Sylvanas Is Evil, Just Admit It

[kappalol]

What if someone wants to play the evil side in-game?

[Varodoc]

What if someone wants to play the evil side in-game?

That's cool, but there isn't supposed to be an evil side in WoW. I suggest you go play Swtor or LOTRO.

[Raisei]

Wanna bet Sylvanas would be shown as right after Shadowlands? Wanna bet the jailor breaking free and Sylvanas' reason for helping is not the universal all bad it is appearing to be.

Classic writing trick, lack of information and set up makes it appear as one thing, only for later revelations to finally put in context what you see and realise, "omg, Sylvanas was doing us a favour" -2she's amazing, and badass"

This classic trick however stops working when the character in question actually DOES evil things all along. The character can APPEAR evil but cannot fully commit to it.
Murdering a tree full of innocents is simply not excusable by some nonesensical justification later. I have no doubt that Sylvanas BELIEVES she is doing the right thing, but that just does not excuse her crimes in any way.

If it really comes as you say then that will be a final spit on the graves of the Nightelves.

[huth]

Wanna bet Sylvanas would be shown as right after Shadowlands? Wanna bet the jailor breaking free and Sylvanas' reason for helping is not the universal all bad it is appearing to be.

Classic writing trick, lack of information and set up makes it appear as one thing, only for later revelations to finally put in context what you see and realise, "omg, Sylvanas was doing us a favour" -2she's amazing, and badass"

She already made it perfectly clear she does not care about others and will happily sacrifice them for her own benefit. You're seriously delusional if you think Blizzard will go and justify a genocide.

[Shefu]

I mean, she has damned countless people, including the civilians of Teldrassil (possibly children as well) as well as many Alliance and Horde soldiers (which include her own people aka the Forsaken), to a torturous afterlife. Death is one thing, it happens in war, but this.....this is beyond justifiable. There is no hidden plan, no greater good. She is evil, though I wish the writers hadn't written her this way. There was a time when her ruthlessness was used for the good of her people.

The Alliance is evil. They want to control and rule everyone in Azeroth and beyond and convert them to following the light if possible too.

[Varodoc]

The Alliance is evil. They want to control and rule everyone in Azeroth and beyond and convert them to following the light if possible too.

No, they're evil because their leaders don't fight in a bikini. Come now, let's be real.

[Kallisto]

You are sick.

That was how WW2 was fought on both sides. The allies had this thought when leveling cities in Germany and Japan and other axis held areas.

We've just been extremely fortunate that we've not had a real major war since. If the cold War heated up, even if it didn't go nuclear both sides would have used conventional weapons on civilian areas to try to stop the other side will to fight (aka give up hope) as that's how total wars between major powers have always been fought.

[Varodoc]

That was how WW2 was fought on both sides. The allies had this thought when leveling cities in Germany and Japan and other axis held areas.

We've just been extremely fortunate that we've not had a real major war since. If the cold War heated up, even if it didn't go nuclear both sides would have used conventional weapons on civilian areas to try to stop the other side will to fight (aka give up hope) as that's how total wars between major powers have always been fought.

I didn't say I agreed with what those people did.

[Minikin]

Wanna bet Sylvanas would be shown as right after Shadowlands? Wanna bet the jailor breaking free and Sylvanas' reason for helping is not the universal all bad it is appearing to be.

Classic writing trick, lack of information and set up makes it appear as one thing, only for later revelations to finally put in context what you see and realise, "omg, Sylvanas was doing us a favour" -2she's amazing, and badass"

I've been waiting for that for two years, clutching my floatation device in anticipation of the tidal wave of years.

[Dejavuproned]

What if someone wants to play the evil side in-game?

This was always my issue with Forsaken as part of the horde. They are evil from the start (experimenting horrifically on live people) and literally comic book evil from Cata onwards but blizzard wants us to believe the horde are the nobel misunderstood types. Kinda hard to reconsile the two things happening at the same time.

I remember when I first got interested in wow game and saw you could play as basically the scourge from wc3 guys I thought it was super cool. Then I started playing and realized you actually can't... But you can....but you really can't. Because blizzard just can't make up their minds.

There should have been a 3rd faction from the start, the forsaken (as undead versions of the other races) as their own thing for those who wanted to be the literally evil guys Imo.

As for sylvanas, I sympathized with her until Cata, then I saw she was low-key following in Arthas's footsteps. I still thought she was a cool character, though, and was interested where they would take her. It's too late to find redemption for her unless it's written really really well and frankly with respect to night-elf players (acknowledging what she did). I think if this follows to an Arthas's style conclusion, then I'm ok with it because I'm a fan of dramatic irony and she's becoming eveything she claimed to hate about him.

I have a sneaking suspicion though, that they are gonna try to force a redemption arc/ a "she was doing it for good all along" and handle it poorly, only satisfying the cringy sylvanas fanbois that think their wifu can do no wrong. And that would be a real shame, becuase I don't think that's the majority of the playerbase but it would fall in line with how many felt about her story in bfa and how it was handled.

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[Coconut]

This classic trick however stops working when the character in question actually DOES evil things all along. The character can APPEAR evil but cannot fully commit to it.
Murdering a tree full of innocents is simply not excusable by some nonesensical justification later. I have no doubt that Sylvanas BELIEVES she is doing the right thing, but that just does not excuse her crimes in any way.

If it really comes as you say then that will be a final spit on the graves of the Nightelves.

Blizzard's writing team messed up royally in how they presented the genocide at Teldrassil. The problem was that simply by virtue of playing through the content the Horde Champion became complicit in it. There was no point in which the Horde Player could choose to say "I am not ok with this". All the key information came with the cinematic: Sylvanas's decision to burn the tree, her reason for doing it, the fact that only innocents remained in there, and the execution itself. Through it all, it is implied that your character stood there and did nothing.

So there is a cognitive dissonance in how we interpret the story: from a narrative perspective, the Horde Characters are absolutely complicit. If they were ever going to act against Sylvanas, it should have been then, since all the other future circumstances where the narrative has them rebel are trivial compared to the mass murder of children (and their strategic value to moral cost ratio is a hell of a lot higher). From a gameplay and personal perspective, however, the Horde Players are innocent because Blizzard never gave them a choice (except maybe to read the quest chain on mmo-champion and refrain from playing the pre-patch altogether, which is absurd, and not a choice that officially "counts" as in-game narrative). They just hijacked our characters into participating in one of the most horrific events in WoW.

The result is that Horde players generally either:

- Embraced the role Blizzard pigeonholed them in and decided to play as villains (this was the easiest choice if you could stomach it, but Blizzard eventually called it wrong).
- Tried to rationalize the events somehow, either with past or speculative lore.
- Distanced themselves from the story altogether, only looking at it from an extra-narrative angle.

It's important to note that the narrative never manages to convince Horde players that "Sylvanas made them do it". Indeed, I don't even think that it tries to do that. No, it was Blizzard's writing team who took the choice away from us, and in this we strangely empathize with the character. It was also Blizzard's writing team who hijacked Sylvanas into being a villain for BFA-Shadowlands.

As a fan of Warcraft III and Legion Sylvanas, I had high hopes that they would make her a little nicer and integrate her more into the Horde, which they seemed to be hinting at in early Legion and the Blizzcon BFA cinematic. At that time, the perspective of turning her into Garrosh 2.0 seemed so ridiculously bad writing-wise, so offensive and boring for Horde players, that I thought it was impossible. It was stupid to even suggest it. For me, the turn they took with her was terribly disappointing, and I would certainly find no catharsis in killing Sylvanas, since I don't think that would absolve my character of the guilt the writers placed onto his head anyway... It would only mean wasting the potential of yet another villain-batted Horde hero. Nor would it stop Alliance players from bullying me and other Hordies on the forums over a choice we didn't make, like a bunch of 6 year olds harassing the kids who were assigned by the teacher to be the villains in the kindergarten play.

The only solution that would leave both sides satisfied (though perhaps not the die-hard moralists) would be to "neutralize" the genocide by undoing its effects, i.e. reviving Teldrassil and all the Night Elf civilians through a Shadowlands event that both Alliance and Horde characters can participate in. Conveniently enough, this would also undo the plot point that the Night Elves are nigh-extinct and would once again allow them to be a major player in Kalimdor and a credible threat to the Horde in the future. And, of course, it would make it easier to accept a scenario in which Sylvanas survives and maybe even returns to the Horde.

[formerShandalay]

Let me preface this by saying that yes, I think Sylvanas is evil and her deeds are inexcusable. I also think there is no real problem with that, because bad guys have a place in that universe too and as it's a game you're perfectly in the clear about rooting for a bad guy (even if you can't actually join them ingame). Next thing: just because you understand why someone became a bad guy doesn't mean you agree with the methods or even think that it was the only course of action said bad guy could have taken.


I think Sylvanas is one in a long line of bad guys who have been manipulated into being one by either forces higher up on the cosmic scale as them or from a different part of the cosmic scale as them. They come across something that traumatizes them, get shown 'evidence' of how and why this happens, do not question said evidence and suddenly think they are the only ones who understand the threat and the only ones to know the one and only true way of fighting back.
This has happened several times in the lore on different cosmic scales (and even across different games from Blizzard). In the context of WoW the most powerful creature this has happened to is Sargeras, sensing/seeing a world soul consumed by the void, getting told by some Nathrezim that this is a plan to consume the universe, going mad with fear and turning to destroying all of creation, because that's the one and only way to stop it and he is the only one who knows and understands 'the truth'. Next is Illidan, we all know the drill, he gets shown by Sargeras how inconceivably large his armies are and that there is no way to stop him, turns around and from then on thinks he's the only one who understands the 'true threat' and how it can be fought. Next is Arthas, seeing the horrible atrocities comitted by the Scourge, getting told by a necromancer and a Nathrezim how big the threat really is and that there is only one way he can stop it, thinking he knows the only one true way and only he knows 'the truth' of it all.

I think with Sylvanas it's actually at least a little more complicated, because there's more to her story than just one horrible thing and then she completely snapped. First there was the Scourge, the sacking of her homeland, a treason from within, her getting turned undead and physically and mentally tortured for a prolonged period of time with all that comes with those things. I do think that even though most people see that she committed quite the atrocities herself following that, also most people think that her cruel determination and carelessness about the suffering of others are understandable in the context of her story and she may be redeemable until after the Lich Kings defeat, when she comitted suicide.
And while in the past I thought that maybe she was actually supposed to go to the Maw upon her suicide, I am now convinced that this was actually a trick. In Revendreth there is an NPC, Inquisitor Stelia, whose sins get called out and one of her sins is that her 'perfect toxins desolated whole species' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...ature=emb_logo here is the video, you can read that specific sin at 2:36 in the chat window). So this sin, desolating whole species with perfect toxins, doesn't get you sent to the Maw. Compare that to the stuff that Sylvanas did before her suicide. Sylvanas was tame compared to that. That is more in line with the things she did later.
I think the Jailer needed a new Lich King equivalent on Azeroth, because he couldn't get to Bolvar in the same way he could get to Arthas, because he is made out of life magic (Alexstrasza's fire). Which is also why Sylvanas calls him a 'usurper'. Life magic has no business on the Lich King's throne (from the Jailer's pov).
But Sylvanas up until her jump from Icecrown was not really compliant and didn't want any part in a grander scheme of anything, as she pointed out to the val'kyr. She wanted her revenge and when she had that she only wanted to die and be left in peace. So the Jailer showed her to the Maw and made her wish for being left in peace impossible by that, because there is no such thing in the afterlife. We ourselves specualted that the thing Sylvanas saw may be something all the Undead have to endure after their death, which would seem quite extreme and injust, if it was just applied to you because of some arbitrary reason you had no control over. So Sylvanas saw and felt it and from then on ... thought she was the one and only who understood and was shown the one and only true way to avoid it and put an end to it. Which in her case is much the same as in Sargeras's case: destroy the world, destroy the cosmos (Illidan and Arthas both didn't actually want to destroy everything, they both thought they were actually 'saving' the world in their own way).

The point is, though, all of them could have gone a different route too. By checking on other people's experience, by asking themselves if those entities that 'told them the truth' maybe didn't and why those entities would tell them what they did in the first place. And maybe by asking themselves if acting out a plan to destroy the universe/devour souls for more power/turn Azeroth into a wasteland and kill everyone who told them not to was the right thing to do after their own horrible experiences, or if maybe they weren't the ones with all the wisdom and all the knowledge and their plan was the one and only true way.
But they didn't and even if in the end some good things come from the bad, it still doesn't make them right, justified or even 'misunderstood good guys'. If anything it makes those that learn from their mistakes and turn things around the good guys, the ones who rise from the ashes and build a better future the heroes. But it doesn't change anything about evil deeds or atrocities themselves.


Of course Blizzard can still decide ... uh... mindcontrol! or ... uh... bodysnatchers! and make it all go away, but I hope they don't. It cheapens the whole thing and it would make a bad guy worth cheering on (in an 'it's a game'-sense) into a boring tool.

[ravenmoon]

Blizzard's writing team messed up royally in how they presented the genocide at Teldrassil. The problem was that simply by virtue of playing through the content the Horde Champion became complicit in it. There was no point in which the Horde Player could choose to say "I am not ok with this". All the key information came with the cinematic: Sylvanas's decision to burn the tree, her reason for doing it, the fact that only innocents remained in there, and the execution itself. Through it all, it is implied that your character stood there and did nothing.

So there is a cognitive dissonance in how we interpret the story: from a narrative perspective, the Horde Characters are absolutely complicit. If they were ever going to act against Sylvanas, it should have been then, since all the other future circumstances where the narrative has them rebel are trivial compared to the mass murder of children (and their strategic value to moral cost ratio is a hell of a lot higher). From a gameplay and personal perspective, however, the Horde Players are innocent because Blizzard never gave them a choice (except maybe to read the quest chain on mmo-champion and refrain from playing the pre-patch altogether, which is absurd, and not a choice that officially "counts" as in-game narrative). They just hijacked our characters into participating in one of the most horrific events in WoW.

The result is that Horde players generally either:

- Embraced the role Blizzard pigeonholed them in and decided to play as villains (this was the easiest choice if you could stomach it, but Blizzard eventually called it wrong).
- Tried to rationalize the events somehow, either with past or speculative lore.
- Distanced themselves from the story altogether, only looking at it from an extra-narrative angle.

It's important to note that the narrative never manages to convince Horde players that "Sylvanas made them do it". Indeed, I don't even think that it tries to do that. No, it was Blizzard's writing team who took the choice away from us, and in this we strangely empathize with the character. It was also Blizzard's writing team who hijacked Sylvanas into being a villain for BFA-Shadowlands.

As a fan of Warcraft III and Legion Sylvanas, I had high hopes that they would make her a little nicer and integrate her more into the Horde, which they seemed to be hinting at in early Legion and the Blizzcon BFA cinematic. At that time, the perspective of turning her into Garrosh 2.0 seemed so ridiculously bad writing-wise, so offensive and boring for Horde players, that I thought it was impossible. It was stupid to even suggest it. For me, the turn they took with her was terribly disappointing, and I would certainly find no catharsis in killing Sylvanas, since I don't think that would absolve my character of the guilt the writers placed onto his head anyway... It would only mean wasting the potential of yet another villain-batted Horde hero. Nor would it stop Alliance players from bullying me and other Hordies on the forums over a choice we didn't make, like a bunch of 6 year olds harassing the kids who were assigned by the teacher to be the villains in the kindergarten play.

The only solution that would leave both sides satisfied (though perhaps not the die-hard moralists) would be to "neutralize" the genocide by undoing its effects, i.e. reviving Teldrassil and all the Night Elf civilians through a Shadowlands event that both Alliance and Horde characters can participate in. Conveniently enough, this would also undo the plot point that the Night Elves are nigh-extinct and would once again allow them to be a major player in Kalimdor and a credible threat to the Horde in the future. And, of course, it would make it easier to accept a scenario in which Sylvanas survives and maybe even returns to the Horde.

They could do that, I was hoping they'd use shadowlands as a soft reset to restore everyone that's died since WC1 + the Farondis who are sort of in between and explore greatly re-populated world, old characters with a chance to be different or even worse than before. New machinations and new events.

what I suspect will happen is a deepening of the plot and a justification of Sylvanas' actions - e.g. it was necessary to feed the Jailor power to stop him, or in order to beat a bigger threat - and Sylvanas didn't care all that much either because she knew the lives would be restored or would eventually be freed for a good afterlife.

The whole premise of the shadowlands is shoddy as ever, no one is implying what this sort of afterlife, and being able to go to it implies for the meaning of normal life - unlike Christianity that explains a limit on this existence and it's duration having a fixed purpose in a grand plan God will complete in Jesus Christ' second return, there is no such consideration here.

If I die and go to the shadowlands afterlife, and my eternity is there in this condition, then living a normal life while "alive" is actually quite meaningless - this is such a nihilist pro theme even though it has an afterlife, the implications are quite clear. Sylvanas actually has no reason not to kill people off at will and in fact the only people truly at risk of losing a good afterlife are those that were cruelly raised as undeath with the trauma that forces them to ding the cruel things that would condemn them to the maw or one of the worse off afterlives.

I don't like this at all, just like I didn't like how they changed the Light with Xe'ra's actions, just to keep Illidan a bad boy, because fans complained. I guess we can all accept iit under the banner of "it's just fanatasy", and continue with it because of cool gameplay, and pretty pictures and features.

[Yarathir]

Wanna bet Sylvanas would be shown as right after Shadowlands? Wanna bet the jailor breaking free and Sylvanas' reason for helping is not the universal all bad it is appearing to be.

Classic writing trick, lack of information and set up makes it appear as one thing, only for later revelations to finally put in context what you see and realise, "omg, Sylvanas was doing us a favour" -2she's amazing, and badass"

They can do that.

And anyone with a decently functioning brain can call it out as bullshit and say that no "greater good" makes genocide okay. You can't go out of your way to make a character seem as evil as possible (to the point of even pinning Wrath Gate on her years after the fact despite nobody asking for that) and then go "aha but actually she was not all that bad haha just because we say so EXPECTATIONS SUBVERTED."

Then again, this is Blizzard, so I guess they can do that.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard's writing team messed up royally in how they presented the genocide at Teldrassil. The problem was that simply by virtue of playing through the content the Horde Champion became complicit in it. There was no point in which the Horde Player could choose to say "I am not ok with this". All the key information came with the cinematic: Sylvanas's decision to burn the tree, her reason for doing it, the fact that only innocents remained in there, and the execution itself. Through it all, it is implied that your character stood there and did nothing.

So there is a cognitive dissonance in how we interpret the story: from a narrative perspective, the Horde Characters are absolutely complicit. If they were ever going to act against Sylvanas, it should have been then, since all the other future circumstances where the narrative has them rebel are trivial compared to the mass murder of children (and their strategic value to moral cost ratio is a hell of a lot higher). From a gameplay and personal perspective, however, the Horde Players are innocent because Blizzard never gave them a choice (except maybe to read the quest chain on mmo-champion and refrain from playing the pre-patch altogether, which is absurd, and not a choice that officially "counts" as in-game narrative). They just hijacked our characters into participating in one of the most horrific events in WoW.

I can sympathize with that, and honestly, I don't 'hate' Horde players simply because they play Horde. But let's be honest, there are plenty of Horde who thought this was actually great and amazing and a return to form for the Horde.

I want only one thing as somebody who was once a fan of Night Elves, and that's for Blizzard to stop assigning a singular scapegoat for the actions of a huge swath of the faction to beat down while the rest gets off scot-free. The entire Horde doesn't need to be wiped out, but can at least more than just Sylvanas and Nathanos be held responsible? (and then, only after they left the Horde)

The way it's done now almost seems like Blizzard is trying to sell the notion that "I was just following," orders was a valid excuse. And no, I don't buy the idea that they were scared to rebel against Sylvanas because Saurfang did so after Lordaeron, Baine did so after a single human was raised and slated to be brainwashed and Saurfang's "resistance" did so after Baine got strung up below Orgrimmar. There was obviously some kind of line in the sand where enough is enough and I don't think I'm unreasonable in saying that that line should've been Teldrassil to begin with.

Furthermore, in 8.2.5, it's stated several times that at that time, Sylvanas' loyal Horde exceeds the combined forces of what remained of the Alliance (good job, Blizzard) and Saurfang's rebellion. That means that there were more people loyal to Sylvanas than there were people opposing her in the Alliance and Saurfang's splinter group in total. Their line was drawn when she called them "nothing."

[Sangris]

So many assumptions about my character. I find it fun how you immediatedly assume I cannot seperate reality and fiction, becaue I consider the defense of genocide wrong, but grant the people that do actually defend mass murder the license that obviously they seperate these two worlds, despite no indication for it whatsoever. Interesting bias.

It's just find it very naive to say people don't mean what they write, especially if they don't have to fear any repercussions and I am not sure what your point is. Should I now feel bad for countering pro-genocide people because they might just talk about fiction? Yeah I don't think so.

You may have misquoted this one, as I never said anything like that. In fact, you're responding to @Kumorii from the same post you quoted.

[ravenmoon]

They can do that.

And anyone with a decently functioning brain can call it out as bullshit and say that no "greater good" makes genocide okay. You can't go out of your way to make a character seem as evil as possible (to the point of even pinning Wrath Gate on her years after the fact despite nobody asking for that) and then go "aha but actually she was not all that bad haha just because we say so EXPECTATIONS SUBVERTED."

Then again, this is Blizzard, so I guess they can do that.

indeed, and I suspect his because Afrisiabi and Danuser are HUGE Sylvanas fans, she's their fave character - I won't believe she will be done away with as a complete villain until it actually happens. These guys determine what happens in the stories. Unfortunately our poor fan base tend to only think of things from one perspective - usually the in game narrative, oblivious that the narrative is shaped by peole who determine its direction for a host of unrelated reasons to the actual story so far.

And as they have the magic wand of creation in their hands, and are the ones that own/develop the IP, they will do what they want for it, you can never lose that perspective when considering future outcomes.

I have found that blizzard most often does what t hey want and they write the story to fit it, there is no grand long term detailed plot plan with meticulous detail of a narrative that follows on nah, most of what we get in game is not narrative induced, but often gameplay, sales based and other factors. Things also change when new people come in, with their own favourites and the things they like or want more of.

to seriously consider what the future might present, all these must be considered.. you will quickly reach the conclusion that anything can and will happen, and what happens can bet racked by the needs of the game, events of the world and lives of the employees and company state, including resources etc, then lore considerations. Yes, lore does play a role, but it isn't the all powerful driver that will determine what we get.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

She was evil before BFA so it's not a huge change.
Hell she's arguably been evil since TFT it was just written in such a way that it was somewhat ambiguous when she was after Arthas (i.e. vaguely competently).

The only difference is bfa turned her into a moustache-twirling villain so even lowest common denominator players that don't read quest text would know she was the bad guy.

She became evil in Warcraft III. Something about being killed and raised by a Lich King screwed with her moral compass.

[Coconut]

They could do that, I was hoping they'd use shadowlands as a soft reset to restore everyone that's died since WC1 + the Farondis who are sort of in between and explore greatly re-populated world, old characters with a chance to be different or even worse than before. New machinations and new events.

what I suspect will happen is a deepening of the plot and a justification of Sylvanas' actions - e.g. it was necessary to feed the Jailor power to stop him, or in order to beat a bigger threat - and Sylvanas didn't care all that much either because she knew the lives would be restored or would eventually be freed for a good afterlife.

I don't know about everyone, but it would be logical for some key characters and groups of people to be brought back, and Tyrande is supposedly going to play a part in the Ardenweald campaign, the one zone centered on rebirth. It would be a nice boost for her to be able to say "Well, I couldn't save my people from death, so I went after them to the Maw itself and brought them back from the afterlife". She needs to achieve something noteworthy other than be a plot trigger to restart the faction conflict in the future.

The whole premise of the shadowlands is shoddy as ever, no one is implying what this sort of afterlife, and being able to go to it implies for the meaning of normal life - unlike Christianity that explains a limit on this existence and it's duration having a fixed purpose in a grand plan God will complete in Jesus Christ' second return, there is no such consideration here.

If I die and go to the shadowlands afterlife, and my eternity is there in this condition, then living a normal life while "alive" is actually quite meaningless - this is such a nihilist pro theme even though it has an afterlife, the implications are quite clear. Sylvanas actually has no reason not to kill people off at will and in fact the only people truly at risk of losing a good afterlife are those that were cruelly raised as undeath with the trauma that forces them to ding the cruel things that would condemn them to the maw or one of the worse off afterlives.

I agree with this, but maybe the conceit is that not many will remember anything other than the PCs and some major characters? Sort of like the conclusion of ICC was supposed to be a secret for most of the world?

I mean, if the Night Elves get revived, they're probably not going to remember the tortures in the Maw because that would fuck them up, but may remember flashes of Ardenweald, which is in tune with what they'd hope for in an afterlife anyway? We've never seen returned spirits mention anything about the Shadowlands as a whole, they only hint at their own specific afterlife at most, and they might try to explain this somehow.

Another silly implication regarding this expansion is that you'd think spirits kept popping out of their respective covenants whenever the Scourge, Sylvanas, Bolvar and an assortment of others raised some old corpses from the dead. What happened with spirits like Lei Shen and Derek Proudmoore when they got raised? Did they have friends who missed them on the other side? I wonder if this will be addressed at all.

I can sympathize with that, and honestly, I don't 'hate' Horde players simply because they play Horde. But let's be honest, there are plenty of Horde who thought this was actually great and amazing and a return to form for the Horde.

I want only one thing as somebody who was once a fan of Night Elves, and that's for Blizzard to stop assigning a singular scapegoat for the actions of a huge swath of the faction to beat down while the rest gets off scot-free. The entire Horde doesn't need to be wiped out, but can at least more than just Sylvanas and Nathanos be held responsible? (and then, only after they left the Horde)

The way it's done now almost seems like Blizzard is trying to sell the notion that "I was just following," orders was a valid excuse. And no, I don't buy the idea that they were scared to rebel against Sylvanas because Saurfang did so after Lordaeron, Baine did so after a single human was raised and slated to be brainwashed and Saurfang's "resistance" did so after Baine got strung up below Orgrimmar. There was obviously some kind of line in the sand where enough is enough and I don't think I'm unreasonable in saying that that line should've been Teldrassil to begin with.

Furthermore, in 8.2.5, it's stated several times that at that time, Sylvanas' loyal Horde exceeds the combined forces of what remained of the Alliance (good job, Blizzard) and Saurfang's rebellion. That means that there were more people loyal to Sylvanas than there were people opposing her in the Alliance and Saurfang's splinter group in total. Their line was drawn when she called them "nothing."

As a Warcraft III Night Elf fan myself, I also sympathize. The problem is, Blizzard can always say on twitter that all the Horde soldiers who took part in burning Teldrassil were the ones still stationed in Darkshore in 8.1. Tyrande, Malfurion and Maiev killed them all, the end. But we all know there were player characters there and the player characters get away scott free, whether they were Sylvanas loyalists or bullshit rebels who rescued Jaina's brother after helping Sylvanas get his corpse in the first place and somehow think that washes away all their sins. And it's always going to feel like these collective player characters are a good chunk of the Horde.

And it's not like Horde players are happy right now. I mean, if we ignore the morality aspect, the Horde lost two cool characters - Sylvanas and Nathanos - to the villain bat, had Saurfang turned into a pathetic idiot and killed, and had Vol'jin's memory tainted by making him retroactively wrong to name Sylvanas warchief. We may not have been punished in lore, but our faction is in the gutter right now, with few old school tier one characters left and the Forsaken left hanging.

That's why I think the story was stupid, and I continue to believe that the best way to resolve it is to revive Teldrassil and the Night Elves. Revenge can not really be achieved without deleting innocent players' characters, but this thing is doable and on theme, and this is something Horde players can do as well in order to undo the sins Blizzard forced onto their characters. Some people will find this to be bad writing, of course, and it kind of is, but I will argue the bad writing started the moment they decided to pull a Garrosh 2.0.

[Yarathir]

As a Warcraft III Night Elf fan myself, I also sympathize. The problem is, Blizzard can always say on twitter that all the Horde soldiers who took part in burning Teldrassil were the ones still stationed in Darkshore in 8.1. Tyrande, Malfurion and Maiev killed them all, the end. But we all know there were player characters there and the player characters get away scott free, whether they were Sylvanas loyalists or bullshit rebels who rescued Jaina's brother after helping Sylvanas get his corpse in the first place and somehow think that washes away all their sins. And it's always going to feel like these collective player characters are a good chunk of the Horde.

And it's not like Horde players are happy right now. I mean, if we ignore the morality aspect, the Horde lost two cool characters - Sylvanas and Nathanos - to the villain bat, had Saurfang turned into a pathetic idiot and killed, and had Vol'jin's memory tainted by making him retroactively wrong to name Sylvanas warchief. We may not have been punished in lore, but our faction is in the gutter right now, with few old school tier one characters left and the Forsaken left hanging.

That's why I think the story was stupid, and I continue to believe that the best way to resolve it is to revive Teldrassil and the Night Elves. Revenge can not really be achieved without deleting innocent players' characters, but this thing is doable and on theme, and this is something Horde players can do as well in order to undo the sins Blizzard forced onto their characters. Some people will find this to be bad writing, of course, and it kind of is, but I will argue the bad writing started the moment they decided to pull a Garrosh 2.0.

Well, it'd probably help if Blizzard at least pushed this as more than just Sylvanas at fault here. Even Tyrande, the one they're trying to frame as "vengeful maniac" (which is messed up in and of itself) is only considered crazed because she wants Sylvanas dead more than Anduin and other characters want her dead, not because she wants to wipe out the Horde or anything.

I think it would make things better if Blizzard didn't preemptively stigmatize any semblance of wanting to hold more than Sylvanas responsible. Not saying the Horde needs to be wiped out or Horde players need their characters deleted. I'm just saying that Blizzard needs to try and change the narrative so at least it doesn't feel like another case of "pin the blame on a single character and then brush the event under the rug."

[ravenmoon]

I don't know about everyone, but it would be logical for some key characters and groups of people to be brought back, and Tyrande is supposedly going to play a part in the Ardenweald campaign, the one zone centered on rebirth. It would be a nice boost for her to be able to say "Well, I couldn't save my people from death, so I went after them to the Maw itself and brought them back from the afterlife". She needs to achieve something noteworthy other than be a plot trigger to restart the faction conflict in the future.



I agree with this, but maybe the conceit is that not many will remember anything other than the PCs and some major characters? Sort of like the conclusion of ICC was supposed to be a secret for most of the world?

I mean, if the Night Elves get revived, they're probably not going to remember the tortures in the Maw because that would fuck them up, but may remember flashes of Ardenweald, which is in tune with what they'd hope for in an afterlife anyway? We've never seen returned spirits mention anything about the Shadowlands as a whole, they only hint at their own specific afterlife at most, and they might try to explain this somehow.

Another silly implication regarding this expansion is that you'd think spirits kept popping out of their respective covenants whenever the Scourge, Sylvanas, Bolvar and an assortment of others raised some old corpses from the dead. What happened with spirits like Lei Shen and Derek Proudmoore when they got raised? Did they have friends who missed them on the other side? I wonder if this will be addressed at all.

I agree with this. I am still a little divided over how it should all go, while I relish the chance for many old characters to return and a soft reset of the lore, because I think many mistakes were made for e.g. killing off Kael'thas in TBC, the meaning and relevance of death severely watered down, that it's better to just sorft reset by reviving all that have died up to a certain point (I want it to be WC1 onwards + the Farondis in Azsuna), but on the other hand, I also don't want anything to be undone, even the massacre at Teldrassil from the point of view, I want things to move forward, if the night elves get restored like that and everything is reversed, we're just going back to classic borders, the same orc/night elf issues and conflict plot repeat.. Whereas with the kaldorei in a desperate state, the horde dominating Kalimdor, the forsaken out of EK, some new things could happen - it might be tough for the two displaced races, but all the more incentive to generate some amazing even more fortuitous outcomes.


I do agree Tyrande needs to achieve something meaningful for sure, and freeing the souls from the maw with Elune reviving them (and the Farondis) would actually achieve that and explain the Elune involvement with Ardenweald and the expansion plot. All in all, I would restore the people without the land. So the people get saved, but Teldrassil is still burnt and the horde still control most of Kalimdor - they exit the shadowlands in Icecrown and have to find home somewhere, like the Broken Isles, from which they recoup and start living, but launch campaigns to recover Kalimdor.

But I relish the plot of all lives lost in conflict on Azeroth since the Dark portal first opened + Farondis being restored would mean - especially if 10,0 does a time skip and world update of all Azeroth zones apart from BFA and Legion - even if it's staged updates.

now when you die, you are really gone for sure, no coming back.

As a Warcraft III Night Elf fan myself, I also sympathize. The problem is, Blizzard can always say on twitter that all the Horde soldiers who took part in burning Teldrassil were the ones still stationed in Darkshore in 8.1. Tyrande, Malfurion and Maiev killed them all, the end. But we all know there were player characters there and the player characters get away scott free, whether they were Sylvanas loyalists or bullshit rebels who rescued Jaina's brother after helping Sylvanas get his corpse in the first place and somehow think that washes away all their sins. And it's always going to feel like these collective player characters are a good chunk of the Horde.



And it's not like Horde players are happy right now. I mean, if we ignore the morality aspect, the Horde lost two cool characters - Sylvanas and Nathanos - to the villain bat, had Saurfang turned into a pathetic idiot and killed, and had Vol'jin's memory tainted by making him retroactively wrong to name Sylvanas warchief. We may not have been punished in lore, but our faction is in the gutter right now, with few old school tier one characters left and the Forsaken left hanging.

That's why I think the story was stupid, and I continue to believe that the best way to resolve it is to revive Teldrassil and the Night Elves. Revenge can not really be achieved without deleting innocent players' characters, but this thing is doable and on theme, and this is something Horde players can do as well in order to undo the sins Blizzard forced onto their characters. Some people will find this to be bad writing, of course, and it kind of is, but I will argue the bad writing started the moment they decided to pull a Garrosh 2.0.

I think the canon will record them as Sylvanas rebels and they get a pass because although they did wrong, they tried to atone for it, and this because it is similar to most of the horde races, i.e. once done evil things, but actually are not that evil since they now atone for it and just want to get on with stuff, but ofc, alliance currs not wiling to let it go for the sake of peace or consider it even stevens, will be a nice source of faction conflict.

Basically this is their best solution for the canon horde player not to do bad.

The reason I suspect Sylvanas would also turn out to have done the best possible thing given two terrible options (death of all life or death of the night elves) or something like that is that if her actions actually contributed to a greater good, then by association those who acted with her actually are also indirectly responsible for doing a good thing - it is sor of what Illidan's anti-hero story is focused, you do smaller scale bad things for the much greater good, and this somehow justifies your action.

You eventually don't blame Illidan/Sylvanas types because it was cosmic forces that manipulated the events and they were between a rock and hard place and chose the better option. Sylvanas is even saying at one point that it was better that it was alliance lives instead of horde lives, and the night elves were the unlucky losers - whose demise would yield the biggest and most attainable result for the horde and her secret plan.

Sylvanas is then shown as actually not being that evil really, because if she had loved killing people she would have wreacked a lot more havoc, even when she sold the horde heroes out, she didn't destroy the horde or take more lives than she needed, and she could have allowed a bloody conflict at the gates of Orgirmmar if her true intention was the evil carnage people suspect her.

You see the seeds for Sylvanas isn't quite the baddie you think and perhaps is only doing a necessary thing (i.e. redemption arc incoming) are already sown, and may have been part of the original plan all along - they just didn't count on the severe reaction they got - and this partly exacerbated by this sort of story been told over 4 years rather than in a novel at one sitting that covers a 4 year period, allowing the conclusion to frame the earlier atrocities.