Gul'dan: "Death will inherit this world and she will be waiting"

[Blightrose]

Blizzard are 2 expansions ahead, storywise, this could very well have been a foreshadowing referencing Sylvanas by Gul'dan.

[arandomuser]

They are literally planing a few expansions ahead. They knew Sylvanas would go this way before Legion even launched.

yep, and in crucible n'zoth says


which means the shadowlands cinemetic was in development or a concept atleast since 8.1

they clearly plan the lore months years ahead,

[Kallisto]

Right? In what way? She tried to enslave Eyir to take the power of the Val'kyr for herself. How is enslaving someone for your own purposes, especially an Ally in the fight against the Legion, right?

We still don't know what she was doing. She could have been enslaving or she could just be taking her powers to create her own Val'kir. Neither has been confirmed. Hell it still looks like if we go by her internal thoughts the actions have been to make sure that she could keep her forsaken up and running looking refreshed like Nathanos. Which would keep people out of the Maw.

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yep, and in crucible n'zoth says


which means the shadowlands cinemetic was in development or a concept atleast since 8.1

they clearly plan the lore months years ahead,

Well considering they showed Anduin and the alliance Marching on Sylvanas to Metzen when WoD was still the live expansion it would seem years in advance (3-4)

[Maleific]

Eyir is essentially a cult leader who brainwashed her followers into an eternity of undeath in servitude to Odyn.

[How dare you]

We still don't know what she was doing. She could have been enslaving or she could just be taking her powers to create her own Val'kir.

Either way she'd be enslaving her.

[Bigby]

They are literally planing a few expansions ahead. They knew Sylvanas would go this way before Legion even launched.

The Jailer stuff is definitely new. A large amount of Before the Storm has Sylvanas as a POV character and there's pretty much no references to her being any more powerful than normal, hints she may be working for anybody but herself, none of this. All of her internal monologues are about how people don't appreciate undeath enough since they barely feel attachment anymore and if only she could turn all of humanity into Forsaken.

Blizzard writing has all the subtlety of a frying pan. If it was planned Sylvanas may have been in cahoots with someone/something prior to BfA's story being written, they've have tossed plenty of """hints""" at our faces.

[Biochem92]

We still don't know what she was doing. She could have been enslaving or she could just be taking her powers to create her own Val'kir. Neither has been confirmed. Hell it still looks like if we go by her internal thoughts the actions have been to make sure that she could keep her forsaken up and running looking refreshed like Nathanos. Which would keep people out of the Maw.

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Well considering they showed Anduin and the alliance Marching on Sylvanas to Metzen when WoD was still the live expansion it would seem years in advance (3-4)

Some plotlines are ten years in advanced such as the Burning Legion, last time i remember reading a discussion on this I remember reading that alot of the story we are playing now is as far back as cataclysm for its conceptualization

[DeltrusDisc]

Eyir was just a weapon that could be used, just like Aluneth and Thal'kiel.

I hope no one ever puts you in a position of power for anything.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Eyir was just a weapon that could be used, just like Aluneth and Thal'kiel.

"Slavery is fine if you're doing it to make zombies"

[Kallisto]

Some plotlines are ten years in advanced such as the Burning Legion, last time i remember reading a discussion on this I remember reading that alot of the story we are playing now is as far back as cataclysm for its conceptualization

I'll be honest I think Blizzard have this issue of things being so set in stone. "Cataclysm here, Evil Garrosh there, Legion invasion next, Sylvanas and her thing." they have the big story plots in place, nice cinematics but fail to get the small things in order to get there.

Yes they also admit they're not going for big grand stories but something like saturday morning cartoon at best style. But that only works if each expansion is episodic and it really doesn't work in a coherent game story. Cata lead into MoP, which lead into WoD, which lead into Legion which lead into BFA which will lead into Shadowlands. In reality they have the cinematics, they have the ending they want and the start likely up until 11.0 maybe even 12.0. They just need to not be afraid to scrap those if the small stories making up the large story deviates.

Case and point Sylvanas looking like the big villain or secondary villain, not caring for anyone now. While her internal thoughts contradict near enough everything she's stated in her few short scenes in the game.

[Mirishka]

Doubtful. They weren't planning for Sylvanas to be a big bad at that point. More likely he is talking about whoever is considered the true embodiment of Death in WoW or Helya maybe at the time.

Wrong. Emphatically so. But then, you're the 'wut if there is no 8.3' guy, so you must be used to wrong by now.

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Eyir is essentially a cult leader who brainwashed her followers into an eternity of undeath in servitude to Odyn.

Man, the lengths you people will go to to justify Sylvanas. Its embarrassing.

[Nebron]

Just noticed Gul'dan says this to Horde players before his fight in Nighthold. You think this might be referring to the Shadowlands?

He says this to Alliance players



and this to Horde



You think the "she" he is mentioning is Sylvanas or "death"?

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Gul%27dan_(tactics)

Nope, it's just a typical reaching.

The concept of the "death in the end" is common, and in that context with "she" in the line, is vague at least. They were already well into the production of Battle for Azeroth, so it's hard to believe they didn't plan her to go mad. In fact, they were perfectly aware of where they are going to go with the story, especially with Sylvanas' arc. We can't be certain about it, it's true - maybe they planned Shadowlands at the time too, and they meant that realm with the line of Gul'dan, but it's more of a stretch to me. After all, they retconned Sylvanas' motivations in a single expansion and lately even the writers of WoW team couldn't back up their ideas in Blizzcon's interviews.

The problem here is they had some kind of concept, or more like a vision of where they want Sylvanas to be. A misty concept of her arc, but at the same time they had no idea how to get her there, so they created all that messy story ad hoc. Results - trashy plot with a massively shady motivations that feel absolutely out of place. Anyone who denies it is evidently devoided of any standards.

I know making theories, wild assumptions and guesses is all fun, but let them be educated at least. There is nothing worse than ambiguous theories that cannot be supported in any way. Of course, this post is not that really an extreme reaching, but nevertheless it's well far-fetched. There's little chance that Blizzard decided to tease us with Shadowlands through Gul'dans prophetic lines. They are definitely teasing us with Sylvanas bad intentions. And don't forget that it actually WAS their intention to make Sylvanas purposefully evil. They will try to redeem it, but facts won't add up. Anyway, majority of players will take the bait. Of course, if Blizzard writers were here, on that thread, they would surely go with something like: "well, we don't know - maybe!" or straight to a lie: "yeah, that was our intention!"

You give them waaaaaay too much credit

Even now, they will try to fix all the plot holes they made for the last couple of years.

[Phatte]

Doubtful. They weren't planning for Sylvanas to be a big bad at that point. More likely he is talking about whoever is considered the true embodiment of Death in WoW or Helya maybe at the time.

How do you know they werent planning on it? They likely already have the basics planned for the expansion AFTER shadowlands so its not unreasonable to think they definitely had the Sylvanas story arch planned during Nighthold. They even had whispers of II'lgynoth in Emerald Nightmare foreshadowing stuff that isnt even on retail yet (8.3 N'Zoth) so that was all clearly planned out

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Sylvanas being evil isn't even a shocker or being a dark character. Thats been her thing since she went Undead.

[Moozart]

Man, the lengths you people will go to to justify Sylvanas. Its embarrassing.

She may as well be orange

[themaelstorm]

The Jailer stuff is definitely new.

Not new as in, 6 months before Blizzcon new though, definitely known since BfA at least.

A large amount of Before the Storm has Sylvanas as a POV character and there's pretty much no references to her being any more powerful than normal,

Because she necessarily isn't that powerful at that time

no hints she may be working for anybody but herself

It was already confirmed she was not working FOR the Jailer, but WITH the jailer ie she has her own agenda.
Also, obviously they wouldn't have revealed it by then. What you read in the book is the stuff she thinks in relevance to the events of the book, not an exhaustive list of every knowledge and thought in her head (as with any book)

If it was planned Sylvanas may have been in cahoots with someone/something prior to BfA's story being written, they've have tossed plenty of """hints""" at our faces.

Oooor they actually were just subtle enough about it, there were pointers about her ulterior motives but not enough to reveal everything and it all makes sense now? lol

I love mmochamp forums.
Blizzard writes something direct - lol not subtle!!
Blizzard writes subtle - lol not subtle, definitely they didn't think about this, it's something else!

PS: I'm pretty sure "just a tool guy" meant it from Sylvanas' perspective, which is hardly an evil way of looking things, but an extremely pragmatic one that you can encounter in daily life with corporates and governments, even people.
Not saying Sylvanas isn't evil, just talking about looking everything as a tool or resource.

[Volardelis]

Possibly.

Blizzard does like to put in little hints about future expansions in the game now, since they do plan at least 1-2 expansions ahead (even though sometimes they have to retcon stuff because hindsight is hard mode for them). An example of this could be the death quote of the 2nd boss in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, where he calls us maggots swarming to the corpse of a dying god. Put that quote into the context of BFA, we are maggots, azerite is the corpse and Azeroth is the dying god.

[Aleloron]

I kinda think that they plan these things out with broad strokes for years and years beforehand. An example that leads to my thinking that way is that “There must always be a Lich King or else the mindless, uncontrolled Scourge would rampage across Azeroth”. At the time it seemed a bit strange as they could have easily written that the Scourge were entirely controlled by the (un)life of the Lich King and that the heroes killed Arthas, destroyed the Helm and Ner’zhul along with it, and all of the Scourge just dropped and were no longer any sort of a threat.

Now they could have decided a year or two ago “hey, let’s turn Slyvie bad and have her whoop Bovair and destroy the Helm” when someone remembered the whole ‘there must always be a Lich King’ thing during a brainstorming session, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’m one of the (many) folk that always thought that Slyvie was up to no damn good, even though I’ve always enjoyed her character, and having been suspicious of her since I started playing back during TBC and those types of little hints over the years I kinda think that this has been planned for a long, long time.

It seems to be the fashionable thing here to shit on the writers at Blizzard (and the only one that I poo upon is Ms. Golden because I cannot stand her work but I appreciate that not everyone is as critical as I am and more power to you if you like her work or think that she’s amazing) but most of us could not write stories like World of Warcraft and Diablo. It’s now over two decades of stories and lore to keep straight which is a damn difficult thing to do. Sure, some times some of the writing (and often character dialogue) falls flat, but I still think that there are some pretty talented people crafting these stories over there. I firmly believe that I could create an awesome WoW expansion (and have created a couple of them in my head and believe me, they’re the GREATEST EXPANSIONS OF ALL TIME. OF ALL TIME.) but I’m wise enough to know that I could not write a better overarching narrative than the storytelling team over at Blizzard does.

[Archibalde]

Man, the lengths you people will go to to justify Sylvanas. Its embarrassing.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's about justifying Sylvanas. Ignoring her altogether, Odyn has quite a villainous side that kind of gets glossed over. When the other keepers decided to enlist the dragons to help defend Azeroth, he got pissed and literally ripped out his section of Ulduar to get away from them. He decided that his people were better suited for the job and asked for someone to essentially kill themself to go and get souls in the Shadowlands. Nobody wanted to, so he chose to create the Val'kyrs to do it.

His first choice was his adoptive daughter. When she refused, he straight up killed her and... what's the word? Oh yeah he enslaved her spirit. And he lied to his people about it. Pretended she begged him to do it. And then acted like she was a psychotic villain when she finally broke free and tried to get her revenge. Enlisted us and everything, we chased her down to her realm to defeat her.

He's a maniac, no different from any other villain in the game. The only reason we even side with him is because we had a common enemy. One that he created.

[Jamie081]

I wouldn't necessarily say it's about justifying Sylvanas. Ignoring her altogether, Odyn has quite a villainous side that kind of gets glossed over. When the other keepers decided to enlist the dragons to help defend Azeroth, he got pissed and literally ripped out his section of Ulduar to get away from them. He decided that his people were better suited for the job and asked for someone to essentially kill themself to go and get souls in the Shadowlands. Nobody wanted to, so he chose to create the Val'kyrs to do it.

His first choice was his adoptive daughter. When she refused, he straight up killed her and... what's the word? Oh yeah he enslaved her spirit. And he lied to his people about it. Pretended she begged him to do it. And then acted like she was a psychotic villain when she finally broke free and tried to get her revenge. Enlisted us and everything, we chased her down to her realm to defeat her.

He's a maniac, no different from any other villain in the game. The only reason we even side with him is because we had a common enemy. One that he created.

People love Odyn as well that's the funny thing. Reminds me of the 'Garrosh did nothing wrong' crowd. 'Arthas did nothing wrong' crowd.