Sylvanas Character Assassination

[Minikin]

The Horde crossroads thing is just because the back of the book is written by interns who've become bored with life.

just you wait. they are gonna do another fient and this time set fire to nordrassil. tree unfriendly kalimdor here we come.

Arguing about majorities and minorities in WoW is always a mess, since you end up in situations like how a minority of orcs under Garrosh were apparently a world-ending threat, and Sylvanas having a bigger army than the rebels and Alliance combined who then make a complete 180. Ditto, how the dark rangers simultaneously are and aren't Sylv's confidantes.

yeap. hence my aversion to the terminology of "most of them" etc etc without actual numbers.

For what it's worth I think the intention was that she'd ditch everyone except Nathanos and the undead night elves, but they changed their mind in between the backlash to the undead nelves existing and the adding of a loyalist option which necessitated there be a dark ranger to tell the PC to show up to meet Sylv in the Ghostlands, so now the Horde gets to inexplicably keep the Dark Rangers despite them being Sylv mini-mes who's on click quote is literally "I serve the Banshee Queen", but Sylvanas still has however many she needs as goons until Shadowlands rolls around and she can have them replaced by Maw goons. God knows if they were still around they'd keep her from switching to that abysmal monochrome outfit.

calia and her trope of dark rangers. i guess the forsaken will be setting up weekly cat walks every saturday.

[Raisei]

Raisiei mentioned that "Apothecaries need to change their ways or die", and i find that's just ridiculous argumentation.
From perspective of Alliance or Tauren that's awesome storytelling, undead in general and forsaken in particular are unnatural monsters with scary goals and twisted morals.
But moral lessons need to stay relative, it's not like they are writing a book or a movie that has straightforward story with main character's prespective. Afrasiabi and pals literally have a job to write a world with multiple worldviews and characters. Punishing whole playable faction stories because they fail to comply to some IRL views on moral questions is just ridiculous.

At least write my name correctly if you want to argue my point.

The problem with your idea of "multiple worldviews" and "relative morals" is that such a thing has limits and we should not be forced to accept certain points of view.

Are you telling me that we should have let the Lich King be, because from his point of view we were the bad guys and he was trying to safe Azeroth? When Sargeras decided to come to our home and tried to burn it, did we step aside and let him do what he wanted because destroying the universe makes sense from his point? No sir, we did not. We kick the asses of people who are clearly evil and send them burning to their death.

The so-called "Royal Apothecaries" are nothing else. Mad scientists that develop plagues to murder the living for fun, with the reason being either hate, nihilism or something else. They have no more right to exist then the Legion or the Scourge, hell Putricide in Icecrown could just as well BE one of them, there is hardly a difference.

So no, they can have their morals sure, but I do not accept that I have to let them plague the world because in their eyes that is not evil. THAT is ridiculous.

Let's just punish anyone who for outside viewer has twisted morals or questionable actions.

Instead of what? Letting them just plague and murder whoever they feel like? Yeah, sure. Seems smart.

But when it comes to Forsaken, nope. It's rightheous retribution.

I specifically singled out the Apothecaries, who are without a doubt evil. So yes, killing them is in no way different then murdering demons and Scourge.

[Ersula]

Instead of what? Letting them just plague and murder whoever they feel like? Yeah, sure. Seems smart.

In Torghast, players free souls in the cells with no regard for their supposed crimes so it appears the ludonarrative agrees with Necro. And Sylvanas if that's her goal.

Considering Darek & Nathanos can be seen in Torghast, suggests the possibility that the various undead do not retain their souls on Azeroth. So Sylvanas' plan might involve that. And the fact that Tyrande & Jaina are there too suggests everyone going to come back to life after this expansion anyway.

[Feanoro]

So Sylvanas' plan might involve that.

Thinking that Sylvie (and the writers) still have a plan after BfA drunkenly careened around.

[omeomorfismo]

i game we have only velonara as defector, compared to all the others we see with sylvanas. i mean, until we see differently the ratio its pretty clear

At least write my name correctly if you want to argue my point.

The problem with your idea of "multiple worldviews" and "relative morals" is that such a thing has limits and we should not be forced to accept certain points of view.

Are you telling me that we should have let the Lich King be, because from his point of view we were the bad guys and he was trying to safe Azeroth? When Sargeras decided to come to our home and tried to burn it, did we step aside and let him do what he wanted because destroying the universe makes sense from his point? No sir, we did not. We kick the asses of people who are clearly evil and send them burning to their death.

The so-called "Royal Apothecaries" are nothing else. Mad scientists that develop plagues to murder the living for fun, with the reason being either hate, nihilism or something else. They have no more right to exist then the Legion or the Scourge, hell Putricide in Icecrown could just as well BE one of them, there is hardly a difference.

So no, they can have their morals sure, but I do not accept that I have to let them plague the world because in their eyes that is not evil. THAT is ridiculous.



Instead of what? Letting them just plague and murder whoever they feel like? Yeah, sure. Seems smart.



I specifically singled out the Apothecaries, who are without a doubt evil. So yes, killing them is in no way different then murdering demons and Scourge.

this is nonsense. you havent to accept anything, your stance on the apothecaries should be one of the reasons to ignite the faction conflict, not some random blue vs red.
but i havent to buy down on my throat the alliance/druid's moral when playing my forsaken. because this is the same case you are making here but reversed.

[Raisei]

i game we have only velonara as defector, compared to all the others we see with sylvanas. i mean, until we see differently the ratio its pretty clear



this is nonsense. you havent to accept anything, your stance on the apothecaries should be one of the reasons to ignite the faction conflict, not some random blue vs red.
but i havent to buy down on my throat the alliance/druid's moral when playing my forsaken. because this is the same case you are making here but reversed.

True, since you want to be the villain you do not have to accept the moral stance of other Azerothians, but you also do not get to complain when you are faced with consequences for your evil deeds. If you want to be as evil as the Scourge then you will be wiped out just like the Scourge. The Apothecaries chose to be villains so they do not get any special rights because they are Forsaken. It really is that simple.

Take the Feltotem as an example. They were Tauren, but betrayed us all by joining the Legion. They turned villain, they got wiped out. End of story.

[omeomorfismo]

True, since you want to be the villain you do not have to accept the moral stance of other Azerothians, but you also do not get to complain when you are faced with consequences for your evil deeds. If you want to be as evil as the Scourge then you will be wiped out just like the Scourge. The Apothecaries chose to be villains so they do not get any special rights because they are Forsaken. It really is that simple.

Take the Feltotem as an example. They were Tauren, but betrayed us all by joining the Legion. They turned villain, they got wiped out. End of story.

lol? scourge wasnt wiped because evilness, but because we "beated" arthas. the consequence for the scourge invasion was the war, not icc epilogue.
and i would perfectly fine with a lordaeron in constant warfare, where i have to defend it from ally in some quest and in other i have to kidnap humans or corpses to resupply the army, cover ops mission to assassinate some paladin or light priest, plague roftlstomps in battlefield, stuff like this. basically a credible faction conflict...
i mean, blizz could simply pick a random european war in the last 2 thousand years to write a credible stalemate lasting decades if they dont know how to do..

[Raisei]

lol? scourge wasnt wiped because evilness, but because we "beated" arthas. the consequence for the scourge invasion was the war, not icc epilogue.
and i would perfectly fine with a lordaeron in constant warfare, where i have to defend it from ally in some quest and in other i have to kidnap humans or corpses to resupply the army, cover ops mission to assassinate some paladin or light priest, plague roftlstomps in battlefield, stuff like this. basically a credible faction conflict...
i mean, blizz could simply pick a random european war in the last 2 thousand years to write a credible stalemate lasting decades if they dont know how to do..

Uh... ye beating Arthas was the "how" of beating the Scourge but not the "why". The "why" was because the Scourge was an evil army of undead monsters led by an evil orc/human hybrid with a shiny helmet, that threatened to wipe out all live on the planet.

[omeomorfismo]

Uh... ye beating Arthas was the "how" of beating the Scourge but not the "why". The "why" was because the Scourge was an evil army of undead monsters led by an evil orc/human hybrid with a shiny helmet, that threatened to wipe out all live on the planet.

my point was that beating the scourge wasnt the consequence, but the outcome. the consequence for the action of the scourge was waging war in northrend.

its the same old argument against sylvanas in cata.
"balbhalbha shield plot she can do anything without consequences" when she had like what? 4 war fronts (tirisfal, andhoral, silverpine/gilneas, hillsbrad) against 4 different enemies (scarlet crusade, ally, gilneans and scourge).

[Ersula]

Thinking that Sylvie (and the writers) still have a plan after BfA drunkenly careened around.

Still, freeing souls randomly in Torghast is prevelant now, in Shadowlands.... And today they started an ad buy showing the Shadowlands Reveal Cinematic with the tagline "No King Reigns Forever"

That was also the tagline they used for Legion. There is a plan. It might not be well executed, but there is a plan.

Legion was the start of whatever arc they planned out for Sylvanas. (Obviously after Wrath they had no idea what to do with her character, but writer often retroactively assign meaning to incidental events that happened before) That explains why BFA felt like filler, and they could very well just set her up to be a raid boss, but that would mean the writers are treating her with less compassion than Illidan, Arthas or even Garrosh.

[Jastall]

The fundamental mistake here is to believe that an Horde vs Alliance war must always be an affair where one faction is evil and warmongering while the other is passive and good. Even the war instigated by Sylvanas was initially built over a comprehensible ground, reason why even the oh-so-heroic Saurfang was on board with it. The issue here is that Blizzard had to make things overly bloated as ever by having Sylvanas acting like a genocidal maniac, which is precisely what led Saurfang astray (even though I will admit that the justification for the war remained pretty weak nonetheless, Sylvanas' reasoning was compelling but starting a new conflict right after the war with the Legion out of cynical predictions of the future is still quite preposterous, at least given the context of a world that dealt with the Garrosh way too recently, but I do not surely intend to use BfA an even remotely decent example of how to handle a war story, regardless of Sylvanas herself).

Another mistake is to deem such a war always a matter that needs "conclusion". It doesn't need to. Conflicts and wars in such a world should erupt quite easily and they don't have necessarily to be overblown affairs, the only reason they are in WoW it's because Blizzard has excessively embraced a comic book-style of writing that always have to make things "big", as seen in BfA where the whole war has been basically a game of Sylvanas to gather souls for her own schemes; no shit that with such a stupid premise the entirety of the conflict looks idiotic as well.



I tend to agree that they should be more at "edge" if a massive war means forcing embarassing attempts of peace, love and forgiveness at the end of these conflicts, but we should not forget that BfA was a fucking failure because the entire premise was moronic, all the way back to when Sylvanas was made Warchief and especially the asinine way she was made so (even more asinine considered the newest datamined revelations). The Garrosh's arc was far from being perfect but it was tolerable, it had its overblown ending but it was decent for what it was. BfA though? Not only repeating the same storyline but worse was an unforgivable sin to begin with (yeah, right after Garrosh make the Horde evil and aggressive AGAIN) but such thing was done to push forward a storyline regarding Sylvanas and "Death" that had honestly bullshit to do with Blizzard's pretentious intention to "teach" something to the Horde after they apparently failed to do the same thing with Garrosh. Everything about the BfA's faction war, from Sylvanas to her opposition, looked beyond idiotic.



Yeah, that's the point. This so called "faction war" became an overly exaggerated mess from the moment Sylvanas blew Teldrassil up and made it abundantly clear that she had goals in mind that effectively had nothing to do with the war itself. That's the point where things went brutally downhill. So much that it managed to cheapen in such an atrocious way the sacrifice of everyone, especially on the Horde side, who fought this war believing they were fighting for something. Even Garrosh's lunatic followers were less deluded than everyone who fought for Sylvanas, not to mention, as already said, the absolutely cheap way she, of all people, was made Warchief out of some ass-pulled nonsense.

Do I trust them after BfA? I don't know. I know for sure that a proper faction war can and should be done, as much as I am sure of how Blizzard got all the worst ideas for BfA and unfortunately used them all.

Yeah, all my possible optimism for the BFA faction war (thin as it was in the first place) shattered the moment Warbringers: Sylvanas dropped. From then on it was painfully obvious we'd have another evil Warchief plot, and I also echo the sentiment that she should never, ever have been made Warchief in the first place.

There's no trust to be had anymore. Blizzard cannot write the faction war and should stop trying. But we know damn well we're going to be served yet another repeat of that shitty plotline in 2-3 expansions when it's time to "put the War back in Warcraft" and other such marketing-driven speech that people eat up every once in a while.

[Whitedragon]

I don't think the Forsaken PC is anything else but good or antihero at the worst of situations. Azeroth trusted him her Heart and he has helped bring down many villains and I don't think he did that for the sole course to end all life.

Can very easily be hand waved as "in lore no Forsaken actually got a HoA, it was purely for game play reasons.", if blizzard so chooses. If not that then they can say that no forsaken PC actually supported Sylvanas or some such.

[Ersula]

Can very easily be hand waved as "in lore no Forsaken actually got a HoA, it was purely for game play reasons.", if blizzard so chooses. If not that then they can say that no forsaken PC actually supported Sylvanas or some such.

Then that's just lying. I mean, what the game IS counting on is that Sylvanas seeming distant & inscrutable, even if your character is a loyalist. But then we have Lilian Voss, who is nothing but sympathetic.

But then again, you know how important the Heart of Azeroth is to the larger story when it's completely gone from the alpha: You can't even do the HoA quests if you tried in 9.0

[Varodoc]

Still, freeing souls randomly in Torghast is prevelant now, in Shadowlands.... And today they started an ad buy showing the Shadowlands Reveal Cinematic with the tagline "No King Reigns Forever"

That was also the tagline they used for Legion. There is a plan. It might not be well executed, but there is a plan.

Legion was the start of whatever arc they planned out for Sylvanas. (Obviously after Wrath they had no idea what to do with her character, but writer often retroactively assign meaning to incidental events that happened before) That explains why BFA felt like filler, and they could very well just set her up to be a raid boss, but that would mean the writers are treating her with less compassion than Illidan, Arthas or even Garrosh.

Compared to what Garrosh got, it would be compassion if she became a raid boss, dont you think? That is certainly better than being relegated to quest mob.

Besides Arthas was turned into a raid boss in literally the second expansion of the game, despite his popularity and massive storyline coming from WC3.

[Raisei]

my point was that beating the scourge wasnt the consequence, but the outcome. the consequence for the action of the scourge was waging war in northrend.

Yes but outcome and consequence are basically the same for the looser in a war. The looser faces the consequences of their actions, in case of the Scourge (a basically mindless army with only very few able to think for themselves) it was the Lich King and his highest ranking servants facing those consequences by being killed in Icecrown, some of the Scourge itself remained, shackled to Bolvar.

its the same old argument against sylvanas in cata.
"balbhalbha shield plot she can do anything without consequences" when she had like what? 4 war fronts (tirisfal, andhoral, silverpine/gilneas, hillsbrad) against 4 different enemies (scarlet crusade, ally, gilneans and scourge).

Uh huh. And when did that so much as inconvenience her personally? Did she have any punishment inflicted upon her for all the evil shit she did over the years? Granted she was usually too sneaky to have people know or had a scapegoat ready, like Putress and during Garrosh's trial Vareesa. But even when she openly and directly mocked Garrosh and the Horde and disobeyed his direct order NOTHING happened. Voljin later had his throat cut for not recognizing Garrosh as Warchief, but the Banshee didn't get so much as a scratch for her disloyalty.
In front of Orgrimmar after her speech, how is it that no one stopped her from pissing off? Because she can't be attacked in Banshee form? Please, we killed hundreds of ghosts and banshees and we had some of the most powerful mages and lightusers on Azeroth with us. The plot demanded that she gets away with her crimes again, because she had to break the helmet on Icecrown, when there is no way she should have gotten away.

Sylvanas is the definition of a character with a plot shield, never facing consequences, always smiling her smug smile.

[omeomorfismo]

Yes but outcome and consequence are basically the same for the looser in a war. The looser faces the consequences of their actions, in case of the Scourge (a basically mindless army with only very few able to think for themselves) it was the Lich King and his highest ranking servants facing those consequences by being killed in Icecrown, some of the Scourge itself remained, shackled to Bolvar.



Uh huh. And when did that so much as inconvenience her personally? Did she have any punishment inflicted upon her for all the evil shit she did over the years? Granted she was usually too sneaky to have people know or had a scapegoat ready, like Putress and during Garrosh's trial Vareesa. But even when she openly and directly mocked Garrosh and the Horde and disobeyed his direct order NOTHING happened. Voljin later had his throat cut for not recognizing Garrosh as Warchief, but the Banshee didn't get so much as a scratch for her disloyalty.
In front of Orgrimmar after her speech, how is it that no one stopped her from pissing off? Because she can't be attacked in Banshee form? Please, we killed hundreds of ghosts and banshees and we had some of the most powerful mages and lightusers on Azeroth with us. The plot demanded that she gets away with her crimes again, because she had to break the helmet on Icecrown, when there is no way she should have gotten away.

Sylvanas is the definition of a character with a plot shield, never facing consequences, always smiling her smug smile.

lol? how having 4 warfronts open couldnt be view as "inconvenience"? its war, not a tea party
i mean, incovenience isnt even a consequence, its at best karma. what you want isnt consequences for actions but that your team win automatically. and that isnt storytelling, maybe power fantasies.
then outcome and consequence arent in any way the same thing, in w3 the blood elfs answered the scourge invasion with the guerrilla tactics, still arthas and the evils won. same in legion, guldan summoned the BL in the broken shores, we invaded it (the answer) and we still lose.

on a side note, what is this obession with light users? lordaeron was full of the originals paladins and still was roftlstomped by a scourge composed mainly by shitty peasants. yes. they have some advantages over undeads, after all paladin were developed to fight the dks, but this is far from being a win button.

[Darth-Piekus]

In WC3 Arthas had the numbers and his cunning. His armies were endless while every dead Blood Elf became an undead creature under the Lich King's will. The same happened with Lordaeron. A light user can be effective but how much though when Arthas had endless numbers. Even the Horde and Alliance combined had no chance of beating him in Northrend. He let them approach him so he can get their best champions as commanders of the Scourge.

In this situation the Horde is not the same as Arthas's Scourge. We are talking about a faction made from low population races that are finite streched too much after countless wars against the Burning Crusade, the Lich King, Deathwing, Garrosh's Civil War and WOD War. Need to mention how many times should Sylvannas have died had the game been written with lore over gameplay. Especially the Makgora was the epitome of idiocy. Two full armies were looking Sylvannas monologuing and escaping like idiots.

[Kaver]

When will people realize that Sylvanas is nothing more than an evil villain. I'm just looking forward to cutting of her head and putting it on a pole outside of Stormwind.

[Darth-Piekus]

When will people realize that Sylvanas is nothing more than an evil villain. I'm just looking forward to cutting of her head and putting it on a pole outside of Stormwind.

I don't think the fanatic part of her fanbase will ever accept what happened if she dies as a villain. Look at the fans of Garrosh. Still talking about him. In fact I would say some of them became fans of Sylvannas if it made them sate their thirst for War. Instead of moving on and probably try something else they keep blabbering about how bad the game is to every single thread 24/7.

[Kaver]

Instead of moving on and probably try something else they keep blabbering about how bad the game is to every single thread 24/7.

Bad publicity is better than no publicity