Sylvanas Character Assassination

[Varodoc]

i dunno about her plan but i mean familiar as in, she might have started with "im killing these humans to make the forsaken strong" and she eventually ended with "how many red and blue people i can feed into the meat grinder for my next talent choice",

edit
related to how, arthas would take up frostmourne to pay any price for his people. ends up decimating them all.

Oh yes, totally, and what you wrote shows just how selfish she is. Most villains start wars out of good intentions, like Garrosh, Sargeras, or Arthas, but Sylvanas is literally doing all of this just to empower herself and the Jailer, she has no higher purpose, and that's what makes her so vile to me.

Not that there's anything wrong with liking vile characters, it's fiction after all. But it is annoying when people try to justify her actions, just admit she's evil so that we can move on. At this point it's not worth to die on that hill.

Arthas' methods were as bad as Sylvanas', but at the very least he had good intentions. He wanted to unite the world against any threat and create a world without injustice or disorder, whereas Sylvanas doesn't even have any higher aspiration aside from getting stronger to avoid another situation like Edge of Night, where she's powerless in hell.

[Minikin]

Well, for one thing, yes I have a life. Thank you for asking.

Secondly, I did not voice an opinion, I told you facts as they have been written in several books, you voiced the opinion that people could not recognize Sylvanas is evil before BFA and it is all Blizzards fault for twisting her character, which was disproven by said facts. It is your perogative to stick to that objectively wrong opinion but do not put us on the same level.

dont mind him. i dont think malix gets that this is an online forum, and people come here to talk lol.

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Oh yes, totally, and what you wrote shows just how selfish she is. Most villains start wars out of good intentions, like Garrosh, Sargeras, or Arthas, but Sylvanas is literally doing all of this just to empower herself and the Jailer, she has no higher purpose, and that's what makes her so vile to me.

Not that there's anything wrong with liking vile characters, it's fiction after all. But it is annoying when people try to justify her actions, just admit she's evil so that we can move on. At this point it's not worth to die on that hill.

show some respect varodoc! shes trying to free us from this prison! Sheesh!

[Raisei]

Oh yes, totally, and what you wrote shows just how selfish she is. Most villains start wars out of good intentions, like Garrosh, Sargeras, or Arthas, but Sylvanas is literally doing all of this just to empower herself and the Jailer, she has no higher purpose, and that's what makes her so vile to me.

I am at the same time hoping and not hoping that there will be a relateable reason behind Sylvanas' goals.

Hoping because I friggin love relateable villains like Thanos (who was probably one of my favourite villains in the last decade of media), who are not just evil because "MUHAHAHA, I AM SO EVIL" and not hoping because the fanbois will just go and use everything as an excuse for her crimes. I can see the threads already: "SEE? Sylavanas wasn't evil! She knew the Jailor would die from night elf soul overdose, she HAD TO burn the tree!"

Not that there's anything wrong with liking vile characters, it's fiction after all. But it is annoying when people try to justify her actions, just admit she's evil so that we can move on. At this point it's not worth to die on that hill.

Exactly. Let me pick up Vader since you mentioned him before. He is one of the biggest baddest villains of all times. People love him for that, but no one in their right mind would go ahead and defend his murder of children in the Temple.
Yet with Sylvanas people are desperately clinging to an image of her as an anti-hero blinding themselves to all the evidence that has been given that contradicts this.

[Manariel]

have you ever been to the scarlet monastery? its all you said, made by humans where they torture forsaken.
(the logic of most people here it's really poor... and don't really comprehend what war is about...but it begins with...anyone who is not part of your own people is the enemy..and you can't humanize them...because that makes you weak...go to war history...read about people like Winston Churchill...a person loved in the UK. and a complete monster to his enemies...
good and evil are on the eye of the beholder ......by doing good to some people u could do evil on others. it's all relative.

the only way u can be tagged as evil...is that you hurt your own people. because you have connections to them.
(it doesn't matter where we come from...our civilizations are here because they killed others...experimented on others...and only cared for their own survival.)

You do realize that undeads have no rights to exist, right ? That they are utter abominations and that the Forsakens have proven since day one that they were at least as monstrous as the zealots corrupted by a Dread Lord after having endured a zombie apocalyspe in a medieval settings, without any other reason than shit and giggles and how dare some peoples be alive when they died;

Forsakens have been evil since forever, so has Sylvanas. That bshe was WoW's waifu for so long preserved her, but she was always a monster since TFT, and she - and the Forsaken - deserve to be killed.

[Flarelaine]

Orgrim did way more atrocities than sylvanas. Orgrim has killed way more people than Sylvanas.
Everything ugly sylvanas may have done. Orgrim did ten time worse.

I'm confident you can back those claims up with numbers and citations. Will you?

[Tarba]

I'm confident you can back those claims up with numbers and citations. Will you?

I allready explained it multiple time in this thread. Read...
-> war1 and war2.
Destroyed Stormwind to the ground and every human town around. It was after killing orcs and his warchief to get power.
Destroyed every dwarve/gnome towns except their capital because he couldn't.
Destroyed every thing in his way and pushed every elves back in Sylvermoon where they could only cast a shield to protect them from annihilation.
And was on a close call to wype out Lordaeron.

That's just the killing number part.
Atrocities?
Well first of, every civilian in his path of doom.
And I don't know maybe using raped - mind enslaved red dragons?
Or using necromancers. With his own Death Knights. Made from defiled alliance corpses, filled with demonist orc souls he killed himself.
Sylvanas is not even close.

[Quaade]

The Horde showed at the Siege of Orgrimmar that a Warchief's power means nothing if they go against the spirit of the people. A rebel will rise up, gain support and depose them. At that same point, the Horde was defined as "family", a bunch of people who accept and forgive each other. Just like Thrall sought to recover Grom after he drank the demon blood. Just like Vol'jin accepted the defeated Garrosh loyalists back into the fold, and the Horde is accepting Sylvanas loyalists now. If the writing was consistent, Sylvanas should have been very careful not to lose the trust of the Horde; an authoritarian rule would have been the last thing to try with Garrosh so close in the memory of the people.

This retrospective redefining of the Warchief position is hogwash and a perfect example of spaghetti narrative. The story itself doesn't explore any of the points you describe either, nor does it contrast the Horde political apparatus with the one of the Alliance, which is not that rosy either by modern standards, to the degree that it is well defined enough to analyse. The human kings are absolute monarchs who ignore their debts whenever they see fit and, although they offer trials to captured enemy leaders, freely allow the execution of their own subjects for minor offenses such as theft (as evidenced in Elywnn Forest quests), and in the land of Kul'Tiras they hang witches on bogus proof and condemn people to the cruel punishment in a realm of shadowy torture.

The Night Elves are also led by two absolute rulers, who often put each other's safety ahead of the safety of their own people (and the world). The leader of the Gnomes is an incompetent buffoon who authorized the use of radiation gas against the Troggs (which, unlike the Blight, is not seen as a war crime because, of course!, the troggs are ugly and stupid, and therefore deserve to be killed in cruel ways and be experimented upon) and managed to intoxicate 80% of his population. The Draenei are led by a religious figure who abandoned his home world to the Legion because he was told to do so in a vision. Great example to learn from for the real world!

Yeah, WoW has such a strong position to make political commentaries about the Horde! Doesn't feel like a game built around game mechanics, fun and the rule of cool at all, it's a deeply complex geopolitical case study... So much to learn!

That was a direct rebellion against the system after which they said that "the system was totally fine as it was and we should preserve it." It was an act of replacing a malign dictator with a benign one and the moment he died another malign one was instated. It's like if Chauchesko was replaced with another dictator instead of Democracy. It's ultimately meaningless as it's less an overthrowing of the established system and more about replacing the old boss to get a new one.

And Vol'jin accepted Garrosh so much that he gave him up for a trial of his war crimes.

The position of power of the Warchief is an accurate one instead of a retroactive redefining one. The benign Warchiefs have shown a willingness to listen to the counsel of others. The malign ones have flat-out dismissed it unless it aligned with their interests. And the others have just had to shrug and accept it, like most of the other faction leaders do and then instead of wanting to change the system in the open they hatch a plot to do something from the shadows. Yeah, great system there that definitely promotes open debate, so much so that those that feel like they disagree with it have to remain silent for fear of consequences.

The system is utterly broken and unable to deliver its conceptual promise. To use a modern rl analog, it's like the Presidency of the US. A lot of the powers and responsibility of their office were contingent of them acting like decent human beings and now that Trump is there and willing to act like a non-decent human being we can see how weak and essentially broken those protections are.

If the state of the system is contingent on the nature of the occupant of the system then the system is broken. The system should never depend on the person there being unwilling to ruin the system, the system should be so robust that even if there's a person in it willing to ruin it they find it impossible. The Warchief position is the former.

That a faction itself is led by absolute rules is how feudal monarchy works, it's pyramid-shaped and it's fascist in nature. The moment you go on to the greater plane, such as the power structure of the Alliance itself then yes, the high leader of the Alliance makes the final decision, it's needed to point the alliance in the same direction, and each member of said alliance still have autonomy, can counsel their high leader and if they disagree they can do their own thing without great repercussions, such as when the NE and the Worgen went to Southshore despite Anduin's wishes.

Now the same situation happened in the Horde when Baine disagreed with how Derek Proudmore was treated. Instead of bringing up his protests, even though many of the other faction leaders agreed with him, he could only rebel against the system and indeed Sylvanas made an example out of him in order to silence other dissidents. How can a system encourage the members of the alliance to be equal when the leader is clearly more equal than everyone else?

The Horde Warchief system is utterly fascistic and autocratic in nature. No retroactive, biased interpretation is needed as it's an objective interpretation of everything shown in the game. It's biased to interpret it as anything else.

And as for your final argument. No person is an island and that goes for the developers as well. Even though they have no intention of bringing something into their narrative it can appear unintentionally due to them only having rl examples to work of. That's the reason you get tropes such as "death of the author" where the author intends one thing with the narrative and if you interpret the narrative it's clearly about something else than they've stated. Either they're flat-out lying or their subconsciousness has caused them to include something without even noticing it.

"It's just a <> no reason to look so deeply into it," is the most pathetic reason anyone can give due to the above and it's just hiding a subconscious desire for the other person to shut up because they're saying something that they subconsciously know is true and want to ignore since the implications of said thing ruins their sunk cost emotional investment.

[Necromind]

Not that there's anything wrong with liking vile characters, it's fiction after all. But it is annoying when people try to justify her actions, just admit she's evil so that we can move on. At this point it's not worth to die on that hill.

There is a certain ammount of people on forums that RP too much instead of discussing lore, saying that it's actually, morally wrong IRL to like Sylvanas and Forsaken and anyone rooting for different outcome than Sylvanas death is fanboy. And i'm just worried about dangerous lore developements that just fly over people's head. Today it's Sylvanas, tormorrow it's resurecting LK.

You see, in my opinion the problem is not evil Forsaken or evil Sylvanas, the problem is that people, and i'm mainly refering to Blizzard writers and CD, trying to push for some kind of resolution for them. What is the problem with evil characters in game? It adds complexity, it's creative potential.
And what kind of resolution can you bring here? Being "like scourge but playable" is core of forsaken, the razor's edge they were walking cince inception.
Make them good? That going to suck. Kill them all? Well, gg, that going to suck too.
But it just seems creatives don't have idea how to move forsaken story forward(or most likely just don't care anymore), like they try to RP IRL and fuck up stuff in the process.

"If there is evil, it must be brought to justice!" - And then what? All world of lawful good vs. chaotic evil, without any kind of complex relationships is the most boring one. Screw forsaken fans who want to pay militaristic autoritarian state that's not unlike scourge, screw Sylvanas, screw uneasy alliances and cool stories. We are bringing ANOTHER EVILDOER TO JUSTICE while at the same time trying to dabble in complex stories of internal conflict with finesse of an elephant in fine china shop. The result is on display.
Cool, i guess, but now a whole playable faction is gutted and no way to recover. Well, nice going Afrasiabi.

And this aproach is across the whole story, pushing for ALL conflicts to be resolved once and for all, and then you run out of conflict and have to resurect Kelthuzad or Kaelthas or do some other nonsense just to keep it going.
This is one of the great problems with current lore

Forsakens have been evil since forever, so has Sylvanas. That bshe was WoW's waifu for so long preserved her, but she was always a monster since TFT, and she - and the Forsaken - deserve to be killed.

Bro, WTF? lol
That's what i was saying that people RP in lore section too much

[Varodoc]

There is a certain ammount of people on forums that RP too much instead of discussing lore, saying that it's actually, morally wrong IRL to like Sylvanas and Forsaken and anyone rooting for different outcome than Sylvanas death is fanboy. And i'm just worried about dangerous lore developements that just fly over people's head. Today it's Sylvanas, tormorrow it's resurecting LK.

You see, in my opinion the problem is not evil Forsaken or evil Sylvanas, the problem is that people, and i'm mainly refering to Blizzard writers and CD, trying to push for some kind of resolution for them. What is the problem with evil characters in game? It adds complexity, it's creative potential.
And what kind of resolution can you bring here? Being "like scourge but playable" is core of forsaken, the razor's edge they were walking cince inception.
Make them good? That going to suck. Kill them all? Well, gg, that going to suck too.
But it just seems creatives don't have idea how to move forsaken story forward(or most likely just don't care anymore), like they try to RP IRL and fuck up stuff in the process.

"If there is evil, it must be brought to justice!" - And then what? All world of lawful good vs. chaotic evil, without any kind of complex relationships is the most boring one. Screw forsaken fans who want to pay militaristic autoritarian state that's not unlike scourge, screw Sylvanas, screw uneasy alliances and cool stories. We are bringing ANOTHER EVILDOER TO JUSTICE while at the same time trying to dabble in complex stories of internal conflict with finesse of an elephant in fine china shop. The result is on display.
Cool, i guess, but now a whole playable faction is gutted and no way to recover. Well, nice going Afrasiabi.

And this aproach is across the whole story, pushing for ALL conflicts to be resolved once and for all, and then you run out of conflict and have to resurect Kelthuzad or Kaelthas or do some other nonsense just to keep it going.
This is one of the great problems with current lore



Bro, WTF? lol
That's what i was saying that people RP in lore section too much

The problem is that this has been Warcraft formula since forever. You are the hero of the story, no matter how you RP your character. That's why evil characters like Sylvanas will ultimately be forced out of the heroes' side and lose. This is nothing new. The heroes (you) will always win, because you're the protagonist. Thus, evil will always be brought to justice. There is no other way around. They are never going to do crazy things like WoW 2.0 where Azeroth is destroyed and we must go to another planet.

If you hate the fact that evil characters always die, I'm sorry, this has been the way in Warcraft since WC3 at least, when Archimonde died.

[Manariel]

Bro, WTF? lol
That's what i was saying that people RP in lore section too much

It's nor RP, it's fact : undeads are wholly unnatural. I've never liked "playable" undeads, especially when some try to paint them as redeemable or even good. It's a philosophical and spiritual matter for me, not RP.

[Tarba]

The problem is that this has been Warcraft formula since forever. You are the hero of the story, no matter how you RP your character. That's why evil characters like Sylvanas will ultimately be forced out of the heroes' side and lose. This is nothing new. The heroes (you) will always win, because you're the protagonist. Thus, evil will always be brought to justice. There is no other way around. They are never going to do crazy things like WoW 2.0 where Azeroth is destroyed and we must go to another planet.

If you hate the fact that evil characters always die, I'm sorry, this has been the way in Warcraft since WC3 at least, when Archimonde died.

... You may have missed both undead campains then.

[Varodoc]

... You may have missed both undead campains then.

Following your logic then you may have missed the Battle of Broken Shore. WC3 is about the good races banding together to save the world from evil.

Heroes are the protagonists in WoW, thus they'll always win over evil. Don't like it? Go find yourself another MMO. They're not changing a formula they've kept since WC3.

Bro, WTF? lol
That's what i was saying that people RP in lore section too much

It's not LARPing. Undead are inherently cursed monsters who don't belong in the world of the living. Even Sylvanas agreed, hence why she committed suicide as soon as her purpose in the world of the living was finished.

[Tarba]

Following your logic then you may have missed the Battle of Broken Shore.

Heroes are the protagonists in WoW, thus they'll always win over evil. Don't like it? Go find yourself another MMO.

Like when we destroyed Theramore? Or most of the forsaken campains? If you can only play as a bland lawfull good and your only knowlege of rpg is a selected part of wow lore, that's your problem.

[Varodoc]

Like when we destroyed Theramore? Or most of the forsaken campains? If you can only play as a bland lawfull good and your only knowlege of rpg is a selected part of wow lore, that's your problem.

No, your character is canonically the hero. Ion literally said that. That's why lorewise you are now joining the rebels, whether you like it or not. If anything, it's you who still didn't understand this isn't a game where you play the villain and where there'll never be a villain faction, so seems to me like it's YOUR problem.

[Necromind]

The heroes (you) will always win, because you're the protagonist. Thus, evil will always be brought to justice.

But i play Forsaken, how the hell am i winning? And why would i bring "Еvil" to justice if i'm the part of the same system Sylvanas created?

If you hate the fact that evil characters always die, I'm sorry, this has been the way in Warcraft since WC3 at least, when Archimonde died.

I really don't. Sylvanas could die, forsaken could die. As i wouldn't mind Nelfs going extinct, or any other race's heroes dying.
BUT not in MMO, when we have playable forsaken and thus playable scourge, that was build on that idea from day 1. And they see themselves as evil as any other race, so that's really subjective

Forsaken lore was made to serve the story of BFA and not BFA story expanding forsaken lore. It was just milked for developing whatever that story was and thrown away. Again, maybe fine in RTS but Forsaken are a playable MMO faction for better or worse and should have been treated with a little bit more care as they were before.

[Tarba]

No, your character is canonically the hero. Ion literally said that. That's why lorewise you are now joining the rebels, whether you like it or not. If anything, it's you who still didn't understand this isn't a game where you play the villain and where there'll never be a villain faction, so seems to me like it's YOUR problem.

... So you, mean that's a game where you are not the one you attack? What kind of magic is that? It's like you are playing a character and you don't attack yourself?
Amazing concept! Or you don't understand what you are saying.
When we destroyed Theramore we were heroes? When we purge the livings from Lordaeron we are heroes? Damn, I knew I was a hero when I burnt down Theldrassil and all those baby elves!

No you do what you are limited to do by the dev, but you are not limited to be the random lawfull good hero saviors of innocents.

[Varodoc]

But i play Forsaken, how the hell am i winning? And why would i bring "Еvil" to justice if i'm the part of the same system Sylvanas created?



I really don't. Sylvanas could die, forsaken could die. As i wouldn't mind Nelfs going extinct, or any other race's heroes dying.
BUT not in MMO, when we have playable forsaken and thus playable scourge, that was build on that idea from day 1. And they see themselves as evil as any other race, so that's really subjective

Forsaken lore was made to serve the story of BFA and not BFA story expanding forsaken lore. It was just milked for developing whatever that story was and thrown away. Again, maybe fine in RTS but Forsaken are a playable MMO faction for better or worse and should have been treated with a little bit more care as they were before.

Because you're still the hero even if you play Forsaken, canonically the characters will treat you like a good guy and you'll never join a villain like Sylvanas. That's literally what Ion said.

Also BfA did not kill anyone. Forsaken are just not ruled by a psycho anymore.

[Necromind]

No, your character is canonically the hero. Ion literally said that. That's why lorewise you are now joining the rebels, whether you like it or not. If anything, it's you who still didn't understand this isn't a game where you play the villain and where there'll never be a villain faction, so seems to me like it's YOUR problem.

I'm feeling you are missing the point, it's not about our character not being the hero, he is.
But there is a balance to maintain, a status quo for playable races. Saying outright that your whole faction developement until now is wrong and your original leader is monster to be killed is outright spitting on Forsaken lore nerds that still play the faction for what they are.
Imagine Blizzard forces dwarves collectively worship Smolderon or Old Gods, leaders and everything, so others can defeat them and expantion story revovles around that. That would suck even from my, horde perspective.

I mean, Blizzard were fine making forsaken act lawful evil until now. Why throw them under the bus in BFA all the sudden?

[cparle87]

Yeah I have no idea what kind of drugs the writing-team at Blizzard has taken but there is some serious flaws and plotholes with the entire Sylvanas-arc in BFA.

The only people who would think Sylvanas = bad regardless are alliance-fanboys.

And here we have the kind of broad, sweeping generalization that comes from a person devoutly following an agenda without actually knowing anything about the topic. "Everyone knows the story has huge pot holes!" "Name one." "Uhh, everyone knows they're there."

[Varodoc]

I'm feeling you are missing the point, it's not about our character not being the hero, he is.
But there is a balance to maintain, a status quo for playable races. Saying outright that your whole faction developement until now is wrong and your original leader is monster to be killed is outright spitting on Forsaken lore nerds that still play the faction for what they are.
Imagine Blizzard forces dwarves collectively worship Smolderon or Old Gods, leaders and everything, so others can defeat them and expantion story revovles around that. That would suck even from my, horde perspective.

I mean, Blizzard were fine making forsaken act lawful evil until now. Why throw them under the bus in BFA all the sudden?

I was addressing your point that it's bad lore development if evil is always brought to justice. That's the way Warcraft has been since at least Reign of Chaos (though WC2 also ended with the good guys' victory) by very design of the game (you are the hero, so you'll defeat evil). If they run out of villains, they'll just come up with new ones. Garrosh was one of the major villains of WoW and he was created in TBC.