Sylvanas is about to become the next Illidan

[Seradi]

She'll be redeemed and Blizzard will say something like "Oh! You guys didn't believe that after ALL we forced her to do, did you?" and they'll all gather in their own office and everyone will cheer, saying something like "we're master of the plot twist!".



No, but Senior Narrative Designer is treating her like her own waifu.
https://imgur.com/r/wow/FX4poT6

Yeah, I’ve seen that before and it doesn’t really prove much of anything to me other than some angry people on the internet take everything way too seriously.

[baskev]

People have been debating what "I will set us all free," means, why she's going to the Shadowlands, etc. since the trailer dropped. I think I know.

Sylvanas made a pact with The Jailer for the same reason Illidan made a pact with Sargeras - to gain his powers with the intention of using them against him.

Her end goal is to kill the Jailer, take his place as one of the lords of Death, end the concept of Hell as it exists in the Warcraft universe, and become the God-Queen of the Shadowlands.

Then, her dark and terrible powers over Death will be instrumental in defeating the Void Lords in 10.0.

And she's the current Game Director's favorite character, so she has enough plot armor to make it happen.

could be a simple as setting us free from dying. Like if the maw wins...no one really dies. they just come back.

[DemonHunter18]

Sylvanas has always been a fairly popular character. She was lower in the graduatory as long as she remained a character in the background, but that has started to change since WotLK all the way to...well, now. On the other hand, Arthas is dead by ages and Illidan made a heavily forced anti-heroic come back, only to then dissapear again from the story.

you mean heroic LoL.

they literally missed the point of his entire character.

[Draqson]

You can't seriously believe Sylvanas has more fans than Illidan, Illidan is arguably the most popular Warcraft character - competing with Arthas, he's certainly more iconic than Sylvanas

I wish there was a popularity-vote from a time when Sylvanas wasnt written into Warchief. Because I firmly believe she WAS the most popular, when I played the Warcraft 3 Campaign, where she conquers Lordaeron and allies with a Nathrezim, that was the moment when I thought "yep she is kickass". Maybe it was puberty hitting, that made an female edgy elven ranger interesting, but the idea of striking alliances with powerful, yet questionable forces of Azeroth was interesting in a world of 1-dimensional characters. Kael'thas, Illidan, Arthas are popular for a reason, they were all dark grey and they all got torn to shreds by the lore - now its Sylvanas' turn. She isnt unpopular per se, she just got shitty writing from wotlk onwards.

[DemonHunter18]

Illidan is definitely presented as an anti-hero in Legion w

you think???

to me it seemed he was like any other character who tried to stop the Legion tbh.

[Seradi]

You don't think the fact the lead narrative designer is a huge, frankly cringe level, Sylvanas fanboy has an impact on how she's been radically buffed in power levels and at the forefront of the story for the past three expansions? Even Metzen's baby Thrall never got that much preferential treatment

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Illidan is definitely presented as an anti-hero in Legion w

No I don’t. Because I’ve looked at his twitter outside of cherry picking Sylvanas tweets and see he likes characters like Jaina and Alleria just as much lol.

I’m trying to find that poll but it was something my friend sent me a while ago so I’m not having any luck. You can take it with a grain of salt if you like but Sylvanas is certainly in S-tier when it comes to popular Wow characters. The others are Illidan, Arthas, Jaina, and Thrall.

[Draqson]

I wonder if they used the loyalist vs revolutionary data to influence the story, probably not because I imagine the story is laid out years in advance

Im not 100% sure, but I heard that in an interview it was confirmed that the whole loyalist plotline wont play any role in shadowlands. I'd figured it would be too hard for blizzard to write this ambigous plot further on.

[DemonHunter18]

Definitely

His goals were noble, like everyone else's - but his actions to achieve those goals definitely were not in line with that of a hero

but his actions in Legion weren't really that bad.

he only opened the portal to Argus but that wasn't a bad thing since we steam rolled them.

now his actions in the Illidan novel are definitely anti-heroic type.

[Eazy]

Yeah, I’ve seen that before and it doesn’t really prove much of anything to me other than some angry people on the internet take everything way too seriously.

Not really, it's cringeworthy and unprofessional.

[TigTone]

Illidan “ i must do what ever it takes to save my people and Azeroth “

Sylvanas “ this world is a prison, Hope is trash, I’m scared of dying I’ll do whatever it takes to not die and suffer in darkness”

Way different people and motivations.

[Seradi]

Not really, it's cringeworthy and unprofessional.

People parading around with the same imgur link as some gotcha moment because they think one person on the team is responsible for everything they hate is equally as cringey. Not sure what’s unprofessional about it? He hypes up wow characters, I don’t think Blizzard would find that unprofessional at all. Do you have the same reaction when it’s Jaina or is it just because you hate Sylvanas?

[Aucald]

I honestly feel far too much is made of Danuser's tweets. Are they cringy AF? Definitely. Are they the cornerstone of some kind of conspiracy where one of WoW's lead writers is bending the entire plot of a multi-million dollar franchise towards a favorite character? I'd say that answer is a quite definitive no. It's not just that WoW, like most professional products, is a product of a committee working in tandem but the very notion of that kind of unchecked influence from a single individual couldn't help but be deleterious to the game's overall perception. Danuser's tweets are just him trying to be funny and relatable - which, if taken in that context, aren't that bad even if they are still kind of cringe-worthy. But WoW as a product passes through more hands than his, and there's any number of variables as concerns the influences and desires that take shape in the final product.

[Cæli]

it's really not clear why she wants to "save us" all of a sudden (even if it started 2 years ago)
I stopped caring about the lore and instead cared about actual gameplay so...
it will probably because "she's not bad after all" kek
if azeroth isn't saving us from the big bad void in the end then I have honestly no clue where the story is going

[Kharadin]

People have been debating what "I will set us all free," means, why she's going to the Shadowlands, etc. since the trailer dropped. I think I know.

Sylvanas made a pact with The Jailer for the same reason Illidan made a pact with Sargeras - to gain his powers with the intention of using them against him.

Her end goal is to kill the Jailer, take his place as one of the lords of Death, end the concept of Hell as it exists in the Warcraft universe, and become the God-Queen of the Shadowlands.

Then, her dark and terrible powers over Death will be instrumental in defeating the Void Lords in 10.0.

And she's the current Game Director's favorite character, so she has enough plot armor to make it happen.

I'd been down with that. I've wanted to see where Sylvie's "greater good" theme is going. Although it's kinda hard to watch her be a dick for so long without having revealed exactly what that greater good is.

[allawyn]

Sylvanas has a lot of assertion made about her with no evidence. (For example, "she was modeled on Kerrigan.) People post more on whether they hate her or love her.

More objectively, the "I will set us all free" is clearly meant to be a statement about how she sees what she is doing. Now that doesn't even mean she is "not evil". Evil can be seen as forcing your way on a world that doesn't want it. But it does mean that, at the least, she isn't a "I'm going bad things to you for EVIL" or a "Who cares how many I destroy for my self-interest" villian.

[Amaterasu65]

Illidan is probably one of the most liked characters along with Arthas. Sylvanas isn't even close and she has a few vocal fans and even more vocal haters.

[Eazy]

People parading around with the same imgur link as some gotcha moment because they think one person on the team is responsible for everything they hate is equally as cringey. Not sure what’s unprofessional about it? He hypes up wow characters, I don’t think Blizzard would find that unprofessional at all. Do you have the same reaction when it’s Jaina or is it just because you hate Sylvanas?

Why do you immediately assume that I hate Sylvanas? Are you obtuse enough that when someone proves that one of the Blizzard writers does cringe thing you have to call him hateful? I expected more from you.

If you ask me why I find it cringe - if someone is saying that "it's like looking in the dark mirror" after seeing a new model of the Sylvanas partner, and then write a short story about Nathanos x Sylvanas called Dark Mirror where they have some kind of deeper(than usual) relationship - it's obvious that something is wrong.

The tweet about her eyes? Yes, it's kinda hyping the character. Rest? Not so much.

Anyway, have you seen other tweets about Jaina or someone from Blizzard saying that they look like Arthas and then write Arthas and Jaina short story? I think not. So don't use that "would you have the same reaction about Jaina?" if you seriously cannot underpin that or at least have a SLIGHT comparison, because it is actually not an argument at all.

Pretty sure there are a lot of people who don't like Illidan either, myself included. The only reason why Sylvanas may have more "detractors" it's because she's constantly been within the eye of the storm, unlike the first. Conversely, though, that also means she clearly acquired a likely bigger fanbase than Illidan ever had.

I think that you're wrong. I would even say that it's in the other way, that Illidan has larger fan-base than she will ever have.

[TigTone]

Sylvanas has a lot of assertion made about her with no evidence. (For example, "she was modeled on Kerrigan.) People post more on whether they hate her or love her.

More objectively, the "I will set us all free" is clearly meant to be a statement about how she sees what she is doing. Now that doesn't even mean she is "not evil". Evil can be seen as forcing your way on a world that doesn't want it. But it does mean that, at the least, she isn't a "I'm going bad things to you for EVIL" or a "Who cares how many I destroy for my self-interest" villian.

She’s similar to Wesker from Resident evil.

He believed he was doing the right things
by “elevating the human race with his experiments”. Which would have ended with most of humanity dying.

She might believe she’s really saving everyone from what she sees as a prison.

She’s not happy or content with life/death cycles.

Like you said that doesn’t meant they are not evil just because they think they are saving us.

The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

[horbindr]

I was under the impression she was going to become kerrigan, not illidan.

[Black Goat]

People have been debating what "I will set us all free," means, why she's going to the Shadowlands, etc. since the trailer dropped. I think I know.

Sylvanas made a pact with The Jailer for the same reason Illidan made a pact with Sargeras - to gain his powers with the intention of using them against him.

Her end goal is to kill the Jailer, take his place as one of the lords of Death, end the concept of Hell as it exists in the Warcraft universe, and become the God-Queen of the Shadowlands.

Then, her dark and terrible powers over Death will be instrumental in defeating the Void Lords in 10.0.

And she's the current Game Director's favorite character, so she has enough plot armor to make it happen.

Sylvanas is about to [insert clever assumption here].

First she was Garrosh 2.0, then she was the Lich Queen, now she's Illidan, next she'll be be Tyrion Fordring or something.