Will Sylvanas Windrunner be Garrosh 2.0

[Dartz1979]

Potential of more sexy arts like this?



TBH I can't see what you expecting. Sylvanas is dead horse. Her logical story end should have happen back in WoTLK. Now she just fanboy material not some serious character material.

PS I was sad when Varian died on Broken Shore. But atleast he got out when he still was good and loved character. Looking now at Thrall and Sylvanas I pity them.

oh my god i love that picture.. i wish she looked like that in game.. she did sort of before 7.2 that is now she is all covered in armor i miss her original look.

[Friendlyimmolation]

oh my god i love that picture.. i wish she looked like that in game.. she did sort of before 7.2 that is now she is all covered in armor i miss her original look.

you are one disturbing individual.

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calling it now, she does something so nasty that anduin goes and gets bolvar. (because he could, lets be honest).
so then the lich king comes in and drags her away kicking and screaming to be a mindless undead forever.

The only thing Bolvar would do is trying to kill the silly human who showed up to Icecrown, It's not Bolvar anymore.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Sylvanas will never be Garrosh. Garrosh cared about his people.

Exactly.

Make her a raid boss already.

[Vakir]

Losing the Undercity still remains a loss affecting Sylvanas and the Forsaken specifically (well, the Horde too indirectly but obiviously on at the same extent) it's not like the burning of Teldrassil denies the existence of that loss. That's an event that may have benefited the Kalimdor Horde in terms of continental domination but, at this turn, it's none other but Sylvanas herself, among the Horde, who paid the highest price for that. It seriously matters not to her or the Forsaken that the Horde is stronk in Kalimdor if they lost everything in the process.

I'm not talking about military dominance, though. People are making this about faction and that's honestly not what I'm talking about. The decision to attack Teldrassil, regardless of why, probably has some tactical meaning. But many of Sylvanas' other decisions are far less delicate and far more sinister or even outright malicious.

I'm talking about the tactical and ethical things Sylvanas does that should earn her way, way more ire and distrust than she actually gets. Moreover, while WoW isn't always fair, it usually pays people their due in situations where from a humanistic perspective they are outright shitty people.

Again, I'm not saying "hurr, she needs to burn," but being confronted with the reality of what she's becoming beyond just chuckling about it would be nice for a change. We got a brief glimpse of humanity in her interaction with Vereesa in War Crimes, but it was shortlived and we literally had it capped off with her bitterly vowing to never love again which is not exactly the most telling and comforting thing to hear from a leader of millions of people. (Not saying a Warchief has to be a big softy, but that strikes me as someone who is devoid of empathy at this point)

Say what you want about Garrosh, and he was a complete shitlord in the end, but he wasn't wrong when he called her out on her hypocrisy. Sylvanas has never properly answered for that - and I don't just mean from a consequence perspective, I mean from an internal and ideological one. There's never a point where Sylvanas has any realization that, hey, maybe, just maybe, she is becoming the thing she didn't want to be.

To avoid an infinite, miserable afterlife is an interesting start, and being a morally ambiguous character for the purposes of continuing that is a story hook - but there has to be more for me to be able to empathize with her on any level, and in order for her character to mean anything, that ideology needs to develop and be challenged in some way.

Instead, the debate on Sylvanas always just boils down to factional division, and that's cool and all (except just kidding it isn't, fuck faction fanbrats) - but my point is that if she's never going to get hit with consequences of her own decisions and is going to remain totally unmoved by any of them in terms of empathy, it's hard for me to feel invested and generally it means that her potential IS being squandered.

What I'm left with us a schemer who is almost never intellectually challenged and someone who has no driving empathy or personal feelings beyond "I don't want to die/want by people by proxy to die" which is about as basic and primal of a goal as anything.

[truckboattruck]

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The only thing Bolvar would do is trying to kill the silly human who showed up to Icecrown, It's not Bolvar anymore.

"you think"...you left that part out.
thats entirely ineffective as a plot point when there is so much useful content there.

[Zulkhan]

snip

I kinda get what you're trying to say but calculating a proper "punishiment" based on ethics is complicated enough. Garrosh wasn't dethroned because of his morals but because of his actions, which were tied not only to his morality but to his personality too. Of course, people can argue that the storytelling had led Garrosh on that path partially due to the usual need to "punish" people committing heinous acts within a story where the good guys tend to win. That's partially true. However, different characters have different paths and different purposes within a story. People often discuss whoever's worse of the two and I have no intention to argue about that but the one pretty objective fact is that Garrosh and Sylvanas are nothing alike. Not because of their morals but, rather, because of their strikingly different personalities.

On the end of the day, it's within the nature of a character like Sylvanas to commits several yet relatively "minor" questionable acts and mostly getting away with them, that's because she's a character who never crosses the line, the line that would make her a target big and unifying as Garrosh managed to become. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that Sylvanas got it her away about everything, despite not really enduring personal losses. Her most recent scheme was screwed over by Greymane. Hell, even her recent Warchief nomination is more a malus than a bonus for a character like her, exactly because it exposes her out of the shadows. And now, ultimately, she indeed suffered an absolutely catastrophic loss.

What I'm trying to say is that Sylvanas' character is relatively complex and her role in the story even more, so expecting her to receive a straightforward good/bad guy treatment could be misplaced. Surely, you can make her fail, suffer blows and losses. But I wouldn't really expect a precise addressing of every single bad thing with relative punishment attached.

[Highwhale]

you are one disturbing individual.

Atleast he honest why he loves Sylvanas.

[KSM899]

I think she will step down in favor of Thrall being warchief again.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

From the cinematic and the new novel coming out, it's clear she doesn't give a shit about the Horde. That "FOR THE HORDEEEE" in the cinematic is purely theatrics. She sees the Horde as nothing more than her pawns to use to accomplish her own selfish goals, and she actually would have preferred to not be warchief at all, because now that she's in the spotlight she can't easily do whatever the fuck she wants.

Sylvanas has been going down a dark path for a long time, how long until she goes completely nuts and we have to put her down for good?

Even by your own presentation of her character, no.

Sylvanas doesn't care about the horde, they are means to an end. Contrasted to Garrosh that wanted to Horde to become his very narrow vision, Sylvanas is forced to keep the Horde strong and united for her own survival.

Sylvanas and Garrosh's motivations are different, their regard for the Horde different as well. They are not headed for the same path. Which thematically makes them meeting the same end unsatysfying -well, having them follow the same arc itself makes it unsatisfying-

I do think Sylvanas days might be numbered, but the context in which she dies will be different. In Legion they hinted at what Sylvanas would be forced to do, decide between her survival and the forsaken, and I think the best way to wrap her character would be to have her sacrifice herself to ensure their survival and place in the world.

[Deianeira]

It kind of isn't. This is part of the problem with a factional war storyline - it's very much a tit-for-tat situation to avoid a community blowup.

Losing Undercity is a response to Teldrassil (or vice-versa, WHO SHOT FIRST bull aside) for the purposes of factional symmetry and to set up a Kalimdor vs. Eastern Kingdoms narrative. It is not a karmic outcome because it happens as a reaction to something independent of the 80 other atrocities that have already happened. The other shit just kind of happened and there's no actual targets being painted on her back as a result.

It's a pretty big jump between "losing a city in response to another lost city" and "death." There's a wedge between those two outcomes, so you might wanna pump the breaks.

WoW's lore is usually pretty poor as a generality and the storytelling has flaws everywhere, but I can't think of any other character who would just casually get away with, say, imprisoning Koltira. The Ebon Blade doesn't even attempt to bust him out for an extended period of time and makes a nice appeal to Sylvanas prior to the class campaign, but they're willing to immediately charge in to wreck the Paladin class order hall for the purposes of raising someone? And even when they do bust him out, they're just going to let the whole thing go because he said "let's not talk about this?" It's one of several examples where I can't quite buy that. Among other problems too numerous to list.

Not sure what you mean by the DK not being able to get Tirion, they dont manage it because apparently he is too strong in the Light and ofc Paladins are OP as fuck. Anyways the reason they would risk going in and get him is because of the potential gain it would be to have him lead the 4 horsemen seeing that he was soo powerful in life.

[Vakir]

Not sure what you mean by the DK not being able to get Tirion, they dont manage it because apparently he is too strong in the Light and ofc Paladins are OP as fuck. Anyways the reason they would risk going in and get him is because of the potential gain it would be to have him lead the 4 horsemen seeing that he was soo powerful in life.

I understand why. I'm not talking about why they didn't successfully resurrect him.

I'm saying that, when confronted with that as a possible recruit, they're ready to charge in for anything, but when concerning reclaiming Koltira, they send a politely worded letter to Sylvanas several times asking for their brother back in the middle of him being tortured and brainwashed. Then, when they get him back, they just let the whole thing slide rather than mobilize in any capacity.

So in any other situation, they're ready to bust down doors and start making legitimate attempts, but for some reason they're just going to casually not give a fuck because Sylvanas. It's like how she had a lot of pressure on her post-Wrathgate and everyone was watching her like a hawk following Putress, but now we've just casually swept that aside and treat it as forgotten despite it being the catalyst for quite a lot of the bad faction blood in the current era. And that wasn't that long ago! Yeah, that wasn't her, but the monitoring to make sure that crap doesn't happen has completely stalled.

This is also a character that is basically a proto-Lich King as it stands and pretty much falls into every single thing they DON'T fucking want and their order is designed to have dominion over.

Like Tirion just conveniently ignoring the absolute bullfuckery happening in Lordaeron while 2 zones away in Cataclysm's questing experience, it feels like only Sylvanas can get away with this kind of nonsense, and that's just frustrating.

and I think the best way to wrap her character would be to have her sacrifice herself to ensure their survival and place in the world.

I can see this if it is properly built to and earned.

[owbu]

I know they keep saying that they have their stories done already, but Im fairly certain Garrosh (and Voljn) were assasinated by player whine threads about them. Garrosh was setup to be that honorable but warmongering guy in cata and then suddendly turned tentacle (not insane (tm). Voljin was set up to bring back old school hordiness and suddendly turned to ashes.
They are probably setting up silvanas to turn the horde into something...(so far it doesnt make sense, yet, need less contradicting info :>) .. Im sure once we know what it is they are trying to do and the whine threads about that start kicking in, there will be tentacles.

[Vakir]

I know they keep saying that they have their stories done already, but Im fairly certain Garrosh (and Voljn) were assasinated by player whine threads about them. Garrosh was setup to be that honorable but warmongering guy in cata and then suddendly turned tentacle (not insane (tm). Voljin was set up to bring back old school hordiness and suddendly turned to ashes.

Garrosh was always planned to go that route. All of one quest at Stonetalon indicated otherwise. Other than that, he was a hotheaded idiot who deviated almost immediately from what he learned about his father.



18:00

Foil to Thrall, a deliberately messianic character? Check.
Talking about how his dickery is deliberate to contrast with the player, in the WoW mag (second issue, I believe)? Check.
"How much more will you love the Horde when you need to fight for it" in reference to Garrosh? Check.
Chuckling affirmatively in response to "Down with Garrosh Hellscream!" from the crowd? Check.

The arc is that Thrall begins with doubt but learns more about himself - learning his birth name, wearing the new shaman getup, the Elemental Bonds quest etc.

Garrosh in turn is heralded as a war hero by the new blood (see: the new Cata Orgrimmar quests about how it's easier to kill the thunder lizards attacking one another) while criticized by the individuals who learned under Thrall (the older orcs criticizing that way of fighting) but slowly starts to unravel and show that he is not able to hold himself together, because the entire concept of "Warchief" goes beyond the need to be a hero of war and is also about keeping a ragtag group of misfits together.

(gaaaag at the "Thrall is the most important person on Azeroth" comment by Chris, though, that was painful)

It was planned from the beginning, the Stonetalon moment was "more than one dimension" as Chris stated, but that doesn't invalidate that he was extremely deliberately set up to be a foil and a downfall. I can't believe people still fail to recognize this. Most dictators start out looking promising and have good publicity, they inevitably show their ass when tested or when their actions are held up to scrutiny.

[Kokolums]

The way i see it, the forsaken lore is built so much on finding a cure for undeath that i can only see sylvanas’ story resolving with her being cured of undeath. The other thing pointing in that direction is theron is still regent. Its ridiculous he hasnt been made king or some true leader found by now unless they intend on curing sylvanas and making her leader of silvermoon. Everything to me points to sylvanas being cured of undeath.

[Arrashi]

No, she will be mudmug 3.17

[Kultyz]

if Sylvannas dies = wow killer as a huge chunk of fans will rage and stop playing!

Anyway i'm more a believer that in BfA the destruction of Lordaeron by the Alliance will make her more connected to he Horde as she has been developing. Being horde leader is not what she wanted as it gives her more responsability and less opportunity to follow her own goals, however now that she is there it will make her realize the best way to get what she wants (a cure/eternal life) is by making the horde strong, take control of Azeroth (which won't happen but she will try) and gather as much of Azerite, the true power of Azeroth so with it she can create a powerful way to get her goal and then Blizzard will take it away from her as the last boss in BfA will demand her to sacrifice that power to save the world or something like it and Horde/Alliance war will continue to the following expansions!

[Cosmic Janitor]

If they can't think of a way to pin the the NE spit roasting on some other influences, chance or whatever and instead blame it purely on her, yes she will go down the garrosh route. If they find an excuse and kayfabe this whole conflict once more, nah she won't.

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if Sylvannas dies = wow killer as a huge chunk of fans will rage and stop playing!

Some people will be pissed, no one will stop playing directly because of that. Some who are already about to quit might use it as an excuse but that's it.

[Dartz1979]

Exactly.

Make her a raid boss already.

No No No as daniel bryan would say us superfan boys of sylvanas much like jaina and tyrande and other female lore characters we do not want to see them killed off at all.

[Nathasil]

I'm curious how Sylvanas will turn out in BfA. At the moment she looks like Garry 2.0 but that would be too obvious, even for Blizzard.

To all those who say "She is not evil, she is just dark gray!"....no. Sylvanas wants to destroy Stormwind (and in extension all life on the Eastern Kingdoms) to ensure the survival of the Forsaken. Those are her ulterior motives ever since the Lich King fell. The New Book sums that up nicely. Now, you may not consider turning all of the Kingdoms into Plageulands evil....but i do. I believe most Tauren and even Orcs would agree.

To everybody who says: "She obviously showed respect for Varian and helped him on Broken Shore!" - no. She fooled him and helped him to get to a point where his survival was the most unlikely. If she had truely cared, she would have jumped down to Gul'dan Banshee-Style like she does in the BfA cinematic. But she does not, because her goals in that battle are reached.
"She was reluctant to become Warchief!" - Yes, because as the Book clearly states she was much more satisfied by planing the end of all life in the Kingdoms from the Shadows of Undercity. Being dragged into the open was the part she did not like because she knew whatever she did now would be seen by all Horde. Especially those who are not cool with undeath.

At the end of Legion / the start of the Book Sylvanas is very obviously evil. However, as i said, i think this would be too obvious a road to take for Blizzard and they really try to make a secret of the exact cause for teldrassils destruction....that's why i believe her story will change at some point. But who knows? I also thought the exact same about Garrosh during Cata "They will not turn the Warchief of the Horde into Hitler....they won't....they just cannot....they...WTF?! They did it?!"

[Deleted]

No. Garrosh was a manly man, apex alpha orc. Predator made iron. Sylvanas is just another wench with terrible appearance and voice. The sooner we get rid of her the better.