Originally Posted by
OwenBurton
There is a major plot hole that some people seem to have largely ignored or overlooked:
Sylvanas Windrunner's speech to Anduin was about breaking the system and improving it with a far better and fair one - she spent hours and hours attempting to convince him of the rightness and necessity of her plans and strategies, of the cruelties of fate.
Why didn't she just tell the Alliance and the Horde the same thing?
Let's time travel back to after the Legion's defeat - the Alliance and the Horde are not at open war with each other. Why not tell Alleria and Vereesa at their reunion what she experienced at the Maw - why not at least confide in her older sister, who has seen infinite possibilities, who understands the cosmic imbalance and injustice of the Light and has fought another cosmic power for a thousand years - someone who adapts her worldview to change and circumstance, who knows about sacrifices in the name of the greater good, and who "questions everything", and who at that point still does not hate her younger sister? She didn't need to assassinate them - she could have simply explained her complicated views and real plans, and then waited for their reactions.
Sylvanas could have explained her true motives and experiences to the two people she trusted most deeply, her belief in the injustice of death and afterlife, the flaws of the Pantheon of Death and the Shadowlands - Vereesa herself cares deeply for her even now, and possibly Alleria, despite her fierce attitude. Sylvanas: "I do not ask you trust the Jailor, my sisters...but I am asking you to place your trust in me." And perhaps they might have listened?
A Good War might have been this:
1. Sylvanas summons Varok and the Horde leaders to Orgrimmar - then uses her Banshee powers to show them the reality of the Maw, what she personally experienced, and the imperfect nature of the Shadowlands. She could have turned to Saurfang: "High Overlord, your son was taken by Death - do you wish for him to be trapped in fate's bondage forever? Or do you wish to unshackle him - just like Grom unshackled your race from another overbearing and controlling cosmic power long ago? Surely you as an orc understand the value of personal and individual freedom, and the necessity of change in the face of tyranny - whatever the cost and whatever the price and the odds against your people? Old soldier, the opportunity to act is here - the time to act is NOW. Together, we can break the cycle forever and bring freedom to all those who crave it most! For the Horde!"
2. Then she asks Alleria and Vereesa to return to the other Alliance leaders with her revelations. Most of them have no fondness for the Shadowlands, no affinity for any of its rulers - they would have no reason to trust Sylvanas, but at least they are familiar with her, unlike with the mysterious otherworldly powers none of them have ever heard of or imagined.
3. Sylvanas asks them to have Bolvar hand over the Helm of Domination, or otherwise, they all attack him and overwhelm him, and Sylvanas breaks the Veil anyway, minus the Fourth War which depleted both factions needlessly.
Her objective is basically achieved, without a massive global war that divided the Horde or destroyed her leadership and her reputation completely, or convoluted and unreliable bargains with Azshara and Priscilla Ashvane, without overcomplicated deceptions and schemes which alienated most of her sympathizers and supporters, including the Forsaken, including most of her dark rangers, and blood elves; if she desperately needs souls, she could ask them to wipe out the Twilight's Hammer, the Scarlet Crusade, or the naga, sethrak, and the hostile drust populations, or attack Outland and eliminate the hostile, dying races and species there, for example, there are other sources of power other than the Alliance and the Horde on their planet, surely?
Then as Warchief, Sylvanas invades the Shadowlands - with the Alliance and her sisters at her side, or without them.
I am not arguing Sylvanas is a benevolent ruler - but she is still a relatively popular character. Even one of the polls showed most Horde players willing to support her despite her abandonment. She has committed crimes, and has long has harbored ulterior motives. But she is not hurting people because she enjoys hurting them; she has always had some kind of...complicated purpose to her schemes. She believes that she is trying to do the right thing - in an impossible situation that most people in our world cannot relate to properly, because no equivalent is remotely comparable.
If she is so utterly convinced in the rightness and necessity of her actions - why did she not EVER attempt to convince her allies and her own people of their necessity and rightness, why such subterfuge? She explained her plans to the Horde loyalists at the end of the last expansion - so she should have done likewise to the entirety of the Horde, when she still enjoyed massive and overwhelming popular support, and when the night elves were more or less relatively indifferent towards her. If they still supported her after Teldrassil and Lordaeron - how many more would support her had she NOT caused the destruction of both cities, and focused solely on destroying the Shadowlands' flawed order immediately after the Legion was defeated - especially as some of their realms, such as Bastion, ARE genuinely flawed in their policies, and probably would have blindly imposed them had the mortals not intervened after thousands of years?
In my opinion, Sylvanas could have remained an interesting and complex character, with shades of grey in her morality - not one so controversial and reviled, and whose development has arguably been ruined?
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It's been explained both in-game and in interviews the Arbiter broke during Legion though which soul exactly did it is not clear. The popular theory is it was Argus' soul that broke the machine. We know both Ursoc and Ysera's souls were in Ardenweald before the machine broke so it wasn't one of them. Why? Because both of them died during Legion: Ursoc was a Raid Boss and we're forced to kill Ysera at the end of the Val'Sharah quest chain. Ursoc was unfortunately denied another rebirth as is revealed in the pre-expansion Ardenweald short video.
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