Honestly... Jaina riding in on a flying ship is what fantasy is.

[Qprah]

As long as the Warcraft Universe makes sense within itself and follows its own rules, I dont much care how ridiculous things are. Its supposed to be fantasy and thats basically what it is.
Anything that doesnt make sense can be explained later in a book or comic and It'll be fine with me. I dont like that the context that makes stuff you see in-game make sense is often left to the other forms of media, but thats an entirely separate gripe.

I dont think its necessary to call characters like Jaina a mary-sue. It may seem like Blizzard make their major characters stupidly more powerful than they should be, but you might be looking it the wrong way. They arent written OP because they are major characters; rather they are major characters because its apart of their story to be that much more powerful.
For Example:
1: High Elves taught humans magic and they noted that humans seemed to have an affinity for it, picked it up quickly and I'm pretty sure its mentioned somewhere in the lore that they are also able to generate more force/power than a similarly powerful elf mage could. (I cant back up that last point though)
2: Jaina was a prodigal student, was chosen to study under Antonidas; the leader of the city of mages. She was also mentored by Aegwynn in Theramore.
3: Jaina was apparently magically supercharged by the Mana-Bomb at Theramore, further increasing her power.
4: Jaina had her staff supercharged in the Throne of Thunder, further increasing her power.

5:Its very common in WoW for mages and other spellcasters to 'enchant' objects with magic, causing them to do a function seemingly on their own(brooms, flying discs/carpets, etc). In the cinematic the only spells you see Jaina cast are the blight freezing halo thing (which btw isnt even the first time magic has been used to destroy/disperse/neutralize the blight), and when she turns the ship. Unless its specifically stated elsewhere it seems perfectly within the rules of WoW for her to have enchanted the ship to fly itself since she doesnt appear to have to channel any spell to keep it flying. Likewise the magic shooting magic cannons could be explained the same way, as being enchanted to fire arcane-empowered projectiles at her command.
With that in mind I can accept that she had prepared her warship well in advance. She would have enchanted the ship to be able to levitate on its own and enchanted the cannons to be magically empowered and able to fire on command. That way she is free to cast her magic as needed and she can simply nudge the ship in the direction she wants to steer it, which we see her do in the cinematic.

Like others have said this is well within the bounds of WoW canon considering the other things we have seen mages capable of doing with their magic. (flying cities, portals, conjuring objects, enchanting objects, enslaving elementals, etc)

The other main point is that the 'main characters' of the story are there because they in most cases are the best of the best in their field. This is either because they were naturally gifted and rose to the top of their civilization because of it(Malfurion, Tyrande, etc), or because they were born into leadership and were thus trained their entire life to fulfill that duty (Anduin, etc).
On top of that a lot of them have experienced things that would further increase their magical power/fightning capabilities/political & tactical prowess. Its not ever really brought up in game because big lore characters are given a backseat to the 'player character' who does all the menial tasks, but it is mentioned in the other media that during a lot of the time we spend doing the quests/dungeons/raids lorewise those major lore characters are doing their own things too. The world (of warcraft) keeps spinning everywhere even when the player isnt there. These characters spend their time looking after their peoples and training to become stronger when we arent around.

Anduin is a great example of this. Its brought up a few times in various books and comics that he has been destined to rule since he was born. He is after all the first born son of a king. While in game he just stood there in the keep waiting for alliance players to hand him quests or horde players to come fight him, in the lore he has spent all his life training and studying to be a king. That means training to be a capable fighter in multiple forms of combat and studying the tactics of war & politics. He is young and the writers often make a point of it when he talks to the other Alliance leaders. They obviously have more experience than him, but its not as if he has been lounging around with his thumb up his ass his entire life either.


So like I guess TLDR: I too enjoy the fantasy and am not really bothered by any of the things people seem to be getting annoyed at.

But maybe im just a dirty fanboi who is blinded by hype and autism which makes it feel like everyone on MMO-C hates everything about everything.

[msdos]

Sylvannas seems to have a mastery over her corporeal and incorporeal forms that we haven't really seen in WoW before (Shadow Priests maybe?). She's in between a corpse, a ghost and a humanoid and has mastery over all 3 simultaneously and she was always able to manipulate dark magic, which explains how she just magically applies dark tips to her arrows that explode.

[Deleted]

Except before this we've never seen Sylvanas resurrect that many people before. She only tends to do a few at a time. But suddenly she can resurrect an entire contingent of soldiers at once. Banshees themselves never resurrected people, either.

Also Banshees dont fly around like rocket ships. Just Sylvanas.

Dude... Dont overreact. You can count with 5 fingers the number lf soldiers she raise.
And guys wth... Stop this crap.
You guys babys? Can we fkg enjoy a fantasy game? FO

[Deleted]

Be a very cool instance

[Bumbac]

I agree, I also got so sick of talking demons.

[druenos]

I'm thoroughly enjoying the number of people who clearly never watched the Jaina Warbringers cinematic now complaining about the "random magic ship out of nowhere".

Pirates are dope, tall ships are awesome, Jaina is bae.

To be fair though, why is other media required to know whst's going on in a video game?

[Syegfryed]

Only "retarded" because you knew you had lost the battle at that point.
Except we've known the outcome of BoL since Blizzcon

like i give a flying fuck about lose the city, her performance was retarded regardless

[Dug]

It was definitely awesome. A bit surprising to me that she's that powerful but Sylvanas is apparently a necromancer and can go banshee mode at will so if that's the way we're going then I'm all for it

[jackofwind]

To be fair though, why is other media required to know whst's going on in a video game?

WoW has been using cinematics and external canon sources to advance plot since day 1.

[Khuzog]

Said this in another thread, but...

Even speaking as a Horde main -

All these salty soyboys complaining about "Deus Ex Jaina" and "I rolled my eyes so hard when the ship showed up" like any of us wouldn't be crowing about how Alliance got OWNED KEK LOL if the tables were turned and it was a risen Forsaken dreadnaught or a Blood Elf "We've been working on this the whole time! :>" Spelljammer space schooner that erupts from the clouds to defend the Undercity. It'd just be the "realest shit" and "Told you Blood Elves are amazing mages, ha!"

People need to just admit that a magically powered haunted-looking sunken ship is badass and they can't stand that Sylvanas doesn't have it or it's not a Blood Elf / Nightborne mage that can make it move.

[turboether]

As of last expansion she still needed Valks to summon undead, and this expansion focused on her trying to get more valks by kidnapping Hyrja, sooooooooooooooo

She needs Valkyr to reanimate dead into Forsaken. Not to raise skeletons.

[Liftbrul]

At worst it was just a deus ex machina. Her powers are well within reasonable levels and expectations. People are reading way too much into the cinematic. Mostly it seemed to play by rule of cool though.

[Dellis0991]

Those arcane cannons were badass

[Arrashi]

Its power fantasy.

[Ryonas]

They finally let Lady Proudmoore show a tiny taste of the MONUMENTAL powers at her disposal. It's about damn time!

#mywaifuJaina

[Jastall]

The scene is cheesy as hell, a bit of an asspull and I'm no fan of Jaina, but I can't help but say it made me smile. It was well done, especially with the Kul'tiras theme swirling. I can fault Blizzard for many, many things writing wise, but their cinematic direction is just on point.

[Jonsse]

Khadgar could have done it and no-one would even blink at it. She's not a Mary Sue, she's a hero of the story, and she's immensely powerful. mAnduin can resurrect an entire army with the Light. A flying magical ship is well within the realm of possibility in Warcraft. The way they told the story is a bit Ex Machina, but that's a totally different problem.

[Granyala]

I had to chuckle about the flying Dutchman too. I thoroughly enjoyed the scene for it's absurdity.

Also I REALLY like Jainas new model and hair.

[Anastacy]

Let me put it this way the Blight's closest analogue with the real world would be with chemical weapons, and like them it has been carefully designed and cultivated. As they deliberately designed the Blight to kill the Lich King it makes sense that they would design it to be incredibly resistant to cold. If their goal was killing dragons it'd make sense for it to be incredibly resistant to heat, because a weapon is ineffective if the target can easily negate it's damage.

It makes sense, yeah, but that doesn’t mean it happened, and is an assumption on your part.

Apparently, Blizzard doesn’t want the Blight to be “immune to cold”, so we’ll...it’s not.

[Nitex]

My first thought was oh look another flying boat in WoW.... nothing new.