Unfortunate Implications with Sylvanas

[Skytotem]

I get some people enjoy playing the villain, and that's fine, but I think Blizz has dug themselves into a hole with Sylvanas, where if they kill her or have her go off and be villainous, it makes everyone look stupid for ever having trusted her or worked with the Forsaken...

And if they DON'T they made the paranoid orwellian dictator the -right- choice over the folks that want peace / any kind of moral code.

Worse yet, there are folks who don't see Sylv as villainous despite the stuff she's done in the past, all cause it was done to 'the enemy', and citing WoW not having real world war-laws, when... even by using WOW's cultures Sylv and the Forsaken are considered sadistic and unrepentant about the harm they cause (which is a shame because actual pragmatism would be fun, but we haven't seen that, just a lot of card-carrying villainy)

[Kumorii]

They won't kill her or let her become a villain.... she will be redeemed.

[Super Dickmann]

The notion that a war game based solely around improving your ability to kill things in interesting ways alongside and against other players for fun should somehow be the vehicle of a genuine message about peace and understanding are why we're in this ditch in the first place.

[Sorrowseer]

Well have a good think here, are there any good forsaken? Like ones that make the world a better place?Or are they all just disgusting corpses doomed to be a carrion race and abominations?

[PuppetShowJustice]

I don't see how she could possibly redeem herself. Although Blizzard clearly doesn't care to actually justify themselves since Grommash declared Draenor free from the threat of himself at the end of WoD and that went over okay.

Even if she does something super heroic there is no way the Night Elves would ever accept a situation where they stop calling for her head now.

[Skytotem]

They won't kill her or let her become a villain.... she will be redeemed.

That's another problem, if they Kerridan her it's just another repeated plot, and frankly it'll feel unbelievable because to be redeemed you have to... WANT to be better.

Sylvanas doesn't think she's done anything wrong, she isn't sad or conflicted about Burning Teldrassil, she hasn't ever said "Yes I have to do this thing for the Horde, this thing is bad but we have to do it still" she's just gone "This is necessary and because it's necessary it's right and anyone who doesn't agree is stupid or cowardly."

[Briselody]

Well have a good think here, are there any good forsaken? Like ones that make the world a better place?Or are they all just disgusting corpses doomed to be a carrion race and abominations?

Voss has her good moments.

And Faol seems like the decent sort, if you can forgive him for being involved in the whole Calia thing.

OT: They're absolutely going to Kerrigan her. She'll do something noble and heroic and fade off into the ether, and everyone will talk about what a complicated and layered person she was. Meanwhile Anduin will call an end to the war while the night elves and Gilneans will justifiably insist on holding the rest of the Horde accountable too, which Blizzard will use to excuse the "faction tension" nonsense for a few more expansions until the MoP plot comes back around on the cycle and Baine decides to kill all dwarves or something.

[Irian]

To some degree I agree, but I don't think they're going to kill her off as a villain. They keep hyping up this "oooOOooo PlOt TwIsT" like we're going to be surprised when they take the Garrosh story and flip it around.

That being said it does make me really sad that the Forsaken are being painted as cartoon villains rather than the actually really complicated and almost pitiable group they started as. I started out as an undead because I loved the idea of a "free" undead trying to find her place in the world as an abomination and outcast. Forsaken do bad things, sure, Cataclysm existed after all...but behind that you always got the impression that all Sylvanas and the Forsaken truly wanted was a place to exist.

It almost feels antithetical the way Sylvanas is acting. This obsession with causing mass death and raising new Forsaken. I hated it in Cataclysm, and I still hate it even now.
I always saw Forsaken as morally questionable but overall misunderstood, and Sylvanas's actions and intent in BfA both in the novels and now paint a clear message: No, the Alliance weren't wrong to distrust the Forsaken and yes, the Horde are essentially just tools for her to further her own goals, and they were never anything else.

[Nathasil]

I get some people enjoy playing the villain, and that's fine, but I think Blizz has dug themselves into a hole with Sylvanas, where if they kill her or have her go off and be villainous, it makes everyone look stupid for ever having trusted her or worked with the Forsaken...

And if they DON'T they made the paranoid orwellian dictator the -right- choice over the folks that want peace / any kind of moral code.

Worse yet, there are folks who don't see Sylv as villainous despite the stuff she's done in the past, all cause it was done to 'the enemy', and citing WoW not having real world war-laws, when... even by using WOW's cultures Sylv and the Forsaken are considered sadistic and unrepentant about the harm they cause (which is a shame because actual pragmatism would be fun, but we haven't seen that, just a lot of card-carrying villainy)

WoW is a game centered on PvE instances. Wether you like that or not is irrelevant, they are the content WoW does better than the competition and the kind of content that the game gets PR for. It's the content the majority plays. By definition this content has to be the same for both factions, because splitting it up would be far too expensive.
When the faction war is about all out genocide, this concept falls flat on its face. You cannot ally yourself with somebody - even for a short amount of time - who simply wants to eradicate you from existance. It does not work.
By escalating the faction war into genocide, Blizzard made the ACTUAL content players play this game for - PvE Dungeons+Raids - look completely stupid and tagged on. In BFA, a dungeon only makes sense for ONE faction and the other looks like a clownshow in it. So far, all of the important ones went to the Horde....and i have a strong feeling it will stay this way.

Blizzard is actively alienating their playerbase by removing the RPG from the best content this game has to offer....and they do that to be able to tell a story which - as you pointed out - will alienate a lot of players on its own. It's just not worth it. But they thought it was. Now all we can do is wait for the big conclusion.

[Super Dickmann]

Where it concerns redemption, there won't be any. The endgame here is the unifaction and Sylvanas is unfit in this. The twist is that she will leave the Horde rather than be overthrown in the seat, presumably in 8.2.5. The Forsaken will be Calia-ized so that they mesh with the uniformity of what follows. I disagree with @Nathasil in the sense that nothing about having PvE instances mandates this nor is dungeons not fitting anything new or anything that exempts faction conflict.

Wrath had us fighting even in the last raid and going after the villain separately. Ditto, WoD had not one but two dungeons where Horde players were obligated to save Stormwind from destruction. Giving even token reasons why we were running the same content in this one is probably the most they've done thus far and outright transforming into the other faction for bosses in Dazar'alor is likewise something that frees them up considerably in story design concerning raids.

That is if they had any interest in doing something that wasn't an infantile morality fable completely at odds with the mechanics and purpose of the game itself, let alone its prior story beats and lore.

[Nathasil]

Where it concerns redemption, there won't be any. The endgame here is the unifaction and Sylvanas is unfit in this. The twist is that she will leave the Horde rather than be overthrown in the seat, presumably in 8.2.5. The Forsaken will be Calia-ized so that they mesh with the uniformity of what follows. I disagree with @Nathasil in the sense that nothing about having PvE instances mandates this nor is dungeons not fitting anything new or anything that exempts faction conflict.

Wrath had us fighting even in the last raid and going after the villain separately. Ditto, WoD had not one but two dungeons where Horde players were obligated to save Stormwind from destruction. Giving even token reasons why we were running the same content in this one is probably the most they've done prior and outright transforming into the other faction for bosses in Dazar'alor is likewise something that frees them up considerably in story design concerning raids.

That is if they had any interest in doing something that wasn't an infantile morality fable completely at odds with the mechanics and purpose of the game itself, let alone its prior story beats and lore.

I don't see the contradiction for WoD. The factions were at peace and actively working together everywhere except for Ashran. Ashran was the unexplained weak point of WoD, not UBRS. It makes sense that Horde forces would not allow the destruction of Stormwind while they are allied with it.

I do agree on Gunship to some extent, though for some reason i never had that much of an issue with it...maybe because it was the outlier in the expansion...a one-time event that - on Alliance side, at least - gets resolved IMMEDIATELY afterwards.

As for Dazar'alor...i have not been short with telling my despise for this raid before and i will not be now. I think it competes with the worst raids in WoW history. I have never felt so turned off to log in to raid night...and i have been raiding for the last 15 years. Dazar'alor is the first raid in all of this time where i have a guild member who simply refuses to play the last 3 fights. He says it breaks all immersion for him. And i agree. It is NOT the same as Caverns of Time back in BC...there, you got transformed. You were still playing yourself. This time, we are playing a "dream sequence"...which is "ok" for a story element of a quest, like in Vashjir...but not for the last 3 bosses in a raid that is supposed to be the story pinnacle of this expansion so far.

What Dazar'alor does is this: There is no story for the Alliance for the finale of this raid...so Blizzard simply forces you to play the Horde version. On the other hand, the last 3 fights are completely pointless storywise and have no implications at all - this goes to the Rastakahn fight, which the Horde cannot play. So from my PoV it is a lose-lose situation, rather than a win-win. The Horde can actually play the finale, but it does not matter...while the Alliance may be able to play the story finale, but is then forced to play the hardest and most important (from a raiding PoV) fights as a dream sequence.

I can see why many players don't care...but i do. A lot of players in my guild do. DA has been out for 3 1/2 months now. Nobody i know in this game still wants to go there. Everybody is longing for the next raid to open (and crucible is not it).

---

What i want from raids are bosses that get me excited with their powerful VO and that i actually WANT to kill from an RPG PoV. Even Ragnaros 1.0 managed to deliver this feeling in an ugly cavern full of trash mobs. Rastakhan does not. Jaina does neither. There just is no motivation for me to do either of these fights. As an Alliance player why on earth would i want to attack Dazar'alor in the first place? No. Thanks for trying Blizzard....but i want something else next time, please.

[Super Dickmann]

@Nathasil

I think people often forget this about Wrath, but the factions were at war through the vast majority of it. There's conflict basically since you land if you do Howling Fjord first and the factions even refuse to cooperate for Yogg'saron. It's just that at the time the heroes were nondescript rather than the centers of reality, so when they cleared the threat up instead it didn't affect faction relations or cause the issue we have now with Azshara or N'zoth. The final battle still had us fighting and the resolution was a personal one, not a factional one. The conflict was the status quo, it just wasn't focused on when it didn't need to be, so the Scourge remained the big bad. While I very much enjoy faction and racial conflicts due to the more approachable scale and motives, this is my second most preferred way to handle this and I think a lot of people are fine with it too.

As it regards Jaina, I get what you mean. I play Horde after all, and we had to raid our Warchief for fourteen months before we went on to cull our WC2 cast. We just happened to do it as ourselves. It's the attachment to these characters that make me dislike UBRS and Everbloom more so than most people, but I do think it goes beyond that as well. Does it make (token) sense that the Horde save Stormwind while the factions are at peace? Sure, I guess, same enemy. But is it a goal that you roll Horde for? No. It's not something you empathize or connect with. Saving a failed Kirin Tor outpost, an Alliance organisation, and ensuring their experiments don't end with Stormwind invaded is a goal that the Alliance would be engaged in, but it's not one that I as Horde care about. In the same way that no one Alliance-side was satisfied that they helped the Horde overthrow Garrosh and then called it a day with nothing else following and the current situation surrounding Sylvanas.

That said, I still stand by the idea that these flipped perspective raids offer more opportunities in terms of what can and can't be a raid and how they can be built, as they allow you to progress the story in a gameplay sense without forcing the player to do something grossly out of character themselves. It's the closest the game has done thus far to something like the SC1 Zerg missions, WC1/2's orcs or WC3's Arthas story where you're following the party's story but you aren't asked to self-insert as that party. An expansion of this sort of thing would allow Blizzard to avoid things like forced team ups where they don't make sense or rebels pawning off Xal to Sylvanas/helping Xal in the first place.

[SirKickBan]

The notion that a war game based solely around improving your ability to kill things in interesting ways alongside and against other players for fun should somehow be the vehicle of a genuine message about peace and understanding are why we're in this ditch in the first place.

That's funny, because there's loads of violent games that do just that.

Halo is literally about a choice between working together for a common good, or everyone dying.

Metro 2033 is about trying to understand the alien, and how fear and misunderstanding lead inevitably into violence.

Dishonored is a story in which the more people you kill, the worse the entire world gets.

..Heck, even Mists of Pandaria's entire message was about cooperation and forgiveness being the only way to break the cycle of violence.

[Florena]

She could maybe redeem herself to the Horde.

To the Alliance, no way. I don't buy it after Teldrassil. The NElves and Alliance should never let that be swept under the rug.

[Super Dickmann]

That's funny, because there's loads of violent games that do just that.

Halo is literally about a choice between working together for a common good, or everyone dying.

Metro 2033 is about trying to understand the alien, and how fear and misunderstanding lead inevitably into violence.

Dishonored is a story in which the more people you kill, the worse the entire world gets.

Yes, and Halo is laughable in that regard and virtually no one plays it for the plot. I didn't teabag people in ye olden days because the game inspired me with its storyline.

As for Dishonored, that's where gameplay and story are integrated with one another, in a same way that say Deus Ex or Undertale integrate non-lethal/pacifistic solutions. Or KOTOR 2 takes the piss out of what you always do in RPGs in terms of killing scores of people and growing stronger.

WoW on the other hand can do no such thing. I honorably toss aside the plaguethrower because I understand that the use of chemical weapons is wrong. Then I give the enemy I nobly didn't gas several incurable illnesses, suck out his soul and if I'm a Death Knight, raise him as my mindless slave until his shit AI gets him killed, then raise another one. Of course, that person wasn't of the Proudmoore family so I can challenge Sylvanas from a place of aloof moral superiority.

[Arrashi]

Nah they just gonna say in blue post 2 years later that 99.9999999999999999% of forsaken never suported or agreed with sylvanas.

[SirKickBan]

Yes, and Halo is laughable in that regard and virtually no one plays it for the plot. I didn't teabag people in ye olden days because the game inspired me with its storyline.

As for Dishonored, that's where gameplay and story are integrated with one another, in a same way that say Deus Ex or Undertale integrate non-lethal/pacifistic solutions. Or KOTOR 2 takes the piss out of what you always do in RPGs in terms of killing scores of people and growing stronger.

WoW on the other hand can do no such thing. I honorably toss aside the plaguethrower because I understand that the use of chemical weapons is wrong. Then I give the enemy I nobly didn't gas several incurable illnesses, suck out his soul and if I'm a Death Knight, raise him as my mindless slave until his shit AI gets him killed, then raise another one. Of course, that person wasn't of the Proudmoore family so I can challenge Sylvanas from a place of aloof moral superiority.

I think I was editing my post to add this in, while you were replying, but WoW did do that, in MoP. The direct gameplay was violent, yeah, but the story was all about forgiveness, cooperation, and overcoming negative emotions (..Which, yeah.. It wasn't great, literally having us beat our own inner violence to death is kinda dumb, but that doesn't alter the overall message)

[Melsiren]

The Horde rebels felt no resistance as they stormed Orgimmar to overthrow the Banshee queen. They did not find her, on her throne was a pardon for Baine and Saurfang as well as a letter of resignation.

Saurfang and Baine are too stu- Honorable to pursue her pardoning her for her crimes in turn. Sylvanas finally turns
up at the last 5% of the N'zoth fight to save the day with Xalatath.

Then there will be some cringy moment where we find out she was playing 4 dimensional chess. The world of the living is no place for her, so she goes to the Shadowlands to conquer and bring peace to death.

What a beautiful story we are slowly watching.

Nah they just gonna say in blue post 2 years later that 99.9999999999999999% of forsaken never suported or agreed with sylvanas.

Turns out Sylvanas was part of a game that was rigged from the start, but she used her powerful plot cunning to turn the tides and rigg the game against all of us.

I think it's safe to assume we may have several other layers or rigging on this shit cake.

[Super Dickmann]

I think I was editing my post to add this in, while you were replying, but WoW did do that, in MoP. The direct gameplay was violent, yeah, but the story was all about forgiveness, cooperation, and overcoming negative emotions (..Which, yeah.. It wasn't great, literally having us beat our own inner violence to death is kinda dumb, but that doesn't alter the overall message)

That's what I'm getting at though. The message is impossible to carry through the mechanics. In Undertale, to keep to that example, the game tells you right out that if you do violence in it's your choice and everything has a peaceful solution, to use the same example.

In Mists, the story is ostensibly about what's worth fighting for and what method is too far or what have you, but it exemplifies pretty much the apex of what I'm talking about when you defeat the Sha of Violence by violently wailing on it with axes. It's not that it literally can't contain such a message, it's that such a message comes across as unconvincing and contradictory because you're told not shown. More than that, you literally can't be shown as it's mechanically impossible.

Set aside all the in-story actions we do for a moment - at the end of this expansion, once the factions are united, Baine and Anduin hold hands and kiss in their marriage ceremony and everyone is Lawful Good, you, the PC, will still be running around condemning random people's souls to hell so you can use them as fuel to summon demons and be acquiring items to increase your ability to do so.

[Rustedsaint]

The thing is wow has a player base of about 6mil from all walks of life(from the far left to the far right) where atleast half cares about the story, it’s not possible to satisfy 100% of the base. So no matter what path sylvanas goes there will be a large amount of rage.
Redemption, validated, controlled/manipulated, straight up killed, becoming a god, leaving.
All these paths will piss off some part of the player base someway or another