Does Sylvanas finally make sense to you?

[Aleksej89]

after she yeeted herself off the LK citadel she got scared and decided to do anything to prevent herself dying.

all she does, whoever she leads or supposedly servers, its all just a tool to protect herself from dying.

[Aucald]

I disagree. There have been no changes to speak of in methodology between Sylvanas's objectives from Cataclysm to Mists and what she does in Legion. Her characterization within those is coherent. If you're going to state that these changes (whatever they are), are congruent enough to ascribe to some kind of corruption, influence or what have you that would culminate in the drastic change between her BTS mental state and her actions in BFA, nevermind BTS in general, you need to actually point out what these changes are going there. And even that would get you nowhere as you are, by your own admission, basing your entire argument based off of hypothetical future elements that at present don't exist. Your position is effectively that changes you don't describe and may not exist are enough backing to justify a drastic change we can observe, on the basis of a story element that has not been alluded to at best and been dismissed at worst (The Devs saying this is Sylvanas's own plan and she and the Jailor are partners, not a master-servant relationship).

You seem to be confused - I was referring to the very marked and obvious change from WotLK to Cata (caused by the events of "Edge of Night") where her very view of the Forsaken transitioned from "arrows in my quiver" to "my bulwark against eternity." A pronounced change in her demeanor, and her embrace of undeath as a way of being (contrary to her oft-expressed view of undeath as being slaves to torment). Then you have her transition from the "Before the Storm" representation to that in BfA, followed swiftly by her wholesale abandonment of the Forsaken at the Battle of Orgrimmar and subsequent (as yet unknown) plotting in the Loyalist ending cutscene. Nathanos rolled with all these transitions pretty seamlessly, but we have little to no evidence he knew they were forthcoming (especially in "A Good War" where he's just as surprised as Saurfang by the sudden body-swerve in strategy). But he's still apparently 100% loyal, mostly because he's in love with her and probably chooses not to question her under those auspices.

On the contrary, think of it as preparation for when you'll have to argue from this position in Shadowlands. The flaw with your position here isn't what semantic term is being used to get across the concept of magic being the reason why Sylvanas doesn't remember doing or planning things we now know she did or having emotional reactions to things we're told she never cared about. It's why I put influence, mind control and so forth under the same denominator - whatever it is, it's still bunk, and the reason it's bunk is always the same - it has no textual backing. There's nothing in the text, at any point, to suggest any sort of corruptive influence got Sylvanas where she was. What you're asking is that anyone consuming this material take your word for it not just that there'll be an explanation forthcoming - that's, if excessively optimistic after BFA, at least sensible - but that a variant of this explanation is pending, and more so than that, arguing on the basis that this explanation has already been delivered. Your visceral reaction to the Sylvanaspool theory is right - it's a load of shit, but it has the same explanatory character and backing in text as the idea that anything regarding her thoughts and actions in said novel were the product of mental influence, that being absolutely nothing.

Whether or not I argue it and to what degree will depend on the nature of the story being told. Speculation doesn't require "textual backing" to exist or even be valid as speculation, as I'm sure you well know. It should be consistent with what is known, though; having a logical backing that connects A to C in a fashion where "B" is at least plausible. Your model offers up an impossible and self-sealing paradox where you require the unknown "B" to be somehow proved by A and C simultaneously, which is an impossibility where relevant information is missing by design. I can't help but feel you do this because you've already come to a conclusion you refuse to abandon, and that you actively desire for this conclusion to be the case even if its not itself congruent with the surrounding narrative. As for corrupting influence we have Sylvanas' growing powers themselves (e.g. the death-beam she fires at Saurfang that goes remarked on by observers of the Mak'gora) and the probability that it carries corrupting effects in and of itself. We also have the flash of black in her eyes when she takes possession of the Xal'atath blade, so far unexplained and not very remarked upon - but a salient detail all the same, I feel. Add to this the mention of her true purpose in "A Good War," which you discounted, and you get a picture that points to external influences having a bearing on the flow of events.

Depth of feeling is not required. The book doesn't claim that Sylvanas and Varian pranced through the meadows. What it says - explicitly and clearly is that she viewed Varian as a very competent ruler who had the respect of his subjects and that she considered the idea of leaving him behind an impossible choice, one solved only by the order from her Warchief. That does not prevent her from viewing him as an opponent in other contexts, but it does prevent her from plotting his demise at that very location, because if she were doing so, she'd not need the order of someone she also we're later told she had no respect for as a tiebreaker. At the end you accuse me of believing a person can only have one thought on a thing, but that's far from the case - hell, we see in the novel that Sylvanas purposefully denies bringing this up to Anduin and admitting to such a feeling and that despite her thoughts on this, she still followed orders and left him behind, likewise still harboring a grudge against his city. No one within this topic or anywhere who's been telling you of the blatant incongruity between her thoughts in BTS, her actions previously and the statements on her thought process in Shadowlands is saying that she can't have contradictory feelings. But that such contradictory feelings exist must actually be in evidence and nothing within the book or with any prior material could ever lead you to that conclusion, you've admitted that yourself.

I don't think she was plotting his demise at that point in the story, either. The Jailer might have been, however; and he and Sylvanas might have altered course later on on that specific detail. Again, your argument here requires that Sylvanas be cognizant of the Jailer's plans at the Broken Shore, and so the description of her memories as related by her interior monologue be purposefully inconsistent. But we don't know that to be the case. That's the flaw in your argument - neither of us know the actual shape of the Jailer and Sylvanas' plans, and when those plans came into being, so you're just assuming the case at the Broken Shore based on nothing with textual backing. Her "grudge" against Stormwind and her begrudging respect for Varian are two different things, as well; Varian was not in Stormwind at the time when her ambassadors were killed, as he would've been in Kalimdor at that time living as the amnesiac Lo'gosh. So that particular element isn't at contradiction at all, and you've just misread or mischaracterized the events to fit your own narrative.

Once again, your argument only holds water if one has the broad strokes of the novel but hasn't actually got it open to read what it says in detail. For someone who accuses others of surface level reading, you are content to consume the most basic level of the goings on in the book, but then fill in whatever flagrantly doesn't fit later on with your ideas rather than extrapolating on the ideas that the book actually presents. Sylvanas does not speak of Stormwind in practical terms - she says it's the battle 'they both longed for', not "a convenient enough way to mass more zombies". In the same chapter she says, in her own mind, in the most plain possible text that she went to Stormheim in order to get more Val'kyr to raise more Forsaken and to keep them from ever dying again. Additionally, in your haste to explain away problems, you're once again contradicting the book. Firstly because as we've rehashed a thousand times, BTS in its nature as a retcon presents Forsaken society as always having been tight and totalitarian, but notwithstanding that, even if it were a shift, BTS clearly represents a heavy loosening of Forsaken society - the Desolate Council were able to form and Sylvanas doesn't even know about it until Nathanos tells her, nor does she do much of anything with this information. It's totalitarian not because Sylvanas fears she's slipping control - it's already totalitarian, and it only has that dissent because she isn't there. And to get back to the start of the paragraph and to how you ended your response to the last one - you adopt an extremely surface level and one-dimensional reading, ignoring the core of the book - the essence of Sylvanas's control of Forsaken society in BTS is her micromanaging of their lives, the personal offense she takes when any single one of them achieves something denied to her, that being positive connection with their past lives or development outside the parametres she was able to develop in, and how extremely controlling she is of them. She's controlling of them despite the fact that she doesn't need to be and that in the Horde itself she has a larger and more powerful tool. BTS is incongruous with what came before, but it's also incongruous with what came after.

Nathanos longs for it (e.g. his venom towards Stormwind and the Alliance in the BfA dialogue), Sylvanas is trying to actively sell it - not too different from her later gambit with Saurfang concerning Darkshore and the War of Thorns. Your read here assumes that Sylvanas is honest, and Sylvanas is very seldom honest toward other people, up to and including Nathanos. We obviously don't and never will come to terms on your proposed "Forsaken retcon," so it's rather pointless to belabor it here - you refuse to be dissuaded, and I find your evidence thin to the point to non-existence. If your goal is to base your claims on a disputed foundation then you're going to have a rough time of it as we came to no conclusion previously. I sincerely hope this whole back and forth hasn't been a hook to return to this particular context, either. I would agree at least that Sylvanas' directives about the Forsaken not exploring their former Human lives is a form of micro-management, although I'd probably more readily file it under propaganda. I don't think Sylvanas really involves herself in that process overly, probably having the Deathguard and similar organs of state do the legwork. I won't argue that the Undercity is likely modeled as a police-state, but that Sylvanas generally holds herself apart from it because her interests are generally elsewhere, either on big picture concerns or her own schemes. A micro-manager tends to hover over their charges as an omnipresent figure, and Sylvanas doesn't generally fit that mold - she trusts more in the Forsaken's desperate love of her to move things along as opposed to personal involvement in the day-to-day life of the Undercity. Either way, upon becoming Warchief Sylvanas is more or less forced to distance herself further from her people, as it were; as her concerns must be the for the entire Horde (a point brought up specifically in "Before the Storm" concerning her aloofness from the other races of the Horde). Distance is after all a relative concept - her relative distance from the Forsaken may be viewed as cloying favoritism when compared to her distance from the other Horde races. This is neither incongruent nor inconsistent with what we've seen previously, in my view. It is only when the concepts that bind the Forsaken to her come into question that Sylvanas reacts badly, perhaps seeing that her position is threatened by a competing ideology. Sylvanas' method of resolving this, fittingly enough, is not to confront her underlings but rather to kill off the ideology itself via mass-murder. If she were the type of micro-manager you claim her to be, it is highly unlikely the Desolate Council would've ever came to be in the first place, as it's a movement that would need relative ideological freedom to grow in.

[Ungeir]

Does the shadowlands reveal make sense of Sylvanas and her leadership of the forsaken? To those who never thougth she felt horde, and that the forsaken weren't truly loyal to the horde. Those who play as a forsaken know the horde has always been a tool or means to an end for her. What exactly that means was we were never truly shown. Wrathgate made us think it was killing everyone, even though it was hard to believe.

She is a terribly written character. WoW never had deep and nuanced storylines, but BfA managed to be even worse than the weirdness of WoD. Sylvanas was a big part of making the already trite and implausible faction war even more boring and meaningless. Her actions make no sense. How she is treated by the rest of the Horde makes no sense. Her plans make no sense.

I primarily quit WoW because it's simply a bad game with way too much half-baked content - but the incredibly low level of storyline and worldbuilding was a compounding factor. As was the focus on Sylvanas. NPCs can be front and center of an expansion if they are (fightable) villains or have meaningful interactions with a protagonist player. Sylvanas is neither.

BfA feels like a story about Sylvanas (and to a lesser degree Anduin and Saurfang) with the player simply as a spectator. I don't feel like they are trying to have Sylvanas make sense. All I hear are excuses, empty promises and post-factual rationalizations of events unfolding contrary to promises. It feels like the story department is completely detached from the actual development of the game - and are making no effort to making a story which can be the vehicle for groups of players experiencing a game and a world together. They are taking advantage of the audience provided by having a game, and telling fan-fiction level stories about their favorite NPCs.

I don't expect sense from the story department, and they certainly haven't delivered it with the information provided about Shadowlands. It's yet more Sylvanas fan-fiction and awful worldbuilding. Perhaps Shadowlands will manage to be even more trite and downright stupid than BfA. That would be an achievement.

Blizzard is doing a terrible job at keeping the franchise and the world alive and well. They are burying it under slow and poor development - and even worse storytelling.

[Tyrannica]

I think there is still time to cut sylvanas out of that SL intro cinematic and replace her by KT, with her just another loot pinjata without cinematic to raid before the Jailer.

[Super Dickmann]

You seem to be confused - I was referring to the very marked and obvious change from WotLK to Cata (caused by the events of "Edge of Night") where her very view of the Forsaken transitioned from "arrows in my quiver" to "my bulwark against eternity." A pronounced change in her demeanor, and her embrace of undeath as a way of being (contrary to her oft-expressed view of undeath as being slaves to torment). Then you have her transition from the "Before the Storm" representation to that in BfA, followed swiftly by her wholesale abandonment of the Forsaken at the Battle of Orgrimmar and subsequent (as yet unknown) plotting in the Loyalist ending cutscene. Nathanos rolled with all these transitions pretty seamlessly, but we have little to no evidence he knew they were forthcoming (especially in "A Good War" where he's just as surprised as Saurfang by the sudden body-swerve in strategy). But he's still apparently 100% loyal, mostly because he's in love with her and probably chooses not to question her under those auspices.

I mean, I wasn't confused then, but I am now, because you said the following:

As for the influence thing, it's an inference based on the various changes in Sylvanas' methodology and rationale going from Cata to MoP to Legion to BfA (including the events in "Before the Storm" and "A Good War" accordingly).

So if you were actually saying that the two major changes were Wrath to Cata and Legion to BFA, I'd agree, but that's quite hard to gather from what you were explaining. I'd say that the reason he had no reaction is because he only returned to her side directly in Cataclysm if we take the removal of his questlines and their personal bond was only properly restored once she restored him with the Val'kyr. That of course is pure conjecture. What isn't is that Nathanos is privy to her plans to an extended level and that, both in BTS and in later material she's pretty up front with him - hell, they assure each other, in 8.2 Sylvanas tells him to stay on target when it comes to the war, presumably given that he's a lot less enthused about that part than her, whereas in 8.2.5 he's the one to tell her not to lose her head around the LK helmet. In BTS, he's her confidante on all topics. If anyone would notice that kind of thing, it'd be him, ditto we can largely take what she says to him at face value until we see otherwise.

Whether or not I argue it and to what degree will depend on the nature of the story being told. Speculation doesn't require "textual backing" to exist or even be valid as speculation, as I'm sure you well know. It should be consistent with what is known, though; having a logical backing that connects A to C in a fashion where "B" is at least plausible. Your model offers up an impossible and self-sealing paradox where you require the unknown "B" to be somehow proved by A and C simultaneously, which is an impossibility where relevant information is missing by design. I can't help but feel you do this because you've already come to a conclusion you refuse to abandon, and that you actively desire for this conclusion to be the case even if its not itself congruent with the surrounding narrative. As for corrupting influence we have Sylvanas' growing powers themselves (e.g. the death-beam she fires at Saurfang that goes remarked on by observers of the Mak'gora) and the probability that it carries corrupting effects in and of itself. We also have the flash of black in her eyes when she takes possession of the Xal'atath blade, so far unexplained and not very remarked upon - but a salient detail all the same, I feel. Add to this the mention of her true purpose in "A Good War," which you discounted, and you get a picture that points to external influences having a bearing on the flow of events.

You do not need textual backing to speculate, but to give your speculation any argumentative value you need to support it based on existing evidence. And the evidence for any level of mental influence on Sylvanas is none - the knaifu is if anything a sign of the Old Gods, not the Jailor. By extension, her shift from one point to the next being on that basis has no weight. I have not discounted A Good War in that aspect, I've not even brought it up for that, that part jives - the elements of A Good War I brought up pertained to Nathanos' understanding of her plan as being part of her position as Warchief and the absence of burning Teldrassil in her initial plan. AGW can be slotted into BFA with little issue, save that AGW Sylvanas is a vastly more convincing character by virtue of actually being written to be convincing to her subjects rather than twirling her mustache and falling flat on her ass every five minutes like her in-game incarnation. She is however likewise incongruent with BTS. What you interpret as a reluctance to move from a set conclusion is a refusal to disregard all prior lore to come to such a position, as compared to say, you or ravenmoon's position, which disregards prior lore coherence entirely in favor of immediately trying to do Blizzard's damage control for them. Given that nothing is owed to Blizzard I tend to agree with @Vakir on this.

Though I will say that it can't help but make me think when you're willing to immediately accept these things and the BTS retcon and support quite extensive theories based on hypothetical evidence to justify these turns as you have here, speculation that's later confirmed based on scores of evidence, like say the Horde in their majority backing Sylvanas throughout and Saurfang and company representing a minority until Sylvanas' turn on the Horde, something I called as of 8.0 you denied at every turn until it became incontrovertible. All without a mea culpa of the kind I propped up when it comes to Sylv being an old god agent.

I don't think she was plotting his demise at that point in the story, either. The Jailer might have been, however; and he and Sylvanas might have altered course later on on that specific detail. Again, your argument here requires that Sylvanas be cognizant of the Jailer's plans at the Broken Shore, and so the description of her memories as related by her interior monologue be purposefully inconsistent. But we don't know that to be the case. That's the flaw in your argument - neither of us know the actual shape of the Jailer and Sylvanas' plans, and when those plans came into being, so you're just assuming the case at the Broken Shore based on nothing with textual backing. Her "grudge" against Stormwind and her begrudging respect for Varian are two different things, as well; Varian was not in Stormwind at the time when her ambassadors were killed, as he would've been in Kalimdor at that time living as the amnesiac Lo'gosh. So that particular element isn't at contradiction at all, and you've just misread or mischaracterized the events to fit your own narrative.

A situation where the Jailor arranges her ascension to the position and she only learns of it after the fact, a situation where her encounter with azerite convincing her to set her sights higher than mere control and exacerbating both her power and grandiosity to the point of ditching the Forsaken and Horde rather than trying to drag them down with her and the like could all be explanations. I'd accept them without much issue, but they need to actually be there and be explained. But at present they aren't and nothing in the material up to this point suggests it. The devs have stated other things when it comes to her level of pre-planning and the point at which it occurred. This might later be changed, but right now, what you are saying simply can't align with the dev positions and ergo can't be canon. When it comes to Varian and Stormwind, you also either did not read in full or misunderstood what I was telling you - namely that that Sylvanas could simultaneously not wish for war with Varian and be willing to lay down for life for him unless prompted otherwise, something backed by her personal pride to not give up a position like she didn't in life, would not dispel her BTS-era grudge with the city. The notion I was contesting was that reading the book and taking what is a fairly personal and in-depth view of her experiences at the Broken Shore as presented and based on what we read there is not a surface level reading - what is a surface level reading is only taking the broad strokes and altering them post-factum to justify a turn that as of yet has no backing.

Nathanos longs for it (e.g. his venom towards Stormwind and the Alliance in the BfA dialogue), Sylvanas is trying to actively sell it - not too different from her later gambit with Saurfang concerning Darkshore and the War of Thorns. Your read here assumes that Sylvanas is honest, and Sylvanas is very seldom honest toward other people, up to and including Nathanos. We obviously don't and never will come to terms on your proposed "Forsaken retcon," so it's rather pointless to belabor it here - you refuse to be dissuaded, and I find your evidence thin to the point to non-existence. If your goal is to base your claims on a disputed foundation then you're going to have a rough time of it as we came to no conclusion previously. I sincerely hope this whole back and forth hasn't been a hook to return to this particular context, either. I would agree at least that Sylvanas' directives about the Forsaken not exploring their former Human lives is a form of micro-management, although I'd probably more readily file it under propaganda. I don't think Sylvanas really involves herself in that process overly, probably having the Deathguard and similar organs of state do the legwork. I won't argue that the Undercity is likely modeled as a police-state, but that Sylvanas generally holds herself apart from it because her interests are generally elsewhere, either on big picture concerns or her own schemes. A micro-manager tends to hover over their charges as an omnipresent figure, and Sylvanas doesn't generally fit that mold - she trusts more in the Forsaken's desperate love of her to move things along as opposed to personal involvement in the day-to-day life of the Undercity. Either way, upon becoming Warchief Sylvanas is more or less forced to distance herself further from her people, as it were; as her concerns must be the for the entire Horde (a point brought up specifically in "Before the Storm" concerning her aloofness from the other races of the Horde). Distance is after all a relative concept - her relative distance from the Forsaken may be viewed as cloying favoritism when compared to her distance from the other Horde races. This is neither incongruent nor inconsistent with what we've seen previously, in my view. It is only when the concepts that bind the Forsaken to her come into question that Sylvanas reacts badly, perhaps seeing that her position is threatened by a competing ideology. Sylvanas' method of resolving this, fittingly enough, is not to confront her underlings but rather to kill off the ideology itself via mass-murder. If she were the type of micro-manager you claim her to be, it is highly unlikely the Desolate Council would've ever came to be in the first place, as it's a movement that would need relative ideological freedom to grow in.

That BTS was a complete retcon of the Cataclysm and even Vanilla-era Forsaken society is a matter of fact. But given that NPC location appearances, quest dialogue, Sylvanas's own positions, multiple people leaving the Forsaken and BFA itself involving references to Lordaeron, their prior lives and the upper city have not budged you on this topic, there isn't much to say, on top of it having no relevance to this thread I have at all turns in this thread used the BTS version of Sylvanas and the Forsaken as my standpoint is that even that version does not jive with the Sylvanas we see in BFA/Shadowlands. The post-BTS canon of the Forsaken is that they are a totalitarian society which Sylvanas longs to return to running and doesn't want to be apart from - her reasoning given is not based on some detached pragmatic gain, but on emotionality - she longs to be with them, gets angry when they reject her views, and treats their successes and failures as her own. Unlike with the Horde, whom she has no issue letting do whatever so long as they serve her purposes, she has very specific societal prescriptions upon the Forsaken and has been basing her rule on them for long enough to traumatize her subjects. The only time a vacuum has occured and for another power to step in has been after her ascension to Warchief in the Desolate Council - it's precisely her absence that allows them to appear, in any other case they wouldn't have. Your argument validates what I'm telling you. And on top of challenging her power, they also challenge her identity and conception of self, which she has projected onto the Forsaken - she kills the Desolate Council both to prevent them from opposing her and because of their actions but also for value-based reasons. Whereas she's okay with the Horde as merely being her tool, she wants the Forsaken to be an extension of herself and doesn't permit them to achieve anything she couldn't achieve. This is not a character who would be content to just go "lol, do whatever", not when total control of their lives and identity has been such a big focus of her for so long and when a much lesser incident caused her to react far more emotionally. BTS Sylvanas would've killed Saurfang, but she'd also have killed Bannerbae as well, as well as the rest of the ting-ting brigade, purely to punish a betrayal from what she sees as a part of her. Her Dark Rangers would also've obeyed her in this rather than the comical turn that people who say "I serve the Banshee Queen" say on click and who's loyalty was to her first and to the Horde never, but that's another point entirely.

[Aucald]

--- snip ---

I think we're both talking past one another at this point, and your assertion of some kind corporate protectionism is neither something I want do discuss nor feel is at all germane to a discussion of the lore (any discussion of the lore). For everything else, we've already covered it in this back or forth, or in previous ones, and we're just circling around old arguments with no hope of establishing common grounds or a unified frame of reference. I cede the argument to anyone else who wants to carry it forward.

[Super Dickmann]

Didn't include this in the previous post since I forgot, but as a side point, Sylvanas isn't spinning to Nathanos - in the book she mentions that when it comes to going after Stormwind it's what both she and Nathanos longed for in her internal monologue.

Well, they do have to be careful with any kind of proactivity from the Alliance side. The Horde tends to turn any and all kind of proactivity (even if it follows already commited war crimes) into justifications for more genocide.
Jaina prepares for the chance that Garrosh attacks, which by reading his character was no surprise for anyone. And people here put the entire following war down as her fault.
Varian invades the Undercity after the Forsaken sabotage the Alliance war effort in Northrend and murder a good chunk of soldiers, and he is suddenly the guilty party. Genn stops Sylvanas from attaining power, knowing that Sylvanas never had any plan that benefited anyone but herself and he is responsible for the entire Blood War including the Burning of Teldrassil.

Every time the Alliance acts even remotely proactive the Horde wants to destroy one of our cities (and the writers oblige for some reason). No wonder it does not happen too often, else we had no hub anymore...

It helps to differentiate between the Horde faction and the Horde playerbase and from various situations. Trying to assassinate the head of state and attacking her army is obviously an act of war and a cause to escalate, especially in a war with Satan. This is entirely notwithstanding Genn's reasoning or even whether he knows about Eyir or not - it'd always be cause for war. That doesn't make him morally inferior to Sylvanas or unjustified to be angry at her given how much she's fucked him and his people over, but it still gives the Horde a valid casus belli.

The other cases on the other hand though are bunk by themselves. Varian didn't declare war because of Sylvanas - seeing what shit the Forsaken were up to contributed to it, but not only had he already attacked the Forsaken at Howling Fjord, but in his spiel when he declares war he spends most of it ragging on about Thrall - because it's him and the orcs his grievances is with and Sylvanas is mostly tangential to it. Jaina meanwhile didn't prepare for war from Garrosh, she waged war on the tauren and facilitated it. Does this make sense during a state of war? Obviously. Much like Varian declaring war after the Wrathgate is logical, but that doesn't mean that they are defensive parties, and it doesn't make Garrosh actually striking at Jaina given that she's a party in the war anything but a proportionate and correct response.

As for the out of story sense, Blizzard don't make the Alliance proactive because they associate goodness with passivity and weakness. To be good you must be a pushover with universalist beliefs who has love for all creatures of god's kingdom regardless of what they've done to you and the cost on those you're responsible for. There's a reason their moral paragons are Baine and Anduin. If they were driven by what either playerbase wanted, Teldrassil would never have been a focus, Lordaeron would be a vastly bigger deal and actually be the object of an Alliance reconquista and the Alliance city that'd have been the object of a raid would be Stormwind. I defy you to find me an Alliance partisan who doesn't think the Forsaken are the ones they should be hitting most of all and who wouldn't enjoy taking Lordaeron City for real, a Forsaken player who wouldnt' find that a compelling conflict or a Horde player who wouldn't much prefer to kick Anduin in the balls than to kick the night elves while they're down for the millionth time.

[Sorshen]

She makes even less sense now than at the start of this dumpster fire expansion.