You do know it takes a considerable amount of resources to wage a war right? It’s not the same as it was back in Cata/MoP. And this was exactly the time where it was mentioned that the Alliance had the stronger military power + Stormwind spies had infiltrated Orgrimmar so much so that Sylvanas found it too costly to even root them out + we had little insight to how the Horde was dealing with the new leadership (compared to when Garrosh took over and all the insight we got into that) + didn’t have the navy and resources from the Zandalari + Azerite development was still new and was clearly a priority so some questlines to build up to that development would’ve worked + post-Legion fallout, but supposedly there was enough resources to conduct 2 full-blown wars and then 2 warfronts in Kalimdor + EK + a whole warfield in KT/ZT?
A very basic proponent in storytelling is less is more, and that it’s far more effective to let something breathe and simmer instead of just jumping straight into a random war for… shock value?
Let me put this in another way:
BoT would be the equivalent of something like SoO happening straight after Dragon Soul and skipping through all the build up that happened throughout MoP that led the players through an entire journey to understand why they had no choice but to take Garrosh down.
Sylvanas didn’t get that. The writing went “She’s insane! She’s killing innocent people and burning trees down!”
got outplayed sucks to suck, but seriously people if you think blizzards going to let you pull some arthas tier revenge after years of having the story say revenge bad, then you’re fooling yourself, its much easier for them to just have her come back cause they want that to happen
When Illidan returns he realizes Sylvanas is right and goes on killing Tyrande, Anduin trys to stop him and falls into his blade. Illidan says Azeroth is free and becomes Sylvanas Champion. Sylvanas rules Azeroth as their Queen with Illidan on her side as her new Champion. I would prefer my version.
But that wasn’t what happened. People were hyped about what appeared to be a story focused primarily on Horde vs Alliance. Familiar settings. Familiar conflicts. Faction identity. Strong leaders.
Understandably, making Sylvanas a villain from the start landed poorly in part because of the expectation horde players had going in from how charismatic she was in the announcement trailer.
I think they tried to write a cohesive narrative that would make sense, but executed it poorly and were pressured by marketing to change that narrative for damage control. Combine that with pressure to scrap anything they could which was connected to afrasiabi. What we ended up with was a story that lacked vision and direction.
She’ll definitely be back eventually. Hell she already has been seeing as she appears in the Forsaken heritage quest if you play it on a Loyalist toon.
My question is more who’s coming back. The Banshee Queen you either loved or loathed was essentially taken out in SL because that was her ebil side. So now we’re left with this blue eyed Ranger General character who really doesn’t interest me.
It is about time a good original Horde leader is saved from being killed and meeting a bad end instead of alliance characters having unbreachable plot armor. That type of writing created people like Zerde. If you feed someone a power fantasy long enough they will grow entitled to it and believe they can dunk on the other half of the playerbase indefinitley.
Sylvanas needs to be retired. Either by walking off towards the sunset or being killed, or just outright ignored, she has had one of the worst character assassinations ive seen.
Edgelord type characters are also just boring in these types of settings. You cannot have a morally complicated character flourish if all is going to be forgotten by next expac.
There is a Alleria Cinematic which has the Banshee Queen appear for 1second, this moment is the most replayed moment of the entire !!! Alleria Cinematic !!! No one talks about Alleria instead there are threads about Sylvanas. Sylvanas is in the Story everyone talks about her. To me it seems no one cares about Alleria at all. Everyone is interested in Sylvanas even her haters and this thread is proof.
Genn and the Alliance did not know Sylvanas was made the new Warchief. How would they have known that? LOL
If you watch the Alliance version of the Broken Shore events (YES WE THE PLAYERS KNOW THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN BUT THE CHARACTERS IN THE STORY DON’T), it straight up looks like Sylvanas and the Horde purposefully withdraw to get the Alliance killed. You could argue for Genn that was a declaration of war at that point.
I’m just saying, the whole argument of Stormheim being the reason why BfA made sense to go to war is, in my opinion, a weak argument.
Let’s presume for a moment that you’re correct.
She’s the queen of a nation, which still has to answer for the assassination attempt.
They have the direct order not to do ANYTHING unless the Horde is up to something.
Anduin is aware of what it looks like.
He tells them not to attack unless Sylvanas is doing something underhanded.
He has the information and gives Genn and Admiral Killhorde the order not to engage unless Sylvanas is doing something.
They choose to disregard their direct orders and attack on Sight.
He being anduin or Dardillien?
Cause my point is that they know about the broken shore when anduin orders them into stormheim and orders them to do nothing unless sylvanas is up to something.