Sylvanas is Guldan 2.0

[Rexosaurus]

That was AFTER she was betrayed by Saurfang and Baine, who by every single definition of the word, are traitors to the Horde.

And if Blizzard ever release the stats of who were Sylvanas loyalists vs who betrayed her along side Saurfang/Baine, I'm 100% sure, it will show a HUGE support for Sylvanas.
Every singe Horde player I know, only did the traitor quest on a single alt, to get the toy.

<---- is a Horde player; has never sided with Sylvanas in that quest chain.

I couldn't give ya numbers because I'm not Blizzard, and I tend to avoid interacting with the community these days, but I know that there are still enough players that identify with the WC3/Thrall's Horde for the forums to be aflame when the chance to overthrow her popped up.

[FuxieDK]

<---- is a Horde player; has never sided with Sylvanas in that quest chain.

I couldn't give ya numbers because I'm not Blizzard, and I tend to avoid interacting with the community these days, but I know that there are still enough players that identify with the WC3/Thrall's Horde for the forums to be aflame when the chance to overthrow her popped up.

I know SOME people went traitor side.. I did say "HUGE support", not "unanimously support" for Sylvanas.

[Zendhal The Black]

Sylvanas is not a Mary Sue, since nothing ever goes her way.

Naaa, having a plot armor with planet size thickness is not Mary Sue

Or storming Icecrown ALONE, beating the shit out of Lich King like he's a pupy, not taking a single hit

Getting random powerups out of depths of Danuser ass (like he read too much manga and watched way too many anime shows)

Every "failure" is going according her grand plan that shifts every god damn single time (how many times were we showed her final plans already?) and in the end, she just twirls her eyebrows and says "hahaaaa, it all went according my grand plan"


And the most obvious of all, everyone just stands in place like an idiot while she's going on with her idiotic monologue....

Some random ass Stormwing rifleman should just shoot her in the head in the middle of the sentence and spare us of the cringeworthy character she is

[Rexosaurus]

I know SOME people went traitor side.. I did say "HUGE support", not "unanimously support" for Sylvanas.

I'm just sayin that it's kind of anecdotal to make claims on numbers. A lot of people play the game, so even if you talked to a thousand people that support Sylvanas, there's still a shit ton of other people that may not have. Most of the people that I still talk to in-game happened to pick Saurfang/Baine, but I know that's just my circle of friends.

I'm not saying you're wrong though. I know the Horde has ever been a haven for the edgy and that seems to have only increased over time, so I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that the majority sided with Sylvanas.

Also:

no ur a traitor

[Kumorii]

I'm just sayin that it's kind of anecdotal to make claims on numbers. A lot of people play the game, so even if you talked to a thousand people that support Sylvanas, there's still a shit ton of other people that may not have. Most of the people that I still talk to in-game happened to pick Saurfang/Baine, but I know that's just my circle of friends.

I'm not saying you're wrong though. I know the Horde has ever been a haven for the edgy and that seems to have only increased over time, so I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that the majority sided with Sylvanas.

Also:

no ur a traitor

Pretty sure blizzard said themselves Sylvanas had huge support, both from quest choice and in-game npc sentiments.

[Caerule]

The ironic thing is that WoD's Gul'dan was actually Gul'dan 2.0.

Anyway, if you think we're perma-killing Sylvanas, you're mistaking. Thrall, Jaina, Sylvanas, Tyrande, Malfurion. They are the legacy characters from Warcraft 3 that tie many old players to the game. I doubt they will ever die.

[Manariel]

Except.......
Gul'dan is evil to the bone, Sylvanas is not.
Gul'dan was hated by most players, Sylvanas is loved by most players.
Gul'fan was an outcast, Sylvanas is a faction leader and Warchief.

--- snip ---

Infracted.

[ryanmahaffe]

Well received VILLAIN yes. But never loved.

Sylvanas is not a Mary Sue, since nothing ever goes her way.

Anduin and Jaina, on the other hand, are text book Mary Sues.

People love villains, Gul'dan was a very popular villain.

What do you mean nothing goes her way, they have written the story to make basically everything that goes wrong was all according to her main plan or her back up plan.
Anduin is pretty bad. Jaina on the other hand, nah dude.
Idk man, I just can't stand her anymore, and I don't think I am on the minority.

[Rexosaurus]

Pretty sure blizzard said themselves Sylvanas had huge support, both from quest choice and in-game npc sentiments.

Oh? I haven't seen anything about that so far. I looked up some interviews but I couldn't find anything.

Did they just say that she had a lot of support, or did they mean that she specifically had a lot of support compared to Saurfang? I'm genuinely curious to know how far the Horde player base has shifted at this point.

[delus]

Warlords of Draenor for Guldan was BFA for Sylvanas, we foil their plains, again and again, while they continue to smirk and play their 4D chess games, they both fuck off at the end to summon their true masters through a giant portal to kickstart the new expansion and she will die in the first big patch raid like Guldan.

Sylvanas will find the soul of Arthas and will try to make him an avatar for the Jailer to invade Azeroth directly, at the end she will scream NO, THIS CANNOT BE! while Arthas appears behind her and sticks Frostmourne in her vagina and she explodes. Then he will turn around and say that we have seen what he has seen and to follow him into the abyss.


Edit: Another similarity, both at the end of WOD and BFA after Guldan and Sylvanas leave their respective Horde factions, both factions start screaming about freedom and honor alongside the people they wanted to genocide 2 days before.

It's like poetry it rhymes.

Better that than Kerrigan 2.0.

[ashblond]

I'm hoping Sylvanas gets double-crossed by the Jailer, in the classical "We had a deal!" "Indeed, we *had* a deal..." style, and that she's then chucked into the maw herself, where gnomes in Arthas-costumes chew on her soul for all eternity...

I'm a sucker for poetic justice, schemers getting betrayed, almost as good as making her a loot-pinata.

That sounds very possible. Meanwhile, Nathanos will be gangbang to death by ogre brutes. His corps will be hung upside down on Orgrimmar gate and whipped permanently by orc peons.

[kendro1200]

if she's Gul'dan 2.0, then they're not doing a good job.


I liked Gul'dan.

Very much this. I liked every bit of Gul'dan we got in WoD and Legion. I liked the short story/audio drama and the tiny cinematic they did with him. Gul'dan did bad things, he struggled against his servitude to the Legion, bad things happened to him, and he eventually got a very nice death for a raid boss.

Sylvanas is a writer's pet character, much like Thrall was Metzen's favorite. Things have gone way too well for her and she has not suffered the tiniest for any of her actions. That can also be said true for the Horde as well, that for some reason gets to go back to being genocidal monsters every other xpack, and then walk out of it free of consequence, meanwhile if the Alliance does anything even remotely close to morally grey they have it held over their heads and have to suffer for it for nearly a decade.
One thing I'd wish, is that Blizzard would go back to sticking to a single theme and story for each xpack, and then stick with that single story. Trying to weave 3 or 4 stories into an xpack to seed future xpacks has gone awful. It's kept them from doing the stories they current tell justice, and has also been just generally confusing because they leave so many threads to get taken care off either in off-screen media or twitter...We saw what happened with Yrel, Jaina from MoP to BFA, Khadgar, Maiev, and so many others. Interesting stories started and then left on cliffs, left for dead because there was something new and shiny being worked on. It leaves me with the only sure expectation that Shadowlands will basically be another WoD, where the actions that are done there are entirely irrelevant to the story at a greater whole. None of the extraordinarily large glaring problems to the narrative in WoW will be resolved in the slightest, except that Sylvanas will get more screen time and look smarter and better than anyone else she shares screen time with.

[Trassk]

Is she?

Does this mean gul'dan had a subset fandom who saw gul'dan as their wafuu?

[kansor]

If you think about it WOW has had 3 arcs:

Vanilla, BC, WOTLK - Original trilogy
Cata, MOP, WOD - Warchief Garrosh trilogy
Legion, BFA, Shadowlands - Warchief Sylvanas trilogy

So yes she will meet her end in SL, but she's a more major char than Gul'dan or Garrosh so I doubt we'll see her fate until last patch

[Varodoc]

I disagree... Gul'Dan was supposed to be a bad ass but spent most of WoD running away and cackling after we nearly caught him. Then he died quickly in Legion, in a raid he didn't really seem to belong in.

He's not supposed to be a badass, he's supposed to be a cowardly warlock who hides behind his Legion masters like a dog.

[mysticx]

He's not supposed to be a badass, he's supposed to be a cowardly warlock who hides behind his Legion masters like a dog.

This really, Gul'dan was always a coward when push came to shove, a big mouth when (he thought) he had the upper hand, but run like hell when things went against him.

At the very start of his storyline, he was reviled for his weakness by other orcs, that's what drove him to become such a power-grabbing lunatic in the first place.

[Raisei]

Except.......
Gul'dan is evil to the bone, Sylvanas is not.

Tell that to the civilians in Teldrassil, the innocents that she tortured to death in her blight experiments, the people of Brennadan and the people she tried to blight in Borlaus. Oh and we should probably also ask Vareesa how she feels about being used by her sister and then murdered along with her children. You have to be extremely blind to think of her as anything but evil.

The difference is that Gul'dan was openly evil while Sylvanas was a coward and hid behind the Horde until she was pushed into the spotlight. Also, nobody seems to defend Gul'dan, that gnarly old orc, as not being evil, while dozens of people jump in to defend Sylvanas, the hot elf (dead and rotten as she may be). Straaaaaange.

Gul'dan was hated by most players, Sylvanas is loved by most players.

Citation needed I would say. Far as I know there is more then enough people that want to see her dead as soon and as painfully as possible. Only the ones that delude themselves into thinking that because they were drooling loyalists, she gives a swamp rat's behind about them are stuck with "loving" her. And of course those that always wanted to be part of an edgy evil Horde.
The others, most of the Alliance and the Horde players who would much rather not be the villain of the story, hate her for draggin them down again.

Gul'fan was an outcast, Sylvanas is a faction leader and Warchief.

Sylvanas was ALWAYS an Outcast, her being part of the Horde was just because she could fool those idiots (Thrall and the Tauren, especially) to protect her from being wiped out while she was planning her revenge on Arthas. She was using the Forsaken and the Horde for her own gain, being a faction leader was just convenient, she never was truely part of the Horde, never believed in their ideals. She even openly mocked them as early as Cata and probably before.
Again the difference is only that Sylvanas is sneaky and hid her true intentions and allegiences, having a scapegoat whenever she needed someone to take the blame, while Gul'dan embraced being the villain of the story.

[Super Dickmann]

Only in terms of function and likely raid placement. Gul'dan was a much better antagonist. For one, he had an identifiable motive. For another, his tie-in story was both free and not a garbage fire. He also didn't get played for pathos, which is what what sank KJ. Both have good voice actors though.

Sylvanas could likely be salvaged into a decent villain if she gets a good showing in the pre-release material. It helps that the protagonists going up against her are such irreparable bores that her putting the majority of them in hell already endears her to me. But they'd need to actually stick with one direction and one motive and work towards that end result.

[ReVnX]

Gul'dan was not nearly as insufferable and cringe as Sylvanas.

What he said.

[HitRefresh]

Well exactly for that reason. She wants to make him a slave in his own body like he did with her.

Oh I see what you mean.