Sylvanas and her supposed brilliance.

[Darknessvamp]

Ah, but you didn't catch on yet... Sylvanas will actually be the hero of the story in the longterm.
She isn't trying to hurt the Horde, she is trying to make the Horde stronger. Saurfang was being a bitch though, he personally betrayed her, so he had to go.

Truly she's a masterful genius who plans out every single movement she makes, her failures, lapses in judgements and plans that fall through are just deception from her true plan which is a series of plans buried in other plans. I also don't disagree that she'll either get a redemption/hero moment at some point in Shadowlands, I've been predicting that something stupid featuring Elune or some other fanciful god work that makes her an avatar of "Make Things Right" before she gets whatever comeuppance/final rewards the writer settles on in the whim at her stories conclusion.

Also Sadfang dying was part of Anduin's plan as well so does that mean Sylvanas includes his plans also in her plans?

[Feanoro]

A character can only be as brilliant and smart as its writer.

Which tells you all you need to know about Danuser Cringecaller.

[Vakir]

A character can only be as brilliant and smart as its writer.

I'm reminded of how almost every single plan Lelouch had was "take out the floor" and it worked and shocked everyone, every single time.

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By the end point of your reply we enter into the same conclusion, we just have a different diagnosis of the core of the problem. And the reason why I can't buy that Sylvanas is the core of the issue is because the story, that is BFA, jury's still out on Shadowlands, is not actually about her. The genocide and Nuremberg defense stuff are not done to elevate her, she doesn't even feature all that much. They serve the message. What she is is a narrative device in order to propel other stories forward which carry the message along, and that message is forgiveness of all, acceptance of everyone, 'non-toxic masculinity' and what have you. The narrative heft and focus is behind the message, not behind her. That's why Anduin, as the representative of the message, not so much as a character, is the core of the problem. In BFA, Sylvanas, like everyone else, bent to the needs of the message, not vice versa. That's why she exits stage left prior to the actual end, having served her purpose, while the message reaches its crescendo.

Given all the retcons in Shadowlands, and the general focus on her, Shadowlands might be the kind of narrative you're talking about, and much like BFA, it's come with its own different Sylvanas, whereas the message is nowhere to be seen.

Dunno how I missed this, didnt pop in mentions so my b.

Anduin bugs me less in terms of consuming the story because he's a passive character. Sylvanas is a drama delivery bomb more than a person at this point so rather than everyone passively listening to some needlessly simplistic caricature of benevolence, which is insufferable but mostly non-invasive, every core action she delivers is an extremely blunt force tool to do some earth-shattering thing or heavily involved plot beat that shouldn't be as omnipotent as it is and makes the stupid pills everyone else takes more obvious. I can at least PRETEND that Genn or Tyrande or Lillian or whoever else won't be gutted because...they haven't really done anything yet. But I can't avoid "what will happen next on the Sylvanas Show?!" narrative we've had to eat for a while now.

That's part of why I hate the premise that "Sylvanas is dumb but everyone else is even more dumb." You can't really have it both ways to imply that she's stupid for Doylist reasons, which is true, but the other characters are more dumb for Watsonian reasons that happened purely to allow for the harsh drama. No gas masks, obvious traps, all of that. One informed ability doesn't take precedence over another as any more valid in-universe. So either everyone is the same degree of stupid...or we have to give the gold medal for bad writing to the one who instigates and requires blunt force trauma to the internal logic of the story to make it work.

I will give you props that you're more reasonable to talk with than the rest of your ilk.

[ErrandRunner]

It's breathtaking that some people defend Blizzard's writing of Sylvanas as anything other than abysmal. Sylvanas is not a master tactician or tactical genius, she just has thick plot armor and rabbid fanboys who are in love with her character. All this BS about "yes she was in on the Wrathgate" and "it's all been according to her design" is just that, BS excuses for massive retcons from the writers.

[Vakir]

All this BS about "yes she was in on the Wrathgate" and "it's all been according to her design" is just that, BS excuses for massive retcons from the writers.

It's funny, since that same retcon of her being in on it is a Blizzard invention, not just a tool of defenders.

Sylvanas fucking up and eating an L because of a dreadlord could have been incompetent but sympathy garnering if they played it right and committed to it.

But now by Blizzard stressing that it was totally as keikaku, it comes off as not only incompetent but pretentious as hell.

[owbu]

If you write a character that can't be hindsight armchair commandeered, you basically just wrote fan fic.

So I think you can still be a master tactician while having to react to things going wrong.


I do think that it's hard to write a master plan plot when you have no idea where your story is going though. I'm fairly certain that noone at blizzard knew about the shadowland plot when they wrote the wrathgate.

[Super Dickmann]

Dunno how I missed this, didnt pop in mentions so my b.

Anduin bugs me less in terms of consuming the story because he's a passive character. Sylvanas is a drama delivery bomb more than a person at this point so rather than everyone passively listening to some needlessly simplistic caricature of benevolence, which is insufferable but mostly non-invasive, every core action she delivers is an extremely blunt force tool to do some earth-shattering thing or heavily involved plot beat that shouldn't be as omnipotent as it is and makes the stupid pills everyone else takes more obvious. I can at least PRETEND that Genn or Tyrande or Lillian or whoever else won't be gutted because...they haven't really done anything yet. But I can't avoid "what will happen next on the Sylvanas Show?!" narrative we've had to eat for a while now.

That's part of why I hate the premise that "Sylvanas is dumb but everyone else is even more dumb." You can't really have it both ways to imply that she's stupid for Doylist reasons, which is true, but the other characters are more dumb for Watsonian reasons that happened purely to allow for the harsh drama. No gas masks, obvious traps, all of that. One informed ability doesn't take precedence over another as any more valid in-universe. So either everyone is the same degree of stupid...or we have to give the gold medal for bad writing to the one who instigates and requires blunt force trauma to the internal logic of the story to make it work.

I will give you props that you're more reasonable to talk with than the rest of your ilk.

As we established way back when we were sparring about the plausibility of the faction war, I enjoy very different things within the story from you, which is why I'm glad you explained your view here. There's still no way I can agree, simply because what you find more tolerable is precisely the part I dislike the most. Passivity, homogeneity, an absence of conflict and moralizing within what is, at the end of the day, a war game founded upon variation and conflict is the worst thing they could have produced, because that gets the story at war with itself and with its own purpose. That's how you end up with Sylvanas being the sole discussed party and gives her the appearance of being everywhere despite her neither being the thematic focus nor the one with anywhere close to the most screentime, the former being Anduin and the latter being Saurfang and Jaina. Because she's the sole proactive party - she is the only initiator of conflict and therefore the only moving part that merits any discussion. Take Sylvanas out of the picture and you have everyone hanging around vegetating, agreeing with each other about how much they love peace and friendship. It's wretched and the exact opposite of what the game can support. Ion basically said this when he ditched faction unification in a side-interview, rendering the entire preening moralizing and the destruction of every major character not just bad writing, but also pointless.

That's ultimately why the message is much worse for the setting than Sylvanas on top of the fact that Sylvanas's current state is just an outgrowth of the message. When her catapults gain super range or the Alliance act like morons when attacking Lordaeron, that's plot contrivance - at the end of the day all these parties are recognizable as each other and what you've achieved is conflict. When everyone forgives genocide, the entirety of Forsaken lore is thrown in the bin in a side book, and all fault is placed on one scapegoat, that's contrivance done for the sake of the message and theme. A message and theme that is both impossible and completely undesirable to represent within the game. And the end result of that is the story's future as represented in the SL cinematic. The good guy wants nothing and does nothing - his job is to sit in a chair. His friends are all the same. The only thing that could possibly move them is if an outside party who exists away from Care-a-lot kicked the chair over. That's Sylvanas. Precisely because Sylvanas delivers conflict and they all kill it in its crib, she'll always be preferable to me. Also because, what with my favorite races being orc and Forsaken, I haven't had the luck of being able to ignore it when the game shits itself in its message-mongering, trying desperately to pretend that it's not a war game about two varied sides bashing each other and a side-baddie but a profound meditation on war, love and peace with a moral on par with Sesame Street.

[Friendlyimmolation]

I'm reminded of how almost every single plan Lelouch had was "take out the floor" and it worked and shocked everyone, every single time.

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Dunno how I missed this, didnt pop in mentions so my b.

Anduin bugs me less in terms of consuming the story because he's a passive character. Sylvanas is a drama delivery bomb more than a person at this point so rather than everyone passively listening to some needlessly simplistic caricature of benevolence, which is insufferable but mostly non-invasive, every core action she delivers is an extremely blunt force tool to do some earth-shattering thing or heavily involved plot beat that shouldn't be as omnipotent as it is and makes the stupid pills everyone else takes more obvious. I can at least PRETEND that Genn or Tyrande or Lillian or whoever else won't be gutted because...they haven't really done anything yet. But I can't avoid "what will happen next on the Sylvanas Show?!" narrative we've had to eat for a while now.

That's part of why I hate the premise that "Sylvanas is dumb but everyone else is even more dumb." You can't really have it both ways to imply that she's stupid for Doylist reasons, which is true, but the other characters are more dumb for Watsonian reasons that happened purely to allow for the harsh drama. No gas masks, obvious traps, all of that. One informed ability doesn't take precedence over another as any more valid in-universe. So either everyone is the same degree of stupid...or we have to give the gold medal for bad writing to the one who instigates and requires blunt force trauma to the internal logic of the story to make it work.

I will give you props that you're more reasonable to talk with than the rest of your ilk.

Following even your own train of thought leads back to Anduin though. The entire expansion’s “message” has been “war is bad we are all friends,” and it radiates from the boy king, bending Horde and Alliance knees to it, turning Jaina from beware of me to “we can’t press the attack” , shredding the last bit of dignity from Saurfang and Baine, turning Calia into “I follow my heart also I’m a holy undead “ and anyone who doesn’t want to be his super best friend is automatically a big meanie, see Sylvanas and Tyrande.

You can say that the narrative is being bent around Sylvanas, but there’s only one character behind the utter lollore kumbaya the “faction war” was yanked into. Sylvanas’s only existed this xpac soon to show how nice Anduin was, and you’d have to be lying through your teeth to say what little weight she had on this narrative was at all outshined by the Golden Child, the character the writers are hellbent in spreading.


Hell the only reason Sylvanas feels at all “everywhere” is because she’s literally the only character that doesn’t want to just sit around and jerk off and talk about how much they love being friends with everyone.

[Yoshingo]

It's breathtaking that some people defend Blizzard's writing of Sylvanas as anything other than abysmal. Sylvanas is not a master tactician or tactical genius, she just has thick plot armor and rabbid fanboys who are in love with her character. All this BS about "yes she was in on the Wrathgate" and "it's all been according to her design" is just that, BS excuses for massive retcons from the writers.

Its tiring seeing people talk about leaders playing 9D chess in real life and then you go to your escapism entertainment and see fanboys talk about a controversial leader who has done horrific things being an actual hero and playing 9D chess in the story.

When in both cases everybody who isn't willingly blinding themselves with their fanboyism can see what's going on.

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It's not an argument, it's a premise.

Trust me. Just as I was right about entire BfA being part of her masterplan, I'm pretty sure I'm right about her redeeming herself as well and or coming out on top after all this. This would just stay true to her WC3:TFT character traits.

No, I'm not going to. Because that argument is complete nonsense. Also Sylvanas wasn't a hero in Frozen Throne. She was a bitter angry individual who backstabbed her allies and just wanted personal revenge against Arthas. Nothing about anything she did in Frozen Throne was heroic. She wasn't trying to stop the Scourge. She wasn't trying to build an army to kill the Lich King. She wasn't trying to help the people of Lordaeron or Azeroth by stopping the undead. She just wanted to kill Arthas because of what he did to her and that was it. Which is evidenced by her killing herself after he dies instead of staying around to kill the remaining Scourge. Or do anything to help anybody but herself.

Sylvanas never gave two shits about anybody, whether in Wrath or in BfA. She killed herself without caring what that would mean to the Forsaken in Wrath of the Lich King, and she totally abandons the Forsaken in BfA after insulting everyone in the Horde who didn't follow her nihilistic bullshit. She's been the same character the entire time. A selfish, arrogant, child who throws tantrums when her dumb plans blow up in her face. A character who would have been killed by more people and factions I can count on both hands by now if not for her absolute insane plot armor.

But if what you're saying is true, and that is the premise then the premise is fucking dumb. And horrendous storytelling and writing. And only works at all (And even then, poorly) if you take the most ridiculous, pretzel-logiced, angle in the story to try and fit it into your predetermined outcome of her being the savior of us all.

[Vakir]

The issue, to address you both (Immo, Dickmann), isn't conflict, though. It's hamfisted and terrible conflict at the expense of literally anything. Homogeneity exists there with overly simplistic moralizing in response to a heavily exaggerated figure that feels driven by a very crash-TV meets "Everything has to be the Red Wedding" perspective on storytelling. And a lot of that, sadly, started with the Wrathgate - an event regarded by many as well executed at the time and topping many best cinematic lists despite being stonking retarded even before the retcon and is the start of when WoW got duuuuuuuumb. (Edit: other than TBC characterizations, that also sucked hard)

When the story needs to slam on the breaks to make the most overblown version of itself happen in the most extreme circumstances (we didn't just start a war, we need to make baby sandwiches with puppies as bread so people would talk about it) , it feels vastly more like the writer's room is taking the hand of what's provocative and punchy rather than a story that actually says or does something meaningful. So when characters become passive, it largely happens as a byproduct because of this weird conceit that long predates anything Golden or her type did that we need a world rending and cataclysmic event, which means you have one of two ways it's going to go- characters aligned with it or not. You're not going to get any other kind of story, especially not in an MMO, unless one of the two factions became the distinct Big Bad. And even then we would need an impossible canonical victor.

Or to tl;dr it, I don't really get the impression that these things happen to vindicate the God-King. I think they happen and Golden's pet is the most convenient conduit to react without having an awkward pileup of like, 50 parties reacting to the same inciting event. Siding with a character that's not only very stupid but also a cancer to the story she inhabits just because they inject conflict, even if it's really shitty conflict, and break the toy you're otherwise bored of seems...weirdly childish? It's like the only way you can appreciate a story is if you play villains. Which is cool, I kind of wish I could play as the Scourge or Illidari back in the day before those concepts got torpedoed...but aim higher, maybe? Have some standards?

In any event, villains acting and heroes reacting will be the only way this goes, "war game" or not, because we have hundreds of quests we need to roll through in reference to a bunch of serotonin roll-outs to keep those MAUs up. I wish we could return to a cold war where we were adventurers, but that is dead outside classic.

[Super Dickmann]

Or to tl;dr it, I don't really get the impression that these things happen to vindicate the God-King. I think they happen and Golden's pet is the most convenient conduit to react without having an awkward pileup of like, 50 parties reacting to the same inciting event. Siding with a character that's not only very stupid but also a cancer to the story she inhabits just because they inject conflict, even if it's really shitty conflict, and break the toy you're otherwise bored of seems...weirdly childish? It's like the only way you can appreciate a story is if you play villains. Which is cool, I kind of wish I could play as the Scourge or Illidari back in the day before those concepts got torpedoed...but aim higher, maybe? Have some standards?

In any event, villains acting and heroes reacting will be the only way this goes, "war game" or not, because we have hundreds of quests we need to roll through in reference to a bunch of serotonin roll-outs to keep those MAUs up. I wish we could return to a cold war where we were adventurers, but that is dead outside classic.

Conflict is the sole barometer in the war game. Poor conflict is better than no conflict and no conflict is what the message represents, because the game has taken it upon itself to impart moral messages. The cancer to the story is the message, it's not the conflict - the conflict is the point of the game. Nor does conflict require one side to be flatly evil, Vanilla, Cataclysm and Mists (unintentionally), both had parties with a distinct motive fighting against each other for reasons related to their in-story values, interests and goals. It is the elimination of conflict and variance that is the cancer, not the sole party that produces it. One faction that's pure good and one that's pure evil is not some world class writing, but it stands head and shoulders between two identical factions of passive lackeys that wait for shit to happen to them.

As regards the MAU thing though, I don't see your point, the story is just a framework to justify the various kinds of fighting that the game is about and subject to its needs. That's why BFA stands out like a sore thumb - it was barreling hard towards a conclusion that it was never going to deliver because that conclusion is incompatible with what the game is, i.e a game by and about killing things and getting better at it in various situations who's story needs to enable that in as many situations as possible and that should service as many fantasies as possible in order to hold and attract users and be fun. The things I talk about - conflict, moral and cultural variance, etc., a constant faction conflict big or small, cold war or hot, are all conducive to this. You can do the story differently, like BFA did, but in the end, the story bends before the gameplay, as it should, and it should only support the core systems, not fight against them.

Which leads me to my last point on this, which is that what makes the messaging so cancerous, past the way it's at war with itself, how boring it is in light of what the game is or that it's bound to fail, is that it doesn't just treat the characters and thus the audience as idiots, the way Sylvanas pulling some plan off does. When people walk into Sylvanas's trap, the story is going "Ooh, look how smart she is" despite them being stupid. When Anduin holds off on finishing the war in 8.1, and his entire council nod their heads because they're a bunch of clones, this is not just an intellectual judgment - it's a moral one. It's telling the audience not just what they should be thinking, but making a value judgment. That is far more essential and far worse, because Sylvanas and Anduin are just fiction, whereas the applicability of these morals as takeaways is what Danuser, Golden and the like are talking about when they mention "stories that need to be told with a lot of heart to them" or "non-toxic masculinity". And what makes that even worse, is that they're wrong. Every position expressed to get us to the end of BFA that isn't blindingly obvious (genocide bad, torture bad) is wrong. Not only does no state induce a white peace after winning a war that starts with genocide, no state should. Not only does regime change not immediately make everyone in the state align with the opposing power, thinking that has caused no end of shit to millions of people. Holding off on ending a war and making peace on your terms after sacrificing god knows how many lives to get to such a position in order to spare your enemy's feelings is not laudable, it's irresponsible and cruel. Not all people are actually secretly the same or only disagree with you because they're evil or deceived. Not all people and states have a compatible interest. Collective responsibility does exist. Characters endorsing these things and letting people make their own value judgment is fine, the writers endorsing these things and telling the audience they're correct is quite another, which is to say, actively harmful.

[Aliven]

I liked Sylvanas as she was presented in WC3: TFT, up to the events of WotLK. After that, and especially with BfA, she's lost her special place in my heart.

"Hahaha you stupid arthas, you will never get past our marvelous gate, unless you get the keys which are located here, here and here, let me mark them on your map, hahahaha stupid arthas"

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Ah, but the writers clearly seem to disagree with you here, so what is the only logical conclusion left here then?
You underestimate her as a character compared to the writers.

You can then argue that the writers are bad and stupid etc. but that is completely irrelevant and also highly subjective. I doubt the writers themselves think that their storylines are stupid, they have their own rational reasons as to why characters behave in certain ways.

The selfishness argument also holds very little water, after all she was there to help fight the Legion in Legion, and she took up her responsibilities as a Warchief when Vol'jin choose her as a successor, despite not wanting the title at all. She is not just purely selfish, if you watch the BfA intro cinematic you can hear her monologue. She is just following another Illidan-arc, misunderstood in her purpose and betrayed for it along the way by Saurfang, Baine and even some of the players.

Poor genocidial maniac. We should feel sorry for her, she killed us to funnel eternaly hungry afterlife overlord for our own sake. Dont you worry lad or lass, she will get Kerriganed and Greymane will admit he always wanted for her to be his girlfriend.

[Darth-Piekus]

Have in mind that Afrashiabi said that Sylvannas is no Kerrigan so I have no idea where this whole Kerrigan redemption coming from. Grom Hellscream didn't get reedeemed. He paid for his crimes after all.

Also Rochana I really don't expect her to want to be reedeemed to the eyes of the Alliance but I don't see why the Horde would forgive her since they are also chasing her from every corner of Azeroth and soon to be in the Shadowlands. I just don't see how she can escape after running back to her master and taking position as one of his minions. We are gonna fight her someway at some point.

If by some miracle she brings back all the dead from both sides and rebuilt what she destroyed then we can talk about redemption.

[Quaade]

There are multiple types of planners;
The common one(both in life and in lore) that people think of when they think of a good planner...is someone who creates a nearly flawless plan and follows through with it; This is what people "THINK" sylvannas is and why they make fun of her for playing "5d chess".

The other type is someone who comes up with many possible plans and adjusts them based on the situation. In other words, always has a plan and always has a backup to it. This is a less common one and the one Sylvanas exhibits. This type of planner also always weighs Risk/Reward.

This is why when she loses her temper all her plans don't collapse.
This also explains most of the things you talked about.

If she did that her plans would actually succeed. I'm one of the people who constantly adapts to new and surprising information. A friend of mine told me they were abused as a child, which was new, surprising, and quite horrid, I never even batted an eye and continued the conversation flawlessly from getting that bomb dropped on me. When Daelin Summermoon said what she did it triggered Sylvanas and she reacted emotionally with rage. No one could see her in the Warbringer cinematic, she had no need to pretend to be angry and her feeling of rage also reached her eyes in the way the eye musculature m0oved.

Later she accepted the Mok'gara against Saurfang because she wanted to hurt him personally. Which would have happened anyway since she had an overwhelming advantage. There was no overall reward in accepting that, only a personal one with the risk that she could lose everything. So yeah, a real display of adaptability there.

Wrathgate-
There is evidence that she knew about it in first places:
Thus she knew- Either
it would kill him or it would oust the traitors for her. In either case it was a win win(You may notice that most undead troops in symantec were in a safe position to minimize her losses)
Risk- Low to her troops/people Reward- High

Except there is no evidence. All there is evidence of is that she had approved the development of the plague since nothing happened in Undercity without her explicit approval and her willingness to use it later. Occam's Razor applied to storytelling, the simplest explanation is often the true one, especially since there's no evidence of the opposite she was caught by surprise instead of having an elaborate plan.

Godfrey
Low risk/ high reward(again)- Even when he turned on her, she didn't lose much except a meaningless keep. If her plan had worked, it would have been her first genocide of an enemy(high reward). And she did use it to kill and weaken both the gilnaius and the alliance.

She lost multipleVal'kyr something she acknowledged was a huge loss, she lost far more than some random keep and gained little in return other than exposing a potential ally no one knew about in the first place and looking utterly foolish in the first place since she welcomed Godfrey with open arms instead of caution. Again. Occam's Razor, the simple explanation. If it was known internally that she was already in cahoots with the Jailer this was the dumbest way to execute that plan.

New way that actually makes her look competent: (Knowing full well that the Jailer will send her soul back if she dies) "No worries, I have ... ways to protect myself in extreme cases." (Casually touches necklace that's enchanted to crumble if her soul ever returns to her body). "There comes Godfrey, just give him a regular search (knowing full well that Godfrey carries a most likely invisible weapon that takes an extreme search to find). *Gets shot on purpose, the Jailer returns her to un-life and the necklace turns to fragments* *The guards now believe that they did a poor job so wow to be even more loyal to Sylvanas, her followers see her taking precautions which add to the legend of her craftiness and she was cautious as well when meeting a new ally, no Val'kyrs were harmed in this production* Risk: none, reward: high, that's the dream situation when you do risk/reward assessments.

Andorhal
Plans: Scourage crush enemy(She is protected and alliance take huge hit), Scourage force alliance to retreat(She is protected and alliance take huge hit), Alliance win(Val'kyr push alliance out; She is protected and alliance take some hit.) The later panned out AND gave her info that Koltira could not be trusted.

Except you have quests there to kill Horde and one of the reasons the Alliance forces are pulled back is due to Horde's presence and knowing that Andorhal is impossible to keep. Their risk for pulling out is none and their possible rewards for doing so are high in that it presents a favourable imagine, which Sylvanas then removes incidentally as she imprisons Koltira.

Warchief
Her surprise was about pacing. She had started to make plans to get in good graces but these plans had not happened yet. The current Warchief still hated her and she knew it. This was a long term goal (And someone besides her accomplished it)

If you make a scheme and you set a long term goal you plan for that goal to happen right away no matter how unlikely it is to happen, especially when you have someone on your side who can tip the scale. That she was surprised it did happen only shows her incompetence.

Burnin of Teldrassil
Her brilliant distraction and tactics let the city get taken. Yes her rage ruined her plans but she still had backup plans to get out and already had undercity prepared just in case.(Not lore wise undercity attack happened very very quickly)

Execution of a plan means nothing when you stumble right before the finish line since that's what people remember. No one remembers your part goal, everyone remembers and judges your actions based on the end result. Any competent schemer would know this and keep their emotions heavily in check since that's what most often sinks elaborate plans.

Trusting Azshara -
The only things she trusted azshara to do were things azshara wanted to do in the first place. It was less about trust and more about using someones goals. This is contrary to working with Anduin who did not share her goals and has allies who do not share her goals.

Except she believed that. Which a supposedly clever person would never do given Azshara's past deeds. What we do in the past heavily influences how people see us in the present.

The reason people see her as dumb and over pushes is because they expect a mastermind like sherlock and instead get a planner. She doesn't create the best long term plans but she has dozens of them. This is the reason she was a thorn in LK side in WC3 and why she was the only one to slow down his plans(She loses only because of her uncontrolled anger aka her weakness she has always had)

'
Or simpler explanation, Occam's Razor and all that, she's incompetent, which is okay since everyone is incredibly incompetent and the current team of story writers has drunk the kool-aid and believes that she's the super-ultra smart and plays 9D chess with everyone, despite them having to give her plot armour and retcon things in an unsubtle way to make her so. And because she is that way due to the plot armour and unsubtle retcons she must be very smart. People will rationalise anything in a way that removes their cognitive dissonance as the brain is unable to tolerate that.

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There is no doubt in my mind that Sylvanas is one of if not the smartest and wisest character in the lore.

She undoubtedly is and given her competition that is an incredibly easy feat to accomplish so that statement says more about them than it does about her.

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Sylvanas' brilliance will be revealed.

She is intending to destroy the Jailer and free the afterlife from his corruption. All her efforts to increase the body-count throughout Legion and BFA, including her plans to have all of the heroes attacking Azshara slain, was to A) increase her own strength since she too draws power from the Maw and B) seed the afterlife with powerful agents to eventually fight against the Jailer.

So see, Sylvanas is actually on our side, and is also super-smart and pretty.

Point A requires some incredible pretzel logic to rationalise She gets her powers from the Shadowlands, the Jailer controls the Shadowlands and as such can at any pointy cut off her power, which she will then use to defeat the Jailer and save everyone.

You forgot a /s there. It's needed since I've seen basically this argument unironically from Sylvanas' waifu fans.

[Quaade]

When a mod has to edit your post because you can't help but put your bias into it.

Of course, Sylvanis isn't perfect, but find me one Horde Warchief that was.

You have no idea what she is doing with or for the jailer, and if one thing Sylvnais has proven is that she can think 3 or 4 steps ahead of the entire Alliance leadership. They fell for her feint and over commented their resources for shiny new material. She knew they couldn't help themselves and she exploited the hell out of it; it's in the game as part of her dialogue so you can't take that away from her, and now the people are still upset because she burnt down a tree that probably needed it.

Oh right, you ad hominem based on, well nothing, the mod edit was made because some people would take it as a personal attack. I wrote it neutrally, it needed to be changed for their sake to prevent them from REEE'ing. Tells me a lot about their mental state when seen from the outside.

And based on her actions in-game she's 3 steps behind everyone else and her plans only succeed because of plot armour and/or Word of God,

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If you write a character that can't be hindsight armchair commandeered, you basically just wrote fan fic.

So I think you can still be a master tactician while having to react to things going wrong.


I do think that it's hard to write a master plan plot when you have no idea where your story is going though. I'm fairly certain that noone at blizzard knew about the shadowland plot when they wrote the wrathgate.

That's what a tactician do, they react and adapt to things happening in the present as they happen. What you're thinking about is a strategist as they make a plan in advance and someone who's a strategist is generally horrible at adapting on the spot. Sylvanas is at most a master strategist because if anything happens that takes her plans off-script they fail horribly.

[korijenkins]

She's been badly written for a few expansions now, with some plot points that were intended to go in obvious directions, but abandoned.

The writers have now decided to justify her very stupid actions by saying it was all part of her master plan. Either way, she needs to die. It's beyond irritating to have to deal with this nonsense at this point.

[david0925]

Its tiring seeing people talk about leaders playing 9D chess in real life and then you go to your escapism entertainment and see fanboys talk about a controversial leader who has done horrific things being an actual hero and playing 9D chess in the story.

When in both cases everybody who isn't willingly blinding themselves with their fanboyism can see what's going on.

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No, I'm not going to. Because that argument is complete nonsense. Also Sylvanas wasn't a hero in Frozen Throne. She was a bitter angry individual who backstabbed her allies and just wanted personal revenge against Arthas. Nothing about anything she did in Frozen Throne was heroic. She wasn't trying to stop the Scourge. She wasn't trying to build an army to kill the Lich King. She wasn't trying to help the people of Lordaeron or Azeroth by stopping the undead. She just wanted to kill Arthas because of what he did to her and that was it. Which is evidenced by her killing herself after he dies instead of staying around to kill the remaining Scourge. Or do anything to help anybody but herself.

Sylvanas never gave two shits about anybody, whether in Wrath or in BfA. She killed herself without caring what that would mean to the Forsaken in Wrath of the Lich King, and she totally abandons the Forsaken in BfA after insulting everyone in the Horde who didn't follow her nihilistic bullshit. She's been the same character the entire time. A selfish, arrogant, child who throws tantrums when her dumb plans blow up in her face. A character who would have been killed by more people and factions I can count on both hands by now if not for her absolute insane plot armor.

But if what you're saying is true, and that is the premise then the premise is fucking dumb. And horrendous storytelling and writing. And only works at all (And even then, poorly) if you take the most ridiculous, pretzel-logiced, angle in the story to try and fit it into your predetermined outcome of her being the savior of us all.

This 100%. The Illidan redemption story for events that happened in TBC through the novel was already cringy enough. Obviously the writers can write whatever they want, but it's bad writing if you don't at least leave reasonable hints to indicate that what a character is doing may be more than meets the eye. A lot of the justification for Sylvanas playing 7D chess is at the same level or worse than real life conspiracy theories.

A lot of people make fun of Blizzard's bad writing, something I agree with, but makes even worse fanfictions. I don't know if you're meming or not, but not even Blizzard writes that badly. Even Kerrigan's redemption wasn't this bad because it was actually it wasn't Queen of Blades going HEY IM ACTUALLY TRYING TO SAVE US ALL FROM AMON THATS WHY I KILLED BILLIONS OF EVERYTHING LOL. Sure, making her "good" again by excusing QoB's past action as being influenced/corrupted by Amon is a bit lazy, but her actions in both BW and HoTS can be followed logically for the most part, without needing "btw this happened off screen" to take place.

[Darth-Piekus]

The Jailor isn't her master.

There are still parts of the Horde that are Sylvanas loyalist, which you get to experience in full every day as you stroll through Orgrimmar if you followed the loyalist storyline. The conflict between Horde and Alliance isn't over yet, not with such a big part of the Horde still supporting her in secrecy.

Im not talking about the Jailor but that chained being who aparently has some relationship with it. Also while yes there are loyalists in the Horde most of them defected to the non loyalist Horde after she denounced them.You can clearly see npc dialogues talking about betrayal. Also the Horde is changing. Now a Council rules over a Warchief in order to avoid similar situations and they did arrest most of the loyalists who kept causing trouble. The Horde as right now is chasing Sylvannas and is in a united front with the Alliance against Nzoth and soon against that Jailer and that Chained Entity. The Horde would never accept her back just to create havok against the Alliance. Blizzard wants to write them differently this time.

[baskev]

Then you have to wonder why Afrasiabi is using that as an example of her motivation to kill all of the living which she didn't have until after meeting the Jailer.

Because they get lore wrong. Red shirt guy is a example of that.

And wrathgate was done by 1 of her rebelling henchmen. And she at that time had a 1 track mind. revenge, revenge and....revenge. Play the dungeons ( icc).

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There are lots of ways she could maximise the number of people dying while still maintaining the position os power she had and in that position, she could keep the number of people dying to the maximum for longer.

Yes, could have. But blizzard needs new expansions . And there was a limit. Because horde players ( a part of them) did not like it from the start. So she could have become a garrosh. On top of that. Why risk explaining her moves. If they notice she is making it all about the max amount of death. They will research it and stop it. Hell if you play horde campaign they more and more doubt her actions.

With her actions of utter stupidity, she has lost this position, can no longer keep the number of people dying to a high number. It's at best a short term gain in exchange for nothing.

Yes ( see above). blizzard writing.

All we have Blizzard saying she's a master manipulator, this is words, and everything in-game that she has ever done, perpetrated, or otherwise instigated shows the opposite, these are her actions. And actions always speak louder than words.

again, blizzard writing. And yes actions speak louder as words. Because blizzard has never changed its few on things. Like the light being good for a long time. And on argus we find out its bad all of a sudden.
Or there are no high elves. while in patch 7.3.5 ( suramar scence) a raid boss/leader calls 3 elf races out ( who all have different looks and banners) blood, night and high elves.
Yet during bfa Ion said: there are not high elves.....

To use a recent RL example, Donald Trump, he says he's the least racist person around, I believe that he thinks this is true, and his actions over the last 40 years show that he holds an incredible racist bias to the point that no one can objectively believe what he says. Sylvanas is exactly the same, the people around her say she's smart and everything she's done in-game is high school levels of manipulation.

Difference is. She has not been caught saying she likes to grap orc dick. She has not been caught bribing people for death. etc.
But yeah i agree its bad writing. But again...its blizzard.


But my text/response was not about her being smart, or her being right etc.
I am just explaining the very basic lore, that blizzard has said out. That everyone seems to ignore. Things they have even said during this blizzcon.

So in short:
Since she threw herself off icc ( after arthas death) she has been working with the jailor.
Her goal is max death. Because more death means more power.
She does not serve the jailor. But like him she wants death for ever and power.

[Darth-Piekus]

Remains to be seen but I think the devs are done with this constant War. I hope for a long time.