If shadowlands draw souls from the entire universe, what did Sylvanas even accomplish

[Aydinx2]

It made a big difference.

The more experiences a soul has in their life, the more anima their soul contains.
Night Elves are immortal (unless killed), and many have lived for hundreds of lifetimes.

According to a Quora answer, Sylvanas killed between 15–20,000 Night Elves. According to the Wiki most Night Elves live around several thousand years.
So lets be fair and assume she killed the lower end of that amount, 15,000 Night elves. And lets assume they all died at a pretty young age, around 1500.

15,000 * 1500 = 22,500,000.
That is how many years of life experience Sylvanas sent into the Maw. And that's when I'm lowballing the number. Using more accurate numbers (like averages instead of the lower ends) the amount increases exponentially.

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a) the Jailer had agents like Sylvanas on most planets with intelligent life and they also started to feed souls to the Maw one way or another.
b) As Azeroth seems to be the prime target of Zovaal perhaps Azerothian souls are just worth 10000x what anyone else is worth.

Option a isn't needed, thanks to Sargeras. Either:
1. Sargeras killed entire planets worth of souls and the Jailer got them
2. The souls killed by Sargeras got obliterated (because of Fel) and the Jailer never got them, meaning Sylvanas' work on Azeroth is worth every soul

For option b, yes they are worth more actually. Specifically Night Elf souls.
How much Anima a soul has is determined by the amount of experiences in life a soul accumulates. The longer you live the more Anima you have.
And Night Elves can live for multiple thousands of years.

[Myradin]

It made a big difference.

The more experiences a soul has in their life, the more anima their soul contains.
Night Elves are immortal (unless killed), and many have lived for hundreds of lifetimes.

According to a Quora answer, Sylvanas killed between 15–20,000 Night Elves. According to the Wiki most Night Elves live around several thousand years.
So lets be fair and assume she killed the lower end of that amount, 15,000 Night elves. And lets assume they all died at a pretty young age, around 1500.

15,000 * 1500 = 22,500,000.
That is how many years of life experience Sylvanas sent into the Maw. And that's when I'm lowballing the number. Using more accurate numbers (like averages instead of the lower ends) the amount increases exponentially.

Yes, the jailor does get more bang for their buck, but they're still a drop in the ocean.

163,898 people die a day on earth, assuming the average life expectancy is 40 (which is really low considering there are plenty of long lived species in warcraft) that means every day a planet like earth would generate 6,555,920 years worth of anima. Which means that a single planet could put out comparable jailer juice every 4 days.

Now earth obviously has a big population, but you'd have to assume a rather low global population to not make just waiting a few days for multiple worlds to produce a similar number of deaths. Even if we assume the average planet has 1/100th the population day earth, we'd have to assume there are extremely few planets in the cosmos for them to not easily produce as much jailer juice. As even 100 planets would then produce anima on part with teldrassil every 4 days.

This isn't counting all the animals which also seem to go to the shadowlands.

Then you also have multiple universes feeding the shadowlands and are we to assume the sylvanus of every timeline also destroyed teldrassil?

Meanwhile the arbiter's minions are doing nothing anyway, making spiking your anima supply kind of pointles when you can just wait till they wither and die.

[Feanoro]

As has been so often the case through the dumpster fires of BfA and SL, this thread thinks the story points through far more than the writers did.

[Daronokk]

But all this at large, must just be a drop in the Ocean compared to the rest of the universe? Billions of worlds, billions of wars, billions of deaths. Then you have Teldrassil that was just maybe a hundred thousand?

I don't think it would have made a difference

Don't try to apply logic to Danuser's WoW, it's a clusterfuck. We've arrived at the point that we're getting retcons within a single expansion.

[Jester Joe]

Yes, the jailor does get more bang for their buck, but they're still a drop in the ocean.

163,898 people die a day on earth, assuming the average life expectancy is 40 (which is really low considering there are plenty of long lived species in warcraft) that means every day a planet like earth would generate 6,555,920 years worth of anima. Which means that a single planet could put out comparable jailer juice every 4 days.

Now earth obviously has a big population, but you'd have to assume a rather low global population to not make just waiting a few days for multiple worlds to produce a similar number of deaths. Even if we assume the average planet has 1/100th the population day earth, we'd have to assume there are extremely few planets in the cosmos for them to not easily produce as much jailer juice. As even 100 planets would then produce anima on part with teldrassil every 4 days.

This isn't counting all the animals which also seem to go to the shadowlands.

Then you also have multiple universes feeding the shadowlands and are we to assume the sylvanus of every timeline also destroyed teldrassil?

Meanwhile the arbiter's minions are doing nothing anyway, making spiking your anima supply kind of pointles when you can just wait till they wither and die.

Anima isn't just based on lifespan though. Experience, deeds, and actions is what makes it up.

If a cheese vendor dies and all they did was sell cheese their entire life, they're basically worthless. And it's fair enough to say it's far more likely that a human in WoW could have lived their entire life doing nothing of note, compared to the average Night Elf and what their culture has gone through with their lifespan.

I haven't seen anything to say animals go to the shadowlands though?

[Myradin]

Anima isn't just based on lifespan though. Experience, deeds, and actions is what makes it up.

If a cheese vendor dies and all they did was sell cheese their entire life, they're basically worthless. And it's fair enough to say it's far more likely that a human in WoW could have lived their entire life doing nothing of note, compared to the average Night Elf and what their culture has gone through with their lifespan.

The life of an average NE probably isn't more notable than your average human. Yes they survived the planet breaking, but beyond being there they likely did nothing of note. The night elves have plenty of civilians in villages who just do humble things like run inns and make cheese.

The night elves as a whole haven't been terribly active between the war of the ancients and Wow, with the exception of silithus. And even if their warriors were it doesn't mean their citizenry was.

I haven't seen anything to say animals go to the shadowlands though?

Whats the point of the animals in the shadowlands then? Most SL natives serve a purpose.

[Jester Joe]

The life of an average NE probably isn't more notable than your average human. Yes they survived the planet breaking, but beyond being there they likely did nothing of note. The night elves have plenty of civilians in villages who just do humble things like run inns and make cheese.

Even if they live the same exact type of life, they still do it for thousands of years longer. That being said, the experience part still plays into that. Unless I'm mistaken, anima is from the strength of your soul on death. Surviving plenty of horrific events would lead to a stronger soul from that.

Whats the point of the animals in the shadowlands then? Most SL natives serve a purpose.

They're native to the Shadowlands though, at least from what's presented. And some do have a purpose, like the grom are used to craft in Ardenweald when they're not insane.

[Aydinx2]

Yes, the jailor does get more bang for their buck, but they're still a drop in the ocean.

163,898 people die a day on earth, assuming the average life expectancy is 40 (which is really low considering there are plenty of long lived species in warcraft) that means every day a planet like earth would generate 6,555,920 years worth of anima. Which means that a single planet could put out comparable jailer juice every 4 days.

Why are you using real life data? Stop that.[/QUOTE]

[Nathreim]

The thing is the Jailer was inevitably going to break out with or without her thats what makes the last two expansions hurt so much. Everything was pointless trashing the Horde and Sylvanas was unnecessary.

[oplawlz]

As has been so often the case through the dumpster fires of BfA and SL, this thread thinks the story points through far more than the writers did.

Man that's generous, the writing has been terrible since BC, with a few exceptions which I assume came from people that have long since left the company. I mean space goats, right?

[Feanoro]

Man that's generous, the writing has been terrible since BC, with a few exceptions which I assume came from people that have long since left the company. I mean space goats, right?

It's gotten a lot worse lately.

[Giannis-GR]

One of the biggest plotholes, as many have said.

A painfully obvious one. A childish error in calculation. All sacrificed for "The Rule of Cool".

And yet people are still going to excuse this "Eh, no, Danuser is correct, because even if we have the entire Reality, the Great Dark Beyond, consisting of millions/billions of planets, the night elf lives are worth X*Ψsquared because of Azeroth/Years_lived, so yes Danuser is correct and you are just whiners who just watch and parrot youtubers and you know nothing about the lore".....

Or they'll say "Oh, again these people do not know the lore, obviously our Universe/Multiverse has 5-10 planets not millions/billions"

[Syegfryed]

Anima isn't just based on lifespan though. Experience, deeds, and actions is what makes it up.

If a cheese vendor dies and all they did was sell cheese their entire life, they're basically worthless. And it's fair enough to say it's far more likely that a human in WoW could have lived their entire life doing nothing of note, compared to the average Night Elf and what their culture has gone through with their lifespan.

I haven't seen anything to say animals go to the shadowlands though?

what most night elves did anyway, sleep or do nothing for 10.000 years, even so, they said children die, so, not much lifespan.

In truth, this doesn't make any sense, the draenei that died from outland would make much more juice than one tree, this shenanigans of "experiences actions blblaba" is a bad explanation, many worlds, much more juice

[Feanoro]

what most night elves did anyway, sleep or do nothing for 10.000 years

And orcs are nothing but mindless killing machines. Generalizations suck, huh?

[Asrialol]

I think you're right. Surely what she did would be a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of souls constantly flooding in? The problem is Danuser and his fellow writers aren't very good at writing anything that makes sense.

Danuser mentioned in the first reply.

[Feanoro]

"you are just whiners who just watch and parrot youtubers and you know nothing about the lore"

Yeah, that's been a real popular line lately among the Blizzard Defense Force. Somehow though they never get vacations for attacking and insulting everyone, with no actual substance to their posts beyond the written equivalent of blowing a raspberry.

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Danuser mentioned in the first reply.

And? Why are you so invested in defending him and denying that the lead writer has any responsibility?

[Jastall]

It's gotten a lot worse lately.

I dunno, we still haven't reached TBC, WoD and BFA levels of terrible. Most of the bad stuff in Shadowlands is limited to said Shadowlands and we'll happily be able to ignore it afterwards. It destroyed Sylvanas's character forever but at this point it's more like torpedoing an already sinking ship anyway since BFA did a lot of damage itself, while TBC destroyed no less than 3 characters, WoD was just as nonsensical but also was even more irrelevant and had the "one Legion" nonsense, and BFA was BFA.

You could have similar conversations to the current one about every expansion TBH. Warcraft has never made much sense. Why the fuck is there breathable air on Argus and why can we even understand fel Draenei that have been stuck there for 25 000 years, for starters, and that's just the point of the tip of the iceberg of just Legion. Ultimately what's more relevant to me is the damage done to characters or the setting as a whole rather than what is, from a Doylist point of view, a small corner of it in the form of the Shadowlands.

[Mehrunes]

Oh but Metzen is with his whole 1 Legion for all timelines.... come up with some new material if all you can do is somehow act like it's a Danuser exclusive thing and not a WoW exclusive thing. They LOVE to throw infinity around a lot and then not think of the consequences and it has been a thing for a VERY long time in the game.

As is the case with Old God's deaths causing the Cataclysm, this one is Afrasiabi. It's funny that your attempts at deflecting the criticism away from Danuser with your "akshually Metzen was just as bad if not worse, so leave Britney Danuser alone" repeatedly end up with your chosen examples to support this hot take (that doesn't vindicate Danuser anyway) exposing the fact that you don't have a clue about what you're talking about.

[Feanoro]

@Jastall Since we are forced to call it canon, SL has:

Completely destroyed WC3. There are threads that go into more detail, but the new crap effectively means WC3 was all the Janitor's pawns fighting each other for no real reason.

Completely destroyed characters:
- Sylvanas
- Uther (lol at him playing therapist)
- Kel'Thuzad
- The Lich King, and I mean the office rather than a specific holder of the title, if that makes sense. They'll trash Arthas if they show him.

Completely destroyed concepts and settings:
- Elune is no longer the sole Warcraft deity, she's vaguely defined as sister to an Eternal. She's made into a moron who condemned her chosen people to WoW hell and effectively made her high priestess just accept the near genocide of her people.
- The Scourge is rendered just a cheap copy of Maldraxus.
- Kil'jaeden wasn't a master necromancer who created the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne, he was just a thief who nicked them.
- The Titans are made into cheap copies of the First Ones, with wildly contradicting statements as to where they compare with the Eternals
- The Emerald Dream is akshually a copy of Ardenweald
- Any and all beliefs about the afterlife held by the peoples of Azeroth are completely wrong

And these are just the offenses off the top of my head. I'd say SL easily joins the club you listed, and takes the new worst in sheer wrecking ball damage done to the overall setting.

[Jambear]

Hasn’t it been stated before that the Legion has destroyed many worlds already and that life is rare in the universe? Also the void has corrupted a lot of planets. There might not be that many planets full of life like Azeroth left in the universe