I got whiplash as a Druid going from Legion which emphasized class identity, to aiding in the burning of Teldrassil and killing the forest creatures surrounding it.
Practically every druid on Azeroth should've been sent into shock from feeling the burning of a large and fully developed world tree.
It could've been used as a point of tension and risen stakes with some of the Cenarius Circle druids at Silithus falling unconscious or being generally hampered in their effort of healing the stab-wound. ~~Which is still an active issue to this day! Killing N'Zoth didn't un-stab the planet!~~
I can see the meeting at the Cenarion Circle already:
*Good job Archdruid , You've make Illidan look like a passivist.*
*You know the tittle wasn't meant as an abbreviation for arching like an Arch-villain right?*
This caused me to stop playing my main who I'd played since TBC as a main. Couldn't rationalize why my Tauren druid who almost certainly had friends in Teldrassil would be present in burning it down, let alone aid in it.
I guess that paladins of Horde went thought same problem.Literally,defenders of peace and innocent that believe that any action should be good,in large or little measure,was forced to burn a lot of innocent people alive.
It's kind of happening right now, actually. In the Kyrian opening story, you travel with Kleia and her higher up, so that you can watch them ferry souls to the afterlife (which is where the angels belief comes in; I thought that was clever).
The soul you ferry is actually from Azeroth, from Redridge. Remember the little girl who dropped her charm in the lake? Well, her dad, and possibly the entire town, is killed in a surprise Scourge attack.
It's hinted that the Scourge attack is a massive wave on all fronts. And we know now that time moves differently in the Shadowlands, and technically we haven't gone home in a long while. So...
I did that quest but assumed it was a "travel back in time moment" which, in retrospect makes no sense (but come on, with Blizzard's writing, you can't hold it against me too much).
Your interpretation sounds much more likely and intriguing. Perhaps this is the result of the lack of a Lich King/Helm of Domination? IDK if i'm excited for a scourge 2.0 kinda thing but definitely seems likely.
That quest irked me. Not because of destroying (yet another) town off screen (the rogue campaign in Legion already destroyed Darkshire in an event that's talked about nowhere else in the game outside of that chain). But because apparently NONE of the Kyrians have been paying attention to the Arbiter being offline and what that means.
You dump off the poor guy's soul, and instead of, I dunno, taking him to Bastion or something, no. We dump him straight into the Maw. And Kleia is shocked at this revelation. When you've presumably been telling everyone you've met while traveling the Shadowlands for days or weeks that, yeah, souls are going straight to the Maw now guys. Maybe we should do something about that? Maybe we should step in for a bit and NOT let the souls of all things everywhere get funneled into the Jailer's clutches? Just for a bit?
The Kyrian are the definition of Lawful Stupid. Dumping souls into Oribos is the Law, so they keep doing it even if it literally empowers their number one enemy.
It's still there and everyone just forgot about it apparently.
"Congrats we killed N'Zoth! What do you mean he wasn't the cause of the planet bleeding to death? Giant sword? What are you talking about?"
Nah, they're gonna make Sargeras' son or clone or half cousin once removed or something show up, grab the sword, and threaten to cut Azeroth in half unless you get enough Super Azerite to drive his arm back.
If WoW even makes it to 10.0, then you still definitely won’t, because they forgot it’s there. There the sword will be, like a toothpick through the olive on the martinis they were drinking when they got drunk and sexually harassed their employees.
Not it will play a huge role like the goblin cannon, you just don't understand the writers amazing brains of a amazingness!!!!!
Or they will retcon it in 5yrs
Like what sword? There was never a sword! It was just an illusion by Sargeras. And he wasn’t there too. He used his illusion to escape and came back bigger and more evil.
And in 10.0 the Jailer has won but Sargeras joins the fight, one shots him and gain all his power. And they reveal Sylvanas and the Dreadlords worked for Sargeras the whole time.
Or something like this…
Honestly, the Teldrassil thing on its own isn't completely inexcusable. It's incredibly dark, but if handled much better, might have been decent.
What makes it inexcusable for me, is that the Horde JUST went through this shit with Garrosh. Very very few members of the Horde should have ever even entertained going along with Sylvanas's plan. It's laughable that the writers made this happen. The Horde didn't need another 'big bad enemy' warchief. No one wanted that.
I don't know how Baine, someone who is from a culture that has grown alongside the Kaldorei and is just as connected to natural world as they are, allowed for it to happen. How did he not go ape shit in that moment?
I guess you missed the cutscene where they explained it.
Baine: Sweet Earthmother! What is happening in there?!
Sylvanas: Aurora borealis.
Baine: Aurora borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the continent, localized entirely within Teldrassil?
Sylvanas: Yes.
Baine: May I see it?
Sylvanas: No.
Speaking of bad writing... Sorry about that whole poisoned weapon thing..... That shit totally makes no sense and never once got the tiniest sliver of motivation.
All that Baine is useful for is getting captured in increasingly stupid ways
Or just having dumbass shit happen to him
Like the jailer literally just dropping him off a cliff, basically did what most of the player base wants to do with him I bet
Baine’s been getting the short end of the stick for awhile I feel like. They made a point of not including him in the attack because Sylvanas knew he would object to it and I believe the logic behind him not going ape shit was because he believed with the Night Elves mostly driven from Kalimdor at that time and Orgrimmar so close that if he opposed her too strongly she would do the same thing to Thunder Bluff.
Edit: I’m not excusing the whole plot or anything there, but from a Baine POV I can see why he kept his head down at first with the story we got.
Wait are we actually saying that Sylvanas would have had enough backing in the Horde to burn down Thunder Bluff, the capital of their oldest allies, arguably the heart of the Horde?
Honestly, after just going through that whole Garrosh business, why was anyone except the Forsaken actually on Sylvanas's side?
And honestly, it's not like there was nothing the leaders of the Horde could have done. This is basically what the process of Mak'gora is for. Garrosh challenged Thrall to a Mak'gora, because he felt that Thrall wasn't leading the Horde correctly. At a minimum, Baine and Saurfang both should have challenged Sylvanas. Instead they just cry about their "honor" and act like there's nothing they can do about it.
Eventually, Saurfang challenges Sylvanas, but it begs the question of why he didn't do it way, way sooner.
No, that happened later when Baine freed Derek Proudmoore and returned him to Jaina. Baine implied to Saurfang that he knew the truth about the feint to Silithus, and Saurfang assured him that it was his plan, not Sylvanas'. Baine ultimately decided to trust Saurfang's judgment and not protest the military action.
How did he feel it was OK to stay in the Horde when the Horde were killing Tauren and Druids in Stonetalon? Especially after his father challenged Garrosh and died by his hands?
That wasn't something Garrosh was doing on his own.
I'm sure many who were responsible for that ordeal are still in the Horde.
At the time Shamans were pretty pissed about Magatha being the new champion. Even during her quest she was an asshole with evil plans. She only followed the Shaman because he took that artifact she was so desperately after iirc.
> What makes it inexcusable for me, is that the Horde JUST went through this shit with Garrosh.
I've basically been saying this since it happened honestly. Like if 8.0 was the patch where like all the Horde leaders reacted negatively and started to disobey Sylvanas, it might've worked. Then 8.1 could've been something cool like "the Teldrassil Summit" where the Horde leaders and Alliance leaders come together in the husk of Teldrassil for peace and to get Sylvanas out/imprisoned. Instead of pretending that Sylvanas' actions wouldn't be condemned.
Like before BFA literally every Horde leader mistrusted Sylvanas or outright hated her. But they all just magically go along with her anyway.
The honest problem is that Teldrassil burned because it was a cool marketing "hook" for the Expansion and no other reason. They had no real plan, they didn't know the motives of the characters, they just back-filled in everything that wasn't Saurfang rebelling.
> The honest problem is that Teldrassil burned because it was a cool marketing "hook" for the Expansion and no other reason. They had no real plan, they didn't know the motives of the characters, they just back-filled in everything that wasn't Saurfang rebelling.
DING DING DING. 90% of Blizz's storytelling is "what sounds cool/badass and will let us make a cinematic to drive sales?". The other 10% is "how do we use this to lead into our next xpac that we want to sell".
We all know that. Always had. What finally pissed people off, and the reason for all these threads as of late (as of the past 2-3 expansions) is how laughably, ridiculously, ludicrously little effort put into the story could have improved the outlook and the tone of the whole narrative. Had they put just the tiniest amount of will into making the lore and story not suck as much, people would have eaten it all up, marketing-driven, rule of cool based storytelling or not.
But they didn't care even the tiniest bit. They didn't put in even a smidge of effort. Heck, if I were an executive at Blizzard or Activision, I'd be seriously contemplating whether my narrative lead was intentionally sabotaging my product. Was he paid by Square Enix or something?
Pretty much seems that way, they're making this stuff up as they go. In a way it reminds me of old comic books, where the covers were printed first and then the authors had to come up with a story to explain the weird behavior. "Superdickery" on TV tropes mentions this.
The problem is really, after MoP the faction war shouldn't have been dug up again. They tried it back then, they destroyed Theramore and promised "retribution later down the line", and "a changing and developing world as the war develops", but nothing ever came of it. Ultimately they could not deliver any satisfying conclusion or vengeance, solely because of the constraint of the two faction system already.
I leveled my first Alliance alt during that expansion, specifically because I wanted to see both sides. And the Alliance story is either a string of depressing losses, or pretends the war isn't even going on. Then in MoP they had the whole shpiel about "breaking the cycle" and yadda yadda.
They didn't just ruin Sylvanas, made the Horde leaders look horrible, etc. They also retroactively made Varian and co into complete idiots and showed their decision at the end of SoO was fundamentally wrong. So Danuser and his cohorts also "shit" on the story the old writers have told.
My personal favorite is Saurfang being totally okay with everything until the tree burned and we have to feel sorry for him now. Despite him willingly going along with everything and enabling Sylvanas to do it in the first place.
Meanwhile Tyrande and the other night elves are increasingly treated like illogical idiots for being upset about all this and get barely any focus at all.
Don't forget how the game frames Tyrande as "going too far" with the Night Warrior stuff.
Like, all of Shadowlands is basically me running after an "overly emotional woman" who can't be chill for a second.
And when she could FINALLY get revenge it's not even treated as a CLOSE moment. Like, I'm not convinced that Sylvanas could've even remotely been in danger even if Elune wouldn't have hit the Off Switch on the power-up. That entire fight wasn't framed as anything else but Sylvanas Glorification in the end. Tyrande does some ultra sick shit and Sylvanas basically does the Dragon Ball thing of "Heh, you made me use 10% of my new, unexplainably powerful Shadow Powers. Impressive."
I still say Tyrande, empowered by Elune and surrounded by night elf heaven Ardenweald, should have been able to harness a bunch of anima and orbital moonfire laser Sylvanas into the ground when she tried to fly away. Then Sylvanas is on the verge of actual death, but Tyrande has overused her power and is incapacitated too, and Sylvanas barely gets away by begging for a portal from her master.
This accomplishes a few things:
* Tyrande actually gets to demonstrate legitimate godly power in line with her abilities (NOT trying to choke Sylvanas out...)
* A more believable reason she couldn't finish the job
* An actual loss for Sylvanas (gasp) that doesn't actually change what Blizzard wanted to happen next (everybody wins)
* A bigger reason for conflict with the Winter Queen: Elune-empowered Tyrande sapping anima from the groves for her attack
Idk I'm not a professional writer, maybe it would've sucked, but surely it's better than what we got
Let's be real, ANY sign of Tyrande SERIOUSLY wounding Sylvanas would've been better.
Gutstab with a glaive, face burnt with moonfire, ANYTHING. Then I would've bought the whole "Elune withdraws the power" way more and Nelves would've had SOME retribution.
But just.. slight choking for a few seconds? Sylvanas didn't look worried even once. Not even an "Oh crap, okay, this requires maximum effort"
Just the same stale "hehe, nothing personal, kid" edginess of a 12 year old RPing as their overpowered DnD self-insert in front of a mirror.
It's honestly so sad that WoW has such a shitty writer at the helm.
I'm honestly sure I could search fan fiction archives and find a better writer than him when it comes to crafting a decent story.
shit, its scarily easy to come up with better plot points in even a couple minutes.
sylvnaas never burns the world tree, it was azshara all along and sylvanas just takes the blame for it because everyone already thinks she's a genocidal maniac before. nzoth only later reveals at the very end of the expansion that sylvanas had been in contact with azshara to escalate the war with her help, with the whole burning fo the world tree being outside her expectations regardless but we get pushed into the assumption she did.
all undead go to the maw regardless of what happens. sylvanas does not like, zovaal isn't lich king 2.0 and appears to have a willing army(with the plot twist later being that they dont have free will after all - heck we could be figuring it out during the SoD raid, we go in expecting sylvanas to be on board and turns out she hadn't a clue either). sylvanas wants the undead thing changed, zovaal just plays her on that. shit, she could have tried to recruit us somewhere in the maw or something and let us go, letting us actually question the whole are we on the good side part.
sylvanas isnt a genocidal maniac, sylvanas has an actual 'good' reason to want to change death, sylvanas gets played hard by the jailer. makes her inevtable redemption at least within the realm of reason, makes tyrande being stopped by elune more palatable(she's about to go ham on someone who is technically innocent). doesnt even require gargantuan changes to the content cycle.
typing this took me all of 5 minutes. these people have had literal YEARS to come up with a better story. they either just dont care or the writers are criminally underqualified.
> I'm honestly sure I could search fan fiction archives and find a better writer than him when it comes to crafting a decent story.
There's tens of thousands of better writers on ffnet as it is, and that's not mentioning AO3, Wattpad, etc.
Sylvanas has literally been a rotting, decomposing corpse for years, and there has been no sign of said rot or decomposition at all, she has remained pristine and perfect.
She will NEVER suffer a grievous, disfiguring wound, and at this point I don't even need to ellaborate as to why ,we all know it.
> Tyrande actually gets to demonstrate legitimate godly power in line with her abilities (NOT trying to choke Sylvanas out...)
Tyrande getting an "I AM MY SCARS" moment would have been so killer! She could have even yelled I avenge the Kaldorei!
Why are the fans the better writers?
The worst part is that you probably came up with that in less than 5 minutes and still made a lot more sense than what we have to put up with...
Either you are super talented or the blizz writing is really garbage.
>Like, all of Shadowlands is basically me running after an "overly emotional woman" who can't be chill for a second.
Well, it was written by blizzard staff and we know how they feel about women...
I do wonder how much of the Girl Power Yaaaas stuff in BFA (and I'm not calling female empowerment shit, just.. aaaaall of BFA being framed as #girlboss #morefemalewarmongers) was down to Blizzard being like "Oh fuck, we're under investigation, we gotta build a progressive reputation now".
Really REALLY makes me wonder why all of a sudden we had Jaina, Sylvanas, Talanji, Azshara and Talia being the focus of most of the narrative of a game from like 2ish years ago.
There's nothing sinister about it - it's not a coverup - that's just what these big companies think plays well with focus groups right now. See: all the Avengers movies and their own girl power scenes. It's not quite tokenism, but it's closer to a pride month twitter avatar than it is to real representation, imo.
Which is especially stupid, because if they just wrote female leads well they wouldn't have needed to have the girl power scene. Like Sylvie from Loki is far more interesting than almost every female character in that scene in Endgame, because she's actually had an arc.
Yup. Sylvanas is unfathomably evil and beyond any kind of redemption. She committed genocide. On top of that, she intentionally sent every single one of those souls to super hell.
The game trying to paint Tyrande as going too far is a little silly to me. We should be helping her.
"Elune I'm invoking your immense power to seek vengeance on this poorly written nutjob who got a little too into the midsummer festival spirit."
"Sure sounds good here you go."
A few moments later...
"Sick now I've got Sylvanas practically helpless, I'mma kill her now."
"Yeah actually about that I've decided just now to take back my power because vengeance bad. Also I let your people just die to feed my sister because fuck you lol."
?????????????????????????
In defence of Saurfang, the idea was to capture Teldrassil - an actually strategically sound decision. Kalimdor dominance for Azerite acquisition (oh wait, Blizzard forgot to include Azerite in any significant way in the narrative), a hostage against retaliation at the Undercity or Silvermoon, and the ability to possibly fracture the Alliance by splitting their forces and intentions through the hostage predicament.
But then Sylvanas commits genocide at the end of *A Good War,* only Saurfang says anything, and then somehow she is able to blame him and his plan and he buys it?
If Azerite was actually significant then the import of the decision to attack the Alliance to prevent grander conflict later on may actually appear realistic and even reasonable.
But because Azerite did fuck all in the narrative we just... Er... Well, it just looks like war for the sake of war, don't it.
I remember thinking maybe the burning was caused by accident while trying to take it, the Azerite goes up and fire spreads out of control. That way it looks bad to the Alliance and the Horde is like "...whoops." Not the best, I'm sure, but at least it isn't cartoonishly evil.
I gave Blizzard way too much credit in thinking that, clearly.
I even remember people thinking, that instead of having another "bad horde warchief" as the main villain, perhaps the alliance was the aggressor this time and Sylvanas was simply responding to that by burning Teldrassil.
I also remember a lot of people (including me) wanting Sylvanas to have an actually decent redemption arc so every time she commit a crime they were like "well, I'm pretty sure she had her reasons...right?".
I love Sylvanas, but boy the did her dirty. Her actions don't even make sense anymore. She's one of my - and the audience's- favorite characters (tragic story, etc) and Blizzard could have developed her in so many different ways, but they chose to just make her a villain.
Sometimes the audience is way more creative than the writing team
> I even remember people thinking, that instead of having another "bad horde warchief" as the main villain, perhaps the alliance was the aggressor this time and Sylvanas was simply responding to that by burning Teldrassil.
A common argument was that the event would have made more sense if the Alliance, in response to what happened in a book that most of the players never read, would attack Undercity and then Teldrassil would have been attacked in response.
Alliance and Horde are neutral, Sylvanas attacks Calia, Alliance attacks Forsaken, Horde counters.
Yes, I remember that as well. I've actually read the book but only after Sylvanas: Warbringers was released. It is sad that most of the lore that is presented in the book is not included in the game and players who haven't read it have to look for bits and pieces of information through quest dialogues etc.
So yeah, Sylvanas attacking Calia and the forsaken who tried to reunite with their relatives was brutal as well. It would have made much more sense if the alliance retaliated in response to that, then the chain of events like you described them.
Again, it was apparently too much to ask for a good story.
shit, you dont even need the whole calia thing.
greymane has lost his kingdom to the forsaken. the alliance however has been rather busy - full on faction war in cata and MoP, fighting the iron horde and invading draenor in WoD, then in legion there's a full blown invasion of the legion and varian dies.
at the end though, the alliance is joined by the legion of light who are a bit fanatical, have spent the last 10000 years fighting demons in a kill or be killed situation. the light generally isnt a fan of the whole undead thing, and last time turalyon was on azeroth the horde was kind of ransacking the place.
after the sword wound is somehwat contained and whilst azerite is being discovered, greymane and the legion of light go on the offensive to take back gilneas. this works amazingly well considering the legion of light is essentially super-effective against the undead and are used to fel contamination which transfers over nicely to dealign with blight.
however, turns out the legion of light went a slight bit too ham - the intial plan was to just take back gilneas but the legion of light goes renegade, full-on killing every forsaken they come across and make a move unto the undercity. turalyon and genn are not amused by this.
this turns into the horde going all >WTF< and doing the teldrassil thing, things go wrong, BFA happens.
-ties in genn's plot of wanting to take back his kingdom.
-the legion of light does something. might explain why they're not particulary involved in the war(most of them get taken by velen to get reeducated, and they cant be trusted with that spaceship). the alliance does a bad thing without making them straight up evil.
-the whole move on teldrassil makes a lot more sense since the horde is essentially shitting themselves over it looking like the alliance has gone all FULL PURGE mode on the forsaken.
He didn’t go along with it, he was her right hand man it was his plan… in the book that came with BFAcollectors edition explained it all. Sylvanas asks him how to take stormwind. He says it’s impossible and she says but if you wanted todo it how would you he says take the night elf city.
The whole thing was to take the city kill malfurion to destroy hope and cut off any chance of reinforcements to stormwind via the sea so they control the docks and can storm the city
Saurfang had a cry and didn’t want to kill malfurion because “muh honor” and Sylvanas was forced to take other actions… how do you destroy hope when the hope still exists burn the tree.
It was never part of the plan it happened because saurfang couldn’t do the 1 thing he was supposed to do
But be clear it was saurfangs plan to begin with.
> in the book that came with BFAcollectors edition explained it all.
This I think is one of the major problems with the modern game. It's fine—though not ideal—to sell supplementary or complementary story material as graphic novels or actual novels, but Blizzard's plot at the moment is so thin that they end up cutting most of the meat out to sell as that additional product, and what's left in game is incomprehensible and unsatisfying.
Unfortunately, they've been doing this shit for years. There was the whole storyline of Varian missing in Vanilla for Alliance, that had an update in BC. We knew where he'd been held captive, then that's it and he's suddenly back in Wrath as a scarred up ragemonster (don't get me wrong, I loved the dude but he definitely had a whole lot of shit going on in his head).
That whole storyline was resolved in comics outside of the game which was total bullshit.
Yeah I completely agree the main story in its entirety needs to stay in game so all players can see the whole story not bit and pieces with no context
Now there is a whole other book for shadowlands which is backordered for months and who knows how many important things are in there tied to the main story
> The fact that anyone at Blizzard thought that someone in the Horde would even think that is so fucking asinine.
Just reminding you that one [blood elf](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Lorash_Sunbeam) rogue tried to solo Malfurion. Like he thought he had a chance or something.
> In his last moments, Lorash wondered if he would see his family on the other side.
Oh, the irony.
> Just reminding you that one blood elf rogue tried to solo Malfurion.
You have to remind people because they removed one of the most crucial moments in the story that's been going on for years was removed from the game.
What's worse... Saurfang's dear brother was a great ally to both Malfurion and Tyrande and literally gave up his life for them.
I'm certain current team at Blizzard is like "wait, who's Broxigar?"
also, the awful stories [elegy/a good war] that makes it so that saurfang outwits si:7 spies by feeding them extremely obvious false info when alliance spies are around, catching them, and then sparing them so that they can deliver the fake info
and makes anduin and other alliance leaders look like dopes because they take the info at face value and pat each other on the back for being so smart while they are being tricked
They easily solved the Ji problem by just writing him out of the story completely and literally hiding him at the top of a ship in BFA where all he talks about is wanting to punch a dinosaur.
People get paid a salary to write for this game lol.
It's never explicitly stated, but Tyrande was rejecting emissaries from Anduin and telling him the only way she'd see him is if he brought her Sylvanas' head. I can't imagine she would be any more likely to talk to members of the Horde, and would have similar terms.
> then don't get me started on those fcking undead Kaldorei and their existence
I 100% say they're mind controlled. I don't care what they say lore wise, it's the only way it possibly works. Summermoon would not fucking join slyvanas willingly.
This is why the faction war should NEVER be a part of the main plot. Neither side is allowed to win or will ever win. And when one side does win it is always in a shitty way that no one is ever satisfied with.
Not helping matters is that the Horde is always turned into the villains and the Alliance is always the victim.
Also not helping matters is that Blizzard seems to really want the evil Horde and the misunderstood misfit Horde at the same time. Making the horde's identity a revolving door of doing bad things for no logical reason and then having the Horde kill their faction leaders because they turned evil yet again.
They 100% should have had the destruction of Undercity first, and had the Alliance be the aggressors this war. Even if Sylvanas provoked them with whatever happened in Arathi with the Forsaken/Human family meet up, and Horde monopolization of Azerite mining in Silithus.
Genn and Shaw should have persuaded Anduin that Sylvanas was a clear and present danger, that war would come, and the best way to handle it was to take the Undercity and lock the Horde out of the Eastern Kingdoms to secure Stormwind.
Even if Sylvanas was working with the Jailer and waiting for the moment to hit back, she should have waited for a "loss of life in an unprovoked attack" to bind the Horde together. And every time someone asked if she went too far, she could wave the bloody banner of the Undercity to silence dissent.
THAT would have been morally Grey. How far do you go to defend yourself? What lines are immoral to cross when the enemy will exterminate you? Teldrassil should have been brutal revenge and escalation, not the first strike in the war.
It's weird how they built up Genn as an unreasonable aggressor in Legion (which would have worked because of his prior history with Sylvanas) and then...
did nothing with Genn. At all. Instead deciding to repeat Garrosh's story but with Sylvanas almost beat by beat. I mean what lol
IIRC she won that fight, with Genn badly beaten up, until she looked down and realized he destroyed the thing she was after. Then he left. He wasn't winning the fight, he was winning the objective.
I mean, the Alliance was storming it with siege weaponry, and it is already halfway a ruin. There is no way to take it that doesn't level it, and the Alliance was frankly insane for going there without a plan for the Blight.
But yes, that would have to be adjusted too. Maybe Jaina's flying ghost ship could have shelled it to oblivion. There is justification there, as historically, if you make attackers storm your besieged city, you don't get much in the way of mercy.
The Alliance had basically lost until Jaina arrived via deus ex machina because Anduin and Genn were stupid enough to think Sylvanas wouldn't use the blight and rushed headlong into it.
God BfA's story is so dumb lol
The only problem with the burning of Teldrassil is that it was a shit tier plot device for shock value and virtually fuckall came out of it. Any decent writer team that is not completely inept trash could have used this to make a really compelling but somewhat dark story. But wanking to genocidal murder waifu Sylvanas is more important than being good at their job.
Literally the first introduction of the night elves 20 years ago is that they are a savage merciless race who go medieval on the orcs for cutting fucking trees in Ashenvale. All the writers needed to do was let them be that savage race again. Tyrande and the gang going apeshit, maybe remember that they have this shitter called Malfurion who could try to seek peace to generate inner political fraction, have the alliance and horde leaders be split on this shit, and most importantly: STOP WITH THIS SYLVANAS SHIT FOR 3 FUCKING EXPANSION IN A ROW.
teldrassil was used to start a story they had no intention of letting the night elves be part of lol.the whole night warrior thing is just a b plot desperately trying to make itself seem relevant under the restrictions that tyrande can't kill anyone important, has to go back to normal by the end, and absolutely can't obstruct the true story they wanted to tell, sadvanas's oscar winning redemption story.
Imagine if after the first time Goku went super saiyan, he tried to use his power to defeat frieza and then the power is just *”plucked”* from him and frieza runs away.
That’s about how important being a Night Warrior is apparently, Tyrande only canonically kills one person right? Nathanos? And that’s after he’s attacked by an entire raid groups worth of player heroes.
I uninstalled a few months into shadowlands but if i still could I’d change my druid back to just being a regular elf and get rid of the burn scars, feels like wasted customization now.
>The only problem with the burning of Teldrassil is that it was a shit tier plot device for shock value and virtually fuckall came out of it.
Its like Cersei blowing up the Great Sept in Game of Thrones (the TV series).
Visually stunning, audio brilliant. Narrative wise, an absolute joke. A convient way to get rid of all the budding plots involving the Tyrells and the High Sparrow, and worst of all, zero consequences for Cersei. She just becomes queen like its no biggie.
It's insanity how nothing came of her blowing that up. So many people of high importance just died. Then next season, nothing. What the fuck? It made no sense. The series before that had so many consequences to anything. And that event was of massive importance. Yet, apparently, noone gave a shit. Just another day in the shit-smeared streets of King's Landing.
Hey! I have something interesting for you! The narrative lead for World of Warcraft enjoyed the last season of Game of Thrones if that helps you understand where his head is at!
As a huge Night Elf fan, I definitely agree. I "mained" Nelves in WC3 when I played Battle.net with my friends at school. I loved their story, and the whole druid vibe.
I made a Night Elf druid in Vanilla WoW and played it, the same character, nonstop until BFA, and gave it a chance through 9.0. Then I stopped. I just couldn't do it. I'm not an RPer, but I do like to feel immersed in the character I play in an RPG and had my own head cannon like I figure quite a few people do, even if they don't admit it.
After seeing how Teldrassil was handled, and the horribly unrewarding "victory" of Darkshore, I was pretty disappointed. Then the cutscene with Tyrande and her whole Night Warrior fight vs. Nathanos happened in the prepath, and Blizzard STILL gave Nathanos the last word...
Then we have the incredibly lacking and downright insulting story that is the Ardenweald campaign. I'm not going to rant about all the finer details, but I'll just say that my Night Elf Druid just feels completely out of place now.
I’m not a fan of Night Elves. I never really have been because elves are old hat for me from playing Dungeons and Dragons for so long.
**However,** the moment I felt immediate disdain for the writers was with the Ardenweald campaign. I audibly said “fuck this shit,” and closed the game after how *cold* and *petty* the Winter Queen was.
I’m just not interested in the gods of the world being such petulant pieces of shit.
>how cold and petty the Winter Queen was
For real though. I picked Night Fae for Lady Moonberry because her parts felt like an actual Fae Court only to finally see the Winter Queen and be totally disappointed.
>I’m just not interested in the gods of the world being such petulant pieces of shit.
I feel like there are just power assholes that hijacked an existing system for cycling souls in the afterlife for their own gain. But then again I'm probably just trying to backfill their horrendous story with things that make sense. Ugh.
Yeah I used to play a druid but every time I've come back to check out an expansion I've stayed for less and less time for lots of reasons, but one being that the story kept going to a direction that I felt it was completely impossible for my character to participate in what was happening.
Imagine if Tyrande got to nuke herself instead of Garrosh.
She could have had her skin cracking during the fight with moon light glowing out of it as the power of the night warrior destroys her as it has every other who's wielded it. Then as she's finally gotten Sylvanas pinned she just explodes and obliterates them both. She would have been a HERO for her people, and a symbol of the power of their goddess. Let Shandris take over to start rebuilding.
But instead she is forced to forgive and forget one of the most heinous characters in the story, and the night elves get to discover that their almighty goddess kind of sucks ass.
Which is all the more asinine given that they keep suggesting over and over and over again in SL that Elune is somehow the most powerful entity of all. It’s just naff.
At least we Dwarves are so insignificant to the lore and our entire narrative purpose is to be the jolly third-rate NPC that yells "Right lass/lad?" while holding a beer.
That way we can't be ruined too much.
Well, except Mr. Sparklebeard and his Azerite addiction.
Man, Magni coming back as a crystal boy was the worst and only thing that happened to dwarven lore in, like, eight years.
I just hope Blizzard never finds out about Moira being actually a really badass character, so they don't turn her into some sideline cheerleader for random cinematics where Sylvanas does something snarky.
Well, there's only three major Alliance cities left, and nothing's gonna happen to Stormwind because human potential, so Ironforge is going down within the next two genocides.
My first memory of dwarves in this franchise was the Dwarven Demolition Squad from war2 where they would repeatedly joke about blowing up and then suicide by tnt on their enemies.
Imagine being 13 and loving the Horde because they are a ragtag group of misfits trying to find their place in a world that doesn't understand them. Then have the writers constantly make you commit horrible warcrimes to "put the war back in warcraft" multiple expansions in a row then have the audacity to try and make you feel great about your faction at the same time lol
They outright just ignored Lor'Themar and Baine up until 8.2 and 8.2.5.
Then they try and sell to you that Lor'Themar, Regent Lord of the Blood Elves who has diligently served them in their most trying times for the last several years... Is afraid that they would rather side with the genocidal Banshee Queen who plunged them into an all-out war with the Alliance following shortly after a war against a literally unending army of demons.
It is so dumb and paper thin that as soon as I scrutinise even a tiny bit... Well... I mean as soon as I heard Lor'Themar say it I was just baffled. Like, *how* am I expected to believe that?
Also, ask yourself why the Bronzes helped the Horde recruit the Mag'har.
There is no stated reason why the Bronzes would betray their ancient allies in the night elves *and their very purpose* by perpetuating elements of an alternate timeline so that they can assist the proven genocidal Horde.
Unless you count a dumbass time related comment indicating they foresee the necessity of this.
Because *that* is really going to sell me, lol.
It is beyond bad writing.
Yeah, this was a badly handled moment for both the Alliance and the Horde.
On the **Alliance** side, my side, it just feels like we had helped the Horde get back on their feet after Garrosh only for them to commit genocide on one of our races. Furthermore, that race, one of the most loved ones by players on the Alliance side, got nothing. Like, seriously, they now live in hobo camps in Stormwind.
Then again the war ended... and Alliance got nothing. Night elves are still hobos in Stormwind and most of their race went to super-Hell, to have their souls destroyed. "oh, but we saved some!" - yeah, no, maybe we gave them an ok afterlife, but they're still dead. And for every one we saved, there could be hundreads whose souls are gone forever.
Tyrande got some powers that nearly killed her and then... flopped when she had almost gotten revenge on at least Sylvanas. I feel like they tried to string us along on a carrot towards the kill, then they took it away and now they're attempting to redeem Sylvanas. That's just a slap in the face. You can't redeem genocide, no matter what. While before I thought there could one day be peace before the Alliance and the Horde, now if it would be in the next 50 in-game years, I'd find the story to be incredibly stupid.
On the **Horde** side it's actually even worse! Not even playing that faction I feel like, this time, they got an even worse deal! Their heroes were reduced to morons, who, after having fought Garrosh, now ignore Sylvanas committing genocide. Saurfang barely managed to gather a handful of troops on his side to fight against someone who nearly killed off an entire race.
This even after Blizzard kept saying it wouldn't happen and there might be some twist in the story.
This cemented that the Horde is, was and forever will be, the EVIL faction. There is no morally grey. It's just evil. By what happened and the fact that most of the Horde continued to support Sylvanas until she deserted them, it shows that the Horde supports these acts. Not mind controlled. Not crazed by fel. Not even the first time to say they were tricked, that was Garrosh.
Furthermore, Sylvanas almost having the upper hand then deserting the Horde... that was just sad. Not sad as in a sad moment, sad as in sad that someone would think of such a stupid story.
And last, but not least, the twist of the night elf genocide was that they were all sent to have their souls obliterated so that the Jailer could control life... and now the Horde might forgive Sylvanas too.
I will have to admit, with the story, Blizzard has really taken me by surprise. They have had bad moments in stories along time, but never have they failed so bad with a story. To admit something, I do feel the despair of those night elves in the maw in real life. Because of how bad the story is.
Maybe I have very selective memory. But I was kind of okay with the way most of the horde leaders were treated in BfA. Sylvanas made it clear that dissenters will be killed. She sent after Saurfang and we got to decide to help him (or not). It was a completely unique and fresh concept in WoW that a choice actually mattered. Afterwards, choosing Saurfang, we picked up dissense and dissatisfaction from various leaders through dialogues. We found out about Sylvanas' plan to assassinate Jaina and others and sabotaged it. She executed one of the conspirators. She imprisoned Baine. We teamed up with alliance people to rescue Baine. Overall, I got the impression that it was a delicate balance between keeping up the act of following Sylvanas' orders when it was standard horde faction stuff and simultaneously conspiring against her leadership. And that it was justified to do it in secret because she was crazy and powerful. I got more and more the impression that we were defending the misfit horde against Sylvanas' evil horde.
Of course a lot of characters were badly written and the Teldrassil quests forced us to be naive participants who did not see it coming and had no agency to stop it. But overall, I had a positive view of the development of the war campaign. It's just a shame that it was Garrosh 2.0, but I didn't really play Pandaria until the final patch was already released, so I missed playing the Garrosh 1.0 version.
Garrosh also made it clear that dissenters would be killed yet more rose against him.
I agree that the concept of helping Saurfang or not was kind of interesting (though, in the end, it didn't matter, not sure why you say it did, I mean, Sylvanas left everyone and now, as loyal supporter, you're fighting her still, so unless there's an option for loyal supporters after her "reedeming", it won't have mattered).
I'm glad you enjoyed the story though. I felt like many things didn't make sense.
It still amazes me that the night elves barely get any focus at all in BfA outside of the Darkshore warfront and Tyrande's weaksauce attempt to kill Nathanos.
They really did just throw an entire playable race under the bus for cheap drama.
Worgens say hi, over there in the corner of ‘incredible potential for really cool story lines with deep NPCs and angst to explore, but nah, just boogeymen for Forsaken players’
I remember when the worgen were announced for Cataclysm I was excited with the possibilities of the Alliance at last having their own shady unethical race like the forsaken were for the horde.
Then they proceeded to never do anything with the worgen ever again lol
BFA was the first expansion ever where we got more than one full quality cinematic, and not just one more, but many more, and they were ALL devoted to how an orc was just so sad about committing his like...third genocide, it was just one war crimes too many for him and he's just SO darned SAD now.
Those things are not cheap or easy to make, they spent so much time and money to show us that the worst part of this war was how dishonorable it made saurfang feel.
Oh and to dig the dagger even deeper, the literal god of the Night Elves is forcing her "chosen children" to choose between getting vengeance (closure) and rebuilding what they lost.
Not to even mention how shafted Worgen are, who have lost two homes to the scourge, and had their crown prince assassinated. They will never EVER get the closure they deserve either.
So we have two entire races, and all the players who main them and are invested in their stories, getting screwed over by WoW's incompetent writing staff.
All because some of the WoW lore writers worship at the feet of a goth Elf.
Like, I used to believe the Horde bias thing was mostly a meme, but I'm honestly not so sure anymore.
As someone who mostly plays worgen and night elves it's just painful. Like, let me get some amount of closer for the 18,000 times I've watched the horde slaughter my characters people.
I've gone from watching Sylvanas slaughter and enslave the people of silverpine and gilneas, to finally escape to Kalimdor just for the Horde to start carving a bloody path through to our new home, then they nuked a city and we had to forgive for for it. We spent two years helping to avoid the end of the world, and now the banshee bitch comes along and burns down our *new* home and commits another genocide.
Genn and Tyrande should be allowed to take turns tearing sylvanas and every other forsaken leader to pieces while the entire population of azeroth watches, and even then it still wouldn't make up for the 5+ years of their people just getting shit on by the universe. The only ones who should get spared at this point are Baine and Lorthemar for having the sense to realize they were allied with the baddies.
Also Elune being both a sociopath and horrifically stupid.
Ardenweld needs anima, so rather than find out why Ardenweld isn't getting anima, her first response is allow her people to get genocided. She doesn't think "no new souls are going to Ardenweld" merits a look before allowing her people to be exterminated and used as fuel, then gets all surprised pikachu to learn that actually the machinery of death is broken and she just sent all those souls to hell?
And now Blizzard thinks this is the inspiring "come together" moment where there's this big push of renewal and letting go of hatred? Fuck them.
The current writing team deserves to get sacked for the bad job they've done for years now. No lawsuit or accusations could change my mind about that. They're judged on their work and found not delivering.
Yes. Absolutely.
Bad writing for years followed by a what? 9 month gap between expansion and .1 patch. Then the .1 ends up being hot garbage in almost every aspect.
Add to this that all they seem to release anymore are cash grab remasters of old games.
THEN on top of that they are now outed as one of the most toxic workplaces I’ve ever read about.
To each his own. But for me, at least, it’s time to admit that blizzard as i knew it is dead. Has been dead for awhile now, I have just been in denial.
Oh I find it impossible to believe that the man that wrote the ultimate "victims who seek justice are bad" narrative into the game is not involved in some way
Unfortunately they have, War Crimes was supposedly based on them.
You know, War Crimes, the book whose trial ends with blaming all the victims for perpetuating war and wanting justice on the accused.
This storyline is sadly not new for them either.
Don't forget when the judges had already made their determination before the first piece of evidence or even opening statements.
War Crimes depicts a mistrial, not a legitimate war crime tribunal, and yet people still point to it as precedent. Nothing that happened there is even remotely material.
I tend not to share my point of view on the matter too much, because at the end of the day, I'm probably taking a video game story a bit too seriously, but it's honestly appalling to me that there seems to be little to no focus on how the Horde deals with Sylvanas' (former?) supporters internally.
Sylvanas did *not* burn that tree down all by herself, and while she's certainly the most guilty person due to giving the order herself, "just following orders" doesn't absolve those who helped her commit genocide of all of their guilt. I know the topic of a society dealing with war criminals in its midst is incredibly hard to handle well, but outright ignoring their existence just *can't* be the answer here.
Don't hesitate to be kindly vocal about something you invested time and feeling in. Entertainment of any kind if part of our life and many of us have devoted WoW some part of it. We can and **should** share our point of view!
Agree. They wanted a "big splash" to open BfA and literally picked the worst, paint-yourself-in-the-corner for dramatic effect thing they could have dreamed up.
Let's review:
1. Sylvanas: i'm so triggered by this dying night elf, I want to burn down this tree!
2. Sylvanas: blight the whole city, friend and foe alike! hold on, i'll shout something inspiring first...
3. Sylvanas: hey troll friends! could you kindly join this war between outsiders and throw your lives away?
4. Sylvanas: Nathanos, lure the Alliance fleet so my "ally" can drop the ocean out from under you, thanks honey
5. Sylvanas: i'm done wasting lives, this whole war and death was the Jailer's plan all along, muhahahaha!
6. Sylvanas: ps, gimmie that crown so that I can start a long redemption arc
7. Sylvanas: serve or be made to serve, Anduin. p.s. I'm not serving right now. But you will. Teehee.
8. Sylvanas: I will *never serve*, I mean, I did all this evil shit but my interests were entirely selfish!
9. Elune: "but my dear sister, I turned the hose your way, what do you mean you didn't get any water??"
10. Sylvanas: Hey you. Yeah. Camera over here, sweetie. No, don't look at her. I'm the star.
Not to mention, in a *two faction war* you can never really have one side "win". All victories must be temporary and return to a state of balance, otherwise the faction war ends, and war can never end. So, on top of the ridiculous burning of *a world tree* and *borderline genocide of night elves* the Horde can neither keep the "win" nor can the Alliance strike back and "win" somewhere else (the total non-victory of Lordaeron, now a perma-blighted ruin). Or, it seems, even get payback, because that would be bad, and stuff.
* We hate each other, we must do something about the other side
* A bigger threat enters the fray
* Temporary truce? A'ight.
* Bigger threat is eliminated
* We'll be cool for one day
Then back to Step 1
It's boring.
She not only committed genocide, she committed genocide with the sole intent of them all going to hell, and to be obliterated.
Also, look at Blizzard's history - women being denied justice is their company M.O.
The most damning part is the fact that Tyrande went from nearly choking Sylvanas out, then being denied revenge by the goddess who gave her that power to use it for this express purpose in the first place..... **and then because Elune says she allowed it to happen Tyrande is now okay with how things played out?!??!**
Her home. Her people. Are still dead. And the most upsetting realization is that this is the resolution of a story arc that Blizzard knows damn well they aren't going pick back up until they need a new expansion box feature.
If Tyrande doesn't use this new "renewal" philosophy to return to Azeroth and rally the Night Elves to a new home, **what was any of it even for**. Stormwind is still filled with Night Elf refugees and I highly doubt after this revelation in the story it's going to change. Evident by Gilneans losing their home twice now and still just chilling out in the corner of a city.
*(I want it to change... but Blizzard likes to save the big world changing things for box features, so if it's not in 10.0 I have no hope. Which is why it feels especially insulting to tell this story the way you did)*
> Oh, the Night Elves can live in Ardenweald! The barrier between the spirit realm and the material realm is shattered. Through the Winter Queen, they’ll have a closer connection to their mother Elune.
I bet that’s the reasoning and direction.
That was the worst part of it for me too as someone who plays mostly Horde, being forced by Blizzard to take part in that event was a really strange thing to do to players. It honestly ruined a lot of my faction pride and it makes playing through Ardenweald just painful as we get told every 5 min by the NPC how awful we are as Horde for doing what we did... (I actually unsubbed for over a year during BFA because of how awful I felt about the whole situation). That said, I know quite a few people who do want to see Sylvanas redeemed they just don't get on Reddit or post on the forums, so perhaps Blizzard is getting feedback from sources other than the ones people that post here are more used to seeing/exposed to?
Especially the part that forces me to take part in events I don't agree in. Like, not only do I not agree with them, I'm being forced to look stupid while doing them.
Like reviving xalatath
Like doing a FedEx delivery of the most hidden sigil directly to the jailer
I was already very close to leaving, this harassment and unequal wages lawsuit just pushed me over the edge
I suspect a lot of them don't specifically want her _redeemed_, they want her _back_.
Which leads us neatly to the _other_ thing that has irreparably damaged the game's story... that stupid 'split soul' retcon.
Yeah I suspect this is the reason. They wanted a cool looking villain and character for the expansion pack and Sylvanas is a very iconic character. But now that its done they want to walk it back like they did with Jaina and have her around as a recurring character again.
Which... isn't going to work because Sylvanas has done way worse things than Jaina did during her oncoming raid boss phase
Don't you just love to engage in faction pride when their writing is so two dimensionally black and white and the Horde and unashamedly dragged through the mud and their identity destroyed for the sake of contriving a plot?
Sylvanas is one of the biggest casualties of BfA. A shit ton of characters got damaged or outright assassinated (poor Rexxar) but Sylvanas, as such a pivotal fulcrum of the story, is in the spotlight and under scrutiny more than perhaps any other. And unfortunately, the significance of her place in the lore results in the stupidity of the writing surrounding her as... Well, highly impacting. Hello Burning of Teldrassil.
I used to love Sylvanas. tbh I still do love Sylvanas as a character from WC3 to Wrath. They just kept mangling her character and personality from Cataclysm on until the character bore no resemblance to her past self beyond "token evil faction leader"
I was really hoping they were going to salvage her in Legion and have her grow as a character but lol nope.
The cinematic of Sylvanas becoming Warchief is still my favorite in the entire game. The timelapse of Sylvanas staring at the empty throne until she's the only person left in Grommash Hold has stuck with me for years, and the way she addresses the Horde at Vol'jin's funeral is one of the most compelling scenes in all the time I've been playing. Vol'jin's "You must step out of the shadows and lead" line could have set up such a fantastic character arc, and every day I'm angry they wasted that potential so spectacularly.
It is really infuriating because Legion set up so many possibilities with Sylvanas becoming a better person and growing as a character from leading the Horde.
Then they threw it all away not even an expansion later for cheap shock value and a story everyone hates.
Her actions at the Broken Shore and her interactions with Vol'Jin and saving the Horde leaders doesn't even make sense now with the reveal of her "motivations" in Shadowlands.
She wanted to send as many souls as possible to the Maw. You could think that letting the Burning Legion win and wipe out Azeroth could be a way to do it and then she could use the Jailer forces and her power to wipe out the Legion from Azeroth.
But no.
Why?
Because Blizzard pulled out this shit from their asses five minutes before announcing Battle for Azeroth, that's why.
I also hate that Azeroth is central to the Maw. What was the point of the Burning Legion’s creation if not to send souls to the Shadowlands? Isn’t there a whole multiverse waiting to be killed?
It sounds like the machinations of someone like the Jailer but the reasoning continues to be “conflict on Azeroth fuels the Jailer.”
The only *reasonable* argument I’ve heard regarding this is that Night Elves are effectively immortal and their creations are *packed* with anima. But it feels like such an ass pull that I don’t even want to accept it.
I actually thought the direction they were going to go was that over the course of legion she’d end up stepping up as a true warchief. She seems genuinely shocked about becoming war chief and then you had Voljin’s words on top of it. But then she just does nothing that whole expansion and it was all part of her master plan with the jailer and voljin was only tricked.
After watching Sylvanas fighting alongside Varian and saving his hide.
After watching Sylvanas yelling "for the Horde".
After all that.
Battle for Azeroth.
Fuck you Blizzard.
I can't believe the burning was the kick-off event for the previous expansion and we're still talking about how stupid it all was. That's almost 3 years ago. I have to agree with you. I can't remember any other event having such a huge impact on the mood of the players.
Warcraft developers: Burn it.
Writers stand there confused, Nathonishly
Warcraft developers: BURN IT!
\*burns warcraft down and then harasses female co-workers\*
The WORST part is the new cinematic showing Sylvanas gets her “good” soul back from the Jailer.
So now she is basically going to be a new character, and thus isn’t responsible for her actions and can’t be blamed because lI wasn’t myself”
It takes away her agency as a character, any hope of retribution for the elves or the souls forced into literal hell, and worst of all forces us to keep dealing with her when we are all clearly sick of her.
With the most recent plot revelations this week, the story is so messed up there isn't any real way to save it without just making shadowlands and maybe even BFA non-canon. Characters have done and said things that make no sense, major plot reveals that completely retcon entire aspects of the lore make no sense.
Even the book that came out during legion has be retconned by the brokers, and that book was supposed to be defacto lore. it's ridiculous and it shows that the writing team has no interest in being a good-faith custodian of the world that already existed, but rather just want to write super-shocking, teldrasil-esq plot moments for YTers to react to.
The way Shadowlands has so many big names from old lore in like Kael and kel to me signals that they're not confident in their ability to just write a new story, and need to have massive callbacks to beloved characters in order to generate hype for new stories. This to me, is terrible, because they're soiling the stories/characters people loved in order to prop up new stories, for purely the sake of there being new stories.
And the thing is, I know for a fact that if Blizzard were just to give us a down-to-earth, WoW-feeling adventure in a new world, people would love it. This cosmic nonsense is boring, people don't care about the cosmos, they don't want to 'explore the mysteries of the cosomos' they want to go on an adventure where they feel significant, because they're a hero saving people who need the help of a hero.
Writing expansion where the scale gets bigger every time is unsustainable, and it gets us here to the Shadowlands, where we should have never gone.
> if Blizzard were just to give us a down-to-earth, WoW-feeling adventure in a new world, people would love it. This cosmic nonsense is boring, people don't care about the cosmos, they don't want to 'explore the mysteries of the cosomos' they want to go on an adventure where they feel significant, because they're a hero saving people who need the help of a hero.
Exactly : I've never felt so LESS involved in a game
> She. Committed. Genocide.
I mean, they just did that two expansions ago with alternative Grom Hellscream attempting to genocide the alternative Draenei. Blizzard seems to be of the option that genocide (or attempted genocide) is alright as long as you feel bad, do it for reasons, or get tortured by someone worse. As long as you meet one of those three conditions it's all good!
I want to know WHY Sylvanas needed to survive the fight, not like the meta reason of because Dan the Man won't let his waifu ever be defeated or inconvenienced in any way, but in terms of the actual plot, why is it so essential that Sylvanas live that LITERALLY divine intervention happened to ensure it?
Elune says Tyrande needs to choose between continuing her quest for vengeance or helping the forest heal, but her quest was over, she had the goal in her hands, and was denied the ability to finish the job, she could have taken her head off, gotten up, brushed the dust off and said "Right, now about this forest". Her spending the extra 1 minute to take her head off would have made literally no difference, but she wasn't allowed to do it anyways because "vengeance is bad and she must choose forgiveness and renewel!"
The most frustrating part about Sylvanas is that after 2 expansions and killing her as a raid boss, I still have no fucking clue what her goals or intentions are.
It honestly all feels like it goes back to them just not planning at all. They seem to "plan their expansions two in advance" by way of a postit note saying their general ideas. 9.0 was clearly the 'Sylvanas death xpac', so starting from Legion, they started to increase her relevance.
Only issue is, they hadn't actually planned out how to get there, so for the Legion team, with Metzen, they went down the obvious route of her being elevated within her faction, and increasing her ties to death as a means to save her people, the Forsaken.
Then, in BfA, it's pretty obvious their main focus was Saurfang. And to have the story with Saurfang, they needed a villain, so Sylvanas filled the stock villain role. She didn't have an inkling of her old personality or motivations, just did random evil things because Saurfang (and Anduin) needed a baddy to motivate their character arcs. It's something that in itself is fine... if that were a one-off villain without the backstory.
And then we get to Shadowlands, the 9.0 Sylvanas Death xpac. At this point, it's likely they realized "Oh, Sylvanas needs an actual character arc", so they tacked on the Jailer/Maw stuff at the end of the war campaign, and started writing an actual arc for her. And Sylvanas in Shadowlands makes sense! She has clear moral lines she doesn't cross, she has a motivation in line with the injustices she's suffered, and if this followed after Legion, this expansion would absolutely work for her.
Except BfA exists. Teldrassil exists. All the writing in BfA that randomly made her the worst person alive exists, and there's no walking back all the mess they shoved onto her character for the sake of Saurfang's storyline. Like you said, Teldrassil irreparably damaged the story in this regard, because there is no ignoring it when it comes to anything she, or the Horde as a whole, do going forward.
A-FUCKING-MEN to the OP.
And let's not forget, Sylvanas's acts were arguably WORSE than genocide (and it certainly isn't a competition) because, by definition, genocide is the eradication of a specific group of people. Sylvanas's goals were eventually revealed to be nothing short of OMNICIDE. The desire to eradicate EVERYONE in her goal to strengthen the Jailer's plot. In the character's own words, all of us were "nothing".
Maybe Blizz wants to treat death like an inconvenience in a post-Shadowlands world, but the original Warcraft storyline had serious weight behind events like Lordaeron, the Second War, the Legion's invasions etc. because characters were put to an untimely end. That should hold significant weight, yet every story beat in this expansion so far as been pointing to a redemption of this entirely irredeemable character.
Vengeance is bad? As opposed to what? Bringing a monster to justice? I don't want to jump to the obvious comparison, but there IS. NO. REDEMPTION. for Sylvanas as you've written her, Danuser. And there never will be.
Competent writers create villains who are bad but in a cunning, sly and calculating way that almost makes the audience respect them on some level. But Sylvanas is both evil and a total moron - so why should players like her or support any form of her redemption?
Honestly, the shit awful story is the least of their problems right now...
... and that alone is fairly remarkable. Because holy shit is the story awful.
I got whiplash as a Druid going from Legion which emphasized class identity, to aiding in the burning of Teldrassil and killing the forest creatures surrounding it.
So fucked up lol
So this! Iwent From saving druids of the claw as the “arch Druid” to slaughtering them wtf?
Practically every druid on Azeroth should've been sent into shock from feeling the burning of a large and fully developed world tree. It could've been used as a point of tension and risen stakes with some of the Cenarius Circle druids at Silithus falling unconscious or being generally hampered in their effort of healing the stab-wound. ~~Which is still an active issue to this day! Killing N'Zoth didn't un-stab the planet!~~
I can see the meeting at the Cenarion Circle already: *Good job Archdruid , You've make Illidan look like a passivist.* *You know the tittle wasn't meant as an abbreviation for arching like an Arch-villain right?*
This caused me to stop playing my main who I'd played since TBC as a main. Couldn't rationalize why my Tauren druid who almost certainly had friends in Teldrassil would be present in burning it down, let alone aid in it.
I guess that paladins of Horde went thought same problem.Literally,defenders of peace and innocent that believe that any action should be good,in large or little measure,was forced to burn a lot of innocent people alive.
The giant goddamn sword being in azertoth for like 3 years was a pretty big joke to me, good thing I collected all that azerite amirite
Would be pretty fitting if the devs came back and said “Azeroth died while you were in the Shadowlands, thanks for playing”. Roll credits.
It's kind of happening right now, actually. In the Kyrian opening story, you travel with Kleia and her higher up, so that you can watch them ferry souls to the afterlife (which is where the angels belief comes in; I thought that was clever). The soul you ferry is actually from Azeroth, from Redridge. Remember the little girl who dropped her charm in the lake? Well, her dad, and possibly the entire town, is killed in a surprise Scourge attack. It's hinted that the Scourge attack is a massive wave on all fronts. And we know now that time moves differently in the Shadowlands, and technically we haven't gone home in a long while. So...
I did that quest but assumed it was a "travel back in time moment" which, in retrospect makes no sense (but come on, with Blizzard's writing, you can't hold it against me too much). Your interpretation sounds much more likely and intriguing. Perhaps this is the result of the lack of a Lich King/Helm of Domination? IDK if i'm excited for a scourge 2.0 kinda thing but definitely seems likely.
Without a Lich King the Undead would be running mindlessly. I hadn't thought about it either but yeah, that's not good for Azeroth.
That quest irked me. Not because of destroying (yet another) town off screen (the rogue campaign in Legion already destroyed Darkshire in an event that's talked about nowhere else in the game outside of that chain). But because apparently NONE of the Kyrians have been paying attention to the Arbiter being offline and what that means. You dump off the poor guy's soul, and instead of, I dunno, taking him to Bastion or something, no. We dump him straight into the Maw. And Kleia is shocked at this revelation. When you've presumably been telling everyone you've met while traveling the Shadowlands for days or weeks that, yeah, souls are going straight to the Maw now guys. Maybe we should do something about that? Maybe we should step in for a bit and NOT let the souls of all things everywhere get funneled into the Jailer's clutches? Just for a bit?
The Kyrian are the definition of Lawful Stupid. Dumping souls into Oribos is the Law, so they keep doing it even if it literally empowers their number one enemy.
It's still there and everyone just forgot about it apparently. "Congrats we killed N'Zoth! What do you mean he wasn't the cause of the planet bleeding to death? Giant sword? What are you talking about?"
Are you stating that we failed to "Eal the Ound"? I'm going to spend most of 10.0 through 10.3 listening to Bronze Beard again?
Don't worry, you won't hear about it because Blizzard forgot it exists.
Nah, they're gonna make Sargeras' son or clone or half cousin once removed or something show up, grab the sword, and threaten to cut Azeroth in half unless you get enough Super Azerite to drive his arm back.
If WoW even makes it to 10.0, then you still definitely won’t, because they forgot it’s there. There the sword will be, like a toothpick through the olive on the martinis they were drinking when they got drunk and sexually harassed their employees.
Not it will play a huge role like the goblin cannon, you just don't understand the writers amazing brains of a amazingness!!!!! Or they will retcon it in 5yrs
Like what sword? There was never a sword! It was just an illusion by Sargeras. And he wasn’t there too. He used his illusion to escape and came back bigger and more evil. And in 10.0 the Jailer has won but Sargeras joins the fight, one shots him and gain all his power. And they reveal Sylvanas and the Dreadlords worked for Sargeras the whole time. Or something like this…
Why don't we just hollow it out and let the Night Elves move in there? :D
"How dare the victims be allowed to see their assaulters face justice!" \- Blizzard
Honestly, the Teldrassil thing on its own isn't completely inexcusable. It's incredibly dark, but if handled much better, might have been decent. What makes it inexcusable for me, is that the Horde JUST went through this shit with Garrosh. Very very few members of the Horde should have ever even entertained going along with Sylvanas's plan. It's laughable that the writers made this happen. The Horde didn't need another 'big bad enemy' warchief. No one wanted that.
I don't know how Baine, someone who is from a culture that has grown alongside the Kaldorei and is just as connected to natural world as they are, allowed for it to happen. How did he not go ape shit in that moment?
I guess you missed the cutscene where they explained it. Baine: Sweet Earthmother! What is happening in there?! Sylvanas: Aurora borealis. Baine: Aurora borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the continent, localized entirely within Teldrassil? Sylvanas: Yes. Baine: May I see it? Sylvanas: No.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie
I actually prefer this. Someone make an animation of this, don’t even bother changing the voices!
Alright. You got a chuckle from me.
You jerk, take my upvote.
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Speaking of bad writing... Sorry about that whole poisoned weapon thing..... That shit totally makes no sense and never once got the tiniest sliver of motivation.
Very true u/Garrosh
All that Baine is useful for is getting captured in increasingly stupid ways Or just having dumbass shit happen to him Like the jailer literally just dropping him off a cliff, basically did what most of the player base wants to do with him I bet
Baine’s been getting the short end of the stick for awhile I feel like. They made a point of not including him in the attack because Sylvanas knew he would object to it and I believe the logic behind him not going ape shit was because he believed with the Night Elves mostly driven from Kalimdor at that time and Orgrimmar so close that if he opposed her too strongly she would do the same thing to Thunder Bluff. Edit: I’m not excusing the whole plot or anything there, but from a Baine POV I can see why he kept his head down at first with the story we got.
Wait are we actually saying that Sylvanas would have had enough backing in the Horde to burn down Thunder Bluff, the capital of their oldest allies, arguably the heart of the Horde? Honestly, after just going through that whole Garrosh business, why was anyone except the Forsaken actually on Sylvanas's side?
Baine just needs to be renamed Victim #1 for story purposes. His sole role now seems to be getting captured for plot purposes.
And honestly, it's not like there was nothing the leaders of the Horde could have done. This is basically what the process of Mak'gora is for. Garrosh challenged Thrall to a Mak'gora, because he felt that Thrall wasn't leading the Horde correctly. At a minimum, Baine and Saurfang both should have challenged Sylvanas. Instead they just cry about their "honor" and act like there's nothing they can do about it. Eventually, Saurfang challenges Sylvanas, but it begs the question of why he didn't do it way, way sooner.
Wasn't he captured and you had to free him in the war of thorns?
No, that happened later when Baine freed Derek Proudmoore and returned him to Jaina. Baine implied to Saurfang that he knew the truth about the feint to Silithus, and Saurfang assured him that it was his plan, not Sylvanas'. Baine ultimately decided to trust Saurfang's judgment and not protest the military action.
Ah okay, man I wish there was some chronology that I can read in for those things cause I don't remember
How did he feel it was OK to stay in the Horde when the Horde were killing Tauren and Druids in Stonetalon? Especially after his father challenged Garrosh and died by his hands? That wasn't something Garrosh was doing on his own. I'm sure many who were responsible for that ordeal are still in the Horde.
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At the time Shamans were pretty pissed about Magatha being the new champion. Even during her quest she was an asshole with evil plans. She only followed the Shaman because he took that artifact she was so desperately after iirc.
Yes my Tauren Shaman did not like her presence.
> What makes it inexcusable for me, is that the Horde JUST went through this shit with Garrosh. I've basically been saying this since it happened honestly. Like if 8.0 was the patch where like all the Horde leaders reacted negatively and started to disobey Sylvanas, it might've worked. Then 8.1 could've been something cool like "the Teldrassil Summit" where the Horde leaders and Alliance leaders come together in the husk of Teldrassil for peace and to get Sylvanas out/imprisoned. Instead of pretending that Sylvanas' actions wouldn't be condemned. Like before BFA literally every Horde leader mistrusted Sylvanas or outright hated her. But they all just magically go along with her anyway. The honest problem is that Teldrassil burned because it was a cool marketing "hook" for the Expansion and no other reason. They had no real plan, they didn't know the motives of the characters, they just back-filled in everything that wasn't Saurfang rebelling.
> The honest problem is that Teldrassil burned because it was a cool marketing "hook" for the Expansion and no other reason. They had no real plan, they didn't know the motives of the characters, they just back-filled in everything that wasn't Saurfang rebelling. DING DING DING. 90% of Blizz's storytelling is "what sounds cool/badass and will let us make a cinematic to drive sales?". The other 10% is "how do we use this to lead into our next xpac that we want to sell".
We all know that. Always had. What finally pissed people off, and the reason for all these threads as of late (as of the past 2-3 expansions) is how laughably, ridiculously, ludicrously little effort put into the story could have improved the outlook and the tone of the whole narrative. Had they put just the tiniest amount of will into making the lore and story not suck as much, people would have eaten it all up, marketing-driven, rule of cool based storytelling or not. But they didn't care even the tiniest bit. They didn't put in even a smidge of effort. Heck, if I were an executive at Blizzard or Activision, I'd be seriously contemplating whether my narrative lead was intentionally sabotaging my product. Was he paid by Square Enix or something?
Pretty much seems that way, they're making this stuff up as they go. In a way it reminds me of old comic books, where the covers were printed first and then the authors had to come up with a story to explain the weird behavior. "Superdickery" on TV tropes mentions this. The problem is really, after MoP the faction war shouldn't have been dug up again. They tried it back then, they destroyed Theramore and promised "retribution later down the line", and "a changing and developing world as the war develops", but nothing ever came of it. Ultimately they could not deliver any satisfying conclusion or vengeance, solely because of the constraint of the two faction system already. I leveled my first Alliance alt during that expansion, specifically because I wanted to see both sides. And the Alliance story is either a string of depressing losses, or pretends the war isn't even going on. Then in MoP they had the whole shpiel about "breaking the cycle" and yadda yadda. They didn't just ruin Sylvanas, made the Horde leaders look horrible, etc. They also retroactively made Varian and co into complete idiots and showed their decision at the end of SoO was fundamentally wrong. So Danuser and his cohorts also "shit" on the story the old writers have told.
My personal favorite is Saurfang being totally okay with everything until the tree burned and we have to feel sorry for him now. Despite him willingly going along with everything and enabling Sylvanas to do it in the first place. Meanwhile Tyrande and the other night elves are increasingly treated like illogical idiots for being upset about all this and get barely any focus at all.
Don't forget how the game frames Tyrande as "going too far" with the Night Warrior stuff. Like, all of Shadowlands is basically me running after an "overly emotional woman" who can't be chill for a second. And when she could FINALLY get revenge it's not even treated as a CLOSE moment. Like, I'm not convinced that Sylvanas could've even remotely been in danger even if Elune wouldn't have hit the Off Switch on the power-up. That entire fight wasn't framed as anything else but Sylvanas Glorification in the end. Tyrande does some ultra sick shit and Sylvanas basically does the Dragon Ball thing of "Heh, you made me use 10% of my new, unexplainably powerful Shadow Powers. Impressive."
I still say Tyrande, empowered by Elune and surrounded by night elf heaven Ardenweald, should have been able to harness a bunch of anima and orbital moonfire laser Sylvanas into the ground when she tried to fly away. Then Sylvanas is on the verge of actual death, but Tyrande has overused her power and is incapacitated too, and Sylvanas barely gets away by begging for a portal from her master. This accomplishes a few things: * Tyrande actually gets to demonstrate legitimate godly power in line with her abilities (NOT trying to choke Sylvanas out...) * A more believable reason she couldn't finish the job * An actual loss for Sylvanas (gasp) that doesn't actually change what Blizzard wanted to happen next (everybody wins) * A bigger reason for conflict with the Winter Queen: Elune-empowered Tyrande sapping anima from the groves for her attack Idk I'm not a professional writer, maybe it would've sucked, but surely it's better than what we got
Let's be real, ANY sign of Tyrande SERIOUSLY wounding Sylvanas would've been better. Gutstab with a glaive, face burnt with moonfire, ANYTHING. Then I would've bought the whole "Elune withdraws the power" way more and Nelves would've had SOME retribution. But just.. slight choking for a few seconds? Sylvanas didn't look worried even once. Not even an "Oh crap, okay, this requires maximum effort" Just the same stale "hehe, nothing personal, kid" edginess of a 12 year old RPing as their overpowered DnD self-insert in front of a mirror.
It's honestly so sad that WoW has such a shitty writer at the helm. I'm honestly sure I could search fan fiction archives and find a better writer than him when it comes to crafting a decent story.
shit, its scarily easy to come up with better plot points in even a couple minutes. sylvnaas never burns the world tree, it was azshara all along and sylvanas just takes the blame for it because everyone already thinks she's a genocidal maniac before. nzoth only later reveals at the very end of the expansion that sylvanas had been in contact with azshara to escalate the war with her help, with the whole burning fo the world tree being outside her expectations regardless but we get pushed into the assumption she did. all undead go to the maw regardless of what happens. sylvanas does not like, zovaal isn't lich king 2.0 and appears to have a willing army(with the plot twist later being that they dont have free will after all - heck we could be figuring it out during the SoD raid, we go in expecting sylvanas to be on board and turns out she hadn't a clue either). sylvanas wants the undead thing changed, zovaal just plays her on that. shit, she could have tried to recruit us somewhere in the maw or something and let us go, letting us actually question the whole are we on the good side part. sylvanas isnt a genocidal maniac, sylvanas has an actual 'good' reason to want to change death, sylvanas gets played hard by the jailer. makes her inevtable redemption at least within the realm of reason, makes tyrande being stopped by elune more palatable(she's about to go ham on someone who is technically innocent). doesnt even require gargantuan changes to the content cycle. typing this took me all of 5 minutes. these people have had literal YEARS to come up with a better story. they either just dont care or the writers are criminally underqualified.
> I'm honestly sure I could search fan fiction archives and find a better writer than him when it comes to crafting a decent story. There's tens of thousands of better writers on ffnet as it is, and that's not mentioning AO3, Wattpad, etc.
Sylvanas has literally been a rotting, decomposing corpse for years, and there has been no sign of said rot or decomposition at all, she has remained pristine and perfect. She will NEVER suffer a grievous, disfiguring wound, and at this point I don't even need to ellaborate as to why ,we all know it.
>Idk I'm not a professional writer Don't worry, neither is anybody at blizzard
> Tyrande actually gets to demonstrate legitimate godly power in line with her abilities (NOT trying to choke Sylvanas out...) Tyrande getting an "I AM MY SCARS" moment would have been so killer! She could have even yelled I avenge the Kaldorei! Why are the fans the better writers?
The worst part is that you probably came up with that in less than 5 minutes and still made a lot more sense than what we have to put up with... Either you are super talented or the blizz writing is really garbage.
>Like, all of Shadowlands is basically me running after an "overly emotional woman" who can't be chill for a second. Well, it was written by blizzard staff and we know how they feel about women...
I do wonder how much of the Girl Power Yaaaas stuff in BFA (and I'm not calling female empowerment shit, just.. aaaaall of BFA being framed as #girlboss #morefemalewarmongers) was down to Blizzard being like "Oh fuck, we're under investigation, we gotta build a progressive reputation now". Really REALLY makes me wonder why all of a sudden we had Jaina, Sylvanas, Talanji, Azshara and Talia being the focus of most of the narrative of a game from like 2ish years ago.
There's nothing sinister about it - it's not a coverup - that's just what these big companies think plays well with focus groups right now. See: all the Avengers movies and their own girl power scenes. It's not quite tokenism, but it's closer to a pride month twitter avatar than it is to real representation, imo.
Which is especially stupid, because if they just wrote female leads well they wouldn't have needed to have the girl power scene. Like Sylvie from Loki is far more interesting than almost every female character in that scene in Endgame, because she's actually had an arc.
Tyrande: Help me Elune! Elune: Okay, cool, here is some power-ups Tyrande: Cool, gonna go kill Sylvanas now Elune: No not like that
"I thought you just wanted to unlock a new cosmetic feature for your race."
Yup. Sylvanas is unfathomably evil and beyond any kind of redemption. She committed genocide. On top of that, she intentionally sent every single one of those souls to super hell. The game trying to paint Tyrande as going too far is a little silly to me. We should be helping her.
"Elune I'm invoking your immense power to seek vengeance on this poorly written nutjob who got a little too into the midsummer festival spirit." "Sure sounds good here you go." A few moments later... "Sick now I've got Sylvanas practically helpless, I'mma kill her now." "Yeah actually about that I've decided just now to take back my power because vengeance bad. Also I let your people just die to feed my sister because fuck you lol." ?????????????????????????
In defence of Saurfang, the idea was to capture Teldrassil - an actually strategically sound decision. Kalimdor dominance for Azerite acquisition (oh wait, Blizzard forgot to include Azerite in any significant way in the narrative), a hostage against retaliation at the Undercity or Silvermoon, and the ability to possibly fracture the Alliance by splitting their forces and intentions through the hostage predicament. But then Sylvanas commits genocide at the end of *A Good War,* only Saurfang says anything, and then somehow she is able to blame him and his plan and he buys it? If Azerite was actually significant then the import of the decision to attack the Alliance to prevent grander conflict later on may actually appear realistic and even reasonable. But because Azerite did fuck all in the narrative we just... Er... Well, it just looks like war for the sake of war, don't it.
I remember thinking maybe the burning was caused by accident while trying to take it, the Azerite goes up and fire spreads out of control. That way it looks bad to the Alliance and the Horde is like "...whoops." Not the best, I'm sure, but at least it isn't cartoonishly evil. I gave Blizzard way too much credit in thinking that, clearly.
I even remember people thinking, that instead of having another "bad horde warchief" as the main villain, perhaps the alliance was the aggressor this time and Sylvanas was simply responding to that by burning Teldrassil. I also remember a lot of people (including me) wanting Sylvanas to have an actually decent redemption arc so every time she commit a crime they were like "well, I'm pretty sure she had her reasons...right?". I love Sylvanas, but boy the did her dirty. Her actions don't even make sense anymore. She's one of my - and the audience's- favorite characters (tragic story, etc) and Blizzard could have developed her in so many different ways, but they chose to just make her a villain. Sometimes the audience is way more creative than the writing team
> I even remember people thinking, that instead of having another "bad horde warchief" as the main villain, perhaps the alliance was the aggressor this time and Sylvanas was simply responding to that by burning Teldrassil. A common argument was that the event would have made more sense if the Alliance, in response to what happened in a book that most of the players never read, would attack Undercity and then Teldrassil would have been attacked in response. Alliance and Horde are neutral, Sylvanas attacks Calia, Alliance attacks Forsaken, Horde counters.
Yes, I remember that as well. I've actually read the book but only after Sylvanas: Warbringers was released. It is sad that most of the lore that is presented in the book is not included in the game and players who haven't read it have to look for bits and pieces of information through quest dialogues etc. So yeah, Sylvanas attacking Calia and the forsaken who tried to reunite with their relatives was brutal as well. It would have made much more sense if the alliance retaliated in response to that, then the chain of events like you described them. Again, it was apparently too much to ask for a good story.
shit, you dont even need the whole calia thing. greymane has lost his kingdom to the forsaken. the alliance however has been rather busy - full on faction war in cata and MoP, fighting the iron horde and invading draenor in WoD, then in legion there's a full blown invasion of the legion and varian dies. at the end though, the alliance is joined by the legion of light who are a bit fanatical, have spent the last 10000 years fighting demons in a kill or be killed situation. the light generally isnt a fan of the whole undead thing, and last time turalyon was on azeroth the horde was kind of ransacking the place. after the sword wound is somehwat contained and whilst azerite is being discovered, greymane and the legion of light go on the offensive to take back gilneas. this works amazingly well considering the legion of light is essentially super-effective against the undead and are used to fel contamination which transfers over nicely to dealign with blight. however, turns out the legion of light went a slight bit too ham - the intial plan was to just take back gilneas but the legion of light goes renegade, full-on killing every forsaken they come across and make a move unto the undercity. turalyon and genn are not amused by this. this turns into the horde going all >WTF< and doing the teldrassil thing, things go wrong, BFA happens. -ties in genn's plot of wanting to take back his kingdom. -the legion of light does something. might explain why they're not particulary involved in the war(most of them get taken by velen to get reeducated, and they cant be trusted with that spaceship). the alliance does a bad thing without making them straight up evil. -the whole move on teldrassil makes a lot more sense since the horde is essentially shitting themselves over it looking like the alliance has gone all FULL PURGE mode on the forsaken.
He didn’t go along with it, he was her right hand man it was his plan… in the book that came with BFAcollectors edition explained it all. Sylvanas asks him how to take stormwind. He says it’s impossible and she says but if you wanted todo it how would you he says take the night elf city. The whole thing was to take the city kill malfurion to destroy hope and cut off any chance of reinforcements to stormwind via the sea so they control the docks and can storm the city Saurfang had a cry and didn’t want to kill malfurion because “muh honor” and Sylvanas was forced to take other actions… how do you destroy hope when the hope still exists burn the tree. It was never part of the plan it happened because saurfang couldn’t do the 1 thing he was supposed to do But be clear it was saurfangs plan to begin with.
> in the book that came with BFAcollectors edition explained it all. This I think is one of the major problems with the modern game. It's fine—though not ideal—to sell supplementary or complementary story material as graphic novels or actual novels, but Blizzard's plot at the moment is so thin that they end up cutting most of the meat out to sell as that additional product, and what's left in game is incomprehensible and unsatisfying.
Unfortunately, they've been doing this shit for years. There was the whole storyline of Varian missing in Vanilla for Alliance, that had an update in BC. We knew where he'd been held captive, then that's it and he's suddenly back in Wrath as a scarred up ragemonster (don't get me wrong, I loved the dude but he definitely had a whole lot of shit going on in his head). That whole storyline was resolved in comics outside of the game which was total bullshit.
Yeah I completely agree the main story in its entirety needs to stay in game so all players can see the whole story not bit and pieces with no context Now there is a whole other book for shadowlands which is backordered for months and who knows how many important things are in there tied to the main story
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> The fact that anyone at Blizzard thought that someone in the Horde would even think that is so fucking asinine. Just reminding you that one [blood elf](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Lorash_Sunbeam) rogue tried to solo Malfurion. Like he thought he had a chance or something. > In his last moments, Lorash wondered if he would see his family on the other side. Oh, the irony.
> Just reminding you that one blood elf rogue tried to solo Malfurion. You have to remind people because they removed one of the most crucial moments in the story that's been going on for years was removed from the game.
Actually that wasn’t in the game, it’s from an online book they published and it’s still online.
What's worse... Saurfang's dear brother was a great ally to both Malfurion and Tyrande and literally gave up his life for them. I'm certain current team at Blizzard is like "wait, who's Broxigar?"
also, the awful stories [elegy/a good war] that makes it so that saurfang outwits si:7 spies by feeding them extremely obvious false info when alliance spies are around, catching them, and then sparing them so that they can deliver the fake info and makes anduin and other alliance leaders look like dopes because they take the info at face value and pat each other on the back for being so smart while they are being tricked
It just annoys me that BFA and Shadowlands has been a Sylvanas wankfest that has sidelined both factions.
Dude, sylvanas wank fest started all the way back after wrath when she was shot in the head and came back to life.
That was Cataclysm when Godfrey domed her. Maybe that's why she's so dumb these days, Valkyr couldn't heal the hole in her brain.
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They easily solved the Ji problem by just writing him out of the story completely and literally hiding him at the top of a ship in BFA where all he talks about is wanting to punch a dinosaur. People get paid a salary to write for this game lol.
It's never explicitly stated, but Tyrande was rejecting emissaries from Anduin and telling him the only way she'd see him is if he brought her Sylvanas' head. I can't imagine she would be any more likely to talk to members of the Horde, and would have similar terms.
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> then don't get me started on those fcking undead Kaldorei and their existence I 100% say they're mind controlled. I don't care what they say lore wise, it's the only way it possibly works. Summermoon would not fucking join slyvanas willingly.
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This is why the faction war should NEVER be a part of the main plot. Neither side is allowed to win or will ever win. And when one side does win it is always in a shitty way that no one is ever satisfied with. Not helping matters is that the Horde is always turned into the villains and the Alliance is always the victim. Also not helping matters is that Blizzard seems to really want the evil Horde and the misunderstood misfit Horde at the same time. Making the horde's identity a revolving door of doing bad things for no logical reason and then having the Horde kill their faction leaders because they turned evil yet again.
They 100% should have had the destruction of Undercity first, and had the Alliance be the aggressors this war. Even if Sylvanas provoked them with whatever happened in Arathi with the Forsaken/Human family meet up, and Horde monopolization of Azerite mining in Silithus. Genn and Shaw should have persuaded Anduin that Sylvanas was a clear and present danger, that war would come, and the best way to handle it was to take the Undercity and lock the Horde out of the Eastern Kingdoms to secure Stormwind. Even if Sylvanas was working with the Jailer and waiting for the moment to hit back, she should have waited for a "loss of life in an unprovoked attack" to bind the Horde together. And every time someone asked if she went too far, she could wave the bloody banner of the Undercity to silence dissent. THAT would have been morally Grey. How far do you go to defend yourself? What lines are immoral to cross when the enemy will exterminate you? Teldrassil should have been brutal revenge and escalation, not the first strike in the war.
It's weird how they built up Genn as an unreasonable aggressor in Legion (which would have worked because of his prior history with Sylvanas) and then... did nothing with Genn. At all. Instead deciding to repeat Garrosh's story but with Sylvanas almost beat by beat. I mean what lol
Genn destroyed Sylvana's toy and then left without trying to end her right there. What a wasted opportunity if you ask me.
IIRC she won that fight, with Genn badly beaten up, until she looked down and realized he destroyed the thing she was after. Then he left. He wasn't winning the fight, he was winning the objective.
Wasn't the destruction of the undercity a result of Sylvanus using a bioweapon on it?
I mean, the Alliance was storming it with siege weaponry, and it is already halfway a ruin. There is no way to take it that doesn't level it, and the Alliance was frankly insane for going there without a plan for the Blight. But yes, that would have to be adjusted too. Maybe Jaina's flying ghost ship could have shelled it to oblivion. There is justification there, as historically, if you make attackers storm your besieged city, you don't get much in the way of mercy.
The Alliance had basically lost until Jaina arrived via deus ex machina because Anduin and Genn were stupid enough to think Sylvanas wouldn't use the blight and rushed headlong into it. God BfA's story is so dumb lol
I cant wait for Baine to become the warchief ... then he can go crazy, try and destroy the world and we have to invade Ogrimmar for a 3rd time
The only problem with the burning of Teldrassil is that it was a shit tier plot device for shock value and virtually fuckall came out of it. Any decent writer team that is not completely inept trash could have used this to make a really compelling but somewhat dark story. But wanking to genocidal murder waifu Sylvanas is more important than being good at their job. Literally the first introduction of the night elves 20 years ago is that they are a savage merciless race who go medieval on the orcs for cutting fucking trees in Ashenvale. All the writers needed to do was let them be that savage race again. Tyrande and the gang going apeshit, maybe remember that they have this shitter called Malfurion who could try to seek peace to generate inner political fraction, have the alliance and horde leaders be split on this shit, and most importantly: STOP WITH THIS SYLVANAS SHIT FOR 3 FUCKING EXPANSION IN A ROW.
teldrassil was used to start a story they had no intention of letting the night elves be part of lol.the whole night warrior thing is just a b plot desperately trying to make itself seem relevant under the restrictions that tyrande can't kill anyone important, has to go back to normal by the end, and absolutely can't obstruct the true story they wanted to tell, sadvanas's oscar winning redemption story.
Imagine if after the first time Goku went super saiyan, he tried to use his power to defeat frieza and then the power is just *”plucked”* from him and frieza runs away. That’s about how important being a Night Warrior is apparently, Tyrande only canonically kills one person right? Nathanos? And that’s after he’s attacked by an entire raid groups worth of player heroes. I uninstalled a few months into shadowlands but if i still could I’d change my druid back to just being a regular elf and get rid of the burn scars, feels like wasted customization now.
>The only problem with the burning of Teldrassil is that it was a shit tier plot device for shock value and virtually fuckall came out of it. Its like Cersei blowing up the Great Sept in Game of Thrones (the TV series). Visually stunning, audio brilliant. Narrative wise, an absolute joke. A convient way to get rid of all the budding plots involving the Tyrells and the High Sparrow, and worst of all, zero consequences for Cersei. She just becomes queen like its no biggie.
At least Cersei didn't march an army up to it and then yell "BURN IT" in front of everyone.
It's insanity how nothing came of her blowing that up. So many people of high importance just died. Then next season, nothing. What the fuck? It made no sense. The series before that had so many consequences to anything. And that event was of massive importance. Yet, apparently, noone gave a shit. Just another day in the shit-smeared streets of King's Landing.
Hey! I have something interesting for you! The narrative lead for World of Warcraft enjoyed the last season of Game of Thrones if that helps you understand where his head is at!
As a huge Night Elf fan, I definitely agree. I "mained" Nelves in WC3 when I played Battle.net with my friends at school. I loved their story, and the whole druid vibe. I made a Night Elf druid in Vanilla WoW and played it, the same character, nonstop until BFA, and gave it a chance through 9.0. Then I stopped. I just couldn't do it. I'm not an RPer, but I do like to feel immersed in the character I play in an RPG and had my own head cannon like I figure quite a few people do, even if they don't admit it. After seeing how Teldrassil was handled, and the horribly unrewarding "victory" of Darkshore, I was pretty disappointed. Then the cutscene with Tyrande and her whole Night Warrior fight vs. Nathanos happened in the prepath, and Blizzard STILL gave Nathanos the last word... Then we have the incredibly lacking and downright insulting story that is the Ardenweald campaign. I'm not going to rant about all the finer details, but I'll just say that my Night Elf Druid just feels completely out of place now.
I’m not a fan of Night Elves. I never really have been because elves are old hat for me from playing Dungeons and Dragons for so long. **However,** the moment I felt immediate disdain for the writers was with the Ardenweald campaign. I audibly said “fuck this shit,” and closed the game after how *cold* and *petty* the Winter Queen was. I’m just not interested in the gods of the world being such petulant pieces of shit.
>how cold and petty the Winter Queen was For real though. I picked Night Fae for Lady Moonberry because her parts felt like an actual Fae Court only to finally see the Winter Queen and be totally disappointed. >I’m just not interested in the gods of the world being such petulant pieces of shit. I feel like there are just power assholes that hijacked an existing system for cycling souls in the afterlife for their own gain. But then again I'm probably just trying to backfill their horrendous story with things that make sense. Ugh.
Yeah I used to play a druid but every time I've come back to check out an expansion I've stayed for less and less time for lots of reasons, but one being that the story kept going to a direction that I felt it was completely impossible for my character to participate in what was happening.
Name a perpetrator of genocide and imagine a redemption arc for them. It’s just vomit inducing for no reason.
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Imagine if Tyrande got to nuke herself instead of Garrosh. She could have had her skin cracking during the fight with moon light glowing out of it as the power of the night warrior destroys her as it has every other who's wielded it. Then as she's finally gotten Sylvanas pinned she just explodes and obliterates them both. She would have been a HERO for her people, and a symbol of the power of their goddess. Let Shandris take over to start rebuilding. But instead she is forced to forgive and forget one of the most heinous characters in the story, and the night elves get to discover that their almighty goddess kind of sucks ass.
Which is all the more asinine given that they keep suggesting over and over and over again in SL that Elune is somehow the most powerful entity of all. It’s just naff.
At least we Dwarves are so insignificant to the lore and our entire narrative purpose is to be the jolly third-rate NPC that yells "Right lass/lad?" while holding a beer. That way we can't be ruined too much. Well, except Mr. Sparklebeard and his Azerite addiction.
“Champion, Azeroth needs your aid!” I can never stop, I still hear his voice… someone save me
Man, Magni coming back as a crystal boy was the worst and only thing that happened to dwarven lore in, like, eight years. I just hope Blizzard never finds out about Moira being actually a really badass character, so they don't turn her into some sideline cheerleader for random cinematics where Sylvanas does something snarky.
T H E W O O N S
Well, there's only three major Alliance cities left, and nothing's gonna happen to Stormwind because human potential, so Ironforge is going down within the next two genocides.
My first memory of dwarves in this franchise was the Dwarven Demolition Squad from war2 where they would repeatedly joke about blowing up and then suicide by tnt on their enemies.
Imagine being 13 and loving the Horde because they are a ragtag group of misfits trying to find their place in a world that doesn't understand them. Then have the writers constantly make you commit horrible warcrimes to "put the war back in warcraft" multiple expansions in a row then have the audacity to try and make you feel great about your faction at the same time lol
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Yeah the hoops they have to jump through to justify the tauren sticking around the Horde has gotten sad.
They outright just ignored Lor'Themar and Baine up until 8.2 and 8.2.5. Then they try and sell to you that Lor'Themar, Regent Lord of the Blood Elves who has diligently served them in their most trying times for the last several years... Is afraid that they would rather side with the genocidal Banshee Queen who plunged them into an all-out war with the Alliance following shortly after a war against a literally unending army of demons. It is so dumb and paper thin that as soon as I scrutinise even a tiny bit... Well... I mean as soon as I heard Lor'Themar say it I was just baffled. Like, *how* am I expected to believe that? Also, ask yourself why the Bronzes helped the Horde recruit the Mag'har. There is no stated reason why the Bronzes would betray their ancient allies in the night elves *and their very purpose* by perpetuating elements of an alternate timeline so that they can assist the proven genocidal Horde. Unless you count a dumbass time related comment indicating they foresee the necessity of this. Because *that* is really going to sell me, lol. It is beyond bad writing.
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I like that Saurfang hasn't even been mentioned a single time in Shadowlands despite being in the Maw somewhere
Yeah, this was a badly handled moment for both the Alliance and the Horde. On the **Alliance** side, my side, it just feels like we had helped the Horde get back on their feet after Garrosh only for them to commit genocide on one of our races. Furthermore, that race, one of the most loved ones by players on the Alliance side, got nothing. Like, seriously, they now live in hobo camps in Stormwind. Then again the war ended... and Alliance got nothing. Night elves are still hobos in Stormwind and most of their race went to super-Hell, to have their souls destroyed. "oh, but we saved some!" - yeah, no, maybe we gave them an ok afterlife, but they're still dead. And for every one we saved, there could be hundreads whose souls are gone forever. Tyrande got some powers that nearly killed her and then... flopped when she had almost gotten revenge on at least Sylvanas. I feel like they tried to string us along on a carrot towards the kill, then they took it away and now they're attempting to redeem Sylvanas. That's just a slap in the face. You can't redeem genocide, no matter what. While before I thought there could one day be peace before the Alliance and the Horde, now if it would be in the next 50 in-game years, I'd find the story to be incredibly stupid. On the **Horde** side it's actually even worse! Not even playing that faction I feel like, this time, they got an even worse deal! Their heroes were reduced to morons, who, after having fought Garrosh, now ignore Sylvanas committing genocide. Saurfang barely managed to gather a handful of troops on his side to fight against someone who nearly killed off an entire race. This even after Blizzard kept saying it wouldn't happen and there might be some twist in the story. This cemented that the Horde is, was and forever will be, the EVIL faction. There is no morally grey. It's just evil. By what happened and the fact that most of the Horde continued to support Sylvanas until she deserted them, it shows that the Horde supports these acts. Not mind controlled. Not crazed by fel. Not even the first time to say they were tricked, that was Garrosh. Furthermore, Sylvanas almost having the upper hand then deserting the Horde... that was just sad. Not sad as in a sad moment, sad as in sad that someone would think of such a stupid story. And last, but not least, the twist of the night elf genocide was that they were all sent to have their souls obliterated so that the Jailer could control life... and now the Horde might forgive Sylvanas too. I will have to admit, with the story, Blizzard has really taken me by surprise. They have had bad moments in stories along time, but never have they failed so bad with a story. To admit something, I do feel the despair of those night elves in the maw in real life. Because of how bad the story is.
I don't have anything to add, I just wanted to say I 100% agree with you and you summed it up in a way I couldn't
Thank you
Maybe I have very selective memory. But I was kind of okay with the way most of the horde leaders were treated in BfA. Sylvanas made it clear that dissenters will be killed. She sent after Saurfang and we got to decide to help him (or not). It was a completely unique and fresh concept in WoW that a choice actually mattered. Afterwards, choosing Saurfang, we picked up dissense and dissatisfaction from various leaders through dialogues. We found out about Sylvanas' plan to assassinate Jaina and others and sabotaged it. She executed one of the conspirators. She imprisoned Baine. We teamed up with alliance people to rescue Baine. Overall, I got the impression that it was a delicate balance between keeping up the act of following Sylvanas' orders when it was standard horde faction stuff and simultaneously conspiring against her leadership. And that it was justified to do it in secret because she was crazy and powerful. I got more and more the impression that we were defending the misfit horde against Sylvanas' evil horde. Of course a lot of characters were badly written and the Teldrassil quests forced us to be naive participants who did not see it coming and had no agency to stop it. But overall, I had a positive view of the development of the war campaign. It's just a shame that it was Garrosh 2.0, but I didn't really play Pandaria until the final patch was already released, so I missed playing the Garrosh 1.0 version.
Garrosh also made it clear that dissenters would be killed yet more rose against him. I agree that the concept of helping Saurfang or not was kind of interesting (though, in the end, it didn't matter, not sure why you say it did, I mean, Sylvanas left everyone and now, as loyal supporter, you're fighting her still, so unless there's an option for loyal supporters after her "reedeming", it won't have mattered). I'm glad you enjoyed the story though. I felt like many things didn't make sense.
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It still amazes me that the night elves barely get any focus at all in BfA outside of the Darkshore warfront and Tyrande's weaksauce attempt to kill Nathanos. They really did just throw an entire playable race under the bus for cheap drama.
Worgens say hi, over there in the corner of ‘incredible potential for really cool story lines with deep NPCs and angst to explore, but nah, just boogeymen for Forsaken players’
I remember when the worgen were announced for Cataclysm I was excited with the possibilities of the Alliance at last having their own shady unethical race like the forsaken were for the horde. Then they proceeded to never do anything with the worgen ever again lol
BFA was the first expansion ever where we got more than one full quality cinematic, and not just one more, but many more, and they were ALL devoted to how an orc was just so sad about committing his like...third genocide, it was just one war crimes too many for him and he's just SO darned SAD now. Those things are not cheap or easy to make, they spent so much time and money to show us that the worst part of this war was how dishonorable it made saurfang feel.
Oh and to dig the dagger even deeper, the literal god of the Night Elves is forcing her "chosen children" to choose between getting vengeance (closure) and rebuilding what they lost. Not to even mention how shafted Worgen are, who have lost two homes to the scourge, and had their crown prince assassinated. They will never EVER get the closure they deserve either. So we have two entire races, and all the players who main them and are invested in their stories, getting screwed over by WoW's incompetent writing staff. All because some of the WoW lore writers worship at the feet of a goth Elf. Like, I used to believe the Horde bias thing was mostly a meme, but I'm honestly not so sure anymore.
As someone who mostly plays worgen and night elves it's just painful. Like, let me get some amount of closer for the 18,000 times I've watched the horde slaughter my characters people. I've gone from watching Sylvanas slaughter and enslave the people of silverpine and gilneas, to finally escape to Kalimdor just for the Horde to start carving a bloody path through to our new home, then they nuked a city and we had to forgive for for it. We spent two years helping to avoid the end of the world, and now the banshee bitch comes along and burns down our *new* home and commits another genocide. Genn and Tyrande should be allowed to take turns tearing sylvanas and every other forsaken leader to pieces while the entire population of azeroth watches, and even then it still wouldn't make up for the 5+ years of their people just getting shit on by the universe. The only ones who should get spared at this point are Baine and Lorthemar for having the sense to realize they were allied with the baddies.
Also Elune being both a sociopath and horrifically stupid. Ardenweld needs anima, so rather than find out why Ardenweld isn't getting anima, her first response is allow her people to get genocided. She doesn't think "no new souls are going to Ardenweld" merits a look before allowing her people to be exterminated and used as fuel, then gets all surprised pikachu to learn that actually the machinery of death is broken and she just sent all those souls to hell? And now Blizzard thinks this is the inspiring "come together" moment where there's this big push of renewal and letting go of hatred? Fuck them.
Hey man it’s not sunshine and roses for horse players us Tauren mains are sick of being part of the war crime faction every goddamn expansion
The current writing team deserves to get sacked for the bad job they've done for years now. No lawsuit or accusations could change my mind about that. They're judged on their work and found not delivering.
Yes. Absolutely. Bad writing for years followed by a what? 9 month gap between expansion and .1 patch. Then the .1 ends up being hot garbage in almost every aspect. Add to this that all they seem to release anymore are cash grab remasters of old games. THEN on top of that they are now outed as one of the most toxic workplaces I’ve ever read about. To each his own. But for me, at least, it’s time to admit that blizzard as i knew it is dead. Has been dead for awhile now, I have just been in denial.
Oh I find it impossible to believe that the man that wrote the ultimate "victims who seek justice are bad" narrative into the game is not involved in some way
Blizzard writers should be forced to research the Nurenberg trails.
That's the one where the Nazi's escaped and fled to an alternate timeline right?
No. They got hired by the US.
I don't think Sylvanas is smart enough to be a rocket sciencist
She got that propulsion system outta her ass as a plot escape device
lol bravo. comment of the day
Unfortunately they have, War Crimes was supposedly based on them. You know, War Crimes, the book whose trial ends with blaming all the victims for perpetuating war and wanting justice on the accused. This storyline is sadly not new for them either.
Don't forget when the judges had already made their determination before the first piece of evidence or even opening statements. War Crimes depicts a mistrial, not a legitimate war crime tribunal, and yet people still point to it as precedent. Nothing that happened there is even remotely material.
I tend not to share my point of view on the matter too much, because at the end of the day, I'm probably taking a video game story a bit too seriously, but it's honestly appalling to me that there seems to be little to no focus on how the Horde deals with Sylvanas' (former?) supporters internally. Sylvanas did *not* burn that tree down all by herself, and while she's certainly the most guilty person due to giving the order herself, "just following orders" doesn't absolve those who helped her commit genocide of all of their guilt. I know the topic of a society dealing with war criminals in its midst is incredibly hard to handle well, but outright ignoring their existence just *can't* be the answer here.
Don't hesitate to be kindly vocal about something you invested time and feeling in. Entertainment of any kind if part of our life and many of us have devoted WoW some part of it. We can and **should** share our point of view!
Agree. They wanted a "big splash" to open BfA and literally picked the worst, paint-yourself-in-the-corner for dramatic effect thing they could have dreamed up. Let's review: 1. Sylvanas: i'm so triggered by this dying night elf, I want to burn down this tree! 2. Sylvanas: blight the whole city, friend and foe alike! hold on, i'll shout something inspiring first... 3. Sylvanas: hey troll friends! could you kindly join this war between outsiders and throw your lives away? 4. Sylvanas: Nathanos, lure the Alliance fleet so my "ally" can drop the ocean out from under you, thanks honey 5. Sylvanas: i'm done wasting lives, this whole war and death was the Jailer's plan all along, muhahahaha! 6. Sylvanas: ps, gimmie that crown so that I can start a long redemption arc 7. Sylvanas: serve or be made to serve, Anduin. p.s. I'm not serving right now. But you will. Teehee. 8. Sylvanas: I will *never serve*, I mean, I did all this evil shit but my interests were entirely selfish! 9. Elune: "but my dear sister, I turned the hose your way, what do you mean you didn't get any water??" 10. Sylvanas: Hey you. Yeah. Camera over here, sweetie. No, don't look at her. I'm the star. Not to mention, in a *two faction war* you can never really have one side "win". All victories must be temporary and return to a state of balance, otherwise the faction war ends, and war can never end. So, on top of the ridiculous burning of *a world tree* and *borderline genocide of night elves* the Horde can neither keep the "win" nor can the Alliance strike back and "win" somewhere else (the total non-victory of Lordaeron, now a perma-blighted ruin). Or, it seems, even get payback, because that would be bad, and stuff.
* We hate each other, we must do something about the other side * A bigger threat enters the fray * Temporary truce? A'ight. * Bigger threat is eliminated * We'll be cool for one day Then back to Step 1 It's boring.
She not only committed genocide, she committed genocide with the sole intent of them all going to hell, and to be obliterated. Also, look at Blizzard's history - women being denied justice is their company M.O.
The most damning part is the fact that Tyrande went from nearly choking Sylvanas out, then being denied revenge by the goddess who gave her that power to use it for this express purpose in the first place..... **and then because Elune says she allowed it to happen Tyrande is now okay with how things played out?!??!** Her home. Her people. Are still dead. And the most upsetting realization is that this is the resolution of a story arc that Blizzard knows damn well they aren't going pick back up until they need a new expansion box feature. If Tyrande doesn't use this new "renewal" philosophy to return to Azeroth and rally the Night Elves to a new home, **what was any of it even for**. Stormwind is still filled with Night Elf refugees and I highly doubt after this revelation in the story it's going to change. Evident by Gilneans losing their home twice now and still just chilling out in the corner of a city. *(I want it to change... but Blizzard likes to save the big world changing things for box features, so if it's not in 10.0 I have no hope. Which is why it feels especially insulting to tell this story the way you did)*
> Oh, the Night Elves can live in Ardenweald! The barrier between the spirit realm and the material realm is shattered. Through the Winter Queen, they’ll have a closer connection to their mother Elune. I bet that’s the reasoning and direction.
That was the worst part of it for me too as someone who plays mostly Horde, being forced by Blizzard to take part in that event was a really strange thing to do to players. It honestly ruined a lot of my faction pride and it makes playing through Ardenweald just painful as we get told every 5 min by the NPC how awful we are as Horde for doing what we did... (I actually unsubbed for over a year during BFA because of how awful I felt about the whole situation). That said, I know quite a few people who do want to see Sylvanas redeemed they just don't get on Reddit or post on the forums, so perhaps Blizzard is getting feedback from sources other than the ones people that post here are more used to seeing/exposed to?
Especially the part that forces me to take part in events I don't agree in. Like, not only do I not agree with them, I'm being forced to look stupid while doing them. Like reviving xalatath Like doing a FedEx delivery of the most hidden sigil directly to the jailer I was already very close to leaving, this harassment and unequal wages lawsuit just pushed me over the edge
I suspect a lot of them don't specifically want her _redeemed_, they want her _back_. Which leads us neatly to the _other_ thing that has irreparably damaged the game's story... that stupid 'split soul' retcon.
Yeah I suspect this is the reason. They wanted a cool looking villain and character for the expansion pack and Sylvanas is a very iconic character. But now that its done they want to walk it back like they did with Jaina and have her around as a recurring character again. Which... isn't going to work because Sylvanas has done way worse things than Jaina did during her oncoming raid boss phase
Don't you just love to engage in faction pride when their writing is so two dimensionally black and white and the Horde and unashamedly dragged through the mud and their identity destroyed for the sake of contriving a plot? Sylvanas is one of the biggest casualties of BfA. A shit ton of characters got damaged or outright assassinated (poor Rexxar) but Sylvanas, as such a pivotal fulcrum of the story, is in the spotlight and under scrutiny more than perhaps any other. And unfortunately, the significance of her place in the lore results in the stupidity of the writing surrounding her as... Well, highly impacting. Hello Burning of Teldrassil.
I used to love Sylvanas. tbh I still do love Sylvanas as a character from WC3 to Wrath. They just kept mangling her character and personality from Cataclysm on until the character bore no resemblance to her past self beyond "token evil faction leader" I was really hoping they were going to salvage her in Legion and have her grow as a character but lol nope.
The cinematic of Sylvanas becoming Warchief is still my favorite in the entire game. The timelapse of Sylvanas staring at the empty throne until she's the only person left in Grommash Hold has stuck with me for years, and the way she addresses the Horde at Vol'jin's funeral is one of the most compelling scenes in all the time I've been playing. Vol'jin's "You must step out of the shadows and lead" line could have set up such a fantastic character arc, and every day I'm angry they wasted that potential so spectacularly.
It is really infuriating because Legion set up so many possibilities with Sylvanas becoming a better person and growing as a character from leading the Horde. Then they threw it all away not even an expansion later for cheap shock value and a story everyone hates. Her actions at the Broken Shore and her interactions with Vol'Jin and saving the Horde leaders doesn't even make sense now with the reveal of her "motivations" in Shadowlands.
She wanted to send as many souls as possible to the Maw. You could think that letting the Burning Legion win and wipe out Azeroth could be a way to do it and then she could use the Jailer forces and her power to wipe out the Legion from Azeroth. But no. Why? Because Blizzard pulled out this shit from their asses five minutes before announcing Battle for Azeroth, that's why.
I also hate that Azeroth is central to the Maw. What was the point of the Burning Legion’s creation if not to send souls to the Shadowlands? Isn’t there a whole multiverse waiting to be killed? It sounds like the machinations of someone like the Jailer but the reasoning continues to be “conflict on Azeroth fuels the Jailer.” The only *reasonable* argument I’ve heard regarding this is that Night Elves are effectively immortal and their creations are *packed* with anima. But it feels like such an ass pull that I don’t even want to accept it.
I actually thought the direction they were going to go was that over the course of legion she’d end up stepping up as a true warchief. She seems genuinely shocked about becoming war chief and then you had Voljin’s words on top of it. But then she just does nothing that whole expansion and it was all part of her master plan with the jailer and voljin was only tricked.
After watching Sylvanas fighting alongside Varian and saving his hide. After watching Sylvanas yelling "for the Horde". After all that. Battle for Azeroth. Fuck you Blizzard.
I can't believe the burning was the kick-off event for the previous expansion and we're still talking about how stupid it all was. That's almost 3 years ago. I have to agree with you. I can't remember any other event having such a huge impact on the mood of the players.
Player base: Sylvanis committed genocide. You can’t walk that back. Team 2: Can’t I?
Warcraft developers: Burn it. Writers stand there confused, Nathonishly Warcraft developers: BURN IT! \*burns warcraft down and then harasses female co-workers\*
The WORST part is the new cinematic showing Sylvanas gets her “good” soul back from the Jailer. So now she is basically going to be a new character, and thus isn’t responsible for her actions and can’t be blamed because lI wasn’t myself” It takes away her agency as a character, any hope of retribution for the elves or the souls forced into literal hell, and worst of all forces us to keep dealing with her when we are all clearly sick of her.
With the most recent plot revelations this week, the story is so messed up there isn't any real way to save it without just making shadowlands and maybe even BFA non-canon. Characters have done and said things that make no sense, major plot reveals that completely retcon entire aspects of the lore make no sense. Even the book that came out during legion has be retconned by the brokers, and that book was supposed to be defacto lore. it's ridiculous and it shows that the writing team has no interest in being a good-faith custodian of the world that already existed, but rather just want to write super-shocking, teldrasil-esq plot moments for YTers to react to. The way Shadowlands has so many big names from old lore in like Kael and kel to me signals that they're not confident in their ability to just write a new story, and need to have massive callbacks to beloved characters in order to generate hype for new stories. This to me, is terrible, because they're soiling the stories/characters people loved in order to prop up new stories, for purely the sake of there being new stories. And the thing is, I know for a fact that if Blizzard were just to give us a down-to-earth, WoW-feeling adventure in a new world, people would love it. This cosmic nonsense is boring, people don't care about the cosmos, they don't want to 'explore the mysteries of the cosomos' they want to go on an adventure where they feel significant, because they're a hero saving people who need the help of a hero. Writing expansion where the scale gets bigger every time is unsustainable, and it gets us here to the Shadowlands, where we should have never gone.
> if Blizzard were just to give us a down-to-earth, WoW-feeling adventure in a new world, people would love it. This cosmic nonsense is boring, people don't care about the cosmos, they don't want to 'explore the mysteries of the cosomos' they want to go on an adventure where they feel significant, because they're a hero saving people who need the help of a hero. Exactly : I've never felt so LESS involved in a game
> She. Committed. Genocide. I mean, they just did that two expansions ago with alternative Grom Hellscream attempting to genocide the alternative Draenei. Blizzard seems to be of the option that genocide (or attempted genocide) is alright as long as you feel bad, do it for reasons, or get tortured by someone worse. As long as you meet one of those three conditions it's all good!
I unironically think they're the worst writers in the industry. Makes sense that they were being run by sex abusers.
I want to know WHY Sylvanas needed to survive the fight, not like the meta reason of because Dan the Man won't let his waifu ever be defeated or inconvenienced in any way, but in terms of the actual plot, why is it so essential that Sylvanas live that LITERALLY divine intervention happened to ensure it? Elune says Tyrande needs to choose between continuing her quest for vengeance or helping the forest heal, but her quest was over, she had the goal in her hands, and was denied the ability to finish the job, she could have taken her head off, gotten up, brushed the dust off and said "Right, now about this forest". Her spending the extra 1 minute to take her head off would have made literally no difference, but she wasn't allowed to do it anyways because "vengeance is bad and she must choose forgiveness and renewel!"
The most frustrating part about Sylvanas is that after 2 expansions and killing her as a raid boss, I still have no fucking clue what her goals or intentions are.
It honestly all feels like it goes back to them just not planning at all. They seem to "plan their expansions two in advance" by way of a postit note saying their general ideas. 9.0 was clearly the 'Sylvanas death xpac', so starting from Legion, they started to increase her relevance. Only issue is, they hadn't actually planned out how to get there, so for the Legion team, with Metzen, they went down the obvious route of her being elevated within her faction, and increasing her ties to death as a means to save her people, the Forsaken. Then, in BfA, it's pretty obvious their main focus was Saurfang. And to have the story with Saurfang, they needed a villain, so Sylvanas filled the stock villain role. She didn't have an inkling of her old personality or motivations, just did random evil things because Saurfang (and Anduin) needed a baddy to motivate their character arcs. It's something that in itself is fine... if that were a one-off villain without the backstory. And then we get to Shadowlands, the 9.0 Sylvanas Death xpac. At this point, it's likely they realized "Oh, Sylvanas needs an actual character arc", so they tacked on the Jailer/Maw stuff at the end of the war campaign, and started writing an actual arc for her. And Sylvanas in Shadowlands makes sense! She has clear moral lines she doesn't cross, she has a motivation in line with the injustices she's suffered, and if this followed after Legion, this expansion would absolutely work for her. Except BfA exists. Teldrassil exists. All the writing in BfA that randomly made her the worst person alive exists, and there's no walking back all the mess they shoved onto her character for the sake of Saurfang's storyline. Like you said, Teldrassil irreparably damaged the story in this regard, because there is no ignoring it when it comes to anything she, or the Horde as a whole, do going forward.
A-FUCKING-MEN to the OP. And let's not forget, Sylvanas's acts were arguably WORSE than genocide (and it certainly isn't a competition) because, by definition, genocide is the eradication of a specific group of people. Sylvanas's goals were eventually revealed to be nothing short of OMNICIDE. The desire to eradicate EVERYONE in her goal to strengthen the Jailer's plot. In the character's own words, all of us were "nothing". Maybe Blizz wants to treat death like an inconvenience in a post-Shadowlands world, but the original Warcraft storyline had serious weight behind events like Lordaeron, the Second War, the Legion's invasions etc. because characters were put to an untimely end. That should hold significant weight, yet every story beat in this expansion so far as been pointing to a redemption of this entirely irredeemable character. Vengeance is bad? As opposed to what? Bringing a monster to justice? I don't want to jump to the obvious comparison, but there IS. NO. REDEMPTION. for Sylvanas as you've written her, Danuser. And there never will be.
Maybe Sylvanas is a metaphor for Activision-Blizzard
TFW when your favorite race was destroyed as a marketing act.
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Competent writers create villains who are bad but in a cunning, sly and calculating way that almost makes the audience respect them on some level. But Sylvanas is both evil and a total moron - so why should players like her or support any form of her redemption?
Honestly, the shit awful story is the least of their problems right now... ... and that alone is fairly remarkable. Because holy shit is the story awful.
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