Alright so after the last thread I got thinking
1. After Garrosh is gone the Horde's going to be pretty focused on cleaning house and running a tighter ship to keep things like what he did from happening.
2. It'd be really difficult to bring Sylvanas and the Forsaken into peaceable cohabitation in the Eastern Kingdoms with the Alliance, particularly after killing Greymane's son, and Varians peek at Undercity in Wotlk.
3. When Sylvanas attempted (successfully, temporarily) suicide in her short story, she was in a really nasty shadow realm that seemed vaguely old-god-ish until the Val'kyr plucked her out of it.
4. Sylvanas is central enough to the Forsaken and popular enough with the playerbase to be difficult to outright 'kill off' even if her comeuppance would make sense.
5. The old gods, particularly yoggy and his puzzlebox, have a few things to say about death, here's just a few.
So I got to thinking, what if the 'hell' that Sylvanas went to is a byproduct of the Old Gods, and there's no grand cosmic balance scale that decides who goes where, so much as people not tied to any other powers are 'fair game' for Old Gods when they die? If you have a deity or tie to another force like the Light, Loa, Elune or elemental and nature spirits, then they effectively keep you 'anchored' or protected from going to Old-god-hell.There is no escape. Not in this life, not in the next.
All places, all things have souls. All souls can be devoured.
The void sucks at your soul. It is content to feast slowly.
Yogg-Saron says: A thousand deaths... or one murder.
-Lane/Garona vision stuff-
Yogg-Saron says: Your petty quarrels only make me stronger!
Now, if Sylvanas were to die at the hands of Greymane, or pretty much anyone after she runs out of Greater Val'kyr, she'd end up back in that hellish shadowrealm... but would she necessarily be powerless there?
Could she potentially ascend to a sort of pseudo godhood where, even while trapped and suffering, she can function as a sort of deity for the Forsaken, slowly growing strong enough to escape?
I think it'd be pretty cool, and in her absence a more subtle government could control the forsaken, leaving them no less the token 'dark' members of the Horde, but no longer as set on expanding down into Stromgarde and the like.
Plus this would make it easier for them to work up rituals, or magic to replace the Val'kyr when they eventually run out. (Or if neither of those work, they can go full Frankenstein)
And it'd give the Forsaken a reason to go after the Old gods, weaken them and help Sylvie get free.
Sylvanas is being 'punished' for murdering people at Southshore and allowing horrific experimentation in her pursuit of going after Arthas, yet she's still a part of the Storyline and the game rather than being 'dead dead'.
Hardly a perfect solution but I'm fond of it.