Sanctum of Domination Ending cinematic

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Why am I not surprised or impressed ?

Seriously I am still very baffled that Blizzard and so many other companies, keep writers whose story and treatment and use of characters is so bad.

It's the same level than the last seasons of GOT or Star Wars' Disney sequels.

[bagina]

The smallest mercy would be not going in the direction of MUH UNWILLING ATROCITIES we're skyrocketing towards.

You're not wrong

[Uzkin]

Since the Jailer is the originator of the undead, it is likely that the undead are by nature conditioned to trust and follow him. It is impressive that Sylvanas could turn against him.

[qwerty123456]

That like-dislike ratio on the video is hilarious, they even unlisted it!!

But the dislikes had better not be from Sylvanas fanboys. These writers literally took someone who committed genocide and redeemed her, don't you dare dislike the video, what more could you possibly want??? Maybe the 4th CGI Sylvanas cinematic in a row to ease your pain?

They need her evil and undead or they can't finish.

[Hugnomo]

Be pretty hard to pull that off, her soul was fragmented by Frostmourne. Most undead were created by the plague of undeath, not Frostmourne - and the souls trapped in that blade were released when the blade was broken, or that's what I recall.
All of the Forsaken being able to get their souls back - which isn't established in any lore I'm aware of that their souls are splintered - would require some egregious retconning major parts of the lore to pull off. The Forsaken are dead. Restoring their souls would not resurrect them. That would be aggressive, obnoxious retconning - not that I think Danuser wouldn't go that far, but it would be pretty awful to try and pull that off, on any level - and to what point? Game mechanics wise, it's removing the Forsake faction. It would be like allowing Death Knights to live again, making the whole class moot.

I agree on it not having been established before. But neither Uther's or Sylvanas'. But yes, the fact that a lot of them weren't killed by frostmourne probably invalidates my theory.
And I think you misunderstand in one aspect, I'm not saying "resurrect the Forsaken". I don't think Sylvanas was resurrected in this cinematic either. I just think that the Forsaken and Sylvanas, in addition to being undead, lived in a cursed state, a state where positive emotions were hardly felt if at all, a state that heavily altered their personalities, made them live an angry, resentful, unsatiated undeath. Someone like Calia, despite being undead, doesn't seem to suffer from this cursed state. It is my theory that it is because their souls were fragmented and that part of their soul was stolen from them, just like Sylvanas.
Returning those pieces doesn't mean resurrecting them, means mending their souls, returning the positive emotions and humanity to them.
The point for me is just to advance the narrative of the Forsaken from their perpetual phase of unresolved middle ground in regards to their cursed state.
But these are just theories in my head, I understand not everyone would like this development and that's fair.

[Varodoc]

The only good thing about this cinematic is that Janitor finally had the decency to put on some clothes and especially some shoes, that is all.

[Smallfruitbat]

That was a troll right? They must have hidden the real ending cinematic behind the covenant quest line?

[LilSaihah]

I was kind of on the "I'd like to see where you're going with this" page prior to 9.1, but this is pretty underwhelming to say the least.
To be honest I'm not really sure what I expected, they delivered BFA last time.

[Super Dickmann]

This. Small mercies. Her Maw uniform looks fucking terrible in motion, so awkward and uwieldy.

Btw, she's been wearing an outfit decorated to the brim with skulls and spikes and it never occurred to her that she's on the bad guys' side. The worst part is, the Jailer has never made a secret of what his intentions are, he's been pretty fucking straightforward with his methods. How do you misunderstand that guy is beyond me.

I'm not even gonna bother writing longer posts, this story doesn't deserve that. Really, it doesn't deserve the attention it's getting, negative or otherwise. It deserves to disappear in the pits of hell forever, never to be mentioned again.

The few positive things I can say about Sylvanas in this expansion, besides having arguably more depth than BFA to go with her 100 point lower IQ is that the animations are a lot better.

Also, she's been wearing skulls for fifteen years so that's not a tell. The whole plotline collapses because the guy barely even pretends to be anything but comically fucking evil at every turn. It's one of the funny aspects of the cinematic actually - when she calls him out, he isn't angry, just sort of confused, like he was surprised she expected anything else. Maybe if the Maw was running on autopilot and he was a prisoner going 'woe is me' it'd work marginally better but even then it's impossible to present this character as a viable schemer or even an average intellect when the story rotates around her trusting this obviously incredibly evil dude.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

The only thing I appreciate about this is the irony of Sylvanas finding herself in the same position than Arthas after his defeat after he was finally freed of Frostmourne's corruption and had his soul + his empathy and capacity for regret back.

But yeah otherwise it's very stupid, it was obvious from the start that the Jailer was extremely bad news and not someone to serve, Sylvanas only realizing it now is just garbage writing.

[Beuargh]

How many predicted that the Jailer would punish Sylvanas by restoring her soul?

this part I don't understand. why did he restore her soul? she just betrayed (??) him, and he restore her soul before taking the door.... it doesn't make sense to me. at first I thought the blue-ish eyes were the sign she was becoming braindead like anduin, I thought he was taking full control of her which made more sense to me since she shot an arrow at him. did I miss a piece of dialogue or something?

[Smallfruitbat]

this part I don't understand. why did he restore her soul? she just betrayed (??) him, and he restore her soul before taking the door.... it doesn't make sense to me. at first I thought the blue-ish eyes were the sign she was becoming braindead like anduin, I thought he was taking full control of her which made more sense to me since she shot an arrow at him. did I miss a piece of dialogue or something?

Cause once she gets her soul back, she gets her empathy back and can see the results of all the shit she has done.

[Jackstraw]

this part I don't understand. why did he restore her soul? she just betrayed (??) him, and he restore her soul before taking the door.... it doesn't make sense to me. at first I thought the blue-ish eyes were the sign she was becoming braindead like anduin, I thought he was taking full control of her which made more sense to me since she shot an arrow at him. did I miss a piece of dialogue or something?

No. It's just that absurd.

The Jailer has enlisted Sylvanas for however many years, and he trusts her enough to have her perform various tasks of importance.
After her betrayal - asspulled as anything about their interactions - he gives her back the piece of her soul Frostmourne took, and goes away with his Buzz Lightyear. Because assets are just that disposable unless humans.

So now Sylvanas can pull a pity party for her long lost soul and all the bad she did when not whole, it doesn't matter no soul should have been left in Frostmourne after Ashbringer broke it, and we can enjoy her pretty blue eyes as she's getting her high elf identity back.
You know, the proper one as writers always intended.

[Unholyvamp]

The SoD ending cinematic has somehow reminded me of this.
Sylvanas tried to pull a "Loki" on Zoval
And i'm not saying that is a bad thing.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Cause once she gets her soul back, she gets her empathy back and can see the results of all the shit she has done.

Typical generic and petty villain's way of thinking, the Jailer isn't turning into my favorite Warcraft villain anytime soon.

[sador]

Not a thread to hate on writers or anything like that. I'm just a bit amused as to why we don't have some more insights into why characters do what they do, and because of this, they come off as unrealistic, stupid. I feel that with this cinematic, Sylvanas going against Jailer would be justified, if it had some more background, insights to her struggle, thoughts etc. Probably a book will cover parts of it, but game itself just makes it look like she just randomly realized after years of serving the jailer, that "oh no, he's really not that good". Just lazy to miss this oppurtunity to have more info here and see more of her internal struggle leading up to this. We had some cinematics where we saw that she was not amused with some of the Jailer's choices, but thats it. And she's a clever character, like literally no one else thought that "yeah, the Jailer is gonna fight for some good free will, with some bad means, but overall wants to do good". And it's sad, we could have had some insights into how he convinced Sylvanas etc.

And for the jailer himself, he could have been such an interesting character, with some insights of what happened to him, why are his motives the way they are. But like nothing really. I love a good villain with some good background, where he thinks he's doing the right thing because of what happend to him and we get some personal connection on their reasoning, see some things from their perspective.

I think this is what made the first few expansions of wow great, that we had more ties to the villains, even tho their motive was not always clear or seemed very justified, but we knew more about them, their story. And now we get a new character out of nowhere, which would be fine, but no real connection to him over the expansion, some very generic threats and lines, and that's it.
I loved Jaina's story in bfa for example, it was personal, it moved her development further, her character felt real. Don't see why they couldn't have done something similar for Sylvanas here, and Zovaal.

[Nerovar]

For someone who gets triggered by the word “Serve..” I guess it doesn’t matter as long as they serve her?

You can't make this shit up.

[Smallfruitbat]

I've come to the conclusion after watching the cinematic that Activision view World of Warcraft as a vehicle for the MDI and other 'e-sports'.

They seem to have stopped trying to write coherent characters, yes there are a few gems still in there but if you look at their posts they are making more of a deal about season 2 of Shadowlands than they are of seeing the next step in the journey of an iconic and much loved character.

[Beuargh]

Cause once she gets her soul back, she gets her empathy back and can see the results of all the shit she has done.

ok. but it still doesn't make sense to me. why would he do that? when everybody know that's one more things that's gonna help "us" defeat him in the end.. if he believe Bolvar and co are going to lynch her on the spot, it doesn't make any difference if she got her soul back or not. he just gave her an excuse to be spared by the good guys. her plot armour is so thick and heavy (and obvious..) I don't know how she can walk with it....

[Ophenia]

Not sure what Sylvanas expected would happen to a literal death god after being shot by some shadowy arrow though. A bit weird but whatever.

The next thing you know in 9.2 or 9.3 is that Zovaal can only be defeated by using his own powers against him, hence Sylvanas is our only hope to ever defeating him.