Patch 9.2 PTR - Build 41360: Sylvanas Cinematic

[Dejiko]

Noone really dies anymore and everyone is just misunderstood.
Shame really, being truly homocidal would be so much more interesting than this.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Eh, it's okay I guess? They've written themselves into a corner and it was clear that there is no way out of it unless they get rid of her or redeem her, obviously the former was never going to happen. So as far as the later goes the character may at least acknowledge her sins, that is pretty much the best we can hope for with Blizzard writing.

[neik]

Good god she's pretty.. artists absolutely outdone themselves. It's possible that good things are coming.

[Absintheminded]

Thanks, I hate it

[Grimbold21]

So what blizzard is saying is even Bobby Kottick is redeemable

[Mehrunes]

Blizzard: *Elegantly handles Sylvanas's transition from baddie to good*
Community: *Doesn't like it because they're filled with spite*

Alternatively, unlike you and @Relapses (who'd eat up Fifty Shades of Grey fanfiction written by Tommy Wiseau if it had Blizzard's name on it) the community actually has standards and doesn't consider the act of not only making the Sylvanas that the story focused on for the past two decades just a version of her but then instantly brushing her under a carpet in order to focus on the version that was there for just a handful of missions in W3 to even scratch the surface of the definition of elegance.

Yeah, definitely just WoW that uses major lore characters from previous titles in their story. This is 100% only a thing that WoW does. No other creative franchise cycles in lore characters from different series other than WoW, that's why it's fair to be cynical when they do this!

Uh-huh. Because all other creators use their past characters in the same fashion these two were used here (or the way Blizzard reused the music from Vol'jin's death cinematic at the end here, mirroring the way Uther stayed in place while others disappeared one by one, despite there being no actual story relation between those scenes, clearly hoping players like you will mistake a cosmetic connection for a thematic one and praise it as the second coming of sliced bread). In other words, because you (deliberately and willfully) can't spot blatant nostalgia baiting (in an expansion already chock-full of it, to the point it resorted to retconning the story in order to shove in more nostalgia baiting "connections") it apparently doesn't exist

The people commenting on forums are still a minority. It's a louder minority that needs constant, never-ending validation of their negative opinion of Blizzard, though. And thanks to content creators like Bellendular and Asmongold, there's no shortage of fuel for the perpetual outrage machine or content pandered directly to that petty need for validation. We're just seeing the echoes of this extremely cynical self-fulfilling prophecy reverberate infinitely into itself around here.

It's a good thing that this forum has you as a voice of reason to tell this sinful minority (which is a claim you as always base on nothing but wishful thinking and dreams (probably about Blizzard being god's gift to mankind)) how they are objectively wrong and how objectively god-damn amazing everything Blizzard ever has done and ever will do is. Preach the gospel.

Lore hasn't changed. If it's bad now it always was. Maybe you're the one that changed, but don't try to blame it on anyone or anything else.

Now let's watch you support this with either absolutely nothing or, at best, yet another repeat of the lie about how it was Metzen, and not the glorious post-Metzen Afrasiabi, that said the Cataclysm was caused by us killing Old Gods.

While I disagree with your framing, because they are both Sylvanas, one is just her older self, I don't disagree they want to let Sylvanas go on a technicality.

She may technically be Sylvanas but she literally had nothing to do with the Banshee Queen's crimes. It's not even a case of her not being in control like the good part of Arthas (before the evil one "killed" it, at least), the good Sylvanas wasn't in Sylvanas' body at all until the Jailer shoved her in there five seconds prior to this cinematic. So the framing by @Syegfryed is correct, it was not this Sylvanas that did those crimes and while she may feel responsible for them and even act accountable, that's just her subjective feelings talking. Objectively she's as responsible for them as she's for Deathwing's shattering of the world.

And the part where the cinematic showed that Uther can outright split into two distinct pieces of himself even after we helped them merge indicates that it's still going to be the case even after the good Sylvanas made peace with the Banshee Queen's actions and awoke as a blue eyed undead Sylvanas.

LOLOLOLOL holy fuck, come the fuck on my dude.

1- its unlisted because its SPOILERS, they don't want to send this out to literally everyone MONTHS before the patch comes out so of course its unlisted
Imagine the outrage of people logging onto their youtube to see a new video out by wow, only to open it and be instantly spoiled for a cinematic that is about 50 quests into the new zone, that wont be out for another 2-3 months. You serious? also i cant really think ever of a time they made a cinematic unlisted after it was released as listed, outside the nylotha end cinematic which was uploaded, then made unlisted only a few minutes after, likely as a realised mistake.

at this point im starting to wonder if you stuck that tinfoil hat in a microwave.

Are you not tired of this song and dance? You tried this deflection with multiple other cinematics before, like the death of N'zoth one you mentioned here. Lo and behold, it remains unlisted to this very day, throwing a moon-sized wrench into your take because the purpose of delisting a video to "avoid spoiler" flies out of the windom when, you know, it stops being a spoiler. Unless you want to tell me Blizzard is trying to avoid spoiling a story they already told two years ago

[Elim Garak]

I'm not up to date to the latest lore... who's the Jesus Angel dude?

[Delever]

I'm not up to date to the latest lore... who's the Jesus Angel dude?

You dont wanna know

[Easo]

The cinematic itself... Kudos to Blizzard, without irony or sarcasm (maybe the HoTS style models are a bit too jarring change of style). Tt seems they have forgotten the High Elf glowing eyes, though.

But the story? How is this anything BUT a bit changed redemption story? No one forgives her? Changes nothing, it looks increasingly clear she does not get any actual punishment. It was all Jailer, all along, since WC3 + her second persona. The same Jailer, who dies in a really dumb looking animation. Yeah, totally connected storylines to 20 year old past. Sure, Blizzard, whatever you say.
Screw that.

[Mehrunes]

I think a big point here was that it was Sylvanas. She has to contend with the fact that both of those people were her, that's the entire point of Uther's spiel.

Not saying it's good writing, but 17 years haven't been invalidated, more like recontextualized. She's still the person who did all those things.

Except it wasn't. The half of Sylvanas that said it was literally a crystal in a torture dimension for the past in-lore decade a half and wasn't even aware what the other half of her did until Jailer shoved her back into her body just moments before. The good Sylvanas takes responsibility because of what a paragon of justice she apparently was (which the cinematic focuses on a lot), but she's objectively wrong. And as Uther showed in that very scene, people like them that were split into two by the Frostmourne remain two distinct halfs that can outright split again at will even after they get brought back together.

Because one storyline used a Kerrigan (the actual Kerrigan story itself), that means no other story can use anything similar, nope!

Geez guys.

It's kinda different when it's the same company doing it though, because that's Blizzard eating its own tail and showing (yet again) they can't stop themselves from repeating the same story beats over and over again. Also, it's not just similar, it's an outright rehash.

[Falkeshall]

Well, this character arc certainly removes me from my total immersion in a computer game about time-travelling alien invaders with dragons.

[Mehrunes]

No it does not. This shows BOTH Sylvanas's and the the Ranger General does not like what the Banshee Queen did. The Ranger General wants to take responsibility for the Banshee Queen's actions. None of what you say is true.,

Next time you try to tell someone nothing of what they said is true make sure you're at least staying on topic. Because @Jastall's point was all about the Banshee Queen half and what this grand revelation means to her specifically. And you somehow set out to disprove by talking exclusively about the feelings of the other half of Sylvanas. Simply brilliant.

That's what I find funny too, so many of the people "upset" or think the story/outcome is "trash" don't even understand what's going on. Seems like the Dunning-Kreuger effect in full effect.

And just like @rrayy, you don't even understand what the post they were replying to and which you jumped on the bandwagon to bash was actually about. Funny how you mentioned the Dunning-"Kreuger" effect being in full effect.

[Xykotic]

Decent cutscene, even if the plot is a mess.

[Very rare pepe]

The people commenting on forums are still a minority. It's a louder minority that needs constant, never-ending validation of their negative opinion of Blizzard, though. And thanks to content creators like Bellendular and Asmongold, there's no shortage of fuel for the perpetual outrage machine or content pandered directly to that petty need for validation. We're just seeing the echoes of this extremely cynical self-fulfilling prophecy reverberate infinitely into itself around here.

You are correct about those louder minorities, the majority of disgruntled WoW players have left and rightly so, the game is shocking and blizzard is cancerous at this moment. Outrage youtube popularity is just a by-product of how bad blizzard have become and the low quality of product that is being put out. If blizzard made good quality products and wasn't a shithole company outrage videos would not do well. It's on blizzard, 99.9% of it.

And honestly I wish outrage youtube would go away, it's almost keeping blizzard relevant in some twisted, retarded way and I wish those who are clearly done with the game, give up hope that it will improve and move on. Let those few left who enjoy it, enjoy it and leave it be.

[crusadernero]

Decent cutscene, even if the plot is a mess.

At this point we aint here for the story, but the cool cinematics. The story is all over the place anyway.


By the way, since we get this cinematic we can expect maybe two more? Probably one after raid ends? After that its 8+ months of nothing until a new xpac draws closer. Blizzards way of telling story sure is a slow process.

- - - Updated - - -

You are correct about those louder minorities, the majority of disgruntled WoW players have left and rightly so, the game is shocking and blizzard is cancerous at this moment. Outrage youtube popularity is just a by-product of how bad blizzard have become and the low quality of product that is being put out. If blizzard made good quality products and wasn't a shithole company outrage videos would not do well. It's on blizzard, 99.9% of it.

And honestly I wish outrage youtube would go away, it's almost keeping blizzard relevant in some twisted, retarded way and I wish those who are clearly done with the game, give up hope that it will improve and move on. Let those few left who enjoy it, enjoy it and leave it be.

I dont know.. I've been playing a bit the last couple of weeks and the game seems rather healthy. lots of groups going all the time at any time of day. But thats just my subjective observation, I have ofc no data to back it up.

That said I dont give two shits who quit or not, so theres that.

[Mehrunes]

Yeah, because in the cinematic she was like: "Sup dudes, it wasn't me so chill, can we be friends plox?"
What she did will have lasting consequences - for her and for everyone else - whether it was conscious or not. So no, nobody's throwing 17 years of her arc to the garbage bin. If anything, for her alone, the 17 years will actually mean something now, and it won't feel pretty.

Except the Sylvanas that said it wasn't the Sylvanas that did all the things we've watched her do over the past two decades. It's not her arc, it's the Banshee Queen's. Who has been replaced by a character the story hasn't even hinted at being a thing at all until recently and who no one cared about as an obvious consequence of the above for the past 20 years. She's effectively a third party that tagged along at the last moment and hijacked the whole thing. They could have just as well made Sylvanas merge with Calia and be hijacked by her and it wouldn't be any less of a continuation of the Banshee Queen's arc. Even if the Calia-based persona felt responsible for what Sylvanas has done.

And she's also objectively wrong about that anyway, because good Sylvanas spent the last 15 years or so in the Jailer's jewelry box of soul fragments created by the Frostmourne and hadn't had the slightest input on (or, until the Jailer shoved her back, even awareness of) what the Banshee Queen was doing. So while she may feel responsible because of her just personality, that's not how responsibility actually works.

[Very rare pepe]

I dont know.. I've been playing a bit the last couple of weeks and the game seems rather healthy. lots of groups going all the time at any time of day. But thats just my subjective observation, I have ofc no data to back it up.

That said I dont give two shits who quit or not, so theres that.

I'm talking about specifically from WoW's peak numbers to now, the game is still fine, it will run fine with it's >2 million players easily, especially with cross realm stuff. But compared to it's heights, and whether it's because of MMO's being less popular or blizzards inability to keep producing a consistent product, people have left and don't look like coming back.

[crusadernero]

I'm talking about specifically from WoW's peak numbers to now, the game is still fine, it will run fine with it's >2 million players easily, especially with cross realm stuff. But compared to it's heights, and whether it's because of MMO's being less popular or blizzards inability to keep producing a consistent product, people have left and don't look like coming back.

I mean.. the games height? That was all the way back in Wotlk, we are talking over a decade ago here. ALOT of things has happend since then with Blizzard and especially the gaming world in general. Even how people interact with eachother online is way different now than back then. Just a simple thing as a streamlined game were you could be a character and easily chat with everyone was a huge thing back in the early days of wow. Today? Thats a given in almost any game, and if the game dont have it theres discord and whatnot to communicate on.

Gaming trends also shift. The young gamers of today probably want something different than MMORPGs, especially the ones that require alot of time investment(mostly a given in mmorpgs). We "old" gamers probably prefer it more and all we really have to lean on is wow or a select few other good MMORPGs.

I would bet most people play SoM right now also played when classic relaunched. Many of them again probably played vanilla one way or another. Would be interesting to see numbers on how many new players that plays classic(or retail) compared to us old farts.


If you are to compare wow of today to its heights(classic-->wotlk) theres SO much you gotta take into consideration than just "lol wow suck now, was great before".


Lastly - For all we know younger gamers of today might like retail wow better than classic. Who knows? They gotta cater to a everchanging gaming marked.

[Beet]

The cinematic was made by the art team rather than the cinematics team, hence its different appearance: https://twitter.com/TerranGregory/st...78994391203840

That’s a shame. It’s ugly. Doesn’t fit the rest of WOW at all. It’s HotS basically.

I guess the cinematic team was busy working on stuff for the next expansion that’ll be here in 2023.

[Chelly]

The dialogues in every cinematic is just fucking terrible. It's all just one-liners spoken in "Whispery.... mysterious.... pauses...".
Compare the dialogue between Uther and Sylvanas in this video, to Arthas and Uther in WC3.


The 'reveal' that Sylvanas was split in two, with the bad Banshee part of her soul being in control ever since Wc3, is also absolute garbage. If her Jailer simp Banshee soul was in control since Arthas killed her with Frostmourne - why the fuck did she attempt to kill herself at the end of Wotlk?
Why would the banshee part of her soul get nostalgic when people brought an heirloom back from her home in Ghostlands, causing her to sing?