper bag, and have the villains foolishly sow the seeds of their own defeat for no reason other than “the lulz”.
I mean…if this Sylvanas is going to be consistent with old post-Wrath Sylvanas, then old post-Wrath Sylvanas has always considered death or at least the cycle of life and death to be a prison. So a consistent Sylvanas that wants to “free” everyone, would be a Sylvanas that would be trying to eliminate said cycle of life and death. I imagine that eliminating the Maw and every other form of afterlife would be the means or a part of the means to destroy the cycle. This again is assuming of course this Sylvanas is being written with some degree of consistency. Which we know she is not.
She ain’t setting anyone free of the Maw. People keep taking the line “I will set us all free” away from the entire rest of her dialog. “This world is a prison. And I will set us all free” very clearly means she’s gonna set us all free… From the prison of Azeroth.
Meaning, she unabashedly will be going full Darkseid and trying to destroy the planet, end all life and usher in the Anti-Life equa- Ok, maybe not full Darkseid. But she’s trying to end all life and send everyone to the Shadowlands for realsies. Since she’s working with Big Baddie Jailer, Big Baddie Jailer rules the Maw, the Maw’s eating all the dead souls, and Sylvia has been sending more people into the Shadowlands to be fed into the Maw…
Naw, don’t look too likely that this is some 200-D chess move made by the 1000 IQ Lich Queen to be heroic. Where you see her ripping open the veil between life and death to make the deadlands more vulnerable, I see her opening a clear path for the deadlands to invade the living world.
I estimate between 0 and 2 kissies. No more, no less.
She was setting us free from debate threads about how Ner’zul is still the Lich King, or sharing control with Arthas and Bolvar.
The Shadowlands website says that there is some “conspiracy to unmake reality” that we will be investigating, and that we will learn about Sylvanas’ plans- whether or not those are the same thing, it doesn’t say. If it is, I guess it makes some sense even if I think it’s dumb.
NPCs in BFA seem to point to this. Frequently. Sylvanas is the “enemy of all life/ threatens the balance/ wants to KILL HOPE!!!” Apparently the NPC’s have more story knowledge than we do. Or maybe they can all hear N’zoth whispering these things to them. IDK. To me it’s so thick that it came off as propaganda… but whatever.
If there isn’t more in mind for her character than the nihilistic emo queen, then her whole story is a waste and I feel like the story directors have to know this. It’s just a really bad idea.
It will be interesting to see if they do anything with the Sylvanas story beyond having it transition into the next expansion.
Agreed, any Sylvanas master plan works better with her initial plot being foiled in BfA, and the shattering of the Lich King’s helm as an improvised plan B.
I get the feeling that “immortality” or “saving yourself from death” is going to become a much less compelling motive the more we interact with, and pass through, the afterlife.
Not even literally every single thing. Sylvanas could be written as a hero if they do three simple things. First, say she planned to send the heroes to Shadowlands to save it, this resolves the whole ‘tried to kill everybody’ problem. Second, have some weird plan that made the destruction of Teldrassil necessary, this resolves the whole ‘genocidal madwoman’ problem. Three, have her plan stop something happening in Shadowlands that dwarfs the destruction of Teldrassil, this turns her back into a pragmatic anti-hero and lets us all go back to arguing about whether she’s evil or capital-e Evil.
In two years, when this is all revealed, most people will have forgotten about the whole Derek Proudmoore mind control debacle. And the rest of what she did, outside of Derek Proudmoore and Teldrassil, isn’t really that bad.
Torturing and doing disgusting experiments with captives in undercity
are also very evil, and I’m sure she has done a lot more than that. I just don’t want undead hitler to be redeemed and all of her crimes forgotten and never talked about again, just like Teldrassil.
If it wasn’t enough to turn her into an expansion villain the nearly 10 years ago when it happened, it’s not enough now.
Yeah, I can’t really talk about what you want. You suggested something Blizzard could do to redeem the Sylvanas character, I’m only making the point that it’s even easier than you think, especially since they don’t need to win you over, they need to win over people like Alynsa, Jellex or me, people with an actual investment in the Horde and its characters.
