Sylvanas = Kitty Pride...

[Skytotem]

What the f-

How come she never did it since... forever? Or are they just inventing excuses for more superpowers up the asses of racial leaders? Getting sick of this shit.

It was mentioned in one of the books, the one with the emerald nightmare.

In her dream Varimathras was about to touch her and so she went incorporeal by switching to her banshee state.

[Vokal]

Cool, although I can think of a few points in the story thus far where actually doing that would have saved her a lot of trouble. I've been thinking about how her powers are super vague for a while now. What does she actually get from being the Banshee Queen? All we ever see her do is shoot arrows and occasionally use the banshee's wail or pump up her allies with a song. I've always thought she should have a few more tricks up her sleeve/clawed gauntlet than what we've seen.

Your sig and avatar pics are quite eerie and scary, quite interesting looking though.

[Aquamonkey]

It was mentioned in one of the books, the one with the emerald nightmare.

In her dream Varimathras was about to touch her and so she went incorporeal by switching to her banshee state.

Interesting, but it didn't say anything about a banshee state.

An invisible force akin to all of the Undercity collapsing upon her sent Sylvanas to the floor. She instinctively went from solid to incorporeal, but nothing seemed to happen, for she still felt the harsh collision. Sylvanas briefly lost focus, but the cool, moist stone against her cheek stirred her back to full consciousness.
--Stormrage

I was entertaining the possibility that Loreology was mistaken in his interpretation (it was previously stated that she could go in and out of banshee form), but I guess there is something to her actually turning herself solid to incorporeal.

[Matt0193]

But why? They aren't part of her.

The examples in the replies didn't shed their clothes when they phased through objects.

i rather kill malfurion. slyvanas can stay horde. Ebon blade can take koltira back. useless idiot.

That's a good idea. Kill off the one faction leader who still advocates not killing Horde, despite them still tearing up his forests, killing his people and repeatedly beating his wife while he watches. I mean, at least I can understand the desire to kill Thrall off, he's just so fucking annoying but Malfurion? Even when he was supposed to take center stage his screen time was mostly shared with the Runetotem, minus Raggy HC. Thrall? Solo, center stage every time.

at least they will still be alive if neutral.

Sure, when you provide a good example for said scenario. Jaina going batshit crazy? Okay, I can get behind that. She probably wouldn't die, as Kalec would whisk her away or lock her up in a matrix. Varian? Last expansion, sure. Now... not so much. The only thing I could see him being killed off is as a catalyst for Anduin's growth or as a precursor for additional conflicts. Velen? I'd not mind replacing Our Velen with Alt Velen, at least Alt Velen looks to be somewhat more... present.

Anyone else isn't even notable. Moira? Tyrande? Gelbin or Genn? What would be the point of killing them off when they've done absolutely fuck all in recent years, save for petty scenario stories? It's not like you see them regularly, it's not like they're all up in your face all the time. Not to mention the A Little Patience scenario was fucking awful and didn't reflect Tyrande's character properly either (10000 years, at least, of guerrilla warfare and she's still shit at it).

Who else would you kill off that's affiliated, and a recurring character, with the Alliance? Anduin? I could see that, have him lead the Army of Light as a Guardian of Light (Akin to Paladin's Guardian of Kings) rather than as a Paladin (As it was loosely referred to). I could see Admiral Taylor being killed off, as his opposite Nazgrim was killed off but really, who else is there?

[Haven]

the one faction leader who still advocates not killing Horde

Lol, list me actual racial leaders that are pro-war. It's like, Sylvanas (to a degree), Tyrande (only in retaliation to orcish ravaging) and... that's it. Well, you can count Jaina, but she's not a racial leader per se. We've been playing World of Peace&blowjobcraft for quite a while.

[D-Throes]

how about kill everyone you hate and then you make your own and then will kill them again? ally or hordie? doesnt matter will learn to hate everything then say blizzard has bad story telling in the end will just make love not warcraft and do pet battles for the lulz?
/sarcasm...

[Matt0193]

Lol, list me actual racial leaders that are pro-war. It's like, Sylvanas (to a degree), Tyrande (only in retaliation to orcish ravaging) and... that's it. Well, you can count Jaina, but she's not a racial leader per se. We've been playing World of Peace&blowjobcraft for quite a while.

What I mean is he's the one who still wants to openly work with the Horde, since he's actually wise enough to know that no matter what happens between the two factions, they will need each other in the end. I'd probably say that Gelbin is neutral, though it's not like he has any love for the Orcs after the Second War, same goes for the Dwarves, particularly the Wildhammer who have a grudge against the Dragonmaw after TLHL. The Draenei should hate the Orcs with a passion after the sacking of Shattrath and the events around it, but because they're the holier than thou race they're not allowed to be angry and vengeful. Genn actively argued for the retaking of Gilneas, I believe? So I'd count him in those refusing to work with the Horde, so long as the Forsaken still exist and are affiliated with them I guess.

For the Horde there's a lot more neutrality between the factions. Vol'jin in indebted to the Alliance so it's not like he'd be willing to start a war, same goes for Baine who actively warned Theramore that there was an imminent invasion, so they could evacuate most of the civilians (Which turned out to be a bad idea, considering they were captured). Lor'themar, while probably still pissed at Jaina for doing what she did in Dalaran, was openly negotiating peace with Varian before the hostilities. I'd imagine he'd be willing to re-engage in that with the offer of prisoners still in the Violet Hold being released. That leaves Gallywix and whoever is named as the Orc Racial leader (Let's use Thrall/Saurfang as a placeholder (I can't remember if one has been definitely stated yet, it's late and I'm tired)). Gallywix has been shown to be a money grabbing fuck, so I'd assume he'd take whatever offer was given and go back to his money. For Thrall/Saurfang, both know the value of peace with the Alliance, both having fought alongside the Alliance previously in the Third War and each in their own respective wars.

So only Genn, and his is aimed largely at the Forsaken/Sylvanas. But as I said, I phrased what I meant wrong. It's not like the faction leaders are on talking/friendly terms.

[Kaleredar]

Are you serious? You are aren't you. Ok, anyone who ever does anything in the WoW story does so because Blizzard decide they want them to. There is literally no other cause for any of this. Varian is fond of seafood and cider because Blizzard want him to be, Jaina is dating Kalecgos because Blizzard want her to, Mankrik's wife died because Blizzard wanted her to and Sylvanas now owns the majority of northern EK because Blizzard want her to. Why else do you think any of this is happening?

That doesn't make it "good writing" or make her a "well written" character. In fact it speaks to the exact opposite: that blizzard is unprepared for her to lose because they know so many fanboys would be pissed off. Her attitude is undeserving of a character who has been trashed and brought to her knees so many times by often very insubstantial things. She is not a "morally gray" character in the least. That Fordring and Mograine haven't kicked down the door to Undercity with the rest of the argent crusade and knights of the ebon blade behind them for her head is nothing short Blizzard plot armor.

"That's it"? Is it really? That tiny handful of racial leaders you listed is "it"? Hah! Sure, right let's talk about Mekkatorque for just a second shall we? He was tricked by his friend into nuking his own people and leaving the survivors with no other choice but exile, he sat around doing nothing for years before attempting to take back Gnomeregan but was tricked by his friend for a second time and failed.

Yeah Sylvannas lost her city too, but she didn't have radioactive gas and rabid troggs to blame. It was literally two guys that ousted her. Pff, she even needed the Alliance to take it back. Oh, and you want to talk about being tricked even further? How about good ol' Godfrey?

The only thing Mekkatorque has participated in that could be considered a victory is the Siege of Orgimmar and he still barely did anything. I know blindly swinging your grudge for Sylvanas around is fun and all but try to do your research. I'm not about to sit here and list everything you missed but maybe next time include the fact that Garrosh was losing his fight against Cairne before the latter succumbed to poison and probably would have died there if not for Magatha? That's a good one.

Still not a loss.

If I recall correctly Sylvanas took Silverpine from the Worgen guerillas by kidnapping Lorna Crowley having deduced her father's refusal to allow any harm to come to her from the fact that he hadn't even turned her into a Worgen to prevent undeath like he had everyone else. She used his love for his daughter against him. Success.

Yeah that was at the end after she was crushingly defeated in Gilneas itself. Like, literally, an airship crushed her army.

And then the worgen got shunted of to Darnassus for no reason to become carbon-copy night elves.

She denied Thassarian's imminent victory in Andorhal by raising Alliance dead and using Scourge tactics to force them into retreat. All this while Koltira was trying his best to hand the town to the Alliance on a silver platter. Oh, and that's one borderline treasonous Milquetoast she handily discovered and purged from her forces too. Success.

An example of Deus ex machina nonetheless. The alliance Andorhal are literally a case of "we're winning, we're winning, we're winning... oh, wait, go home, we lost." Just like all her other victories.

Many of her failings in Cataclysm primarily come from the fact that she was unluckily the bad guy in an Alliance starting area. A starting area's purpose being to make the player feel awesome about the race they picked. In every single one of them the enemies are cartoonishly evil and mostly incompetent because they're there to be punching bags for the hero player characters while they're still in their training wheels. We're lucky Sylvanas was able to accomplish what she did there in reducing Gilneas to a wartorn, plague-ridden pile of rubble instead of being made to be even more of a fool to nurse the Worgen player's ego.

But not so much that Blizzard would dare make the forsaken actually lose anything.

Oh, and it's been established that Sylvanas only has a few major, pact-bound Val'kyr (the only ones capable of rezzing her) but they are able to spawn lesser Val'kyr to do the grunt work.

Oh, she only has a LIMITED number of "come back to life for freesies" cards? Oh well that just makes her character all the more fascinating and insightful. Glad to hear her character impact is on par with when you use that +30 lives cheat in Contra on your guy in red pants.

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This gives me shivers.

eah, it's been "obvious" since vanilla, but as other villains rose and fell, she kept balancing on the blade's edge, trolling righteous moralists. She didn't trivialize her race's lore, she gave them an interesting, realistic direction after Arthas's death - after all, they do have to solve the plight of procreation and live for themselves rather some abstract goody-two-shoes ideal.

She has no morals at all. Like, you can't even claim she does.

It's always agitating to see people say "well horde and alliance really share the same amount of bad stuff."

Really? Do they? Plague bombing Southshore and turning the inhabitants into mutants? Plague bombing Gilneas? Rezzing Kel'thuzad's BFF? Yeah that's bad. And that's not even counting Theramore getting blown to shit or all that other stuff.

Oh but I guess Garithos, that one guy from warcraft 3, was kind of mean to Kael'thas once, so it all balances, amiright?

Well, making Hillsbrad Horde was actually balancing the number of zones.

Not from any lore or story way, seeing as Alliance was completely axed from three zones and horde was kicked out of... zero.

And she still has won more for her people than any other racial leader. Lol!

Yes, it's always inspiring to see that a character can have her forces saved out of the blue from nowhere and scrape her way to an undeserved victory. That's a well built, engaging character.

Oh wait no, it's just bland and annoying to see that over and over again.

[Haven]

She has no morals at all. Like, you can't even claim she does.

And that is exactly why she's so refreshing in this land of moralfags. Just single-minded efficiency, no bullshit.

Not from any lore or story way, seeing as Alliance was completely axed from three zones and horde was kicked out of... zero.

Sometimes, one side wins more battles than the other. I know it sounds crazy in a world of eternal standstill, but it happened.

Yes, it's always inspiring to see that a character can have her forces saved out of the blue from nowhere and scrape her way to an undeserved victory. That's a well built, engaging character.

Oh wait no, it's just bland and annoying to see that over and over again.

Royal Apothecary Society has been working on chemical and biological weaponry for years since vanilla. They've started to apply the results in Wrath and Cataclysm, it's just research that paid off. Other races were just too stupid to research advanced weaponry and apply it. Or do you call Forsaken victories "undeserved" (which is ridiculous in itself) because they're eeeeviiiiilllll?

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I would rather have alliance heroes die as alliance than go neutral.

Amen brotha.

[Deleted]

That doesn't make it "good writing" or make her a "well written" character. In fact it speaks to the exact opposite: that blizzard is unprepared for her to lose because they know so many fanboys would be pissed off. Her attitude is undeserving of a character who has been trashed and brought to her knees so many times by often very insubstantial things. She is not a "morally gray" character in the least. That Fordring and Mograine haven't kicked down the door to Undercity with the rest of the argent crusade and knights of the ebon blade behind them for her head is nothing short Blizzard plot armor.



Yeah Sylvannas lost her city too, but she didn't have radioactive gas and rabid troggs to blame. It was literally two guys that ousted her. Pff, she even needed the Alliance to take it back. Oh, and you want to talk about being tricked even further? How about good ol' Godfrey?



Still not a loss.



Yeah that was at the end after she was crushingly defeated in Gilneas itself. Like, literally, an airship crushed her army.

And then the worgen got shunted of to Darnassus for no reason to become carbon-copy night elves.



An example of Deus ex machina nonetheless. The alliance Andorhal are literally a case of "we're winning, we're winning, we're winning... oh, wait, go home, we lost." Just like all her other victories.



But not so much that Blizzard would dare make the forsaken actually lose anything.



Oh, she only has a LIMITED number of "come back to life for freesies" cards? Oh well that just makes her character all the more fascinating and insightful. Glad to hear her character impact is on par with when you use that +30 lives cheat in Contra on your guy in red pants.

Conjecture. Assuming that anything Sylvanas accomplishes in the story is simply Blizzard throwing her a bone in fear of angering her fans is a pretty dangerous way to start thinking. Why don't they just let the players write the story while they're at it? Also, I'm fairly certain Fordring and Mograine don't want to jump the gun, kick her door down and risk making an enemy of the entire Horde in the process (I don't believe the other leaders would just sit back and be all "lol, serves you right" unless she did something really bad). They might think differently but neither of them are Azeroth's undead police.

I'm not trying to convince you that Sylvanas is better or more competent than Mekkatorque (although being tricked by two different people and twice by the same person are not the same thing). My point was that every character you listed does not compare so favourably to her after all. They've either suffered plenty of defeats of their own or only have such a "clean" record because they've never even tried to attempt anything they could lose. Turns out if you do nothing you've no chance of failing while actually being active (and conquering the shit out of the majority of Lordaeron) is a risk. Also, she wasn't kicked out of the Undercity by "literally two guys". It was a full scale rebellion of Forsaken who bought into Varimathras's bullshit. When the Horde and Alliance came back to the Undercity to take he and Putress out there was a small army waiting for them hence why it was called "the battle for the Undercity".

Have you never heard of a "come from behind" victory? They're actually quite common. Hardly examples of Deus ex Machina.

Way to over-simplify things. The Val'kyr are a big part of Sylvanas and the Forsaken's story now. A race of beings who's purpose it is to raise the dead are pact-bound to serve and protect her. Obviously they're going to try and keep her standing. You can dumb that down into a "lives system" if you like but this is a fantasy game. People come back to life all the time, the only difference is Sylvanas has an actual explanation for it. The fact that the leader of the biggest faction of undead in the game and the only practitioner of necromancy left on the planet has a few tricks up her sleeve to cheat death a limited number of times doesn't make her a bad character. It's this wonderful little thing called theming.

[Deleted]

Yey!. For the Banshee queen. Now how exactly does she not rot away like the rest of the Forsaken? Ithink we'd all prefer to see her putrify a bit if only to stop the creepy necrophilic fan art and teenage girls fangirling hard over her cause she's dark and moody. Even if she isn't a very well written character. :P

[Mrbleedinggums]

That doesn't make it "good writing" or make her a "well written" character. In fact it speaks to the exact opposite: that blizzard is unprepared for her to lose because they know so many fanboys would be pissed off. Her attitude is undeserving of a character who has been trashed and brought to her knees so many times by often very insubstantial things. She is not a "morally gray" character in the least. That Fordring and Mograine haven't kicked down the door to Undercity with the rest of the argent crusade and knights of the ebon blade behind them for her head is nothing short Blizzard plot armor.



Yeah Sylvannas lost her city too, but she didn't have radioactive gas and rabid troggs to blame. It was literally two guys that ousted her. Pff, she even needed the Alliance to take it back. Oh, and you want to talk about being tricked even further? How about good ol' Godfrey?



Still not a loss.



Yeah that was at the end after she was crushingly defeated in Gilneas itself. Like, literally, an airship crushed her army.

And then the worgen got shunted of to Darnassus for no reason to become carbon-copy night elves.



An example of Deus ex machina nonetheless. The alliance Andorhal are literally a case of "we're winning, we're winning, we're winning... oh, wait, go home, we lost." Just like all her other victories.



But not so much that Blizzard would dare make the forsaken actually lose anything.



Oh, she only has a LIMITED number of "come back to life for freesies" cards? Oh well that just makes her character all the more fascinating and insightful. Glad to hear her character impact is on par with when you use that +30 lives cheat in Contra on your guy in red pants.

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She has no morals at all. Like, you can't even claim she does.

It's always agitating to see people say "well horde and alliance really share the same amount of bad stuff."

Really? Do they? Plague bombing Southshore and turning the inhabitants into mutants? Plague bombing Gilneas? Rezzing Kel'thuzad's BFF? Yeah that's bad. And that's not even counting Theramore getting blown to shit or all that other stuff.

Oh but I guess Garithos, that one guy from warcraft 3, was kind of mean to Kael'thas once, so it all balances, amiright?



Not from any lore or story way, seeing as Alliance was completely axed from three zones and horde was kicked out of... zero.



Yes, it's always inspiring to see that a character can have her forces saved out of the blue from nowhere and scrape her way to an undeserved victory. That's a well built, engaging character.

Oh wait no, it's just bland and annoying to see that over and over again.

Not going to bother trying to debate the entire thing at this time, but she never needed the Alliance's help during the Undercity event, if you even bothered to do the Alliance questline, Varian wanted to kill them all and so he led a siege via the sewer tunnels. In the Horde quest line, after we finish killing Varimathras they even say (paraphrase) "Now, time to find Godfrey." If I wasn't looking out for infractions for a while, I'd make some snide comments about the way you like to twist your logic.

[Statix]

Finally, someone who used 'literally' right.

You said it.

Pretty cool ability.

[Zantos]

I really hope they don't kill her off. I mean, come on. That type of story angle is so over used that it's not even funny. A single minded undead with no morals turns evil and we have to kill them? Come on! Lets ignore the fact that the vast majority of the undead lore wise think exactly like her aside from the newly freed death knights. The original intro for the forsaken intro even states that they enter an alliance with the horde without harboring any true feelings of allegiance to their new allies. I would just give up on wow lore all together if they were to suddenly make the Sylvanas an enemy and still allow us to play forsaken characters or create new ones. The forsaken have a huge amount of loyalty for their leader and I do not see them as a whole suddenly turning against her at any point. After all, she is the one who broke the lich kings grasp over them and later gave new forsaken the option of following her or doing what ever else they willed. I know there is a lot of hate for her, but honestly I like her single minded no mercy tactics. We have too much of that in the horde, and nothing ever gets done because of it. Garrosh had the right idea, but went a bit too far. Sylvanas was the only one who I saw actually talk in a disrespectful tone and manor to Garrosh when everyone else just rolled over.

I would like to see her use her abilities a bit more. I don't think we see enough of the racial leaders doing anything really. The blood elf leader did a few things recently, but not much. Same as the others. They didn't even lend their aid for the most part in the SoO raid.

[Traveler Voltin]

The examples in the replies didn't shed their clothes when they phased through objects.



That's a good idea. Kill off the one faction leader who still advocates not killing Horde, despite them still tearing up his forests, killing his people and repeatedly beating his wife while he watches. I mean, at least I can understand the desire to kill Thrall off, he's just so fucking annoying but Malfurion? Even when he was supposed to take center stage his screen time was mostly shared with the Runetotem, minus Raggy HC. Thrall? Solo, center stage every time.



Sure, when you provide a good example for said scenario. Jaina going batshit crazy? Okay, I can get behind that. She probably wouldn't die, as Kalec would whisk her away or lock her up in a matrix. Varian? Last expansion, sure. Now... not so much. The only thing I could see him being killed off is as a catalyst for Anduin's growth or as a precursor for additional conflicts. Velen? I'd not mind replacing Our Velen with Alt Velen, at least Alt Velen looks to be somewhat more... present.

Anyone else isn't even notable. Moira? Tyrande? Gelbin or Genn? What would be the point of killing them off when they've done absolutely fuck all in recent years, save for petty scenario stories? It's not like you see them regularly, it's not like they're all up in your face all the time. Not to mention the A Little Patience scenario was fucking awful and didn't reflect Tyrande's character properly either (10000 years, at least, of guerrilla warfare and she's still shit at it).

Who else would you kill off that's affiliated, and a recurring character, with the Alliance? Anduin? I could see that, have him lead the Army of Light as a Guardian of Light (Akin to Paladin's Guardian of Kings) rather than as a Paladin (As it was loosely referred to). I could see Admiral Taylor being killed off, as his opposite Nazgrim was killed off but really, who else is there?

Malfurion and varian have made the night elves look like shit. Mal refused to let tyrande counter attack against the horde when she was in full right too. he needs to die. He is a bad husband and night elf. he should die or go back to playing archdruid and leave Tyrande alone.

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have we ever seen in game sylvanas use her charm spell from WC3?