What got me is the only Horde characters to have any feelings on the Burning of Teldrassil were the God of War reference Orcs. Which was a NPC interaction in Orgrimmar near the Tauren district I truly believe next to no one would’ve noticed if it hadnt been pointed out by WoWHead.
Most of the Horde races know what it’s like to watch in horror as your homeland is destroyed. The Forsaken, Orcs, Sin’Dorei and Bilgewater all personally experienced that. And the rest of them all empirically understand what it’s like to be tempest tossed and homeless.
But nobody even reacts to the Burning of Teldrassil outside Saurfang. It remains hilarious to me that Baine’s final straw isn’t the firebombing of civilain population centers, or use of Blight on their own soldiers followed up by immediately weaponizing their alchemically bleached skeletons, but the vague Manchurian Candidating torture of Derek Proudmoore.
Goes to show how haphazard the story was. The opening cinematic seemed to show the Horde on the defensive, and the actual Burning was one of those barely animated, mostly still image cutscenes which I imagine are much less time and resource consuming to make than the full cinematics they introduce expansions with.
There is a bit of a reference to the Burning in the Old Soldier cinematic but it’s mostly just fire vfx and vaguely elven silhouettes. Which is pretty barebones for a famously highly detailed art style.
It’s obvious it was a very late in development jump-the-shark moment. And to their credit it certainly put butts in seats. But they really had 0 plans for the implications of such a scene. And instead the story focused arounf a somehow even stupider arc over Sylvanas explaining why she did what she did.
And that boiled down to sad lava eels, the world’s lamest prophecy, and her being retroactively split into a good and evil half this whole time. Which would have profound implications on every one of her actions that showed empathy, selflessness and affection but I guess we’re pretending those didn’t happen even though they were in the damn book.
It remains telling that it’s frankly hard to coherently link Sylvanas’ narrator monologuing in the BfA and Shadowlands announcement cinematics with her actual motives and actions in the story.
It comes across like a lot of very broad and numerous rewrites occurred between the making of those cinematics and the actual releases of the associated content.
I desperately want to read the original ‘Sylvanas’ novel. That book abruptly got post-poned something like 6 months to the point where it came out after SL had already wrapped up it’s main arc.
What in God’s name did that look like if after half a year of additional work it still came out looking like that.
Seriously the book contradicts itself. I’m appreciative that WoW has a soft at best approach to it’s world building and mechanics but I don’t think it unreasonable to request things follow the same thread of logic within their own narrative.
They say, in an outright pathetic attempt to pretend her soul shattering was more nuanced than being bisected into 'goob an ebil halves, that she was incapable of kindness and empathy.
But she shows genuine kindness to Nathanos. And okay I’ll be nice and we’ll pretend that was actually a selfish, narcissistic affection. But then how the Hell does she feel bad for killing Liam Greymane? She’s feeling Genn’s pain vicariously because she knows what it’s like to bury a close family member who was supposed to outlive you.
Probably to add the last chapter where it’s implied that Anduin joined her in the Maw. (the cinematic wasn’t out at this time).
Or maybe to change many texts because the writing team didn’t know how to save the character of Sylvanas after the Burning of Tel Drassil.
In game and since the Burning of Tel Drassil, Sylvanas was portrayed only as en evil character.
And the way the soul shattering was shown, it only confirms that the Sylvanas we knew all along was just an incomplete evil soul, not the tortured soul we though she was.
Must be nice for her fans to be told that the character they knew since the beginning was just a false one.
Same for all the times she has shown kindness, was it her true feelings or just lying to herself in an attempt to feel good?
On the other hand, being evil doesn’t mean that she is incapable to show kindness or at least understanding toward those who suffered like her.
Even the worst tyran can show a good side.
I hate this character but even i think that she shouldn’t have been written like this in BfA and SL.
I heard that the original story written by Afrasiabi was to see Zovaal and Sylvanas being the good guys or at least true grey characters.
If it’s true and after how Shadowland played out, i am VERY curious to see what was originaly planned.