Is Sylvanas going to die in Shadowlands?

[Nebron]

I definitely have very little trust in them pulling something good and lasting off with the whole death thing. The idea itself sounds pretty interesting - even though it sounds more like a new darksiders storyline- but they can fuck up so much of their cosmology and story progression here. I have said it by now in a couple of threads, but the question of "where do we go after this" has me quite frankly scared. Killing/Banishing a titan with super powerful artefacts and the help of other Titans is one thing, conquering death on a cosmic scale is quite another. I fear we have entered the point of no return on the spiral into ludicrous story telling. This franchise might turn into a cultivation manhua before we know it.

As for what happens when someone, even the major players die there, we already have us dying being explained by Azeroth helping us out again. That alone is such a giant opening for any kind of plot holes, it's not even funny anymore. The implication that Azeroth can just casually reach into the shadowlands, even without being fully concious at the moment, has alot of implications, even if it's just us being able to escape the maw.. Duking it out with entities like the Jailer and/or the Arbiter seems entirely too grand. It also invites writing crutches like "the shadowlands were not the real final destination after all, there something even grander behind it", which inadvertedly leads to grander and grader plotlines.

Very well encapsulated!

Yeah, it's the opposite of an infinite regress. We can go with the story and there will never be a definite end. Blizzard writers got themselves cornered - they went for such a grand theme - Titans - that it's to push the story forward. We had the lore already established, that Titans are the greatest entities in the Universe. Then came the Void Lords, and here we go... retcon over a retcon. I can't forgive a lot when it comes to plot holes in the internal logic of a franchise, but Blizzard went way beyond that.

I can't really feel any excitement to face a new threat once I was the one to imprison Sargeras. Obviously, they introduce the cosmology to clean that stuff up, but still, it's also opens the doors for even deeper layers of absurdity.

My concerns are also about the scale of the story they want to tell in the sense of number of storylines they carry at the same time. MMORPG may not be a good medium for such complex stories. People can get confused easily. Not to mention that Blizzard likes to make use of external sources like books, comics, short stories for major plotlines.

I hope, I really do, that Shadowlands is a beginning of something really great. I want to believe that Blizzard will be able to properly utilize their idea of cosmology and that will help them with all their plot holes and allow them not to make ones in the future.

As I said, for now, it doesn't really feel like they plan their stories in advance as the plot holes run on some very fundamental parts of the story. I also hope that they will minimize what I call "behind-the-scenes plotting" structure. I understand why they try to keep the story mysterious, but lack of motivations disallow me to relate with characters which is crucial for a good storytelling.

[Nemah]

I understood that reference. That would be amazing if they did that

Yeah - she'll be gone and did bad things but at peace, blah blah. That's sort of how I feel like it's going.

[Murthag]

I voted, "yes we kill her in a raid encounter".

But for me she deserves to be killed like Garrosh in WoD.

Im so bored of reeeeeeevanas

[ercarp]

Im so bored of reeeeeeevanas

Most of us are.

[Ophenia]

That idea recently crossed my mind as well, what was all that and the buisiness with getting more valkyrs about? Why would she ever bother to resurrect more forsaken (which was clearly her goal until recently) when these souls would have been deducted from her overall Souls in the Maw counter? Many of these actions clearly conflict with the whole maw story line which makes the hasty retconning even more apparent. It's also a giant plot hole as the way forsaken are made would clearly imply that any valkyr can just stroll into any of the 4 realms of the shadowlands and pluck souls out of it, seeing how they resurrected people like factory workers in Brill.

They'll take advantage of the leveling revamp to remove Legion entirely, so that this whole Helya/Eyir stuff was never cannon to begin with

OT: I hope she dies a pitiful death, even an offscreen one stepping on a banana would be fine for me

[Lorde Snow]

If sylvanas gets redeemed, that will be the point I stop caring about the lore and just treat WoW as a purely gameplay experience

If Sylvana doesn't die in this expansion and gets redemption, I give up everything on Wow.

[Pheraz]

Some people have been trying to rationalize Bolvar's embarrassing defeat at the hands of a godmoting emo roleplayer by taking it to mean that we will kill Sylvanas at some point in this expansion. Personally, I think that, yes, she will die, BUT it's also revealed that she was playing 4D chess off-screen the whole time and that every move up til the moment of her death had been for the sake of Azeroth. She dies a selfless, flawless hero, possibly taking her own life since no one else would be strong enough to defeat her.

What do you think her fate is going to be in Shadowlands?

One or two options are missing:

Yes but not as a raid boss and not with redemption.

I think she will not suddenly be a hero.
She is a selfish being only lamenting about how baddie bad Arthas was to her.
She is done with Azeroth. She is depressed and completely mentally ill. There won't be a redemption.

That's ofc my impression.

But they officially said she won't end up in chains in some dungeon or as raid boss.

This leaves two more options:

- she survives and they slowly swap her out of the story (except they want to rename WoW into World of Gothelfbitchcraft)
- she dies in some cinematic without a raid fight for example as we fight the jailor she will get sucked into the maw