I still can’t believe Blizzard thought that “twist” was a good idea...

[Chilela]

The story writing has been mediocre since cata. If story was important to me, I would have quit a long time ago.

I'd honestly contend MoP is up there, at the very least on a micro level, but after that point, definitely.

[rrayy]

Did Blizzard just forget that a lot of their fans are adults now, and that we appreciate a little bit of nuance or moral ambiguity?

Who is "we" and who made you sole arbiter of what everyone wants? You only speak for you and not everyone agrees with you.

[TyrannicalPuppy]

Her problem isn't that she realized the Jailer was evil. She realized full and well that he was doing some shady shit. The issue she took with him? She's not his equal, which she had apparently been assuming up until now? Even though he's a "titan++ level being" and she's just an undead elf with a bow, this falls perfectly in line with how prideful Sylvanas was in both life and death.

Notice her specific phrasing when calling him out: "I will never serve." Not "I won't let you do this" or "I thought you were better than this", but instead, something that focuses squarely on her own subservience to him. She has no problem forcing others to serve her, as was the case with Derek Proudmoore and Anduin Wrynn, but the moment someone wants HER to serve? That's where she draws the line; a vain and conceited hypocrite until the very end.

Now watch as she magically becomes "good" all of a sudden now that she's been reunited with the other half of her soul - even though she literally just revealed to everyone her ability to display free will and disobey the Jailer and not serve as his puppet - and everyone suddenly decides she deserves a second chance because "it wasn't really her this whole time, you guys!"

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...jyxmzm9a71.png

[Kumorii]

Saddle up, twist is gonna get twistier.

[Skirdus]

I'd honestly contend MoP is up there, at the very least on a micro level, but after that point, definitely.

MoP at least ended on a note of having good morals and values without being overly preachy about it.

BfA / SL on the other hand asks you to forgive literal unsympathetic war criminals because "vengeance bad."

[Pangalactic]

I'm pretty sure this twist is just a reflection of the current Blizzard policy to target the most generic casual players:

- class ability pruning and making all classes as generic as possible
- a ton of minigames of a RIDICULOUSLY easy level so that even a three-year-old would finish them
- removing any need to interact and cooperate with other players for 99% of the game
- game shop and selling pretty much anything for money

so a transformers level story with "BigBad 5000" threatening to destroy the world and "oh no vengeance is bad" is quite fitting.

[dope_danny]

Look man, every time Stevens waifu isn't on screen every character needs to ask "Wheres Poochie?". Gotta make screentime for WoW's protagonist right?

Also Sylvanas should have a time machine and a race car.

[Kyriani]

It would be a real kick in the rubber parts if they turned Sylvanas into a "Redeemed" light undead like Calia.

[Skirdus]

Don't get me wrong - I agree that BfA and SLs stories have both been shitshows.

But MoP not being overly preachy? The end book which kicks off WoD literally has the celestials man-splain why we shouldn't stop Garrosh from escaping because "everyone is at fault" and that they were going to find him innocent of literal admitted (and unrepentant) genocide. THAT was the writing which ended MoP and kicked off WoD.

The end of MoP was the most preachy expansions have ever been - And it didn't help that it was about how morally wrong everyone but Blizzard's own writing team is for thinking what Blizzard's own writing team tried to make you think.

Oh, I was referring to the actual in-game ending cutscene in the Vale where it's moreso about the necessity of conflict and the promise of regrowth despite eternal and unending hardships.

MoP's overall premise of "Why do we fight" just felt a lot more impactful and philosophical than Legion's "NO SACRIFICE IS TOO GREAT" or "I AM MY SCARS!!!!!!!"

[Gaidax]

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. We still don't really know Sylvanas' side of the story, why she actually did what she did and what was the envisioned goal.

I, personally, am looking forward to 9.2 where we finally have her come clean with that, as well as get a proper summary of what exactly happened between Jailer and his kind that kickstarted the whole thing.

[Chilela]

MoP at least ended on a note of having good morals and values without being overly preachy about it.

I was thinking more that MoP knew what it was in terms of scale story-wise, so overall it was a more "down-to-earth" expansion in terms of conflict, aside from MAYBE the late-xpac Garrosh arc. Honestly, it feels a bit vanilla-like in that sense.

[hydrium]

Like... we know Blizzard has talented writers.

....do we?

[sam86]

U do know that the head writer is the worst most toxic fan type u can imagine right? The type who has a body pillow of his waifu (Sylvannas) and took photo with it
I won't trust that guy to be a functioning society human, imagine giving him total power to do whatever he wants with his dream waifu, what u expect?
If u saw the 1990 movie Misery, you will know how far he is ready to go exactly and sadly
If u wonder something, i wonder how he is keeping his job and how he got it in first place, probably he is relative to someone in power like the feminazi writer Roux of last 2 books

Also we forgave AU Grom who did worse than Sylvannas so this isn't something new

[Malkiah]

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. We still don't really know Sylvanas' side of the story, why she actually did what she did and what was the envisioned goal.

i wanted to respond to this with a "yes we do know", but then i got to thinking about it and realized i couldn't wholly justify that based on what's in game.

the impression i've gotten is that sylv is basically azrael from dogma - the ultimate plan here is to cause a situation which effectively undoes the whole of existence.

seems an easy extrapolation, but this could be pure bias from my own personality:
undead sylv's whole shtick is hating her very existence, she's had lines of dialogue since wc3 stating this flat out.
she briefly had some sense of purpose in the forsaken, at least insofar as organizing them into a tribe, and then once they were going along as their own kingdom she lost the distraction of bringing them together and resumed her whole "fuck everything" attitude.
then the LK wakes up and WOTLK happens and she's focused again on him, we kill him, she sees no purpose or reprieve in her existence, and tries to kill herself.
she then finds out that even then existence isn't over and is confronted with the maw and what the afterlife is like.
it seems quite clear from multiple lines of dialogue during SL that sylv's perspective on the jailer's plan is to undo creation, either entirely wiping out reality or at least re-writing it so it's no longer like it is.
her willingness to do work with the jailer has always been predicated on this outcome, there's plenty of dialogue in SL supporting this.

so, the jailer being less "ok let's unmake all of reality" and turning all "ok let's subjugate all of reality to me" seems a very obvious thing she would have a problem with.
seems to be that "going along with someone despite not liking their methods for the sake of an end result, and convincing yourself that the end result you want is going to happen even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, and then freaking out when the breaking moment comes and you can no longer delude yourself about this" is a very real and very human experience, so it doesn't strike me as shitty writing so much as just a thing that actually happens to people all the time.

[sam86]

....do we?

for sure not anymore, 4 of current writer team are anti-white male woke generation, one even said that 'everything good a white guy did, is stolen from a black person'
and sharing ur last name with one of actiblizz higher ups is of course 'coincidence' that has nothing to do with hiring them, it is their pure talent of insulting white males on twitter that landed them this job
i'm not white and even i feel so much racism and offense from those bullshit tweets

[arandomuser]

blizzards sylvanas writing makes boths sides mad
on the right you have people who hate her being a "girl boss" and more powerful than a male char like bolvar
then on the other hand shes also writtein in a way where she makes rash decisions based on emotion, and seems to be an oblivious pawn of the jailer which is like the opposite spectrum

i think cinematic would be good if the jailer just transformed and then left without any of the diologue, and maybe giving her soul back would make sense in a context if he did it before sylvanas betrayed him

[Cosmic Janitor]

MoP at least ended on a note of having good morals and values without being overly preachy about it.

BfA / SL on the other hand asks you to forgive literal unsympathetic war criminals because "vengeance bad."

You must have been fortunate to not have read the book which served as the epilogue of MoP. Some kangaroo court which was always going to give a non-verdict by it's own admission just so they could preach a few platitudes. Brrr, I still shudder when thinking about that rubbish.

Edit: Nvm, I should have kept reading, someone else already pointed it out.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. We still don't really know Sylvanas' side of the story, why she actually did what she did and what was the envisioned goal.

I, personally, am looking forward to 9.2 where we finally have her come clean with that, as well as get a proper summary of what exactly happened between Jailer and his kind that kickstarted the whole thing.

Given how bad the ingame representation of everything is, I think you will have to wait for the book to tell you what actually happened here.

[justandulas]

Look; you don’t need a fortune teller to see where the story is going. Having Sylvanas just decide “actually the Jailer IS evil, sorry y’all”, that was genuinely one of the most cringe-inducing videos I could imagine.

Like... we know Blizzard has talented writers. How the fuck does a cutscene like that even happen? How many people had to green light every step of the process for that stupid cutscene become reality?

This is like Diablo 3 (vanilla)’s story all over again. The “greatest tactician in Hell” giving you constant updates on his plans, the “Lord of Lies” is so obviously communicating to you the whole time in Act 2.

Did Blizzard just forget that a lot of their fans are adults now, and that we appreciate a little bit of nuance or moral ambiguity?

Their story telling has been bad for years

Needs more HBO, and less disney+

[Adamas102]

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. We still don't really know Sylvanas' side of the story, why she actually did what she did and what was the envisioned goal.

Does it even really matter? She had been portrayed for quite a while as a willing servant of the Jailor and gleefully pushing for the suffering, enslavement, and deaths of countless people. It went way past the point where "why" makes any difference whatsoever.

They can't even pass her off as some sort of Thanos-like anti-villain that knows they're doing terrible things but rationalizes them with an "ends justify the means" approach. Trying to show any sort of restraint in her SL scenes with Anduin just seems clumsy now given her actions throughout BFA as a chaotic evil, mustache twirling villain stoking a global war in order to "kill hope" and stack as many corpses as possible.

Giving Sylvanas any sort of justification, much less some sort of redemption arc, would be akin to painting the Nazis in a sympathetic light because deep down they cared about their country. At a certain point a villain's motivations no longer serve to elevate the story, and that's where Sylvanas has fallen over the past few years.

[Lolites]

The story writing has been mediocre since cata. If story was important to me, I would have quit a long time ago.

*since vanila
story in wow was always mediocre at best, only exception being wrath, but there they were just wraping up story from w3