Do you really want Sylvanas back if she has blue eyes instead of red?
Thing is, itâs either:
She was a victim of circumstances beyond her control, her soul is restored, and she isnât the same character.
OR
She retains her agency, sheâs ultimately the same character, and the rest of the world have to collectively turn their brains off again to give her room to exist, which poisons the well for all of the other characters.
Frankly, given the cinematics and aftermath of the Jailer, the second option is impossible to the point that it is such awful writing that my Mad-Eye Moody/doppelganger joke would unironically be a less insulting/frustrating development.
(Edit: And the first option is still bad because âfeminist icon Sylvanasâ was reduced to a story about being a victim)
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Itâs already this one. Me and another poster talked at some point about how she can come back all mopey at first but eventually find her confidence, self esteem and snark once more. Maybe not snark but a sass.
⊠What?
Her entire story as banshee queen started BECAUSE she was a victim of Arthas, what are you on about?
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Right. She threw off the domination of the Lich King, rallied together people in a similar boat and established a new kingdom, then marched to Icecrown to put an end to Arthas.
Except it turns out that it was really the Jailer manipulating events and tricking her into serving him all along because she couldnât be with Nathanos in the afterlife or something? Except that her soul was fragmented, so her agency wasnât her own. Or itâs Schrödingerâs Agency or something, because she seems to conveniently have it and not have it at the same time.
Put another way, a story about someone overcoming their abuser just had a second abuser thrown on top of it because the Super Lich King is so much cooler than the regular Lich King guys, trust me.
Grabs Jailer action figure and knocks Arthas action figure off the table Raaaghhh! explosion noises
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Now this is just a troll.
Ugh.
They could have done literally anything with her in SL and it would have been better than what they did. Itâs like the whole plot in SL was backpedaling, damage control and backpedaling the backpedaling. I have zero faith that that expansion was actually written and greenlit in any way similar to what we got.
The potential of BfA couldâve been good and the zone storylines were great. But the BfA campaign was doomed from the get go because it literally made no sense to jump into a faction war right after Legion. We just experienced a global unification effort where multiple factions worked together. It couldâve worked a couple of expansions later if they kept building up skirmishes and tension, and give us clear evidence of the Alliance being the aggressors in the EK via the Worgen and Anduinâs inability to commend the Alliance. But going from Argus â Burning of Teldrassil was extremely off-putting, and the constant catch-up to fix those issues left a very bad taste in the playerbase mouth.
And the reality is that Sylvanasâ unfairly gets a lot of the flack for these decisions when itâs literally a fundamental failure of the writing direction and a 6 year thematic mess that is only just started to relax and only because itâs being partially-abandoned and TWW feels more like an organic continuation from Legion. Her entire character got dismantled and assassinated trying to fit into the BfA/SL themes.
Like itâs literally there in real time for everyone to see. Her motivation went from âthe Alliance is a threat, the Forsaken are at risk of extinction, Anduin canât control his forces, and it makes strategic sense to undermine the Alliance operations in Kalimdor to ensure the Hordeâs survivalâ to âlava eel PTSD, Anduin reminds me of my younger brother, let me feed all the souls to the maw for the nipple jailer man because life is unfair.â
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The faction war was the hottest selling point. It made the expansion the best selling expansion of all time on release day. It wasnât until people were mad about the decided lack of faction conflict, and we started discussing Teldrassil, that people soured on the faction conflict as a âand another thingâ to complain about. No one complained about the faction conflict when the trailer was shown at Blizz con. People were fainting like they just saw Elvis when Sylvanas roared âFor the HORDE!â
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Thatâs because people love action in general. You can give them a cinematic of Garrosh vs Illidan and theyâll be screaming their hats off. Storytelling mechanism and ensuring you tell a proper and coherent storyline takes a lot more effort and it will always be a matter of time before that catches up to you.
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Yeah, isnât it shocking how doing an exponentially worse rerun of Siege of Orgrimmar went over poorly? Isnât it even more shocking how trying to shoehorn the half-baked Great Value Nipple-Thanos into masterminding every single plot in Warcraft ever from behind the scenes with zero groundwork or connective tissue between events to actually realize that plan went over poorly?
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https://imgur.com/a/UmdX7lp
⊠You serious?
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Kerrigan and the swarm destroyed entire planetary populations.
Heâs technically not wrong about the body count
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I disagree. Like I said, itâs going directly from Argus â Burning of Teldrassil that does not make sense. You literally have troops that are severely exhausted fighting an existential threat, the player character spending a whole expansion working together with various parties, and thatâs not to even go into faction leadership being unstable, with Stormwind in particular having a whole dreadlord infiltrate their spy network, and the narrative only benefits from building up tension and letting people breathe a little before building up to an epic war.
If BoT and Lordaeron was the following expansion (or final patch) and if there was more skirmishes to build up to it then thereâs a lot more pay off and a proper emotional journey to lead up to it. And a key component of that is going to have to actually show Anduin failing in his leadership (which also then benefits his emotional journey in TWW) so that players can understand Sylvanasâ strategy instead of just going âwell sheâs cray cray.â
An intro questline to Stormheim is just not going to cut it and the results speaks for itself.
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Attacking the leader of a world power is a declaration of war.
They didnât just want to kill the Warchief of the Horde.
They tried to kill the Warchief of the Horde.
Argus or no, that had to be answered for.
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Uther only helped the Ranger General, we donât know what Banshee thinks about all of this. We didnât get anything from her perspective. In Shatterd Legacies, she doesnât agree with Ranger General at all, and when Uther comes, she suddenly disappears.
The crazy part of her from BFA and SL is still inside somewhere Sylvanas body. I wouldnât mind ââifââ during her return her evil part starts going crazy and we get a mission in which we finally kill her. The good part may keep her memories, emotions and personality, but the bad part must die. Only then is it possible to accept Sylvanas back
She NEEDS to come back with both halves of her united. Inverting that and killing the bad soul to keep the good one is honestly, a terrible idea
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âhey we need to remutilate this persons soul to satisfy my revenge, which is something the game has taken multiple explicit stances againstâ
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People arenât wrong for wanting Sylvanas to not have a Get Out of Jail Free Card after Burning Teldrassil, intentionally sabotaging the Horde, and killing racial leaders.
Itâs just not realistic to expect her not to receive and validate her Get Out of Jail Free Card.
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Said racial leaders shouldnât have challenged her to a duel to the death then.
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