Will Sylvanas return help or hurt the game?

Lore Story Forum
901

It says that the sentinels were ensuring more civilians could escape and that they were dying. It was two birds with one stone and fit Sylvanas battle plan for the occupation. At this point she has not yet thought to burn the tree.

The Sentinels were not surrendering. Even as a tide of Horde flooded Darkshore, they fought on, trading their lives to give the civilians of Teldrassil every chance to evacuate.

Sylvanas had no objection. More dead enemies? Fewer prisoners? They were doing her a favor.

Just to be clear, the favor they were doing was evacuation. The horde was killing them, and they were letting civilians evacuate.

902

I am loathe to engage you again, but this is important.

No. I think that “free us all” originally referred to “from the cosmic scourge of domination magic”. Purely speculative but I think, at the time that the BFA cinematics were written and produced, the Helm of Domination, Frostmourne, and the Primus were the most important parts of the plans for SL and not “I don’t get to be with Nathanos.” I don’t even think they had the Prepatch cinematics made yet, nor the mawsworn Kyrian conceptualized. If they did, I believe that they were understandably recruited out of the broken system because Shadowlands was supposed to be messed up via a Machiavellian conspiracy of Muehzala, Gorak Tul, Denathrius and the Primus. Everyone was at war because of the very quotes we read from the Primus hidden around Maldraxxus at the various Primus statues and the anima scarcity was originally orchestrated to disrupt the Shadowlands so that The Primus could seize power. Sylvanas had a personal vendetta against the domination magic of The Primus and for her to be convinced to go to war against him for that purpose is much more believable. It would explain why the devs thought if we waited and saw where it was going, we would see that it wasn’t exactly like Garrosh 2.0. If that’s not something like reality, then they were just lying to get us to stay subbed through BfA, which is possible but seems unlikely.

903

lol i’m sorry but that’s just not what that means. the favor they’re doing her is not surrendering. it’s not even ambiguous.

904

You’re right. It’s not ambiguous. It’s spelled out in the quote, which is a reference to the earlier meeting between her and Saurfang regarding the need for the NEs to at least partially evacuate because they don’t have the resources to police a bunch of prisoners.

There was no plan to burn the tree yet at this time.

905

it’s not an external reference, it’s a self-contained thought. she is literally listing the consequences of their lack of surrender, sequentially. fewer prisoners and more dead enemies. also, bringing it up to defend the idea that sylvie didn’t want to kill all the elves doesn’t work, because as you note, it’s an unrelated episode to the burning of the tree. it’s just not a solid citation, nor really a solid interp of the citation

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906

Ok… What do you think was the point of saying “Sylvanas had no objection”. First of all, if they were just dying why would she object? One might think she could object to them buying time for the evacuation but the text literally spells out why she doesn’t object to that very important element pointed out no more than a line above.

907

i have told you what the point of that line is. she does not object to the sentinels fighting to the death, because she doesn’t care if they just die, and it’s only an explicit ‘maybe’ that the sentinels’ plan will work in the first place.

908

No. You’ve told me what your interpretation of that line is. That doesn’t make it so, and it requires one to remove it from the context of the novella in which it is found. It’s not a “self contained thought” it is part of a whole written by the same guy in the same book as the very plan laid out by the same character who is now thinking that the sentinels are dying and saving her from having more prisoners, without realizing that this is what she wants on both counts. For whatever reason you only want to see the one part of that narrative even though I marked it in bold for you.

Edit: This is also part of a theme in AGW, where Saurfang kinda screws the pooch. There is this constant contrast between Sylvanas and Saurfang throughout the battle. Where the Sentinels are facilitating the plan (While Sylvanas was being written as playing 3d chess) Saurfang realizes that his forces have advanced to a point where the arriving Alliance fleet (while fully capable of evacuating civilians) will believe that they don’t have the space and time to do so, and will instead bombard his position, thus hindering the evacuation and putting his troops in danger.

909

bro i read the entire quote. and the novella. tbh discussing this is becoming sisyphean so imma let it drop. i simply disagree. even if your interp was correct, it still doesn’t bear a ton of weight in light of the change of plan. the tenuous nature of the language used in the passage re: the evacuation makes it clear that’s not her focus in evaluating the consequences of the sentinels’ choice. reply if you want, but i’m done with these scraps

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910

Then why do people treat genocide as if it means total destruction of a group when it doesn’t?

Was it because of what the Shatterspear are or because of what they did?

Then why do people treat genocide as if it means total destruction of a group when it doesn’t?

No need for petty personal attacks.

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911

I can’t believe the forum is still having the same debates five years in.

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912

It’s Sylvanas. She’s always going to be a controversial character to some people.

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913

I can’t believe the “was Teldrassil a genocide” debate is still going strong.

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914

Same. I’m just confused on why people are even debating whether it was a genocide or not. When blizz labeled it specifically a genocide.

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915

What they will do and what they should do are two different things. :wink:

Well, the most glaring evidence Blizzard could not do it is the fact they have tried (during times without nearly as much chaos at the company or a pandemic) to do expacs in a year and failed.

You are just telling me you have no idea the amount of work going into an expac.

He literally said (quoting here) “at no point in Legion or BFA did I get ANY hints” and when I asked “No Hints” he replied “Nope. None.”

You seem to have a weird idea about what a hint is. Blizzard doesn’t need to spell everything for it to be a hint. Just because it didn’t have Zovaal’s name or title doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hint.

We knew someone very powerful was supplying Sylvanas with power. We knew that she was working for someone. Not having the identity in BfA doesn’t mean groundwork was not laid.

Your problem appears to be that you didn’t already know everything they were doing, guessed wrong, and now can’t admit you guessed wrong so assume Blizzard had to have changed.

Are you trying to gaslight here? Or did you just not read what you were quoting?

Let’s review:
I the original quote was:

[quote]
You think “Free us all” was a different motivation than ‘The system doesn’t give us free will, so we are going to remake the system’ that she talked about in SL? That is some grade A twisting. [/quote]

Free us all is the same literal works. Her goal, as stated in SL was ‘We have never had free will, so we are going to change the system to have free will.’ She said things like ‘we have never been free to choose ___.’ Freeing everyone to make choices is literally the same thing as “Free us all.”

Try actually giving a modicum of thought next time.

Yes. It was a plot point of how she was going to take on Malfurion. And it was apparent enough that it was a major talking point on the forums.

It wasn’t retconned. It was a bug. Blizzard told us right after it was released that she was not supposed to kill any of the NPCs as she walked around. She was supposed to be teleporting them away. But some coding issues caused them to be killed before the teleport spell was triggered.

Again, you are using your speculation has fact.

Even if your interpretation was a possible meaning, you have no evidence it was. And given that it directly matches her later saying she was going to give free will to everyone, the logical interpretation was that was the meaning.

You held up the cinematic as proof of Blizzard changing directions. But it fits the Shadowlands narrative without having to add more words to the line.

You are rewriting history so your speculation at the time was correct and Blizzard changed directions.

The argument seems to be ’ But Golden said it and she is bad so it must be wrong.’

Honestly, I think it is a consequence of them wanting Sylvanas back and so trying to portray it is a lesser crime than it was.

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916

Because that was crap writing. Gleaming in the moonslight like lava eel vore.

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917

Doesn’t really change the lore. Didn’t say anyone had to like it, but we’re stuck with it.

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918

There’s a “-cide” for everything now. They even invented the term “democide” to describe mass killings that don’t fit any other criteria.

919

Stupidity? Deflection?

You’re just as capable of looking up the definition as they are.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. Acts that constitute genocide include:

  • Killing members of the group
  • Deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction
  • Imposing measures to prevent births within the group
  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
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920

Most Sylvanas loyalists are good people. My friend who is one tells me that many of them are fascist or racist, but that’s just a side effect of being a WoW player. You can’t blame them for wanting their character back.