Why Sylvanas is worse then Garrosh (as a villain)

Lore Story Forum
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Garrosh was so much better of a villain then Sylvanas, for more reasons then you might think. First off let us talk motive, He was an over-eager general in wrath turned war hero, but he didn’t want the position of warchief, as he knew he was not a governor, still thrall gave it to him in the middle of a resource crisis, and the twilight hammer plotted to remove all trade between the factions.

Despite this, his villainy was very much of his own making. As he was never a governor or politician his response to any problem was warfare, and despite having some standards, it was made from just as much hatred of the alliance as necessity of the horde. He also was very racist towards trolls and the undead, viewing the former as weak cowards and the latter as unholy abominations. Garrosh’s overly agressive personality also lead to him alienating his allies.

Meanwhile Sylvanas’ motivations seem to boil down to 3 things, she hates the idea of hope, she is overly paranoid someone might overthrow her, and she is in league with death. Thats it, not nearly as human as Garrosh’s aggressiveness and prejudice, and most of it really comes out of left field.

Now for how they handle their tactics. Garrosh as a general isn’t honestly to impressive, but he is a fairly skilled manipulator by the end of the day, He manipulated Baine and Jaina to kill as many alliance generals as possible during the siege of theramore, then abused Jaina’s mental instability to make it so when he steals the divine bell, she blames the sunreavers shutting down any potential peace talks between her and the blood elves. However he was very hotheaded when coming up with strategies, such as in the twilight highlands when he got his airship shot down, and his tendency to give supply caravans the minimum defenses possible, his pride of Orcish superiority also is a major reason he was overthrown, as he managed to piss off each individual race of the horde in ways that could have easily been avoided, with the narrative acknowledging his poor impulse controll.

Sylvanas meanwhile doesn’t even really have a plan. She kills people for little to no reason in order to win a war she started for pretty poor reasoning. From killing forsaken for not immediately returning to her side (or being to slow), to ruining a hostage situation because a dying night elf said she wasn’t afraid of her, she never really manipulates people that well. You can’t just say “JUST AS PLANNED” to every setback then never reveal how it works to your advantage, that just makes you look dumb. The narrative also seems to pretend to ignore sylvanas is extremely controlled by her impulses in BfA.

Finally, their crimes, garrosh’s crimes were many, but he only hit the really big ones like genocide towards the end of his reign, even theramore i struggle to call a genocide because he knew they got notice beforehand and would evacuate the city. It’s not until seige that he crosses that line as a final “Look at how #%@$ up this guy is” after we had plenty of confirmation he was evil. He previously used evil actions that, while not as big in scope as genocide, are easier to process. Oppression, Sacrificing Allies, Aggressive Expansion, Imperialism, Not paying his workers, Assassinating political rivals and potential dissenters. Sylvanas’ evil is genocide, one very stupid assasination attempt, and brainwashing jaina’s brother. Oh and arresting Baine, but only after he committed treason. Yeah that’s the issue. while Genocide is one of the most evil things one can do it is also harder for most people grasp the severity of. A Million is a statistic after all. And the Assasination Attempt on Thralls family makes literally no sense, your sending to assasins, to kill a mans entire familly, when said man is living in a self imposed exile and has never shown disapproval of your rule, across PLANETS! Her evil never feels like it has a reason, yet are never small enough for their pettiness to work.

Oh and finally, they didn’t pretend for half an expansion Garrosh wasn’t evil after he started doing mega-evil stuff.

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This is the one that irks me the most. Even though Garrosh had his fanbase (substantially smaller than Sylvanas’s, but a fanbase nonetheless), they made it clear in no uncertain terms that Garrosh was the antagonist of MoP. By hitting all of the same story beats as Garrosh but not saying upfront that Sylvanas is the villain - furthermore, purposefully casting weird doubt when people suggest she IS one - you only serve to aggravate people when the outcome turns out the same.

Mystery for the sake of mystery isn’t fun. It’s just irritating.

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other thing that i would like to remark is that they never pretended that garrosh was playing 7d chess the entire time.

he adapted to the unexpected situations and changed his plan along the way. that’s more realistic that pretending that everyone acted exactly how you planned because you are a genius.
he changed his war plan when pandaria was discovered, tried to weaponize the sha and the divine bell, and after it was destroyed by anduin and jaina he then went for the hearth of ysharj.

because i gotta tell you that blizzard pretending that this is all going “according to plan” of sylvanas is extremely frustrating and far more annoying because that is not realistic.

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I’m of the opinion that, like Azshara, Sylvanas is good at pretending we’re playing into her hands, when in reality she’s holding less cards then she lets on.

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your helmet is really gold

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Although I wasn’t a huge fan of Garrosh (I didn’t have major problems with him, his brand of villainy just didn’t scratch my itch), you make a good case. That said, some quibbles –

Unless I’m misunderstanding you, these aren’t really motives; they’re character traits. Garrosh doesn’t want to be a flaming racist–he just is one.

On that front, I don’t think Sylvanas is much less developed. EoN makes it clear that like Garrosh she has a sympathetic backstory–hero of the Elves–but also a fatal flaw: narcissism. Even in life, she sees others as tools:

“We have only two dozen rangers up there,” he said, his voice now a whisper. “They cannot survive that!” … It was the height of the Third War, and hours away from Silvermoon’s fall at the hands of Arthas’s army.

“They are arrows in the quiver,” Sylvanas said. “They must be spent if we are to win this.”

Undeath just exacerbates this flaw, much like becoming warchief exacerbates Garrosh’s racism and megalomania, until it completely undoes her original heroism. People might find one throughline more compelling than the other, but that’s mostly subjective imo.

Sylvanas’ main motive has been clear since at least EoN: to survive and avoid her afterlife. Personally, I find pathological fear of death more relatable than racism and toxic nationalism.

That said, it’s increasingly likely that her specific goal in BfA is to create as much death as possible because this somehow empowers her–and I agree that the specifics here were not very adequately foreshadowed, and that made her actions in BfA…frustrating.

I’ll grant that Sylvie’s handling of Baine & Thrall was…not brilliant. Frustratingly so. However, much of her stupidity – Teldrassil for example – makes a lot more sense now that we know she just wanted to maximize death.

Was it frustrating watching her do all that before we knew the twist? Frustrating as Hell. That’s is a problem with BfA more generally, though: The writers are fixated on a SHOCKING TWIST, but they don’t give the players the pieces they need to see that twist coming. The result is characters and plot threads that don’t make sense until you get to the BIG REVEAL.

Which is my problem with Sylvie in BfA more generally. Her baseline character is fine–I even find it compelling. But it isn’t presented well in BfA because of the way the plot unfolds. This isn’t unique to Sylvie–a lot of characters in BfA have been twisted into pretzels to make the plot go where the writers want.

Also Grannyboy, your new helm is making my eye twitch.

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I’m Shinyboi.

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can shinyboi gib pats?

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Is that the second or third evolution of the human paladin?

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/headpat

Second, the third evolution involves a Scarlet tabard.

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yay!

/10 chars

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The reality is that someone in blizzard wanted to change sylvanas’ role in both legion and bfa. Without planning the chronology and history of the expansions.
We can see that the sylvanas in voljin’s funeral is not the same the sylvanas in the burning of teldrassil or the sylvanas from bfa launch trailer is not the same as reckoning sylvanas.
She is sooooo terrible written in this expansion that she seems inconsistent. This kind of situation happens when the writers dont know where to go or how to achieve their goals.
Too much ppl put their hands in her, perhaps to make her fit in the role of evil warchief or something else we dont know yet. But alas her character never had good intentions but bfa turned her into a deathwing kind of bad guy( one that thinks that is in control of the situations but are actually playing along and ends dead and beaten).
As much as I love her and the horde bfa did what i found impossible. Killed my amusement for the lore of this game.
But ill still be loyal to her even if she kills me and all living beings in azeroth.

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The Authors need to realise they have to write wow like a TV Show, IE, every part needs to be able to stand on its own as well as when put together

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What book/story was the arrows line in?

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Sylvanas Windrunner: Edge of Night By Dave Kosak. It’s available for free online here : https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/story/short-story/leader-story/sylvanas-windrunner

See page 3

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Now it’s Garrosh looking back at Sylvanas and thinking that she’s the amateur.

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If that was the case, Sylvanas would never have evacuated Undercity; amd why not stop there? Why not contact the Twilight’s Hammer? Or pull a Lord Prestor for C’Thune? Or counter attack under blight in Lordaeron?

Sylvanas story amd villain hood has too many holes to be credible.

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Unless the Forsaken were still a useful tool for her at that time.

We don’t really know who Sylvie is working with / for yet. The answers here could range from “well, she is actually,” to “because N’Zoth wouldn’t have liked that.”

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I’ve found in general that BFA’s war story has been an inferior retelling of MOP.

Sure there are some differences. But we have:

Horde warchief who became warchief the prior expansion and who the Alliance doesn’t trust convinces the horde to go to war for a quick victory against the Alliance.

Horde warchief orders an alliance city destroyed, which galvanizes the alliance into a counterattack on a horde capital.

The war rages on with the horde mostly united but with a few cracks in its loyalty. These cracks deepen as the warchief chooses means of victory the other horde leaders find objectionable.

Jaina and Lor’themar are both involved in fighting back against a third party threat that emerges mid expansion that was built up to during the base expansion, and agree to work together.

Alliance and Horde together show up at Orgrimmar to depose the warchief.

There are some differences I admit. In MOP it was generally Garrosh’s actions toward members of the horde (trying to assassinate Vol’jin, treatment of blood elves as expendable etc) that ultimately turned the horde against him, while in BFA Baine is eventually driven to betray Sylvanas because of something terrible she’s doing towards Alliance characters.

Byt by and large, MOP told this story first and told it better. Not that MOP was perfect and BFA is bereft of good moments. But ultimately it feels like the war story has been treading old ground and not in an interesting or well written enough way to justify it.

I kind of hope this is it for the faction war, at least for several expansions. I’ve never been more tired of it than I am now and just want it to be done with. How many times post WC3 are we going to fight unite fight unite fight unite?

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The best part is that, when asked about the parallels to MoP, one of the story devs(I think it was either Afrasiabi or Copeland) said that it was deliberate because they didn’t think that MoP did a good enough job of addressing the Horde’s identity.

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