Does Sylvanas finally make sense to you?

[Super Dickmann]

None of her thoughts in the novels ever really addressed her long-term plans, either; and they all ring true despite the new information we're privy to (e.g. in order to protect herself and her interests i.e. the Jailer she still needed the Forsaken still serve as an effective shield). Nothing Sylvanas has done since Legion and in BfA strike me as anything she wouldn't otherwise do.

"I didn't want Varian to die and am only going to go to war because I can't trust his son to keep control" "I feel sad that Vol'jin died and didn't want to be Warchief. I'm proud to be Warchief and jealous of how well he ran the Horde" "I want to preserve the Forsaken that's why I nabbed Eyir" "I really want to take over Stormwind and gush about this in my own mind despite never having expressed such interest before and never wanting to do so after".

There's no amount of fanfiction that can glue pre-BTS Sylvanas, BTS Sylvanas and BFA Sylvanas together. Kosak didn't write EoN with the Jailor in mind, nor did anyone in Vanilla/Cataclysm write the laughable Orwellian state of BTS. In turn, Golden didn't write Sylvanas with the goal of killing as many people as possible or having planned Vol'jin and Varian's deaths. Hell, the writers in BFA didn't know if Sylvanas had told her dark rangers about her plans or not or whether she intended to ditch the Horde or not because they had to hastily rewrite the plot to fit the loyalist option.

[Hugnomo]

It's pure nonsense that doesn't make sense even within the expansion it's introduced in terms of informing her decision-making. The writers themselves didn't know that'd be her motivation in the tie-in book meant to hype the expansion it was to be revealed in. Things like evacuating civilians from Undercity instead of letting them die, intervening in Ashenvale to save 'thousands' of soldiers, when letting them die would serve her goals better, being frustrated in her own mind about Malfurion - whom she allowed to survive, when killing him and torching the tree would maximize the body count.

And this is only within BFA itself. It goes without mention that Sylvanas wasn't helping send more people to hell when she was mass-raising undead in Cataclysm or trying to acquire Eyir for her explicitly mentioned purpose (in her mind) to make the Forsaken immortal, ergo unable to go to hell and thus enable to empower her.

There was no grand plan. Sylvanas' heart's desire in Edge of Night was to survive and to preserve her subjects to ensure that survival. Her heart's desire in BTS was to destroy Stormwind. Her heart's desire in BFA is to kill as many people as possible. I am going to go out on a limb here and tell you that her goal will change in Shadowlands as well and there too we will be told that all along it was something else entirely.

Yeah I completely agree. It is apparent that her motivations were not set in stone from the get go. In hindsight, it only makes BfA feel like a filler expansion, where they needed some faction war flavored expansion and decided to pin it on Sylvanas because of her status as a character and because they knew they would eventually go further into her story and wanted to start introducing her and hyping her in this "she has some 5D chess plan that you aren't privy to yet and won't be for the entirety of the expansion because we haven't come up with it yet*

[PenguinChan]

If Blizzard was capable of long-term planning it'd make sense and I think everyone would be alright with it. But honestly ever since WotLK, characters like Sylvanas lost almost all of their character and just keep getting bounced around from writer to writer with no coherency in sight.

[Super Dickmann]

Yeah I completely agree. It is apparent that her motivations were not set in stone from the get go. In hindsight, it only makes BfA feel like a filler expansion, where they needed some faction war flavored expansion and decided to pin it on Sylvanas because of her status as a character and because they knew they would eventually go further into her story and wanted to start introducing her and hyping her in this "she has some 5D chess plan that you aren't privy to yet and won't be for the entirety of the expansion because we haven't come up with it yet*

The whole idea was stupid since inception because contrary to what Blizzard are trying desperately to tell us now, Sylvanas was never a 6d underwater backgammon player. She was consistently much better as a fighter than a schemer and acted as such. Changing someone who prefers to keep a low profile and is decently clever with someone who's some kind of mastermind understanding everyone's motivations yet simultaneously having less impulse control than in her prior writing and consistently failing to read those around her is as strange as it is frustrating. Saying "nuh uh, she didn't get a coup on her hands with the Wrathgate because she trusted a dreadlord, it was her plan all along" or "Nuh uh, she didn't lose her temper and fuck up at the Gates, she just didn't need the Horde" doesn't make her look smarter, it just makes it look like the writers are hastily trying to glue vastly disparate plot threads together and failing. Because they are.

[Toppy]

If Blizzard was capable of long-term planning it'd make sense and I think everyone would be alright with it. But honestly ever since WotLK, characters like Sylvanas lost almost all of their character and just keep getting bounced around from writer to writer with no coherency in sight.

You were expecting to much from a character that was always fairly simple. What character did they even have post-wotlk? Was it something that was there, or something you thought was there?

[Kyphael]

Pretty much all of the above. It's like WoW is a comic book title that gets tossed around different writers, and the new writer that picks up doesn't even care what the previous ones did, or didn't do. DC Comics ran into this issue before. They called it a Crisis. Blizzard doesn't consider their story to be in a bad place, however, that would imply they even care.

[Aucald]

"I didn't want Varian to die and am only going to go to war because I can't trust his son to keep control" "I feel sad that Vol'jin died and didn't want to be Warchief. I'm proud to be Warchief and jealous of how well he ran the Horde" "I want to preserve the Forsaken that's why I nabbed Eyir" "I really want to take over Stormwind and gush about this in my own mind despite never having expressed such interest before and never wanting to do so after".

There's no amount of fanfiction that can glue pre-BTS Sylvanas, BTS Sylvanas and BFA Sylvanas together. Kosak didn't write EoN with the Jailor in mind, nor did anyone in Vanilla/Cataclysm write the laughable Orwellian state of BTS. In turn, Golden didn't write Sylvanas with the goal of killing as many people as possible or having planned Vol'jin and Varian's deaths. Hell, the writers in BFA didn't know if Sylvanas had told her dark rangers about her plans or not or whether she intended to ditch the Horde or not because they had to hastily rewrite the plot to fit the loyalist option.

She didn't care whether Varian died or not, but she respected (and feared) his strength and tenacity - traits she does not see in his son, and therefore has scant respect for him. Not wanting to be Warchief but being proud of becoming one also isn't mutually exclusive, I've had plenty of times in life where I didn't ask for an accolade but still proud to receive it. Ditto for using Eyir to strengthen her Forsaken as that feeds directly into her personal power. Again for taking Stormwind and increasing the ranks of the Forsaken while also feeding her patron in the Maw.

I agree, "Edge of Night" wasn't written with the Jailer in mind at all - but his existence and effect on her plans are neither inconsistent nor a retcon in any real sense. Since Sylvanas' abandonment of the Horde was essentially a knee-jerk reaction from Sylvanas herself getting tagged by Saurfang, it scans that told her Dark Rangers nothing of it as she had no idea it was going to happen. Those that remain loyal to her no doubt bought her lies about what had happened after the fact, whereas those who did not finally see her for what she always was.

[Super Dickmann]

You were expecting to much from a character that was always fairly simple. What character did they even have post-wotlk? Was it something that was there, or something you thought was there?

Of course it was, the notion that Sylvanas is any less of a fleshed out character than the rest of the WC3 cast is farcical. "Elf military leader dies, get raised into a slave, rebels and wants to kill the guy who enslaved her while in charge of zombies with a similar backstory." is functional. As is "Did aforementioned, kms, went to hell. Oh, hell sucks, let's protect the zombies I have so I don't go to hell and make more zombies".

She didn't care whether Varian died or not, but she respect (and feared) his strength and tenacity - traits she does not see in his son, and therefore has scant respect for him. Not wanting to be Warchief but being proud of becoming one also isn't mutually exclusive, I've had plenty of times in life where I didn't ask for an accolade but still proud to receive it. Ditto for using Eyir to strengthen her Forsaken as that feeds directly into her personal power. Again for taking Stormwind and increasing the ranks of the Forsaken while also feeding her patron in the Maw.

That is not what the book tells you, much as you're trying to spin it now. On all of these points at that. She doesn't just tell herself, in her own mind, that she respected Varian, but that she wanted to help him and the reason she didn't was because of her Warchief's order and that she had to obey it. Ergo, by extension that she respected the office of Warchief. The contradiction is not in wanting to be Warchief yet being proud of the position and wanting to do a good job, as she mentions in her thoughts admiring Vol'jin and pondering distributing the land of the Alliance post a military victory, it's in lamenting how she wanted to stick around for Vol'jin and how high an opinion she had of him, while we now know she arranged his death. The contradiction isn't in that she just wanted Eyir to save the Forsaken, but that she laments that she could've saved them all, not expand her own personal power. There is zero reference in her own mind about feeding the Jailor in the Maw in the entire book, but there is a bit where she says that she can't trust Anduin and thus would go to war with him where she wouldn't Varian. Something as essential as her whole reason for starting the war and the fact that she used Vol'jin and Varian without actually having an interest in the position would be something to come up in her own mind while she contemplates the exact opposite to what we were told later.

I agree, "Edge of Night" wasn't written with the Jailer in mind at all - but his existence and effect on her plans are neither inconsistent nor a retcon in any real sense. Since Sylvanas' abandonment of the Horde was essentially a knee-jerk reaction from Sylvanas herself getting tagged by Saurfang, it scans that told her Dark Rangers nothing of it as she had no idea it was going to happen. Those that remain loyal to her no doubt bought her lies about what had happened after the fact, whereas those who did not finally see her for what she always was.

They are completely inconsistent. Every single person Sylvanas raised made her weaker. The conclusion she draws at the end of EoN regarding preserving the Forsaken to benefit her own survival is the opposite conclusion of the one she seeks to achieve now in terms of killing as many people as possible, ergo, not raising anyone. The Dark Ranger you meet in the loyalist questline told you this was an outcome she foresaw - before - and you later see said dark ranger with her in the Ghostlands ,yet we learn a patch later that she actually ditched the Dark Rangers as well. The latter was clearly the intended objective, but the former was pasted in along with the assertion that she knew before the fact that this is what she intended, something strengthened by how the commenting NPCs like Lor'themar say that 'she no longer needs the Horde' and frame it as a deliberate move instead of a hissy fit.

[Mehrunes]

She didn't care whether Varian died or not, but she respected (and feared) his strength and tenacity - traits she does not see in his son, and therefore has scant respect for him. Not wanting to be Warchief but being proud of becoming one also isn't mutually exclusive, I've had plenty of times in life where I didn't ask for an accolade but still proud to receive it. Ditto for using Eyir to strengthen her Forsaken as that feeds directly into her personal power. Again for taking Stormwind and increasing the ranks of the Forsaken while also feeding her patron in the Maw.

Except post-Blizzcon she did want to become Warchief. Like @Super Dickmann said there is no way to glue various Sylvanases together. Your efforts are beyond futile.

[Aresk]

Sylvanas' motivations (going strictly with the undead version, not the ranger general) from TFT through Legion made sense to me, back when it was "vengeance against Arthas" into "staving off an oblivion of torment that exists on the other side of death," with exception of Vol'jin's making her Warchief. Even Eyir makes sense with her quest for more val'kyr. But Vol'jin clearly wasn't in his right mind when he made her Warchief and we were promised more explanation. What we got was the bizarre juxtaposition of her character even before BFA where she both simultaneously hates being Warchief (BTS) and is proud to be the Warchief (Three Sisters) and little explanation beyond "Not sure why I did that, mon!" from Vol'jin and a Sylvanas who appears mentally unstable whenever anyone mentions "Hope." It's possible that the power she's getting from the Maw is affecting her sanity somehow, but even then, Blizzard's own statements about Sylvanas' motivation (she had a long ploy to become Warchief since the end of WotLK) just don't mesh with the products that they provide (expansion, cinematic, novel, or comic).

[Aucald]

That is not what the book tells you, much as you're trying to spin it now. On all of these points at that. She doesn't just tell herself, in her own mind, that she respected Varian, but that she wanted to help him and the reason she didn't was because of her Warchief's order and that she had to obey it. Ergo, by extension that she respected the office of Warchief. The contradiction is not in wanting to be Warchief yet being proud of the position and wanting to do a good job, as she mentions in her thoughts admiring Vol'jin and pondering distributing the land of the Alliance post a military victory, it's in lamenting how she wanted to stick around for Vol'jin and how high an opinion she had of him, while we now know she arranged his death. The contradiction isn't in that she just wanted Eyir to save the Forsaken, but that she laments that she could've saved them all, not expand her own personal power. There is zero reference in her own mind about feeding the Jailor in the Maw in the entire book, but there is a bit where she says that she can't trust Anduin and thus would go to war with him where she wouldn't Varian. Something as essential as her whole reason for starting the war and the fact that she used Vol'jin and Varian without actually having an interest in the position would be something to come up in her own mind while she contemplates the exact opposite to what we were told later.

The book doesn't and need not tell you *everything* she's thinking, nor spell out her larger-scope plans telescoping into infinity - it's speaking of events relevant to what is occurring at that point in time, not casting itself deep in the future or into the past. Maybe she did want to help Varian at the Broken Shore, as the Burning Legion (with its penchant for consuming souls) would be her enemy as well as her patron's enemy, making the struggle against them a shared venture. We also don't know if Sylvanas had any hand in Vol'jin's death, and at no point in either "Before the Storm" or BfA is it shown she's directly responsible for it - this could just as easily being the Jailer acting on her behalf without her direct knowledge, setting her up where it thought she needed to be to enact the plan (also explaining why she relates that she didn't want the position in the first place). You're making the assumption that Sylvanas and the Jailer concocted some master plan they both cleave to unerringly, but at no one point are we shown evidence of this. Sylvanas is basically feeding Death as best she can, not enacting some grand plan for a great purpose - she's enriching herself in the process, but it's not a monomaniacal focus either. She has other plans, as well; such as her own eternal preservation. It's also entirely possible she made more concrete contact with this entity in the midst of BfA (such as when she took possession of the Xal'atath blade), and her brief communion during "Edge of Night" was more preamble (hence it doesn't factor hugely into her thoughts in "Before the Storm").

They are completely inconsistent. Every single person Sylvanas raised made her weaker. The conclusion she draws at the end of EoN regarding preserving the Forsaken to benefit her own survival is the opposite conclusion of the one she seeks to achieve now in terms of killing as many people as possible, ergo, not raising anyone. The Dark Ranger you meet in the loyalist questline told you this was an outcome she foresaw - before - and you later see said dark ranger with her in the Ghostlands ,yet we learn a patch later that she actually ditched the Dark Rangers as well. The latter was clearly the intended objective, but the former was pasted in along with the assertion that she knew before the fact that this is what she intended, something strengthened by how the commenting NPCs like Lor'themar say that 'she no longer needs the Horde' and frame it as a deliberate move instead of a hissy fit.

As I said above, Sylvanas' goal is not so singularly focused. She has to feed death, but she also needs a standing force to keep her enemies at bay. The Forsaken used to be this force, but she lost it; now she has to rebuild through whatever scheming remains to her. It's not as if Sylvanas raised every soul that the Horde war machine sent to swirling to the Maw, either; she focused on quality over quantity - sending most to the Jailer but tagging the best of the lot for her own use as undead servants. There's nothing inconsistent about that, really; just good use of resources when you're spending the tokens of Death.

[birdynumnum]

where is sylvanas by the way, like there must be some timegate between 8.2.5 and 9.0 like she literially just in hiding until she goes to visit bolvar now?

[allawyn]

Sylvanas doesn't even make sense compared to the beginning of the same expansion. In the opening cinematic, her attitude it totally wrong for what she should be thinking. The Teldrasil scene clear shows her deciding to burn Teldrasil at the last moment, when it should have been her plan all along. Edge of Night was retconned into the ground for this.

So it comes down to this. Her actions make sense, only if you forget who Blizzard handled her before and treat her as a new character.

[ravenmoon]

It's pure nonsense that doesn't make sense even within the expansion it's introduced in terms of informing her decision-making. The writers themselves didn't know that'd be her motivation in the tie-in book meant to hype the expansion it was to be revealed in. Things like evacuating civilians from Undercity instead of letting them die, intervening in Ashenvale to save 'thousands' of soldiers, when letting them die would serve her goals better, being frustrated in her own mind about Malfurion - whom she allowed to survive, when killing him and torching the tree would maximize the body count.

And this is only within BFA itself. It goes without mention that Sylvanas wasn't helping send more people to hell when she was mass-raising undead in Cataclysm or trying to acquire Eyir for her explicitly mentioned purpose (in her mind) to make the Forsaken immortal, ergo unable to go to hell and thus enable to empower her.

There was no grand plan. Sylvanas' heart's desire in Edge of Night was to survive and to preserve her subjects to ensure that survival. Her heart's desire in BTS was to destroy Stormwind. Her heart's desire in BFA is to kill as many people as possible. I am going to go out on a limb here and tell you that her goal will change in Shadowlands as well and there too we will be told that all along it was something else entirely.

When you put it that way, it seems like a let's save Sylvanas no matter what, and use every plot line we mess up to buff her up. I think she is more a dev fave than anything..

Still, can we prove that Sylvanas had no other ulterior motives? or does it makes ense that somewhere along BFA she was given a new option?

[Super Dickmann]

When you put it that way, it seems like a let's save Sylvanas no matter what, and use every plot line we mess up to buff her up. I think she is more a dev fave than anything..

Still, can we prove that Sylvanas had no other ulterior motives? or does it makes ense that somewhere along BFA she was given a new option?

We can prove that at the time of writing the writers didn't consider her to have ulterior motive, vis a vis EoN, BTS and omniscient narration in both Chronicle and the Cata Forsaken intro. She does now as a result of retcons but it wasn't intended at the time.

As for Sylvanas being a developer favorite. No doubt, but the Sylvanas they like is radically different from the Sylvanas we had. And at least as far as BFA is concerned, none of this was done to expand on her character. Sylvanas in BFA is just a plot device to advance the stories of other characters, Saurfang and Calia being the most prominent example.

The book doesn't and need not tell you *everything* she's thinking, nor spell out her larger-scope plans telescoping into infinity - it's speaking of events relevant to what is occurring at that point in time, not casting itself deep in the future or into the past. Maybe she did want to help Varian at the Broken Shore, as the Burning Legion (with its penchant for consuming souls) would be her enemy as well as her patron's enemy, making the struggle against them a shared venture. We also don't know if Sylvanas had any hand in Vol'jin's death, and at no point in either "Before the Storm" or BfA is it shown she's directly responsible for it - this could just as easily being the Jailer acting on her behalf without her direct knowledge, setting her up where it thought she needed to be to enact the plan (also explaining why she relates that she didn't want the position in the first place). You're making the assumption that Sylvanas and the Jailer concocted some master plan they both cleave to unerringly, but at no one point are we shown evidence of this. Sylvanas is basically feeding Death as best she can, not enacting some grand plan for a great purpose - she's enriching herself in the process, but it's not a monomaniacal focus either. She has other plans, as well; such as her own eternal preservation. It's also entirely possible she made more concrete contact with this entity in the midst of BfA (such as when she took possession of the Xal'atath blade), and her brief communion during "Edge of Night" was more preamble (hence it doesn't factor hugely into her thoughts in "Before the Storm").

If the book presents her internal narration, as it does, then it purports to show her thought process. It helps if that thought process is accurate to the character's mind, which we later learn it isn't. When it comes to Varian or Vol'jin, we don't need to speculate on the whys presented in the book - the why of why she wanted to save Varian and why she didn't do it is there - the Warchief told her not to, she respected him as a warrior and a king and she didn't feel war was necessary while he was in charge. This is all not subject to interpretation - it is told to us outright. It is also in naked contradiction to what we now know - ergo that her actions around Varian and Vol'jin were part of a long con to get her the power she needed to up the bodycount. This is stated within the most recent Blizzcon statements when this question was directly asked, as @Mehrunes points out. The same applies to her thoughts as regards Stormwind or Eyir - if other thoughts were of paramount importance, and if she had already made a deal with the Jailor that was formative to her motives at some point it'd have come up but at every instance we are given other, different statements, which given that it's from her mind we can safely assume are authoritative.

As I said above, Sylvanas' goal is not so singularly focused. She has to feed death, but she also needs a standing force to keep her enemies at bay. The Forsaken used to be this force, but she lost it; now she has to rebuild through whatever scheming remains to her. It's not as if Sylvanas raised every soul that the Horde war machine sent to swirling to the Maw, either; she focused on quality over quantity - sending most to the Jailer but tagging the best of the lot for her own use as undead servants. There's nothing inconsistent about that, really; just good use of resources when you're spending the tokens of Death.

Sylvanas raised very few people in BFA, as I pointed out in complaint ages back before we knew she was sending people to the Maw. Now that part makes more sense. But her mass necromancy earlier, with the most recent attempt to acquire a means for such being Legion, when the Jailor was already active and she was already in his employ from at the very least the Broken Shore and especially if we assume she was such from Edge of Night on, then her actions do not fit what she goes on to do.

The common denominator with your argument isn't that these wouldn't be possible explanations in a hypothetical scenario where you simply had plot points to bridge together, but that the explanations you give are not the ones the material give and are demonstrably not the writer's intent at the time of writing. Hence why I say earlier that you could have, by sticking to any of these goals and presenting a similar course of events, have had a coherent story, but you don't, because you try to have several separate and contradictory motives and even actions.

[Aucald]

If the book presents her internal narration, as it does, then it purports to show her thought process. It helps if that thought process is accurate to the character's mind, which we later learn it isn't. When it comes to Varian or Vol'jin, we don't need to speculate on the whys presented in the book - the why of why she wanted to save Varian and why she didn't do it is there - the Warchief told her not to, she respected him as a warrior and a king and she didn't feel war was necessary while he was in charge. This is all not subject to interpretation - it is told to us outright. It is also in naked contradiction to what we now know - ergo that her actions around Varian and Vol'jin were part of a long con to get her the power she needed to up the bodycount. This is stated within the most recent Blizzcon statements when this question was directly asked, as @Mehrunes points out. The same applies to her thoughts as regards Stormwind or Eyir - if other thoughts were of paramount importance, and if she had already made a deal with the Jailor that was formative to her motives at some point it'd have come up but at every instance we are given other, different statements, which given that it's from her mind we can safely assume are authoritative.

Agreed, but it needn't show her *entire* thought process unto the end of time, or several years prior, or her planning months into the future, etc. etc. It's quite accurate to her mind in the context events are happening in - the complaint here reads to me: "Sylvanas didn't hit us with enough exposition to justify future movements in the story." My argument is that she needn't, and probably shouldn't - a character's rationale she be read through action in the story itself, not exposition in the form of extraneous internal monologue. The developer's explanations of her actions aren't direct facets of her character, either; her goals *now* don't have to be perfectly adjacent to her goals previously - I think it's pretty obvious something important changed insofar as Sylvanas' plans were concerned, and her way of approaching both peers and enemies, and Shadowlands is likely to be the place where the substance of those changes are fleshed out and explored. I would grant you that taken as-is and without further embellishment Sylvanas' actions aren't consistent, but her story isn't fully told and swaths of it remain to be fleshed i.e. the Jailer and its role in things. I think it's an important piece of backstory you're not factoring into the current calculus of her character. Her actions concerning Eyir and the Forsaken will be borne out and made more understandable (or not, possibly) when we know more about her relationship with and plans concerning the Jailer itself.

Sylvanas raised very few people in BFA, as I pointed out in complaint ages back before we knew she was sending people to the Maw. Now that part makes more sense. But her mass necromancy earlier, with the most recent attempt to acquire a means for such being Legion, when the Jailor was already active and she was already in his employ from at the very least the Broken Shore and especially if we assume she was such from Edge of Night on, then her actions do not fit what she goes on to do.

Even in Cata she didn't really raise that many - some farmers in the Western Plaguelands, a few in Silverpine, and of course continuing the process at Deathknell. She wasn't undertaking Scourge levels of recruitment by any means (and she likely wouldn't have been able to even had she been inclined to).

The common denominator with your argument isn't that these wouldn't be possible explanations in a hypothetical scenario where you simply had plot points to bridge together, but that the explanations you give are not the ones the material give and are demonstrably not the writer's intent at the time of writing. Hence why I say earlier that you could have, by sticking to any of these goals and presenting a similar course of events, have had a coherent story, but you don't, because you try to have several separate and contradictory motives and even actions.

Motives and their outcomes change with time, and what we don't have right now is a cogent timeline of Sylvanas' communion with the Jailer nor any idea of the scope of their plan and when it went into execution. It's entirely possible that at the time we received these windows into Sylvanas' mind her thoughts were shown as intended, but those motivations changed mid-BfA with further input from the Jailer. Her MO during Cata through to pre-BfA could've been entirely focused on self preservation and the building of an army necessary to safeguard her true aims. And even then, back in "A Good War" she eludes to a true end-game that she doesn't expound on, offering a glimpse into the idea that something greater is in the works. Only that it is big enough that it might attract the attention of beings such as Elune.

[Depakote]

Nope.
10/chars

[Mehrunes]

Agreed, but it needn't show her *entire* thought process unto the end of time, or several years prior, or her planning months into the future, etc. etc. It's quite accurate to her mind in the context events are happening in - the complaint here reads to me: "Sylvanas didn't hit us with enough exposition to justify future movements in the story." My argument is that she needn't, and probably shouldn't - a character's rationale she be read through action in the story itself, not exposition in the form of extraneous internal monologue. The developer's explanations of her actions aren't direct facets of her character, either; her goals *now* don't have to be perfectly adjacent to her goals previously - I think it's pretty obvious something important changed insofar as Sylvanas' plans were concerned, and her way of approaching both peers and enemies, and Shadowlands is likely to be the place where the substance of those changes are fleshed out and explored. I would grant you that taken as-is and without further embellishment Sylvanas' actions aren't consistent, but her story isn't fully told and swaths of it remain to be fleshed i.e. the Jailer and its role in things. I think it's an important piece of backstory you're not factoring into the current calculus of her character. Her actions concerning Eyir and the Forsaken will be borne out and made more understandable (or not, possibly) when we know more about her relationship with and plans concerning the Jailer itself.

Or, you know, a spade is a spade and it's the billionth example of Blizzard treating consistency like dirt. Okham's razor exists for a reason. We know she made her pact with the Jailer as early as Edge of Night. The soul mechanism of the Shadowlands has broken as late as Legion (could have been earlier, there was inconsistent info about that one). She failed to capture Eyir shortly afterwards. She learned of Azerite and it potential at the very start of BtS. Those may explain the earlier inconsistencies like her resurrecting people in Cata left and right, but there was no important event afterwards to justify any of the multiple inconsistencies between her goals, thoughts and desires from BtS and later on (and also including things like her thoughts on Eyir because even despite the failure to capture her at the start of Legion she was still thinking about it in context of failing to make the Forsaken immortal in BtS).

Even in Cata she didn't really raise that many - some farmers in the Western Plaguelands, a few in Silverpine, and of course continuing the process at Deathknell. She wasn't undertaking Scourge levels of recruitment by any means (and she likely wouldn't have been able to even had she been inclined to).

In-game portrayal of things matters nothing. As per quest text from Cataclysm Deathknell alone produced hundreds daily.

[Super Dickmann]

Agreed, but it needn't show her *entire* thought process unto the end of time, or several years prior, or her planning months into the future, etc. etc. It's quite accurate to her mind in the context events are happening in - the complaint here reads to me: "Sylvanas didn't hit us with enough exposition to justify future movements in the story." My argument is that she needn't, and probably shouldn't - a character's rationale she be read through action in the story itself, not exposition in the form of extraneous internal monologue. The developer's explanations of her actions aren't direct facets of her character, either; her goals *now* don't have to be perfectly adjacent to her goals previously - I think it's pretty obvious something important changed insofar as Sylvanas' plans were concerned, and her way of approaching both peers and enemies, and Shadowlands is likely to be the place where the substance of those changes are fleshed out and explored. I would grant you that taken as-is and without further embellishment Sylvanas' actions aren't consistent, but her story isn't fully told and swaths of it remain to be fleshed i.e. the Jailer and its role in things. I think it's an important piece of backstory you're not factoring into the current calculus of her character. Her actions concerning Eyir and the Forsaken will be borne out and made more understandable (or not, possibly) when we know more about her relationship with and plans concerning the Jailer itself.

Internal monologue is the farthest thing from extraneous, nor is it detached from action. What it does is inform action and spoken word and reveal what is shown behind it. By showing us the mind of the character it shows us what they actually think and feel, rather than what they put on. The notion that her entire thought process should be shown is a weak strawman - what needs to be shown is an accurate picture of what drives her and what occupies her thoughts. There is no situation where Sylvanas would spend more time thinking about how proud she is to be the first woman Warchief despite being surprised to be in the position or note how war could've been avoided when we know that she didn't give the least bit of a shit about being Warchief, that she can't have been surprised because she arranged her place as Warchief at Vol'jin's expense or that war was always going to happen because it was her goal to amp up her bodycount. It's not an absence of fleshing out that makes the story nonsense, it's that fleshing out already exists. It's not just that Sylvanas says she feels bad about Varian, it's that her reasons for doing so are expanded upon in unfalsifiable fashion in her own mind, without bearing mention to extremely important aspects we are now privy to that contradict this. Likewise with Eyir - if the immortality of the Forsaken is secondary to what is presumably getting Helya or Eyir or what have you on the Jailor's side as we'll learn later. We know that she was already an agent of the Legion at earliest in EoN - never before in evidence, or in Legion - outright contradicted by her musings on the position, Varian, Vol'jin and the war in BTS. Embellishment would not change this, only outright retcons would.

Even in Cata she didn't really raise that many - some farmers in the Western Plaguelands, a few in Silverpine, and of course continuing the process at Deathknell. She wasn't undertaking Scourge levels of recruitment by any means (and she likely wouldn't have been able to even had she been inclined to).

As @Mehrunes points out, Deathknell alone consists of hundreds per day. Everywhere we go and to every settlement Sylvanas makes a point of raising people. To dismiss it out of hand when it and the perpetuation of the Forsaken consume huge parts of Cataclysm is dubious at best.

Motives and their outcomes change with time, and what we don't have right now is a cogent timeline of Sylvanas' communion with the Jailer nor any idea of the scope of their plan and when it went into execution. It's entirely possible that at the time we received these windows into Sylvanas' mind her thoughts were shown as intended, but those motivations changed mid-BfA with further input from the Jailer. Her MO during Cata through to pre-BfA could've been entirely focused on self preservation and the building of an army necessary to safeguard her true aims. And even then, back in "A Good War" she eludes to a true end-game that she doesn't expound on, offering a glimpse into the idea that something greater is in the works. Only that it is big enough that it might attract the attention of beings such as Elune.

Could the story have been told with her experiencing a change in motive as a result of her exposure to azerite showing her that she was aiming her sights too low, or her desperation at the loss of Eyir driving her to deal with the Jailor or her being ignorant of Vol'jin's death and appointment of her and only later figuring out that it was the Jailor's machinations? Yes. But it wasn't. And for it to be told that way they don't just need to retcon BTS and EoN, they need to retcon BFA and adjust their Shadowlands hype statements because we already have positions and reasoning for all those things that aren't the above and don't gel with the Jailor story. Even A Good War, while alluding to a real goal, has things like Nathanos gushing about the Horde or Sylvanas being shocked that Malfurion isn't dead and having to have an epiphany to burn the tree.

[Ophenia]

The more the story "progresses" the less she does.

They want to make us think she's some kind of mastermind who had planned all of this since like Cataclysm, while most of the events were pure randomness. Unless, of course, they pull out that Sylvanas can see the future in Shadowlands to explain everything that happened over the last 10 years (which I absolutely believe they're able to).

But I'm putting a coin on Sylvanas appearing in N'zoth ending cinematic and doing something that should reveal a huge plot-twist once again, which we are supposed to absorb like the brainless sponges Blizzard think we are