It feels like they saw the positive reaction to Illidan's arc and thought "Oh we can do that for Sylvanas." Forgeting that Illidan's redemption had 10 years of them reframing and justifying events. For Sylvanas it's imagine if someone stabbed you the. 5 seconds later launched into their tragic backstory and tried to use it as justification for stabbing you.
Shit, we still don't know what her or the Jailer actually want. It's hard to sympathise with a character when I don't know what motives justify their means.
Hot Take: I didn't like it. I thought it was fine as it was, back in BC. I still entirely agree with this sentiment though. Really does feel like they're retreading to something they did before, and are just flinging shit and hoping it sticks.
@@wrathshorts2894 I still can’t get over how the one good narrative scene only happened because a single dev went out of his way to make it happen with just himself and Garrosh’s voice actor. I don’t know who that guy is but can he be in charge of the story?
Sylvannas went from Tony Stark (Cursed with knowledge of the other side, doing things no one understood because how can you possibly explain whats coming) to a discount kerrigan who they half assed and ham fisted into "its not her fault bro, forgiv her". She was cool before bfa >:C
I feel blizzard’s writing for Sylvanas goes like this Blizzard: She’s just “misunderstood” you guys, take a chill pill Also Blizzard: Let’s make her cause Elven genocide, start essentially a World War, and make her edgy AF, that will surely win over the fans.
@@gromczar1589 I haven’t played WoW for a while so after reading your comment I thought “WTF? When did this happen?” I believe you, Danuser’s writing means what you said is in character I’m just curious when this happened.
They butchered my lady after cata. The way she found meaning trough the forsaken, and the way she protected her people was all for nothing. She has been retconned.
They ruined tons of characters in cata and after it in MoP, just look at Thrall and Jaina, Metzen hated Jay and hijacked Thrall as his self insert and ruined him in the process in Cata(by making him into a Green Jesus and then have him try to put down Garrosh in MoP which incredibly out of character for Thrall compared to Lord of Clans)* while ingoring everything Christie Golden wrote in the books and she made an amazing job characterizing both of them and quite obviously planned to do something with these two after Wotlk, but Metzen just never let her and then outright shut the door on it by indulging into his own fanfiction by inserting his wife in as Aggra and fullfilling "brown babe and brown babies" fantasy with incredibly bad build up. Then Garrosh himself who was already semi ruined in Wotlk by being reduced to stupid and impulsive manchild, when he had great potential to be the best his father was after he learned that he shouldnt feel shame and see Grom and his title as a disgrace. Instead of doing that and letting him mirror the best in his father and then exceed it they made him into a warmongering manchild with daddy issues and projecting those at Thrall becoming the absolute worst of his father and then some.... This is why i just gave up on taking wow and its story seriously from Cata onwards, and even Vanilla and TBC had it's problems like forcing night elves and frosaken to Alliance and horde when they should be their own neutral factions, or whatever stupidity was TBC in regards of Kael, Illidan.(tho some bits like pre wotlk garrosh were nice) *Not to mention he ends up killing Garrosh anyway...
@@Kacpa2 mostly agreeable, tho the forsaken and the elf remaining neutral in spite of strong human presence in the vicinity and after the deforestation of ashenvale respectfully didn't make much sense. + the forsaken needed the help, the reason it was given to them was a ploy from the grimtotem to destabilize the horde.
There is no way that this was planned for the last 15+ years. Nor since the Edge of Night short story after WotLK. The new Sylvanas arc lines up with the rest of the terrible plot decisions made during BFA/SL.
@@lightests Its all made up on the spot and its horrible. They just take a dump on anything that ever was good about wacraft...so Warcraft III and Wrath in this case...and Danuser has no right to wipe his ass with this, he neither earned it nor respects it.
it definitely started with legion or bfa, depending on if the stuff in legion was meant as a set up for bfa, or if it wasnt clear at that point i think thats when metzen left and new writers took over, they dont seem to care about the story that was set up for them and decided to just brute force retcon it by making up this split soul stuff as an in-universe justification to do it
I can't help but feel like I'm being directly insulted and disrespected. I deleted my account after 8.3 came out, and how horrendously they handled Azshara, Nazjatar, N'zoth and Nyalotha. Danuser destroyed, and wasted 10 years of my life. 10 years of breadcrumb trails, hints, and foreshadowing. All gone to waste. I hate Danuser, I truly do.
@@corypopowich2879 Ever since I saw the land named Azshara in the old WoW back in 2005, I expected an epic confrontation with Azshara happening there. Boy did Blizzard let me down.
My first love in wow was night elf's and their culture, never was a fan of Sylvanas. But the last two expansions has just cheapened everything that both was based on.
I think you actually love half of the elven culture, the one related to nature and Elune. The other half is highly chaotic, presenting some very disturbed individuals, elves consumed by their dreams of power, control and show-off: Azshara, Illidan, Xavius, etc, etc
@@imadeyoureadthis1 well, you still have Illidan in there :) And the archetype applies for all elves, no exceptions. Given the opportunity most of them embrace the dark side of the force, BIG time. As smaller scale but higher in numbers, you have the night elves following Goldrinn, using aspect of the pack, then you have Naralex and his druids of the fang, etc, etc.
Devs: "Shadowlands ties in plot elements dating back to Warcraft 3!" Playerbase: "we wish Shadowlands wasn't canon and it was all a N'zoth fever dream"
This "plot twist" only served to cheapen her character. Before she could be seen as a complicated character: 1. She may have cared about the forsaken as "her people". Especially until the end of wrath. It seemed like she bonded with the fellow ex-scourge members who were liberated 2. She had a strong sense of "free will" and would never actually follow anyone's orders. 3. She cared for her sisters, they were really close to bringing her down to earth even in the most recent stories. After the 9.2 twist, it's clear that she was always doing evil things with zero redeeming qualities. All the redeeming qualities were in a gem that the jailer had. She was just a one-dimensional manipulative and manipulated right hand man of the big bad guy all along. All of her actual personality was locked away the whole time. Nothing mattered.
Not to mention with her strong free will wasbecause she never wanted to be a slave again, and yet here she is a slave and forcing others to be a slave. She should be the one person out of everyone to not fall for this trap and advocating free will. So when I saw the cutscene about her breaking from the Jailers will, I rolled my eyes so hard I'm now blind. Because really wtf are writers doing?
aaaaaaand, you are literally working with just assumptions :) 1. There is literally 0 proof that she cared about the Forsaken. Because caring needs facts. And there are 0 facts that actually help anyone. At times, from example with Garrosh, it is clearly stated the Forsaken were accepted in the horde to be meat canon. Regretting or not she accepted. 2. For what the story says, and judging from her actions, she is just cocky and feels strong when making choices. The problem is she is "encouraged" to take precisely choices, her freedom is a false one. She is not mind controlled, she gladly takes by her own free will the only choice given. Choosing from one choice is a false free will. She was all along led to follow a certain path. And you are very wrong to associat the fall of Arthas with her freedom. It was explained that Arthas was actually holding back the undead from completely rampaging Azeroth, it happened naturally to push Sylvanas forward since it was so easy to make her think everything is her choice. Her only true choice took just a second, when she suicided, but that "mistake" was instantly corrected. 3. As for her being an empty shell, no, that's not true either. She was stripped by her morality, exactly as Uther was. Both had exactly same focus, on vengeance. And when she was done with Arthas she was provided with another false cause, probably fighting the very existence of forces that allow necromancy to exist. Perhaps that is her motivation to fight for a "hard reset". The problem here is she is incapable to understand that in the great cycle some things cannot be controlled. Like her being born as an elf and not a dwarf for example. So even if the wheel is messed up by individuals it doesn't mean that it should be broke and remade. Is just like saying let's reinvent the wheel, but I don't like how it worked, lets make it square this time.
She was that way since BFA, my dude. Please do not confuse needing a person with caring for a person. Wanting to kill Vereesa Windrunner to be with her forever is the opposite of caring. It is similar to someone that cannot be his/her best self without the person she/he wants to be with him/her. That is not caring and nor loving. If she cared "for her people" then I suggest reading about how she slaughtered the forsaken that joined the meeting in Arathi. She never did something to show she cared about them. She NEEDED them. Her perpetual state since warcraft 3 to Legion is to bitch about herself, raise her victims into undeath and then use them. If you chose to serve her then you were safe from her wrath. If you did not then you were her enemy.
Not only all of this, BUT with this it also cheapened and pretty much rendered all of the development and culture as well as what caused people to gravitate to the forsaken as the race that they loved to play meaningless and void of anything all because, as it turns out, Sylvanas just wasn't herself all along. So, with the main Pillar of the forsaken lore (Sylvanas) being written this way the forsaken has effectively become nothing in the process.
Two souls make no goddamned sense. Because sylv was never like how she was in bfa and SL prior to it. Ontop of that if it was a good soul bad soul thing. Then the bad soul should never want to change her mind about what she is doing. And if she did why would she be in conflict with the "good" soul then?? Its a fucking mess
Now that you mentioned Arcane, I gotta say: A French company with snippets of LoL champions' lore and a rough draft of a story from Riot managed to put to shame an entire writing team of a game with 20 years of storytelling so fucking hard that people who knew LoL was a salt-ridden toxic game decided to go back to it from how good that show was, something that the Warcraft franchise has only managed to do only with Classic nostalgia baiting, but because of game mechanics and simplicity, not for the lore which was dead for years.
Teldrassil was the capital of the night elves, a faction that refused to surrender. If you open a history book you will see that almost every capital in a losing nation gets torched. Do i need to mention some? Berlin 1945, Constantinople 1453, Rome 476, the bombing of Drezden which had a ton of civilians that got burned alive and yet the Allies are seen today as the "good guys". The bombings today of major civilian cities that still have many innocents in them. Casualties happen in war, deal with it and have a more open mind about how war works. Only idiotic generals leave the enemy's capital unharmed during a war. How hard is it to understand this? Hell, even Varrian was tempted to just dismantle the Horde by taking over Orgrimmar and i asure you he wouldn't be stopped by some civilians who would oppose him. The only evil-ish deed she ever did was experimentation on living beings and creation of plagues. That is all.
Well Pillaging stuff was happened from desperation that you take what empire they had and give it to your own people with spoils of war. But if you leave none alive, steal everything valuable and leave nothing but an ash is an purely from hatred or personal ego of the leader's superiority. You conquer to control the place you invaded. not to destroy it. You can't be an king if nothing remains to lead beside your ego and piled up money.
@@Shadowhunterbg Its a game and it was quite literally a world tree. Its not morally grey to burn down a world tree. You'll also note that Rome, Constantinople and Berlin still actually exist, were not subjected to 100% genocide and weren't 'torched' either. Sacked perhaps. Not to be picky but a better comparison to Teldrassil would be the victims of Genghis Khan. When you deliberately burn down a world tree AND all its inhabitants to send their souls into literal hell to siphon their life essence to fuel your bosses furnace I can't see how the OP is wrong by calling it morally black. But feel free to find a real world comparison for that :D
@@Zoey-- We are discussing the act of burning the tree, not the hidden purpose for it. It is not a full World Tree. It is the bastardization of one. A tree that exists purely because of the Night elves's hubris and lust for domination and immortality. It is a corrupted version of one. A tree that was not approved by the Dragonflights or Nature itself. Rome, Constantinople and Berlin exist because they were both rebuild and resettled but before that the population was slaughtered and the cities badly sacked, razed if you will. So it is the same - minus the mass rapes that occured during their sacking. And it is not a genocide to attack a single city. Was the burning of Drezden genocide? Was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki genocide? Most people today would say that it was a necessity to end the war faster. No one would call it genocide. Sylvanas did the same. To end the war with the night elves faster, you take down their centre of command and iconomy. Be it a tree, a wooden city, it doesn't matter. It will all be set a blaze during an attack and it will burn and burn fast. Civilians will naturally die because it is war. You judge Sylvanas for actually doing what any general would have - weakening a faction to the point of it being helpless in future wars. What would have she done instead then? Be like "Oh so you don't surrender? Fine. Since you live in a tree i will just turn back and leave you alone because attacking it would make me look very evil." Please... Why didn't the night elves start evacuating their city when the war was clearly going against them? Why keep them till the enemy reaches their doorstep. If there is someone to blame it is the night elves and their pride and stupidity.
Nah. A. Not every single undead was killed personally by Frostmourne. B. It's commonly known Blizzard™ logic™ that only super important special named characters they personally like in the office and need a justification to bring back to being "good" have the Split Soul McGuffin happen to them.
Yes. It was confirmed a long long time ago that all undead (sentient or otherwise) have their souls "Imperfectly" attached to their body. Thats why in every single case they... 'turn' sour. That one lady in BFA, Lilian, every DK ever. They dont all become Pure Evil, but they all become... more angry, more hateful, more quick to attack than they used to be. They arent split in 2 complete sets usually, they're just... not right.
either way the split sould thing is retarded. What about all the people raised after just regular death? were their souls yeeted out of the shadowlands and back into their decaying bodies? or are they just fragments of their original souls? If they are, why was their soul fragmented? or are they like copies of their soul at the point of their death? If so, how does that work?
@@fizzlewick The act of raising someone after death has some sort of effect on them. Like trying to cram a square peg in a round hole. It happens to every undead, not to the same degree every time, but its an unnatural thing that twists them. It doesnt normally do the whole "Oh there a whole other side of me thats good and righteous and good!". Nazgrim is a great example. From honorable noble orc, who yes served a bad man, but did what was right according to his creed... To a bloodthirsty monster of a warrior, wanting to hack first and ask questions never. He didnt change that much, but it made him... worse than he was.
It's so weird, because Garrosh was still based; a complete genocidal maniac, but not apologetic about it. Most people seem to love Sire Denathrius. That's at least two decently written villains, so there ARE people who can write something "at least decent, if not good" kind of character. Meanwhile, Sylvanas' story is completely vague and confusing. Danuser is the Lead Narrative Designer, thus he gets the blame (rightfully so, IMO).
The worst part of what the writers did to her is that you could tell from the very start of BFA it was going to be trash. You know they aren't going to kill her in the end, so the entire time you go through all of her actions throughout the course of two expansions just waiting for the "but here's why you guys should forgive her for all of that" moment. There was no suspense because you already knew the inevitable outcome. People can say what they want about the cinematic not being laid out that way, but at the end of the day if there aren't consequences for characters doing terrible shit, then nothing the characters do really matters. To me, her story arc is just a microcosm of everything wrong with the writers of the lore. They can't make new characters, and they can't let old ones go.
The soul split makes literally no sense. The devs have made it very clear that it wasn't "good vs bad", and didn't result in her being mind controlled or manipulated. So, what's it for? Literally to just make it APPEAR that she now has a good part so that PLAYERS will forgive her for the atrocities she committed and still isn't sorry for.
I think the thing that burns me the most about this is that they seem to be going with making it seem like the Night Elves are crazy for wanting revenge against specifically her.
She was never one of my favorite WoW characters, but I respected her “anything for revenge” plotline. She was ruthless in her goal and desperate enough to sanction one of the worlds most terrifying weapon. All because her opponent wasn’t just powerful, but one of the strongest beings on Azeroth at the time. She worked all the way up to Arthas. Many people would say that her fearing what lies beyond death was an ok story, I think it was terrible. I think that finding any answer on “what happens in the next life” is absolutely terrible for the world building. This moment ruined her whole story and in kept going down from there.
Dont make strong villains and badass characters victims... go full "i love to be bad" villain or full Garrosh "i am a WARchief and protect my people no matter the cost or who stands in my way even when it costs the lifes of my allies" not this "snickers- you are not you when you're hungry" bullshit. Thats "making a pedo blood sucker look romantic" kind of bad writing. None of this is morally grey.. this is character breaking, disney remake, "we tricked you she isnt evil.. or is she" bullshit. Blizzard should know how villains work since they have them as CEOs and in leading positions.
At first, the decline of storytelling in WoW didn't affect the joy I got from the game (and older lore) too much. Cata came and went, storytelling went up and down, but certainly after Legion it just took a nosedive down the cliff. It saddened me every time, to see how the game I loved for so many years (been at it since 2005), which was shaped with so much love by the original developers, was broken down piece by piece. Neglecting the old lore, creating this strange and new story narrative which was forced on the old lore and was just there to justify another DLC, more money, more shares, less value. Ive drifted só far from WoW since legion, before I would always return every once in a while for the nostalgia. But nowadays I just play private servers (if any at all). Blizzard-Activision has absolutely nothing to do with the game that I once loved and played for thousands of hours. They just took that beautifull product and milked it for all its worth, not giving 2 shits about the dedicated playerbase who loved the game since the start. I hate how so many games have become solely about money, not about the joy. I remember once watching a docu. (called 'Looking for Group') about the founding of blizzard and the early days of WoW. A dev. would explain how they didnt create WoW/Warcraft for financial purposes, or at least not directly. It was so they could finally play in a world they had always imagined in their minds. That is so cool, not being warped by the goal of making MONEY, but to make something beautifull, nice and with care, for others to share and love as much as you did when making it. Ugh, Im getting old :(
Sylvanas has never really been designed to be anything more than an anti-hero. Not a villain. The forsaken as a faction were unique in Vanilla and BC because of their loyalty to her over the Hotde itself; they WOULD have been members of the alliance if not for the plague or their rejection by Varian Wrynn. Sylvanas had an "us against the world" mentality that the other race leaders didn't really have. Making her a villain cheapened her character.
Nothing makes me more upset than thinking about sylvanas character arc. They almost pulled the same stunt with Kerrigan in Starcraft who was my all time favorite. They just didn’t have years to ruin her completely. It was always understood in wow lore that becoming undead does something to you. Your crueler tendencies become more prominent while what kindness you had while alive gets drowned out. Nothing about sylvanas is morally gray any more no matter how many times blizzard says she is.
I dont even consider Sylvanas as an Memorable character let alone iconic. Nor do I care about her. Thanks blizzard for creating her just for her to end up saying "You will be forgotten" to Arthas's soul at the end. Bascially "fuck you Arthas, everyone loves me"
Blizz messed up by going too far back with the retcons. They should of aimed Sylvanas' soul split after she jumped off ICC. A forsaken who joins the argent crusade in cata mentions that ever since Arthas' death she hasnt been herself. It would have perfectly explained her new colder and ruthless attitude and we still would have had the banshee queen who we loved from WC3 to WoTLK. Honestly the fact they just blotched out the Lament of The Highborne pains me inside. The entire point of that quest was to show that even in death she still cared for her original people which is why she helped them join the horde.
The medium length answer is, because Blizzard can't fucking stop backpeddling on her characterisation. First she was this morally grey character - not a good person, but not outright evil either (this is pre-BFA I'm talking about - when she was *actually* morally grey) then she went full evil monster mode (unofficially in BFA prelaunch, then officially in late BFA), not even slightly morally grey like previously, and now apparently they're backpeddling *again* in making her *not* pure evil because apparently that wasn't the *real* Sylvanas.
This is the opposite of a morally grey character. Now it's just "evil sylvanas do evil things" and "good sylvanas will do good things". There's no hope for this character anymore.
Sylvanas Simp here: Sylvanas is a character who finished their story arc in Wrath. It ended with suicide. Cata showed she wanted to ensure her people could aid the Horde, while not forcing people into servitude like Arthas had. Then we skip MoP and WoD to get to Legion, where she becomes Warchief and tries to take control of the leader of the Valkyr - failing. Then come BfA and she's Hitler. Her character after Wrath was basically ignored, only to then be retconned under the control of the Jailor. An enemy we NEVER heard of until Shadowlands. Steven Daunser butchered her character harder than Arthas butchered Silvermoon.
Since Cataclysm there have been many ways to write Sylvanas well and nearly every chance Blizzard had they chose the worst possible option and went with it.
After wotlk Sylvanas was the perfect moraly gray character. She did some evil stuff, but her motivation was understandable and noble: she wanted to spare her people from the horrors she saw in the afterlife no matter what. Blizzard biggest mistake was to try to retcon that.
I'm a few days late but that was only ever her fate, no one else's Souls of other undead you free in a quest in the Plaguelands go "into the Light", for instance She was always self serving and manipulative after her death
What bothers me the most about Sylvanas is that how protected by plot armor she is. She only gets a little scratch over her eye against Saurfang, whenever in a cutscene with someone, they act dumber to make her look smart. She was pretty cool in WC 3, now I can't wait to see her die, but I know it won't happen because of her popularity among simps.
Things sylvanas did right since vanilla wow: -attacking gilneas -abducting a death controlling angel -calling the retreat in legion. That's it. Even her ending arc in Wotlk is lackluster I feel. Sylavanas is the forsaken. Forsaken are about compromise, patience, discipline, and free will, especially the free will of their immediate ennemy to die on the spot (Scarlet monastery, Gilneas, detheroc, balnazar and garithos,...) Clearly, she's shown it isn't beneath her to burn down the remnant of a civilisation, but she would only do so if they pause an active existential threat to the forsaken. Let say in the absolute, she gets both saphirron, Sindragosa, and an absurd flight of undead liberated dragons, something the world has no chance against, what would she do? The sylvanas as introduced in warcraft 3 would Step 1 attempt another defensive pact with the alliance Step 2 clean any significant alliance assets above the wetlands, fortify the bridge there (if 1 failed) Step 3 cleanse the ghostland, resume diplomacy with her former high elves kin, destroy the Amani. Step 4 harass the lich king until h's dead. (3-4 are interchangeable i feel, especially if she comes up with a plan to free the undead into more forsaken) Step 5 sit on her very confortable isolated city with enough buffer to guarantee her people security, declare neutrality, probably create some kind of refugee haven.
Honestly, from BFA and beyond? They can’t write a good story with her because on one hand...she should’ve died off as a character a long time ago or had a resolution. On the other, the fanbase will “want more” of her and they can’t let a good thing go. She was such an interesting and anti-hero character and they just shit on it because they’ve run out of characters to kill off and they can’t keep justifying green Jesus. They’re also shaping the “next horde/alliance leaders” and so far we have sympathetic pussy anduin, vengeful tyrande (who will most likely be the next garrosh/sylvanas) Moria Bronzebeard who has Stockholm syndrome, the gnomes and the Draenei are drastically overlooked and these allied races that don’t even matter after BFA.
I blame Metzen for ruining Thrall...Before Cata especially in Christie Goldens writing Thrall was very well characterized but Metzen ignored her and then started to take a piss on his own work by meming around with his stupid hijack/self-insert power fantasy in Cataclysm and then progressively ruining what wad left by making Thrall go directly against who he is. He ruined Jaina too...even more so until whoever cared tried to do something more with her BFA. I just miss storytelling from.the early books and Warcraft III. Where there wss no stupid "red vs blue" division that forced all existing factions into either even of it made zero sense(nightelves and forsaken should be their own independent factions) Now we have this moron Danuser wipe his ass woth Warcraft 3 and Wotlk.....just no.m.
@@Overdoseplus And it could be something unique for Warcraft, but Metzen was too foolish to understand and follow upon it. Christie did recognize it but he ignored the hell out of her writing. Arthas's story wasnt perhaps fully original but good and now Danuser ruined it too plus they held to it too much called back to it too much. Showing they really had no good ideas.
So Sylvanas was split and being controlled by the Jailer? And wanted to take down and kill the Lich King, who was also a puppet of the Jailer (apparently).
Saying your character "wasn't them self" when they have been doing evil shit has roughly the same satisfaction of the "It was all a dream". It's like they are saying that if Sylvanas's noble soul was with her then she would of never broken under Arthas's torture or been afraid of her cruel afterlife. This is the kind of retconning that really damages a character, taking away all the things people liked about her, without giving a satisfying conclusion to the people who hate her.
@@EdyGlockenspiel That's actually true. I was gonna say MoP but I didn't wanna piss off all the panda fanboys. Plus I guess it had its moments with the Thunder King. Say what you want about Cataclysm's ending but at least it was big cool stupid fun with big bad dragon and elements trying to destroy the world.
See, this is what I hated the most in the storyline after Legion. Sylvanas' character was completely assassinated the moment they turned her into a villain. It would have been neat if she was just, as they put, a morally grey character who is trying to avoid what she had seen in the afterlife. She was empowering for many because she got back at the man who stole her freedom away from her during WoTLK. She was a survivor, in all the grittiest and unpleasant details it may entail. Instead of her being the enigmatic but reasonably fair Dark Lady we all thought Blizzard was writing her to be, she became an amalgamation of cliches that the writers compiled from the other WoW villains who did the terrible things they did for the greater good (Kil'jaeden, Sargeras, Illidan, etc). I still love her as a character, but the direction Blizzard made for her really is a crying shame.
Like, they should have just lock her up in the maw, then after ten expansions SHE JUST BY CHANCE.... have a redemption arc. But who is hoping there will be anymore of this acitivision-blizzard to be expanded.
Warcraft 3 expansion showed after the Scourge how Sylvanas HATES to her very core not being in control of her own (un)life. Then in BFA/Shadowlands she fully submits to the nipplemeister and commits obvious war crimes that bring BOTH the horde and alliance against her. They made her a slave and an idiot. Rest in pieces I guess, just like Arthas.
One of the most important aspects to telling a story through characters is to define those characters to the extent they basically fill in the story themselves. Anything they're faced with you need to ask what would they do based on their personality and everything that's happened to them up until that point. Sometimes it takes the story down a path you wouldn't expect. Blizz writes WoW like an 8 year old. "Oh this sounds cool let"s do that." No further thought required. -_-
This is only half-true. Thare are basicly 2 ways to tell a story, and there isn't the "better" way to do it. You can tell a plot driven or character driven story. While plot driven stories usually have better narration, character driven stories fell more real. For example Song of Ice and Fire is a character driven story while Lord of the Rings is plot driven. WoW story was always plot driven, and characters ware there only to fill a role in a story. The main problem with Sylvanas is that thay use her character wrong, put it in place that should not be, and then pulling everything from ass to fit it to the story that she don't belong to. Games usually are telling plot driven stories, but in RPG there is no reason to do both, have some storylines plot driven, others character driven. This is what FF14 is doing with the story., while main story is plot driven, there are a lots of casual moments in a story that are character driven.
"Maybe she Shouldn't" is something we should chant anytime Blizzard tries to tell us Slyvannas was a good character in SL. Just full on Silence brand crab blockade.
She was already a morally grey character before Blizzard let Danuser write all his self-insert fanfiction. Vanilla - MoP: morally grey Sylvanas Legion onwards: trainwreck Sylvanas
Sylvanas has basically been drunk since she got turned. She did awful things she wouldn't normally do, and when she got sober she had to face her consequences 🤷♂️😂
Let's not forget her "I will never serve"-line despite having done nothing BUT serve the jailer since WOTLK. A hypocrite so terrible blizzard removed the line of Garrosh calling her a bitch because of how accurate it is.
I understood Sylvanas as an antihero who cared deeply only for her forsaken since she herself did not want to be alone, growing ever more desperate to save them as a race but not to become a lich king, walking on this edge the whole time ... Then they took this aspekt of her away in BFA and made it look like she never cared for them at all... And now they are telling us that this character never even existed, that the was a mustache tvirling character and did not yet pass the undead equivalent of puberty.
What really annoys me about Sylvanas' writing is the obnoxious set up they have planned with Nathanos. She LOVES him??? Since when? Am I missing something? They have the sexual tension of rotten potatoes! Blizzard's writing quality is bad enough as it is, but their pairings are even worse. Don't get me started with Tyrande and Malfurion, I wish I could run them over with buses just to shut them up. Why does everyone need to be in relationships? Let alone straight ones? Jaina especially concerns me, but then again... we're talking about BLIZZARD. I'm not sure why I even keep up with the lore honestly. It just hurts knowing what this studio is when it was my favourite for so long.
I had a theory back in CATA that Sylvanas had actually died died and that it was something else that returned from the Maw. This explains a lot of her behaviors afterwards... ESPECIALLY if viewed as someone deliberately trying to sabotage the process of death
I argue having a piece of her soul missing (the so called "good" half) doesn't cheapen her decisions up till this point, and here's why: Sylvanas changed the moment she was killed in WC3. She turned from a respectable ranger general into a Banshee who tricked humans into reclaiming Lordaeran and then massacring all of them. There has always been a clear divide between what she was, and what she became afterwards after undeath. If we use your argument, Sylvanas' choices would have been cheapened regardless as she changed through undeath. AT the very least with this split soul story they are saying Sylvanas still made those choices so she is still to blame. inb4 "omg blizzard shill" comments. I have had criticisms of WoW lore throughout the many years I've played the games, and I have my criticisms of Shadowlands. I just think people's opinion of Sylvanas' story direction is very misinformed about how older lore.
I liked Sylvanas before BFA,,,, she was an interesting character, a character who made sacrifices and cruel decisions in order to make her people survive in a world which wouldnt accept them except as monsters.
Garrosh was truly the only one to come out of Shadowlands unscathed. I fucking loved his janky-ass cinematc and wish Blizzard had done a better job because just the dialogue fucking SLAPS.
Garrosh is one of the BEST characters created in WOW (no W3) , he got the Honorable death (pls ignore thrall stuff in mak´gorah) and then they fuck all the legacy doing that shitty cinematic without animation lol
It's 'kay guys, all is forgiven. If she ain't redeemed yet she will be. Despite causing multiple atrocities and possibly being complicit in Vol'jins death, she will be... She's Garrosh 2.0 but opposite.
Solution for us Roleplayers: Shadowlands isn't canon. ...Seriously, what the fuck are we going to know about that place, or the stuff going on in there, anyways? At least the normal joes.
Its one of the reason i just stopped caring for WoW and its story long ago....it already was at odds with storytelling in wc3 in vanilla days due to forced faction split but from Cata onwards it was outright destructive to the characters - metzen singlehandedly ruined Thrall and then Jaina by nuking her for good measure... and constantly ignoring Christie Golden's writing. Only good that we had in BFA after his departure from.Blizz was surely from people who made that little.lovely Hope scene that was inlije with Christies writing of Jaina and gave us that amazong homeland theme for her. Ofcourse Metzen ruine dthat with dismantle the hordse scene 2 patches later in mop.in major scene both having Thrall go all murderous on Garrosh(which is incredibly out of character for Thrall especially compared to him in Lord of Clans novel by Christie) and Jaina being vengeful and heartless in spite of hope scene and ending of tides of war... They salvaged as much as possible and gave us lovely story around her in BFA that balanced out the shit with Sylvanas. And going as close to reuinite her with Thrall....tho obviously limited by Metzens dream of having brown babies with a brown babe back in Cata so any chance of for once truly meaningful romance that ties to the themes of the past stories is gone(namely Medivh's point of world being in mortal hands and ending the cycle of hatred, they could be the people to mend this world slowly)....but atleast they put them alog each other alot in each scene they can... and well Crossroads scene too...but i doubt we will see her smile any time soon again... PS Night elves got royaly screwed over too i guess Danuser hates them same way Metzen hated Jaina..... P.S.2: Also Garrosh was incredibly waste, in TBC he had potential with learning Grom wasnt a disgrace and someone he should be ashamed of to become the best his father could be and beyond.... instead he was a warmongering racist manchild with daddy issues.... I would preffer if he mirrored his father redemption and sacrificed himself to save Meghar or azeroth in a way doing it to save his people and more... Plus from more petty things they fail to capture right eye colours for characters, both Uther and Arthas should have green eyes but they gave arthas blue ones and brown to Uther and then human like eyes to sylvanas as ranger general....
everyone raged at blizzard for giving her the garrosh treatment and they 180 her story arc and it shows its so last minute and sad. as an oldschool forsaken "notmyqueen" I am glad she got some spotlight and that the story evolved but it deviates so badly from what her character design was, she had duality in a sense which is why it is somewhat fitting but at the same time like you said it undermines everything prior. its now just confusing at best. atleast we got a sick cinematic of her solo'ing the current lich king. seriously blizzard just do movies (without the marvel-ness)
they pretty much made her the most irredeemable character not just in wow but almost all video games in general because she was like "I died and i went to a place worse than hell and that's not fear so I'm gone be the most selfish bitch in existence and crab bucket (pull everyone down) everyone else with me by doing what is basically war crimes like gassing my own troops and the enemy troops or burning down a sacred tree plus another races home and not at all see the irony of maybe i went there when i died instead of an normal after life" like hoo boy good job blizzard at essentially creating female elf mega hilter
8/10 of the things you say I agree with and I agree that maybe dumpster comedy take of Sylvanas and WoW storytelling is getting tiring especially when a lot of the wow youtubers are leaving so one of these days I'd like to get a more reserved take/response that makes sense that isn't fucking T&E (which is ironic since they've got a lot of comedy themselves). I dunno. Sure I don't really like how the Mind Control steals people's thunder but tbh it happens all the time in media and preferences aside it's not a bad use of it. "Why can't I escape this torment!?" is one of my favourite lines in that cinematic and it struck a cord with me.
The banshee B deserves to be doomed to suffer in the maw until she's earned her redemption and payed for her crimes, but since Blizzard both can't write worth a S anymore and simps hard for her since she's their little mary sue she's going to get off scot free and probably not even get killed by Tyrandae. The absolute state of WoW, we are truly living in the darkest timeline.
Revendreth: The place where the worst of the worst go, being given ONE FINAL CHANCE of redemption, before having to behold eternal suffering. Bastion: A place for the most noble of beings who lived grandious lives. Their job is now to work through those few small imperfections in their soul to achieve true ascension. Now, class, which place does a maniac that slaughtered entire cities in her wake fall into?
did people forget the undead lv 10-20 starting zone in cata where Sylvanas orchestrated the fall of gilneas or no? Those quests for me showed that Sylvanas is a very strong commander and with Teldrassil burned down... She erased two major races their home.
So The story is like jailor did give her a "favor" and Brought back her second part So she knows about the Jailor's plan She could be the key But after jailor I see no reason to let her be killing her again would mean nothing because she was dead all these times So just let her become the new jailor or whatever
I miss the big wide minor lorepieces that came back… you remember the fact why trolls rule some part and some not? I only remember half of it and i love the lore, but i also dont care… now everything you do, and everywhere you go is a current-lore-bound area because you are always needed wherever you go… i miss some random gnome in swampy areas telling me to collect crocolisk hides for satchels…
So, it seems the soul was split on those that were personally killed by Frostmourne. Ok, we’ve seen it with Sylvanas and Uther. What about Terenas? Dranosh? Thassarian and Falric/Marawyn? Antonidas? Mr Sunreaver and even Illidan? Plus the hundreds of thousands of other people that Arthas and the Lich King murdered? Do they all have shattered souls? Terenas seemed pretty intact to me the entire time.
Sylvanas wasnt the one drunk driving through her decisions, her writer was drunk crawling through women's cubicles. Oh and her writer hated the character he was writing for with Garrosh being his favorite. So "Bitch" wasnt Garrosh saying it Sylvanas, rather Alex saying it instead. She was consistent until right after Teldrassil where her motivations change every 3 pages of the book/every patch in game. She was always victim of "r@pe" by Arthas for nearly a year after he killed her + torture and torment by having her conciousness while Arthas forces her to kill her own people she died defending. And we know it was Arthas and not mind control from LK, since he keeps vial of her blood in the chest next to Jaina's necklass and SH badge from Uther, as well as LK kills dispationately where Arthas took great care in torturing Sylvanas specifically.
Sylvanas is grey now that they blended her black and white souls. Garrosh is red and chaotic. Uther is blue and sad : ( Thrall is Green Jesus. my prediction is that Azeroth is just a coloring book, and the jailer wants to remove all the crayons
Yeah,in my opinion it is more like yes, it is the full character but with moral ambiguity cause while she did do good things she did plenty of bad as banshee, it is more like the part of her soul that was missing made her realize that she had a lot more options than to simply do A rather than B.
This Sylvanas seems like she would be a great side character that just dies in some quests and everyone moves on. Instead of focusing on the mediocre, would find a better place for it to be a part of multiple things that keep the lore foundation strong. But, f*ck it let's kill of the Lich King.
On a posivite note, the cinematic looked cool, thats all the nice thing i got to say about the SL. it seems like they are pulling out a Draenor, having too many ideas but not the capabilities to pull it off, and now they are trying to eject themself out of SL by butchering not just the story of the expantion but every single major event in wow history because - The jailer manipulated it of course It really does seem like they had a better plan for sylvanas but had to drop it because.. time development, or atleast i hope this wasnt their plan all along
well I proposed this theory what if the good part of the soul after merging again to the original body she experiences all the past memories or even better all the memories the jailer wanted to see because the Jailer knows we are going to follow him he left Sylvanas behind as a decoy because why should he reveal the full planche to Sylvanus a near puppet to him
It feels like they saw the positive reaction to Illidan's arc and thought "Oh we can do that for Sylvanas." Forgeting that Illidan's redemption had 10 years of them reframing and justifying events. For Sylvanas it's imagine if someone stabbed you the. 5 seconds later launched into their tragic backstory and tried to use it as justification for stabbing you.
Plus Illidan motivations are a little better than self preservation.
Shit, we still don't know what her or the Jailer actually want. It's hard to sympathise with a character when I don't know what motives justify their means.
Well Illidan's part in TBC was pretty much
"Why are we beating him up again?"
"Dunno.... evil or something?"
"Hell if I know..."
Dagoth Ur is more morally grey than Sylvannas.
Hot Take: I didn't like it. I thought it was fine as it was, back in BC.
I still entirely agree with this sentiment though. Really does feel like they're retreading to something they did before, and are just flinging shit and hoping it sticks.
The only thing grey about any of this is Teldrassil's ashes.
Good. Hail the Dark Lady
Baine is just a morally based character, that's just how they are.
Not sure what was that about, can you pls explain ? :)
@@PotatoTroll
Probably not
Baine 'Based' Bloodhoof
Yeah nothing say morally based like killing Horde to rescue Jaina's brother just so he can sleep well at night.
@@MichaelJones-rz5sw Give him a break his in a faction, so stupid they elected a dictator as there leader twice.
After being afk in oribos for 2 years, baine, with just one sentence, is being one of the shadowlands MVPs for me.
Literally carrying the franchise on his totem right now
1 of only 2 interesting scenes in this expac. The other being Garrosh.
@@wrathshorts2894 I still can’t get over how the one good narrative scene only happened because a single dev went out of his way to make it happen with just himself and Garrosh’s voice actor.
I don’t know who that guy is but can he be in charge of the story?
Yeah nothing say MVP like the Jailer dropping him like a sack of potatoes in the maw. 🙄
1 year but yeah
after this cinematic Bane stonks has risen to over 9000
More like -9000
Sylvannas went from Tony Stark (Cursed with knowledge of the other side, doing things no one understood because how can you possibly explain whats coming) to a discount kerrigan who they half assed and ham fisted into "its not her fault bro, forgiv her". She was cool before bfa >:C
the cinematic literally says they cant forgive her, and it is her fault.
She was cool before wotlk 100%, then it s more ambiguous
@@RazanaArcclaw every single non-verbal story telling element is framed for forgiveness. Then they hamfist dialog.
@@RazanaArcclaw Only Baine says that. The whole cinematic is literally what Justin said.
@@dommguard and jaina, and thrall, and uther himself multiple times, and sylvanas herself multiple times, but nah only baine i guess.
I feel blizzard’s writing for Sylvanas goes like this
Blizzard: She’s just “misunderstood” you guys, take a chill pill
Also Blizzard: Let’s make her cause Elven genocide, start essentially a World War, and make her edgy AF, that will surely win over the fans.
Attempt genocide on the Tauren
@@gromczar1589 that too
@@swood9140 no one talks about it
she is so mommy ugh 😩
@@gromczar1589 I haven’t played WoW for a while so after reading your comment I thought “WTF? When did this happen?”
I believe you, Danuser’s writing means what you said is in character I’m just curious when this happened.
They butchered my lady after cata. The way she found meaning trough the forsaken, and the way she protected her people was all for nothing. She has been retconned.
They ruined tons of characters in cata and after it in MoP, just look at Thrall and Jaina, Metzen hated Jay and hijacked Thrall as his self insert and ruined him in the process in Cata(by making him into a Green Jesus and then have him try to put down Garrosh in MoP which incredibly out of character for Thrall compared to Lord of Clans)* while ingoring everything Christie Golden wrote in the books and she made an amazing job characterizing both of them and quite obviously planned to do something with these two after Wotlk, but Metzen just never let her and then outright shut the door on it by indulging into his own fanfiction by inserting his wife in as Aggra and fullfilling "brown babe and brown babies" fantasy with incredibly bad build up.
Then Garrosh himself who was already semi ruined in Wotlk by being reduced to stupid and impulsive manchild, when he had great potential to be the best his father was after he learned that he shouldnt feel shame and see Grom and his title as a disgrace. Instead of doing that and letting him mirror the best in his father and then exceed it they made him into a warmongering manchild with daddy issues and projecting those at Thrall becoming the absolute worst of his father and then some.... This is why i just gave up on taking wow and its story seriously from Cata onwards, and even Vanilla and TBC had it's problems like forcing night elves and frosaken to Alliance and horde when they should be their own neutral factions, or whatever stupidity was TBC in regards of Kael, Illidan.(tho some bits like pre wotlk garrosh were nice)
*Not to mention he ends up killing Garrosh anyway...
@@Kacpa2 mostly agreeable, tho the forsaken and the elf remaining neutral in spite of strong human presence in the vicinity and after the deforestation of ashenvale respectfully didn't make much sense. + the forsaken needed the help, the reason it was given to them was a ploy from the grimtotem to destabilize the horde.
There is no way that this was planned for the last 15+ years. Nor since the Edge of Night short story after WotLK. The new Sylvanas arc lines up with the rest of the terrible plot decisions made during BFA/SL.
@@lightests Its all made up on the spot and its horrible. They just take a dump on anything that ever was good about wacraft...so Warcraft III and Wrath in this case...and Danuser has no right to wipe his ass with this, he neither earned it nor respects it.
it definitely started with legion or bfa, depending on if the stuff in legion was meant as a set up for bfa, or if it wasnt clear at that point
i think thats when metzen left and new writers took over, they dont seem to care about the story that was set up for them and decided to just brute force retcon it by making up this split soul stuff as an in-universe justification to do it
At this point, Danuser looks like the guy who is desperately trying to one-up the old lore to show how great he is, but is only failing miserably
He neither respects it nor earned any right to even mention Warcraft III or Wotlk and he outright takes a piss on it all...
One of the major reasons I don't play WoW anymore. It's obvious the writers have no idea what they're doing.
I can't help but feel like I'm being directly insulted and disrespected. I deleted my account after 8.3 came out, and how horrendously they handled Azshara, Nazjatar, N'zoth and Nyalotha.
Danuser destroyed, and wasted 10 years of my life. 10 years of breadcrumb trails, hints, and foreshadowing. All gone to waste. I hate Danuser, I truly do.
@@corypopowich2879 Ever since I saw the land named Azshara in the old WoW back in 2005, I expected an epic confrontation with Azshara happening there. Boy did Blizzard let me down.
Steve Danuser destroyed 20 years of WoW story in less than 2 years...
It’s truly impressive.
My first love in wow was night elf's and their culture, never was a fan of Sylvanas. But the last two expansions has just cheapened everything that both was based on.
I think you actually love half of the elven culture, the one related to nature and Elune. The other half is highly chaotic, presenting some very disturbed individuals, elves consumed by their dreams of power, control and show-off: Azshara, Illidan, Xavius, etc, etc
@@danielandrews3878 they said NIGHT elves, read...
@@imadeyoureadthis1 well, you still have Illidan in there :) And the archetype applies for all elves, no exceptions. Given the opportunity most of them embrace the dark side of the force, BIG time. As smaller scale but higher in numbers, you have the night elves following Goldrinn, using aspect of the pack, then you have Naralex and his druids of the fang, etc, etc.
@@danielandrews3878 that person said their first love was NIGHT ELVES, never was a fan of sylvanas. You go around assuming a lot of things.
Sylvana was a blood elf.
Devs: "Shadowlands ties in plot elements dating back to Warcraft 3!"
Playerbase: "we wish Shadowlands wasn't canon and it was all a N'zoth fever dream"
It would have worked if WC3 already referenced handsome nipple man
This "plot twist" only served to cheapen her character.
Before she could be seen as a complicated character:
1. She may have cared about the forsaken as "her people". Especially until the end of wrath. It seemed like she bonded with the fellow ex-scourge members who were liberated
2. She had a strong sense of "free will" and would never actually follow anyone's orders.
3. She cared for her sisters, they were really close to bringing her down to earth even in the most recent stories.
After the 9.2 twist, it's clear that she was always doing evil things with zero redeeming qualities. All the redeeming qualities were in a gem that the jailer had. She was just a one-dimensional manipulative and manipulated right hand man of the big bad guy all along. All of her actual personality was locked away the whole time. Nothing mattered.
Not to mention with her strong free will wasbecause she never wanted to be a slave again, and yet here she is a slave and forcing others to be a slave.
She should be the one person out of everyone to not fall for this trap and advocating free will.
So when I saw the cutscene about her breaking from the Jailers will, I rolled my eyes so hard I'm now blind. Because really wtf are writers doing?
Nah fam Alleria hates her more than anyone and the other one (who has creepy children) just dont want anything with her, or at least THIS Sylvanas.
aaaaaaand, you are literally working with just assumptions :)
1. There is literally 0 proof that she cared about the Forsaken. Because caring needs facts. And there are 0 facts that actually help anyone. At times, from example with Garrosh, it is clearly stated the Forsaken were accepted in the horde to be meat canon. Regretting or not she accepted.
2. For what the story says, and judging from her actions, she is just cocky and feels strong when making choices. The problem is she is "encouraged" to take precisely choices, her freedom is a false one. She is not mind controlled, she gladly takes by her own free will the only choice given. Choosing from one choice is a false free will. She was all along led to follow a certain path. And you are very wrong to associat the fall of Arthas with her freedom. It was explained that Arthas was actually holding back the undead from completely rampaging Azeroth, it happened naturally to push Sylvanas forward since it was so easy to make her think everything is her choice. Her only true choice took just a second, when she suicided, but that "mistake" was instantly corrected.
3. As for her being an empty shell, no, that's not true either. She was stripped by her morality, exactly as Uther was. Both had exactly same focus, on vengeance. And when she was done with Arthas she was provided with another false cause, probably fighting the very existence of forces that allow necromancy to exist. Perhaps that is her motivation to fight for a "hard reset". The problem here is she is incapable to understand that in the great cycle some things cannot be controlled. Like her being born as an elf and not a dwarf for example. So even if the wheel is messed up by individuals it doesn't mean that it should be broke and remade. Is just like saying let's reinvent the wheel, but I don't like how it worked, lets make it square this time.
She was that way since BFA, my dude.
Please do not confuse needing a person with caring for a person. Wanting to kill Vereesa Windrunner to be with her forever is the opposite of caring. It is similar to someone that cannot be his/her best self without the person she/he wants to be with him/her. That is not caring and nor loving.
If she cared "for her people" then I suggest reading about how she slaughtered the forsaken that joined the meeting in Arathi. She never did something to show she cared about them. She NEEDED them. Her perpetual state since warcraft 3 to Legion is to bitch about herself, raise her victims into undeath and then use them.
If you chose to serve her then you were safe from her wrath. If you did not then you were her enemy.
Not only all of this, BUT with this it also cheapened and pretty much rendered all of the development and culture as well as what caused people to gravitate to the forsaken as the race that they loved to play meaningless and void of anything all because, as it turns out, Sylvanas just wasn't herself all along.
So, with the main Pillar of the forsaken lore (Sylvanas) being written this way the forsaken has effectively become nothing in the process.
Two souls make no goddamned sense. Because sylv was never like how she was in bfa and SL prior to it. Ontop of that if it was a good soul bad soul thing. Then the bad soul should never want to change her mind about what she is doing. And if she did why would she be in conflict with the "good" soul then??
Its a fucking mess
@@Fable64 yea like how she didnt have that part of her sould she wouldnt have cared and just killed them
When a character consciously decides to commit genocide (in the name of the "greater good" to boot), we've crossed the "irredeemable character" line.
Now that you mentioned Arcane, I gotta say:
A French company with snippets of LoL champions' lore and a rough draft of a story from Riot managed to put to shame an entire writing team of a game with 20 years of storytelling so fucking hard that people who knew LoL was a salt-ridden toxic game decided to go back to it from how good that show was, something that the Warcraft franchise has only managed to do only with Classic nostalgia baiting, but because of game mechanics and simplicity, not for the lore which was dead for years.
To be fair, they also shamed the hell out of the lore writers for LoL
Except Fortiche only animated the show. Writing was done by Riot themselves.
Shes a morally gray character, kakio thats just how they are
She’s not morally grey, she’s literally grey.
@@ehmwhy na mate she blue
@@tigerisak9037 now she is, she did look a bit more grey with her older shadowlands moddel
How in the world can ANYONE say that Sylvanas is a morally grey character? After teldrassil she is as morally black as they can be.
Teldrassil was the capital of the night elves, a faction that refused to surrender. If you open a history book you will see that almost every capital in a losing nation gets torched. Do i need to mention some? Berlin 1945, Constantinople 1453, Rome 476, the bombing of Drezden which had a ton of civilians that got burned alive and yet the Allies are seen today as the "good guys". The bombings today of major civilian cities that still have many innocents in them. Casualties happen in war, deal with it and have a more open mind about how war works.
Only idiotic generals leave the enemy's capital unharmed during a war. How hard is it to understand this? Hell, even Varrian was tempted to just dismantle the Horde by taking over Orgrimmar and i asure you he wouldn't be stopped by some civilians who would oppose him.
The only evil-ish deed she ever did was experimentation on living beings and creation of plagues. That is all.
Well Pillaging stuff was happened from desperation that you take what empire they had and give it to your own people with spoils of war. But if you leave none alive, steal everything valuable and leave nothing but an ash is an purely from hatred or personal ego of the leader's superiority. You conquer to control the place you invaded. not to destroy it. You can't be an king if nothing remains to lead beside your ego and piled up money.
@@Shadowhunterbg ok arm-chair general.
@@Shadowhunterbg Its a game and it was quite literally a world tree. Its not morally grey to burn down a world tree. You'll also note that Rome, Constantinople and Berlin still actually exist, were not subjected to 100% genocide and weren't 'torched' either. Sacked perhaps. Not to be picky but a better comparison to Teldrassil would be the victims of Genghis Khan. When you deliberately burn down a world tree AND all its inhabitants to send their souls into literal hell to siphon their life essence to fuel your bosses furnace I can't see how the OP is wrong by calling it morally black. But feel free to find a real world comparison for that :D
@@Zoey-- We are discussing the act of burning the tree, not the hidden purpose for it.
It is not a full World Tree. It is the bastardization of one. A tree that exists purely because of the Night elves's hubris and lust for domination and immortality. It is a corrupted version of one. A tree that was not approved by the Dragonflights or Nature itself.
Rome, Constantinople and Berlin exist because they were both rebuild and resettled but before that the population was slaughtered and the cities badly sacked, razed if you will. So it is the same - minus the mass rapes that occured during their sacking.
And it is not a genocide to attack a single city. Was the burning of Drezden genocide? Was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki genocide? Most people today would say that it was a necessity to end the war faster. No one would call it genocide. Sylvanas did the same. To end the war with the night elves faster, you take down their centre of command and iconomy.
Be it a tree, a wooden city, it doesn't matter. It will all be set a blaze during an attack and it will burn and burn fast. Civilians will naturally die because it is war.
You judge Sylvanas for actually doing what any general would have - weakening a faction to the point of it being helpless in future wars.
What would have she done instead then? Be like "Oh so you don't surrender? Fine. Since you live in a tree i will just turn back and leave you alone because attacking it would make me look very evil."
Please... Why didn't the night elves start evacuating their city when the war was clearly going against them? Why keep them till the enemy reaches their doorstep. If there is someone to blame it is the night elves and their pride and stupidity.
So, if Sylvanas' soul was split in half, does that mean that Death Knights, Ghouls, and other undead creature's souls are also split
Nah.
A. Not every single undead was killed personally by Frostmourne.
B. It's commonly known Blizzard™ logic™ that only super important special named characters they personally like in the office and need a justification to bring back to being "good" have the Split Soul McGuffin happen to them.
Yes. It was confirmed a long long time ago that all undead (sentient or otherwise) have their souls "Imperfectly" attached to their body. Thats why in every single case they... 'turn' sour. That one lady in BFA, Lilian, every DK ever. They dont all become Pure Evil, but they all become... more angry, more hateful, more quick to attack than they used to be. They arent split in 2 complete sets usually, they're just... not right.
either way the split sould thing is retarded. What about all the people raised after just regular death? were their souls yeeted out of the shadowlands and back into their decaying bodies? or are they just fragments of their original souls? If they are, why was their soul fragmented? or are they like copies of their soul at the point of their death? If so, how does that work?
@@fizzlewick The act of raising someone after death has some sort of effect on them. Like trying to cram a square peg in a round hole. It happens to every undead, not to the same degree every time, but its an unnatural thing that twists them. It doesnt normally do the whole "Oh there a whole other side of me thats good and righteous and good!". Nazgrim is a great example. From honorable noble orc, who yes served a bad man, but did what was right according to his creed... To a bloodthirsty monster of a warrior, wanting to hack first and ask questions never. He didnt change that much, but it made him... worse than he was.
@@baddawgdavis I think to rememember, that lorewise, DKs need to go on a killing spree from time to time to stay sane.
Only one positive thing about Sylvanas story is in one Cinematic they turn a useless cow into fan favorite xD
Excuse me, Baine is awesome!
Baine was trash, and still is trash, just said for once a good comment
@@diegodevitti2105 a perfect comment.
It's so weird, because Garrosh was still based; a complete genocidal maniac, but not apologetic about it. Most people seem to love Sire Denathrius. That's at least two decently written villains, so there ARE people who can write something "at least decent, if not good" kind of character.
Meanwhile, Sylvanas' story is completely vague and confusing.
Danuser is the Lead Narrative Designer, thus he gets the blame (rightfully so, IMO).
The worst part of what the writers did to her is that you could tell from the very start of BFA it was going to be trash. You know they aren't going to kill her in the end, so the entire time you go through all of her actions throughout the course of two expansions just waiting for the "but here's why you guys should forgive her for all of that" moment. There was no suspense because you already knew the inevitable outcome. People can say what they want about the cinematic not being laid out that way, but at the end of the day if there aren't consequences for characters doing terrible shit, then nothing the characters do really matters.
To me, her story arc is just a microcosm of everything wrong with the writers of the lore. They can't make new characters, and they can't let old ones go.
-Your wrong -Get ratioed, -Your British
"Hah.... you got me." - W.W.
Her character Arc ended after Arthas died. When she killed herself that should have been the end of her. Permanently.
Or when Godfrey shot her in the face with a pistol, Bang!
👍
The soul split makes literally no sense. The devs have made it very clear that it wasn't "good vs bad", and didn't result in her being mind controlled or manipulated. So, what's it for? Literally to just make it APPEAR that she now has a good part so that PLAYERS will forgive her for the atrocities she committed and still isn't sorry for.
I think the thing that burns me the most about this is that they seem to be going with making it seem like the Night Elves are crazy for wanting revenge against specifically her.
Agreed. It's like Danuser is trying to make a Nazi-like statement or something. I'd hate to hear his opinions on the Holocaust
of course they would pull something like this out of their ass. the lead writer wouldn't dare kill off his waifu.
As someone who is(?)/was a Sylvanas fan, she was better off dead than to be gutted like this.
if there was a raid that lead to her death and we get to kill her i would of resubed and leveled just to be able to do that.
She was never one of my favorite WoW characters, but I respected her “anything for revenge” plotline.
She was ruthless in her goal and desperate enough to sanction one of the worlds most terrifying weapon. All because her opponent wasn’t just powerful, but one of the strongest beings on Azeroth at the time.
She worked all the way up to Arthas. Many people would say that her fearing what lies beyond death was an ok story, I think it was terrible. I think that finding any answer on “what happens in the next life” is absolutely terrible for the world building. This moment ruined her whole story and in kept going down from there.
I am sorry to say this but if you think that is her plotline then you might want to look at Illidan.
Dont make strong villains and badass characters victims... go full "i love to be bad" villain or full Garrosh "i am a WARchief and protect my people no matter the cost or who stands in my way even when it costs the lifes of my allies" not this "snickers- you are not you when you're hungry" bullshit. Thats "making a pedo blood sucker look romantic" kind of bad writing. None of this is morally grey.. this is character breaking, disney remake, "we tricked you she isnt evil.. or is she" bullshit. Blizzard should know how villains work since they have them as CEOs and in leading positions.
Writers really took "I can fix her" to another level
At first, the decline of storytelling in WoW didn't affect the joy I got from the game (and older lore) too much. Cata came and went, storytelling went up and down, but certainly after Legion it just took a nosedive down the cliff. It saddened me every time, to see how the game I loved for so many years (been at it since 2005), which was shaped with so much love by the original developers, was broken down piece by piece. Neglecting the old lore, creating this strange and new story narrative which was forced on the old lore and was just there to justify another DLC, more money, more shares, less value.
Ive drifted só far from WoW since legion, before I would always return every once in a while for the nostalgia. But nowadays I just play private servers (if any at all). Blizzard-Activision has absolutely nothing to do with the game that I once loved and played for thousands of hours. They just took that beautifull product and milked it for all its worth, not giving 2 shits about the dedicated playerbase who loved the game since the start. I hate how so many games have become solely about money, not about the joy. I remember once watching a docu. (called 'Looking for Group') about the founding of blizzard and the early days of WoW. A dev. would explain how they didnt create WoW/Warcraft for financial purposes, or at least not directly. It was so they could finally play in a world they had always imagined in their minds. That is so cool, not being warped by the goal of making MONEY, but to make something beautifull, nice and with care, for others to share and love as much as you did when making it.
Ugh, Im getting old :(
Sylvanas has never really been designed to be anything more than an anti-hero. Not a villain.
The forsaken as a faction were unique in Vanilla and BC because of their loyalty to her over the Hotde itself; they WOULD have been members of the alliance if not for the plague or their rejection by Varian Wrynn. Sylvanas had an "us against the world" mentality that the other race leaders didn't really have. Making her a villain cheapened her character.
Nothing makes me more upset than thinking about sylvanas character arc. They almost pulled the same stunt with Kerrigan in Starcraft who was my all time favorite. They just didn’t have years to ruin her completely.
It was always understood in wow lore that becoming undead does something to you. Your crueler tendencies become more prominent while what kindness you had while alive gets drowned out.
Nothing about sylvanas is morally gray any more no matter how many times blizzard says she is.
I dont even consider Sylvanas as an Memorable character let alone iconic. Nor do I care about her.
Thanks blizzard for creating her just for her to end up saying "You will be forgotten" to Arthas's soul at the end.
Bascially "fuck you Arthas, everyone loves me"
Blizz messed up by going too far back with the retcons. They should of aimed Sylvanas' soul split after she jumped off ICC. A forsaken who joins the argent crusade in cata mentions that ever since Arthas' death she hasnt been herself. It would have perfectly explained her new colder and ruthless attitude and we still would have had the banshee queen who we loved from WC3 to WoTLK.
Honestly the fact they just blotched out the Lament of The Highborne pains me inside. The entire point of that quest was to show that even in death she still cared for her original people which is why she helped them join the horde.
Uther : Sylvanas's soul has been fractured from the moment of her death
My Death Knight Character : aren't we all?
The medium length answer is, because Blizzard can't fucking stop backpeddling on her characterisation. First she was this morally grey character - not a good person, but not outright evil either (this is pre-BFA I'm talking about - when she was *actually* morally grey) then she went full evil monster mode (unofficially in BFA prelaunch, then officially in late BFA), not even slightly morally grey like previously, and now apparently they're backpeddling *again* in making her *not* pure evil because apparently that wasn't the *real* Sylvanas.
This is the opposite of a morally grey character. Now it's just "evil sylvanas do evil things" and "good sylvanas will do good things". There's no hope for this character anymore.
Sylvanas Simp here: Sylvanas is a character who finished their story arc in Wrath. It ended with suicide.
Cata showed she wanted to ensure her people could aid the Horde, while not forcing people into servitude like Arthas had. Then we skip MoP and WoD to get to Legion, where she becomes Warchief and tries to take control of the leader of the Valkyr - failing. Then come BfA and she's Hitler.
Her character after Wrath was basically ignored, only to then be retconned under the control of the Jailor. An enemy we NEVER heard of until Shadowlands.
Steven Daunser butchered her character harder than Arthas butchered Silvermoon.
Since Cataclysm there have been many ways to write Sylvanas well and nearly every chance Blizzard had they chose the worst possible option and went with it.
After wotlk Sylvanas was the perfect moraly gray character. She did some evil stuff, but her motivation was understandable and noble: she wanted to spare her people from the horrors she saw in the afterlife no matter what. Blizzard biggest mistake was to try to retcon that.
I'm a few days late but that was only ever her fate, no one else's
Souls of other undead you free in a quest in the Plaguelands go "into the Light", for instance
She was always self serving and manipulative after her death
What bothers me the most about Sylvanas is that how protected by plot armor she is. She only gets a little scratch over her eye against Saurfang, whenever in a cutscene with someone, they act dumber to make her look smart. She was pretty cool in WC 3, now I can't wait to see her die, but I know it won't happen because of her popularity among simps.
This is what makes a tauren main like myself proud to have a chieftain like Baine.. "Maybe she shouldn't!"
Things sylvanas did right since vanilla wow:
-attacking gilneas
-abducting a death controlling angel
-calling the retreat in legion.
That's it.
Even her ending arc in Wotlk is lackluster I feel.
Sylavanas is the forsaken.
Forsaken are about compromise, patience, discipline, and free will, especially the free will of their immediate ennemy to die on the spot (Scarlet monastery, Gilneas, detheroc, balnazar and garithos,...)
Clearly, she's shown it isn't beneath her to burn down the remnant of a civilisation, but she would only do so if they pause an active existential threat to the forsaken. Let say in the absolute, she gets both saphirron, Sindragosa, and an absurd flight of undead liberated dragons, something the world has no chance against, what would she do?
The sylvanas as introduced in warcraft 3 would
Step 1 attempt another defensive pact with the alliance
Step 2 clean any significant alliance assets above the wetlands, fortify the bridge there (if 1 failed)
Step 3 cleanse the ghostland, resume diplomacy with her former high elves kin, destroy the Amani.
Step 4 harass the lich king until h's dead. (3-4 are interchangeable i feel, especially if she comes up with a plan to free the undead into more forsaken)
Step 5 sit on her very confortable isolated city with enough buffer to guarantee her people security, declare neutrality, probably create some kind of refugee haven.
This is less of an arc than a roller coaster I built while playing Planet Coaster very drunk
Honestly, from BFA and beyond? They can’t write a good story with her because on one hand...she should’ve died off as a character a long time ago or had a resolution. On the other, the fanbase will “want more” of her and they can’t let a good thing go. She was such an interesting and anti-hero character and they just shit on it because they’ve run out of characters to kill off and they can’t keep justifying green Jesus.
They’re also shaping the “next horde/alliance leaders” and so far we have sympathetic pussy anduin, vengeful tyrande (who will most likely be the next garrosh/sylvanas) Moria Bronzebeard who has Stockholm syndrome, the gnomes and the Draenei are drastically overlooked and these allied races that don’t even matter after BFA.
I blame Metzen for ruining Thrall...Before Cata especially in Christie Goldens writing Thrall was very well characterized but Metzen ignored her and then started to take a piss on his own work by meming around with his stupid hijack/self-insert power fantasy in Cataclysm and then progressively ruining what wad left by making Thrall go directly against who he is. He ruined Jaina too...even more so until whoever cared tried to do something more with her BFA.
I just miss storytelling from.the early books and Warcraft III. Where there wss no stupid "red vs blue" division that forced all existing factions into either even of it made zero sense(nightelves and forsaken should be their own independent factions)
Now we have this moron Danuser wipe his ass woth Warcraft 3 and Wotlk.....just no.m.
@@Kacpa2 All that stuff was just scuffed Warhammer fanfiction.
@@Overdoseplus And it could be something unique for Warcraft, but Metzen was too foolish to understand and follow upon it. Christie did recognize it but he ignored the hell out of her writing. Arthas's story wasnt perhaps fully original but good and now Danuser ruined it too plus they held to it too much called back to it too much. Showing they really had no good ideas.
So Sylvanas was split and being controlled by the Jailer? And wanted to take down and kill the Lich King, who was also a puppet of the Jailer (apparently).
She'ss a morally gray character Kakio, that's just how they are!
There's nothing morally gray about Sylvanas,she's basically worse than Hitler.
im still waiting for two things, for the two uthers to reunite, and for us to see what happened to arthas
Uther already reunited with his split soul. That was literally a whole questline about that in 9.1...
@@Val_ayh didn't he come to terms with what he did to arthas's soul? not with the half that is still in his shine in eastern kindgoms?
Saying your character "wasn't them self" when they have been doing evil shit has roughly the same satisfaction of the "It was all a dream". It's like they are saying that if Sylvanas's noble soul was with her then she would of never broken under Arthas's torture or been afraid of her cruel afterlife. This is the kind of retconning that really damages a character, taking away all the things people liked about her, without giving a satisfying conclusion to the people who hate her.
Imagine still caring about warcraft lore after what BFA did to it.
This.
Although it’s all been downhill since WoD.
@@picklechin3061 I'd say it was downhill since MoP. They did a 180 with Garrosh in mop.
BFA was fine I lost track of the lore in shadow lands
@@ghostsheepy. If you think BFA's lore was 'fine' you were never really into Warcraft lore at all.
@@EdyGlockenspiel That's actually true. I was gonna say MoP but I didn't wanna piss off all the panda fanboys. Plus I guess it had its moments with the Thunder King.
Say what you want about Cataclysm's ending but at least it was big cool stupid fun with big bad dragon and elements trying to destroy the world.
Dude, I have waited so long for a non reporter video from you. The good Kakio stuff.
See, this is what I hated the most in the storyline after Legion. Sylvanas' character was completely assassinated the moment they turned her into a villain. It would have been neat if she was just, as they put, a morally grey character who is trying to avoid what she had seen in the afterlife. She was empowering for many because she got back at the man who stole her freedom away from her during WoTLK. She was a survivor, in all the grittiest and unpleasant details it may entail. Instead of her being the enigmatic but reasonably fair Dark Lady we all thought Blizzard was writing her to be, she became an amalgamation of cliches that the writers compiled from the other WoW villains who did the terrible things they did for the greater good (Kil'jaeden, Sargeras, Illidan, etc).
I still love her as a character, but the direction Blizzard made for her really is a crying shame.
Only a five minute video? Man, you could write a documentary on this subject.
1:30 I mean...it is pretty dope armor. Clearly the missing piece of SL is to give us that option, just straight up join the Maw covenant.
Like, they should have just lock her up in the maw, then after ten expansions SHE JUST BY CHANCE.... have a redemption arc. But who is hoping there will be anymore of this acitivision-blizzard to be expanded.
Warcraft 3 expansion showed after the Scourge how Sylvanas HATES to her very core not being in control of her own (un)life. Then in BFA/Shadowlands she fully submits to the nipplemeister and commits obvious war crimes that bring BOTH the horde and alliance against her. They made her a slave and an idiot. Rest in pieces I guess, just like Arthas.
One of the most important aspects to telling a story through characters is to define those characters to the extent they basically fill in the story themselves. Anything they're faced with you need to ask what would they do based on their personality and everything that's happened to them up until that point. Sometimes it takes the story down a path you wouldn't expect.
Blizz writes WoW like an 8 year old. "Oh this sounds cool let"s do that." No further thought required. -_-
This is only half-true. Thare are basicly 2 ways to tell a story, and there isn't the "better" way to do it. You can tell a plot driven or character driven story. While plot driven stories usually have better narration, character driven stories fell more real. For example Song of Ice and Fire is a character driven story while Lord of the Rings is plot driven.
WoW story was always plot driven, and characters ware there only to fill a role in a story. The main problem with Sylvanas is that thay use her character wrong, put it in place that should not be, and then pulling everything from ass to fit it to the story that she don't belong to.
Games usually are telling plot driven stories, but in RPG there is no reason to do both, have some storylines plot driven, others character driven. This is what FF14 is doing with the story., while main story is plot driven, there are a lots of casual moments in a story that are character driven.
I don't know why, but why is it so hard for blizzard writers to just let characters go lmao
So she just gets a free pass for genocide because her soul was fractured? Ofc
Ngl the mawsworn mail set looks pretty cool. I can see why she chose that covenant.
"Maybe she Shouldn't" is something we should chant anytime Blizzard tries to tell us Slyvannas was a good character in SL. Just full on Silence brand crab blockade.
She was already a morally grey character before Blizzard let Danuser write all his self-insert fanfiction.
Vanilla - MoP: morally grey Sylvanas
Legion onwards: trainwreck Sylvanas
Sylvanas has basically been drunk since she got turned.
She did awful things she wouldn't normally do, and when she got sober she had to face her consequences 🤷♂️😂
Let's not forget her "I will never serve"-line despite having done nothing BUT serve the jailer since WOTLK. A hypocrite so terrible blizzard removed the line of Garrosh calling her a bitch because of how accurate it is.
I understood Sylvanas as an antihero who cared deeply only for her forsaken since she herself did not want to be alone, growing ever more desperate to save them as a race but not to become a lich king, walking on this edge the whole time ... Then they took this aspekt of her away in BFA and made it look like she never cared for them at all... And now they are telling us that this character never even existed, that the was a mustache tvirling character and did not yet pass the undead equivalent of puberty.
Pretty much
@@eldritchdragon5755 oh do not worry. I absolutelly agree that the redemption is simply unjustifiable, no matter how you look at it ...
Ranger sylvannas:
*WE WERE ON A BREEEEAAAAAAAK!!!!!*
I keep looking for/hoping for reasons to come back but :(
What really annoys me about Sylvanas' writing is the obnoxious set up they have planned with Nathanos.
She LOVES him??? Since when? Am I missing something? They have the sexual tension of rotten potatoes! Blizzard's writing quality is bad enough as it is, but their pairings are even worse. Don't get me started with Tyrande and Malfurion, I wish I could run them over with buses just to shut them up. Why does everyone need to be in relationships? Let alone straight ones? Jaina especially concerns me, but then again... we're talking about BLIZZARD.
I'm not sure why I even keep up with the lore honestly. It just hurts knowing what this studio is when it was my favourite for so long.
I had a theory back in CATA that Sylvanas had actually died died and that it was something else that returned from the Maw. This explains a lot of her behaviors afterwards... ESPECIALLY if viewed as someone deliberately trying to sabotage the process of death
I argue having a piece of her soul missing (the so called "good" half) doesn't cheapen her decisions up till this point, and here's why:
Sylvanas changed the moment she was killed in WC3. She turned from a respectable ranger general into a Banshee who tricked humans into reclaiming Lordaeran and then massacring all of them. There has always been a clear divide between what she was, and what she became afterwards after undeath. If we use your argument, Sylvanas' choices would have been cheapened regardless as she changed through undeath. AT the very least with this split soul story they are saying Sylvanas still made those choices so she is still to blame.
inb4 "omg blizzard shill" comments. I have had criticisms of WoW lore throughout the many years I've played the games, and I have my criticisms of Shadowlands. I just think people's opinion of Sylvanas' story direction is very misinformed about how older lore.
I liked Sylvanas before BFA,,,, she was an interesting character, a character who made sacrifices and cruel decisions in order to make her people survive in a world which wouldnt accept them except as monsters.
Sylvanas is basically drunk driving through all of her decisions, aye.
no other character in wow makes me roll my eyes so hard, such shit writing
Garrosh was truly the only one to come out of Shadowlands unscathed. I fucking loved his janky-ass cinematc and wish Blizzard had done a better job because just the dialogue fucking SLAPS.
Garrosh is one of the BEST characters created in WOW (no W3) , he got the Honorable death (pls ignore thrall stuff in mak´gorah) and then they fuck all the legacy doing that shitty cinematic without animation lol
It's 'kay guys, all is forgiven. If she ain't redeemed yet she will be. Despite causing multiple atrocities and possibly being complicit in Vol'jins death, she will be...
She's Garrosh 2.0 but opposite.
To bad we didn't get a reunion between Garrosh and Sylvanas.
Sylvanas: FORMER Warchief.
Garrosh: Bitch.
They decided to not take the Voljin path so they came up with a last minute story with Sylvannas.
Oh no, half-undead is now canon. Even RPing is ruined.
Solution for us Roleplayers: Shadowlands isn't canon. ...Seriously, what the fuck are we going to know about that place, or the stuff going on in there, anyways? At least the normal joes.
@@ogre7699 I’m not an Role player and to me SL isn’t cannon
Its one of the reason i just stopped caring for WoW and its story long ago....it already was at odds with storytelling in wc3 in vanilla days due to forced faction split but from Cata onwards it was outright destructive to the characters - metzen singlehandedly ruined Thrall and then Jaina by nuking her for good measure... and constantly ignoring Christie Golden's writing.
Only good that we had in BFA after his departure from.Blizz was surely from people who made that little.lovely Hope scene that was inlije with Christies writing of Jaina and gave us that amazong homeland theme for her.
Ofcourse Metzen ruine dthat with dismantle the hordse scene 2 patches later in mop.in major scene both having Thrall go all murderous on Garrosh(which is incredibly out of character for Thrall especially compared to him in Lord of Clans novel by Christie) and Jaina being vengeful and heartless in spite of hope scene and ending of tides of war...
They salvaged as much as possible and gave us lovely story around her in BFA that balanced out the shit with Sylvanas. And going as close to reuinite her with Thrall....tho obviously limited by Metzens dream of having brown babies with a brown babe back in Cata so any chance of for once truly meaningful romance that ties to the themes of the past stories is gone(namely Medivh's point of world being in mortal hands and ending the cycle of hatred, they could be the people to mend this world slowly)....but atleast they put them alog each other alot in each scene they can... and well Crossroads scene too...but i doubt we will see her smile any time soon again...
PS Night elves got royaly screwed over too i guess Danuser hates them same way Metzen hated Jaina.....
P.S.2: Also Garrosh was incredibly waste, in TBC he had potential with learning Grom wasnt a disgrace and someone he should be ashamed of to become the best his father could be and beyond.... instead he was a warmongering racist manchild with daddy issues.... I would preffer if he mirrored his father redemption and sacrificed himself to save Meghar or azeroth in a way doing it to save his people and more...
Plus from more petty things they fail to capture right eye colours for characters, both Uther and Arthas should have green eyes but they gave arthas blue ones and brown to Uther and then human like eyes to sylvanas as ranger general....
Classic sylvanas was the best sylvanas I like ambiguous evil forsaken
everyone raged at blizzard for giving her the garrosh treatment and they 180 her story arc and it shows its so last minute and sad. as an oldschool forsaken "notmyqueen" I am glad she got some spotlight and that the story evolved but it deviates so badly from what her character design was, she had duality in a sense which is why it is somewhat fitting but at the same time like you said it undermines everything prior. its now just confusing at best. atleast we got a sick cinematic of her solo'ing the current lich king. seriously blizzard just do movies (without the marvel-ness)
they pretty much made her the most irredeemable character not just in wow but almost all video games in general because she was like "I died and i went to a place worse than hell and that's not fear so I'm gone be the most selfish bitch in existence and crab bucket (pull everyone down) everyone else with me by doing what is basically war crimes like gassing my own troops and the enemy troops or burning down a sacred tree plus another races home and not at all see the irony of maybe i went there when i died instead of an normal after life" like hoo boy good job blizzard at essentially creating female elf mega hilter
I commented this before somewhere that I like that asmongold's chat went "Her crimes?! Bitch that was you!" while watching the cinematic.
8/10 of the things you say I agree with and I agree that maybe dumpster comedy take of Sylvanas and WoW storytelling is getting tiring especially when a lot of the wow youtubers are leaving so one of these days I'd like to get a more reserved take/response that makes sense that isn't fucking T&E (which is ironic since they've got a lot of comedy themselves).
I dunno. Sure I don't really like how the Mind Control steals people's thunder but tbh it happens all the time in media and preferences aside it's not a bad use of it. "Why can't I escape this torment!?" is one of my favourite lines in that cinematic and it struck a cord with me.
The banshee B deserves to be doomed to suffer in the maw until she's earned her redemption and payed for her crimes, but since Blizzard both can't write worth a S anymore and simps hard for her since she's their little mary sue she's going to get off scot free and probably not even get killed by Tyrandae. The absolute state of WoW, we are truly living in the darkest timeline.
Revendreth: The place where the worst of the worst go, being given ONE FINAL CHANCE of redemption, before having to behold eternal suffering.
Bastion: A place for the most noble of beings who lived grandious lives. Their job is now to work through those few small imperfections in their soul to achieve true ascension.
Now, class, which place does a maniac that slaughtered entire cities in her wake fall into?
did people forget the undead lv 10-20 starting zone in cata where Sylvanas orchestrated the fall of gilneas or no? Those quests for me showed that Sylvanas is a very strong commander and with Teldrassil burned down... She erased two major races their home.
So The story is like jailor did give her a "favor" and Brought back her second part
So she knows about the Jailor's plan
She could be the key
But after jailor I see no reason to let her be
killing her again would mean nothing because she was dead all these times
So just let her become the new jailor or whatever
World of Warcraft...moar like World of Retconcraft
I miss the big wide minor lorepieces that came back… you remember the fact why trolls rule some part and some not? I only remember half of it and i love the lore, but i also dont care… now everything you do, and everywhere you go is a current-lore-bound area because you are always needed wherever you go… i miss some random gnome in swampy areas telling me to collect crocolisk hides for satchels…
So, it seems the soul was split on those that were personally killed by Frostmourne. Ok, we’ve seen it with Sylvanas and Uther. What about Terenas? Dranosh? Thassarian and Falric/Marawyn? Antonidas? Mr Sunreaver and even Illidan? Plus the hundreds of thousands of other people that Arthas and the Lich King murdered? Do they all have shattered souls? Terenas seemed pretty intact to me the entire time.
Sylvanas wasnt the one drunk driving through her decisions, her writer was drunk crawling through women's cubicles.
Oh and her writer hated the character he was writing for with Garrosh being his favorite. So "Bitch" wasnt Garrosh saying it Sylvanas, rather Alex saying it instead.
She was consistent until right after Teldrassil where her motivations change every 3 pages of the book/every patch in game.
She was always victim of "r@pe" by Arthas for nearly a year after he killed her + torture and torment by having her conciousness while Arthas forces her to kill her own people she died defending.
And we know it was Arthas and not mind control from LK, since he keeps vial of her blood in the chest next to Jaina's necklass and SH badge from Uther, as well as LK kills dispationately where Arthas took great care in torturing Sylvanas specifically.
Phantom squidward made me laugh my asss off.
Sylvanas is grey now that they blended her black and white souls. Garrosh is red and chaotic. Uther is blue and sad : (
Thrall is Green Jesus. my prediction is that Azeroth is just a coloring book, and the jailer wants to remove all the crayons
Yeah,in my opinion it is more like yes, it is the full character but with moral ambiguity cause while she did do good things she did plenty of bad as banshee, it is more like the part of her soul that was missing made her realize that she had a lot more options than to simply do A rather than B.
This Sylvanas seems like she would be a great side character that just dies in some quests and everyone moves on. Instead of focusing on the mediocre, would find a better place for it to be a part of multiple things that keep the lore foundation strong. But, f*ck it let's kill of the Lich King.
Man I just want more Uther. He bought back so much nostalgia.
On a posivite note, the cinematic looked cool, thats all the nice thing i got to say about the SL. it seems like they are pulling out a Draenor, having too many ideas but not the capabilities to pull it off, and now they are trying to eject themself out of SL by butchering not just the story of the expantion but every single major event in wow history because - The jailer manipulated it of course
It really does seem like they had a better plan for sylvanas but had to drop it because.. time development, or atleast i hope this wasnt their plan all along
well I proposed this theory what if the good part of the soul after merging again to the original body she experiences all the past memories or even better all the memories the jailer wanted to see because the Jailer knows we are going to follow him he left Sylvanas behind as a decoy because why should he reveal the full planche to Sylvanus a near puppet to him
Because the writers don't know what they are doing.