New Interview: Sylvanas ordered the Wrathgate?

[McFuu]

Sylvanas being involved in Wrathgate would be completely out of character, especially considering she basically killed her self post Arthas being dead. She had nothing to live for. Why would she have machinations for taking more power then immediately lose it 30 seconds later after a major milestone in her "unlife" is reached.

[Deleted]

If you quest for the Forsaken, from Vanilla up to Wrathgate, you'd know that the Wrathgate was planned exactly the way it happened. The Hand of Vengeance Quests alone were done in plain sight, the Blight tested extensively upon the living and perfected for undead only at the very last moment. Seriously, Sylvanas even oversaw the tests of the new Plague against the living and what it does herself in Rise of the Lich King. Otherwise we've had the tests performed in Undercity for all of WoW's lifetime, just as in Tarren Mill and several other places. Tests against living people. Yes, they used Alliance test subjects, but it was clear that this New Plague was against the living just as much as against the undead. It was planned to be deployed at the Wrathgate, and it was known it would be. The Forsaken talk about little else during the whole questline in Northrend.
So why anyone would think that the Wrathgate was an accident is completely beyond me and kind of always was. Not even Thrall believed Sylvanas in this, which is why he sent his Korkron afterwards, even though Varimathras was gone.

[Skytotem]

I dunno, man. It seems like Blizzard's writers are just unable to keep the facts straight anymore. They really ought to hire someone whose job is literally to "proof" all writing, check the Lore for inconsistencies. It seems like they're all just "winging it" now.

They think inconsistencies are clever writing

[Mehrunes]

The funny thing is they actually have people for that. They said so just a few months ago. Those people are just doing a piss-poor job it seems.

Edit: Found the interview where they said it:

https://www.sciencealert.com/world-o...terview-part-2

Ahahaha. Holy fucking shit, that must be the easiest job on the planet. An endless lunch break with no work ever being done.

Alternatively, they are worked to the bone and that's why they let things like these slip. Given the significance of some of the things that would slip (following this hypothetical), one can then wonder at the scope of the things that they actually do fix for the writers. That's a really scary thought.

Sylvanas obviously wants to kill the LK no matter the cost, Putress even says: "This is the hour of the Forsaken" (Kinda weird sentence for a traitor).

Not even remotely weird. Many traitors present the current ruling class as the true traitors and them as true X. The ruler doesn't wage holy war on infidels? He's not a true follower of our faith, we are! The ruler doesn't hate Germans enough? We're the true anti-Germans, death to the traitorous German sympathizer! Basic populism.

[Minikin]

Sylvanas definitely did some lying about what happened, and 100% lied to her Warchief to escape persecution, but it's left vague as to how much she may have been involved with orchestrating events or allowing them to happen.

i wonder.

if at any cost includes "killing Dranosh, so be it" then this would be quite a BIG thing. More i read into this more of that rumor back in Cata that it was actually sylvanas on the chopping block not garrosh, seems real.
@Mehrunes

you seem well versed with this stuff. have you come across that rumor or w.e the hell it is? is it real? the garrosh sylvanas thing in cata

[Aeula]

God, the lore and story of Warcraft just gets worse and worse every expansion and patch.

The sad part is, they think the anger people have about it is directed at the characters instead of Blizzard’s writing.

[Bathory]

Sounds more like the creation of the plague that was designed to kill both living/scourge.

I suppose one could say she may have known about the Wrathgate but not the full lengths Putress and Varimathras were going to go with the coup. Maybe that if she ever got Arthas in her sights she'd enact her vengeance, without caring about horde/alliance plans or causalities. The Wrathgate where both sides were massing their forces to face down Arthas being the opportunity.


Too many maybes in there for my taste though..

[Mehrunes]

If you quest for the Forsaken, from Vanilla up to Wrathgate, you'd know that the Wrathgate was planned exactly the way it happened. The Hand of Vengeance Quests alone were done in plain sight, the Blight tested extensively upon the living and perfected for undead only at the very last moment. Seriously, Sylvanas even oversaw the tests of the new Plague against the living and what it does herself in Rise of the Lich King. Otherwise we've had the tests performed in Undercity for all of WoW's lifetime, just as in Tarren Mill and several other places. Tests against living people. Yes, they used Alliance test subjects, but it was clear that this New Plague was against the living just as much as against the undead. It was planned to be deployed at the Wrathgate, and it was known it would be. The Forsaken talk about little else during the whole questline in Northrend.
So why anyone would think that the Wrathgate was an accident is completely beyond me and kind of always was. Not even Thrall believed Sylvanas in this, which is why he sent his Korkron afterwards, even though Varimathras was gone.

You mean the few Forsaken that pretend they misspoke or that nothing ever happened after they say those things?

[KrakHed]

Sounds more like the creation of the plague that was designed to kill both living/scourge.

I suppose one could say she may have known about the Wrathgate but not the full lengths Putress and Varimathras were going to go with the coup. Maybe that if she ever got Arthas in her sights she'd enact her vengeance, without caring about horde/alliance plans or causalities. The Wrathgate where both sides were massing their forces to face down Arthas being the opportunity.


Too many maybes in there for my taste though..

It'd be more inconvenient for Sylvanas if there wasn't a convenient coup. She'd be forced to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions, Putress would probably be called in for questioning, and so on.

The coup 100% worked out in Sylvanas's favor. She could just say the rebels did it all, and it would sound perfectly believable. Basic 2D chess.

[Topornic]

You know, Blizzard excused bugs in BfA with that the code is over a decade old and it's hard to foresee everything when adding new things.

I wonder if they are going to use the same excuse with lore and writing.

[Scrysis]

I think Chronicles Volume 3 implied Sylvanas may have known more about the Wrathgate than she let on, and it wouldn't be a retcon if Sylvanas threw Varimathras and Putress to the wolves to exonerate herself after the plan.

This makes perfect sense, especially if she knew that Varimathras/Putress was planning to turn on her in advance. She gets a strike on her most hated enemy (and we've seen previously that she she doesn't care who she tramples on for her goals), and then she gets both sides to remove a personal threat while ostensibly keeping herself clean. She might have even manipulated him to do it, or even ordered him to do it. We just don't know.

I mean, ever since vanilla, she's given direct orders to the Royal Apothecary society to make blight. Those weren't Putress' or Varimathras' orders; those were her orders. You're not going to use blight to plant tulips and daisies; blight is used to kill (and potentially raise the dead). Why is everyone surprised it was used to murder things?

[Super Dickmann]

It's likely they're misspeaking, and mean that Sylvanas was aware of the Blight and ordered its creation, which is true, not that she ordered the attack.

On the extreme off-chance that I'm wrong, this is approaching comedy now.

Also, on a more interesting note than this shambles:

"She's an interesting character and she's a character beloved not just by our playerbase but by our developerbase as well," Afrasiabi said. "Like I said, I've been personally working on her since 2006, making stories for her; I definitely have a connection with her in a lot of different ways, and her just ending up as a raid boss feels like a bit of a letdown to me.

"Sylvanas' destiny is to be found out and discussed by the player base, but it would be dismissive to think she'll just go down as another raid boss, because she's a little bit more than that.

"Does that mean you will not fight her?" he added. "Not necessarily true either. The reality is you can fight her every day of the week in Grommash Hold, in a raid, right now. But I do think there's a lot more to Sylvanas' story that hasn't been told yet."

[Kralljin]

Not even remotely weird. Many traitors present the current ruling class as the true traitors and them as true X. The ruler doesn't wage holy war on infidels? He's not a true follower of our faith, we are! The ruler doesn't hate Germans enough? We're the true anti-Germans, death to the traitorous German sympathizer! Basic populism.

Problem is that besides Apothecaries, there were no other Forsaken in UC anymore.

So yeah, even for populism, seeing all of your people as traitors goes a little too far.

[KrakHed]

It's likely they're misspeaking, and mean that Sylvanas was aware of the Blight and ordered its creation, which is true, not that she ordered the attack.

On the extreme off-chance that I'm wrong, this is approaching comedy now.

Is it? We see that Sylvanas has no moral compunctions against Blighting her own troops, and she has a repeated pattern of lying to everyone.

Would it be out of character for her to have set it up, and scapegoat those she already knew were going to betray her at the same time?

[Deleted]

You mean the few Forsaken that pretend they misspoke or that nothing ever happened after they say those things?

Well, there was one quest in Vanilla that made me doubt Sylvanas knew the whole range of Varimathras's scheme and that was when one of the questgivers in Tarren Mill told you, you didn't need to 'bother' Sylvanas with all this, she'd rather tell Varimathras, who is overseeing this particular testing. I can't find the quote anywhere anymore, I think it was some flavor text after you handed in the quest.
But later it was shown that all experiments were approved by Sylvanas herself and the Hand of Vengeance line was so obvious that even while doing it I thought to myself 'Really, the other Horde members don't see anything even... slightly worrying in this? Okeeeey...' ^^ And Agmar, who was supposed to oversee the whole thing and make sure everything was alright was so preoccupied with checking private mail for anything 'treacherous' and yelling how great he was and that his eyes are upon you, that he didn't have the slightest clue about what was going on.
I think everyone just thought.. well, she's only testing this on enemies, so we don't care. And didn't think it through.
And then Varimathras provided her with the perfect scapegoat: himself. Actually... thinking she orchestrated it all (even the coup) makes me want it to be that way, because it seems so ingenious, that I want someone on Azeroth to be this smart for a change.

[Broken Fox]

Is it? We see that Sylvanas has no moral compunctions against Blighting her own troops, and she has a repeated pattern of lying to everyone.

Would it be out of character for her to have set it up, and scapegoat those she already knew were going to betray her at the same time?

El Trollo did it

[ello]

Yeah, this was either a misquote or he is taking about the creation of the blight itself. Otherwise it would be a fairly major retcon of wrath and the cata intro

Unbeknownst to Sylvanas, Putress and his demonic ally, Varimathras, had taken control of the Undercity. As a result, the Forsaken were wrongly blamed for the traitor's atrocities.

CLOWN FIESTA

[Zephre]

Sylvanas knew about the plague that was used at the wrathgate as she was monitoring it's creation, she didn't order it's use though and I believe that's from rise of the lich king novel. I really don't like the idea of them retconning novels and in game lore just to push her further into the role of future raid boss, Blizzard have often forgotten their own lore numerous times in the past and have had to be corrected, just pester them on twitter or something.

[Super Dickmann]

Is it? We see that Sylvanas has no moral compunctions against Blighting her own troops, and she has a repeated pattern of lying to everyone.

Would it be out of character for her to have set it up, and scapegoat those she already knew were going to betray her at the same time?

Yes, because if she knew they were working against her she would've pulled a night of the long knives. That the coup was so developed that it was able to oust her from her own city and seize control means she can't have been aware of it.

Chronicle's statement refers to how the creation of the Blight/New Plague was on Sylvanas's order, something we know since Vanilla, but was obscured from the rest of the Horde. The closest I can come to not dismissing this out of hand as a misstatement is if the implication is that she was willfully negligent and allowed the Forsaken in Dragonblight enough autonomy to allow this to happen, but even that's stretching it. She simply has nothing to gain from this entire chain of events and a lot to lose. This on top of the fact that we've been outright told that the Forsaken were wrongly blamed for this.

[Synros]

He probably misspoke but it's funny how they don't know their lore

And by funny i mean sad

I can guaranteed someone who's been writing Sylvanas for the last 12 years, knows more about her character and the lore than you do...