Emotional Manipulation- Bad Idea for WoW?

[Ersula]

MOP : 20 million views 13k dislikes.
Shadowlands: 4.5 million views 33k dislikes

This doesnt imply what you think it implies. For example if you posted "likes" Shadowlands ratio is way higher

[Frontenac]

What bothers me most is how out of left field shadowlands is coming. What I mean is, the reintroducton of Bolvar feels forced. Sylvanas ambiguous, supposedly selfish goals feel forced. I get it's just a story to tell and the game needs a story but this feels hollow. I feel Jaina has had better build-up to being a villian.

It's like you haven't played BfA at all. Or Legion. Because Bolvar has been reintroduced since then, during the Death Knight storyline. Then in BfA, as Alliance you meet his daughter and as Horde you meet him with Vol'jin. And Sylvanas selfish goals are no longer ambiguous and they certainly are not "supposedly" selfish. They have been exposed since Edge of the Night. There is nothing "forced" here. Also, Jaina has been thoroughly redeemed during the Kul Tiras storyline. There's no build up to make her a villain at all. Finally, the theme of death was central to Sylvanas's character through all BfA, in game and in the comics. It's been a year that people were predicting either a Nyalotha expansion or a Shadowlands expansion. Nothing out of left field here. I would even say that it was the most predictable expansion we've ever had.

[Asotcha]

^^ This.

The cinematic was about subverting expectations. If you watch the fight carefully, it has the same beats as the ICC fight: undead hordes, blizzard storm, it's not like we haven't killed Arthas a zillion times; Sylvanas went in having read the guidebook.

Another thing I think people are overlooking is that the cinematic happens after the events of 8.3 and all the casualties from that, which would also increase her power. We were meant to be able to draw a comparison between her fight wtih Saurfang and this with mention of how Jaina/Thalryssa didn't recognize the magic used, and visually with that purple magic looking effect.

And speaking of drawing comparisons, I have a prediction. Her line about a Usurper sitting on the throne is referencing how the Jailer felt about the LK himself. Its his shtick. Even when Bolvar was talking Tirion into giving him the Helm, he said he'd be the 'Jailer of the Damned." but the Actual Jailer is far more ancient and has greater claim to that. I'm not sure why he suddenly got butthurt and started acting like Bolvar had stolen his lunch and/or girlfriend, but I think this weird animosity is part of it somewhere.

[Ersula]

The difference between Gul'dan and Sylvanas was that you loved to hate Gul'dan. It felt satisfying and earned when you finally got to do him in.

Sylvanas is just a character you want out of the story so that they can move on to more interesting and well-written ones. I'm really glad Shadowlands is going to be the last time I (and everyone else) have to put up with her

You think she's going to be a raid boss, now? When she's manuvered herself into a place in the story where she's completely unkillable?

If we kill her before the Jailer is freed, the Jailer will just resurrect her.

If we kill her after the Jailer is freed or killed, she can just return to life herself because there's no jailer.

Frankly, free the souls of the maw. Go for it. I want to see where she goes with this.

[Gungnir]

aside from the first blow she parried , she just dodged every single attack with ease. bolvar threw 4 rocks at her and she dodged 3 and blew one like its candy then did the same thing bolvar failed to do, smashed him with a rock. which made lich king look like an useless, powerless character that got bested by an enemy trying to mimic his fight.

I noted this before, IMO blizzard could achieve the same ending with a lot better and more appealing approach by just show even tho bolvar had her ass kicked, she outsmarted him in the end. but the way they made it, did no good for audiences because honestly it was screaming "LOL EZ NUB GIT GUD" toward Lich king, and Im gonna assume you agree with me that everyone, no matter how much of a fanboy someone is, will prefer a good epic fight. Its like GoT when night king got killed by a single ambush blow by a 15y/o kid instead of a glorified battle to the death with some powerful lore characters like john brian and others.

its a waste of potential energy stored in audience when someone is built up and then twist their ankle and die because they broke their neck.

Do people just not realize that Bolvar isn't even on the same scale as any of the larger racial leaders?
Bolvar hasn't even got 1/50th of the power that Arthas had at his disposal, and Sylvanas managed to match Arthas and avoid getting killed back in WotLK.

How, if you would be so kind, would Bolvar been able to do anything against her when she's a chosen juggernaught of an unknown entity older than the Titans?
It logically wouldn't have made sense to have made him somehow been able to brute force her.

[Revamp Man]

You can explain why it is boring but what is the point if it's still a boring product?

OT: Sylvanas is to much of a cringe edgelord for me to give a shit about. She's pretty much just an emo girl tripping.

that cinematic to me felt like watching an episode of one punch man when the big bad villain who is taken down 10 other heroes comes face-to-face with the caped baldy and gets one shot

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Do people just not realize that Bolvar isn't even on the same scale as any of the larger racial leaders?
Bolvar hasn't even got 1/50th of the power that Arthas had at his disposal, and Sylvanas managed to match Arthas and avoid getting killed back in WotLK.

How, if you would be so kind, would Bolvar been able to do anything against her when she's a chosen juggernaught of an unknown entity older than the Titans?
It logically wouldn't have made sense to have made him somehow been able to brute force her.

my problem isn't that he lost my problem is how he lost you cannot say that he didn't have near as much power as the last lich King because there's no way of really proving that or not just because we haven't had him do anything for all we know outside of the time that he was chit-chatting with other death knights he was destroying tons of enemies and Rhian slaving nerubians

My problem was this big bad lich King was essentially one shot

and to say that he doesn't have anywhere near the power of the racial leaders are you f****** kidding me because when's the last time that you saw one of the racial leaders that wasn't essentially a god of nature some of the snow storm or raise an army of undead or send giant pillars made of old God blood flying at someone's face with just magic

[Revamp Man]

You think she's going to be a raid boss, now? When she's manuvered herself into a place in the story where she's completely unkillable?

If we kill her before the Jailer is freed, the Jailer will just resurrect her.

If we kill her after the Jailer is freed or killed, she can just return to life herself because there's no jailer.

Frankly, free the souls of the maw. Go for it. I want to see where she goes with this.

Either she is going to be Aladdin and reveal that her plan was to take down the big bad that we didn't even really know about by using their power against them or she is going to think that she has outsmarted this entity and instead get locked as the new jailer and completely re work how the maw functions

Either way her story is just boring and they set her up to be very evil yeah she's not garrosh 2.0 she's illidan 3.0

[Gungnir]

that cinematic to me felt like watching an episode of one punch man when the big bad villain who is taken down 10 other heroes comes face-to-face with the caped baldy and gets one shot

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my problem isn't that he lost my problem is how he lost you cannot say that he didn't have near as much power as the last lich King because there's no way of really proving that or not just because we haven't had him do anything for all we know outside of the time that he was chit-chatting with other death knights he was destroying tons of enemies and Rhian slaving nerubians

My problem was this big bad lich King was essentially one shot

and to say that he doesn't have anywhere near the power of the racial leaders are you f****** kidding me because when's the last time that you saw one of the racial leaders that wasn't essentially a god of nature some of the snow storm or raise an army of undead or send giant pillars made of old God blood flying at someone's face with just magic

We can prove that as Arthas had been actively working with the corrupting powers within Frostmourne, the helmet and the armour in order to become as powerful as possible, he also had a lot more time to do so and he also got a lot of magical knowledge from Ner'zhul.
Bolvar had none of those things. Bolvar sat on the throne actively working against those powers, only holding the reigns. He doesn't have Frostmourne, armor is basically gone, he doesn't have any power from his time in the Alliance since his paladin powers do not function when you're the damn Lich King and he was also always using a sword and shield and not a giant 2h hammer.

There's a pretty SEVERE difference in power between LK Arthas and LK Bolvar.
Hell, send Jaina, Anduin, Tyrande or any other of the leaders with decent magical powers and he would've lost those fights. Likely by much less of a margin, but still.


And again to reiterate, Sylvanas stood face to face against prime Arthas LK during WotLK, held him back and escaped without dying.
Now she has another 10+ years of power development aswell as being effectively forcefed power from an ancient being that turns souls into strength, and we just had one of the largest wars in Azeroth history.
She was also one of the best Ranger Generals in Elf history, stupidly nimble and agile and Bolvar chose a fucking 2handed mace.

[Huggykaze]

There is literally nothing they can do, no story they can tell, no design they can come up with, no cinematic they can render with the most fantastic of computers that will make the whiny, bitching, vocal minority happy. So they just need to tell the story they want to tell because somebody, somewhere, is going to rage and bitch regardless.

I like your baseless assumption that people disliking the cinematic for the way it treated Bolvar, are just a 'vocal minority'...

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We can prove that [...].

That's all baseless assumption. Sure, Arthas was probably more powerful, but Bolvar had years to catch up, and you have no idea what he's been doing in the meantime. You also have no idea what his mace and armour are. For all we know they could have been as powerful as Arthas's, forged by the same dude etc. Your arguments hold no real power or meaning, and you fail to understand why people are upset. It's not about Bolvar being so easily defeated, it's about Sylvanas being turned into an evil Mary Sue and pushed to a godlike levels of power with 0 foreshadowing and 0 reason. Her personality has also been butchered, so she's just a bad character now, yet Blizz keeps shoving her down our throats.

[Deianeira]

Listen to me when I say this:

There is literally nothing they can do, no story they can tell, no design they can come up with, no cinematic they can render with the most fantastic of computers that will make the whiny, bitching, vocal minority happy. So they just need to tell the story they want to tell because somebody, somewhere, is going to rage and bitch regardless.

And if Bolvar had won their fight, you can bet your ass that all the Sylvanas fanbois would be out in force, raging about that just as people have complained that he lost.

I didn't like the cinematic at all, not because Sylvanas won, but because it wasn't an interesting or balanced fight. She walks up with her smug little smirk and has an answer for everything he does. I don't think he should have defeated her - especially with what we know about the Jailer now - but the fight would have been more interesting if it painted at least the slightest possibility that maybe this time, she bit off more than she could chew.

But dont you think that this is what they wanted to convey a little bit? That this Jailer is or atleast the last few years have grown so powerful that he can lend his power to his allies and make them so powerful so that we want to "take care of that threat"?

[Mirishka]

But dont you think that this is what they wanted to convey a little bit? That this Jailer is or atleast the last few years have grown so powerful that he can lend his power to his allies and make them so powerful so that we want to "take care of that threat"?

Sure, yeah. I'm looking forward to learning more about him.

[Scathan]

Your "epicness-meter" is totally broken if you found this cinematic good.

Technically, ofcourse it was good.
But there is nothing cool about a fight without suffering and adversity.

The entire cinematic was used to show us how powerful Sylavanas is. Thats all you got from this entire video.

SYLVANAS = STRONG

That is all you got.

Adversity? In a short cinematic? For what purpose? It honestly just seems like you are upset that LK got stomped. The breaking of the helms of domination was awesome and unexpected.

[Muajin76]

It's pretty clear that the Bolvar/Sylvanas cinematic was designed to get the audience hating Sylvanas and wanting her to die, to hype up a confrontation with her in Shadowlands.

But as we can see in the comments everywhere, people are hating Blizzard instead. Some people think that Sylvanas will get away with everything, some people think it's a girl power fantasy, others are calling it the worst cinematic ever and swearing off the franchise.

Is it worth it to make an audience mad about the story? Because I think it's driving people away from the franchise moreso than making people want to buy to kill Sylvanas.

My honest thought on Bolvar and Sylvanas. Either he joins our side and helps fight her from the get go. OR She manipulates him into fighting us, breaks his hold on her and helps us fight her. Do we know if he will be a raid boss or an important npc that we just interact with? It would be foolish to have him as a non-confrontational character.

[Gungnir]

That's all baseless assumption. Sure, Arthas was probably more powerful, but Bolvar had years to catch up, and you have no idea what he's been doing in the meantime. You also have no idea what his mace and armour are. For all we know they could have been as powerful as Arthas's, forged by the same dude etc. Your arguments hold no real power or meaning, and you fail to understand why people are upset. It's not about Bolvar being so easily defeated, it's about Sylvanas being turned into an evil Mary Sue and pushed to a godlike levels of power with 0 foreshadowing and 0 reason. Her personality has also been butchered, so she's just a bad character now, yet Blizz keeps shoving her down our throats.

I- what?
Firstly, he did exactly what he told Tirion he would do, hold the reigns. He was actively fighting against every bit of that corruption in that helmet.
Secondly, I doubt he managed to track down the Forge of the Damned, the original Nathrezim and Kil'jaeden from beyond the grave to forge another Frostmourne equivalent, unless you can specifically point out the lore entry where Bolvar does just that.
Thirdly, you are the one throwing incredible amounts of conjecture simply because you like Bolvar and dislike Sylvanas, to the point where you actively avoid logically thinking about any part of this specific scenario.
Fourthly, you are misusing the term 'Mary Sue', not that I am surprised however.
Fifthly, her rise to power has been foreshadowed to hell and back, feel free to read any of the more recent LK vs Sylvanas threads for people pointing that out.
Sixthly, I agree that her character has been butchered, but so has every other character in BfA.

I genuinely don't give a shit that you dislike her, but don't try to bullshit your way into implying that Bolvar should've stood an icicles chance in hell against her.