So new leaks revolving around the whole Blizzard scandal has touched up on lore now. In short, according to sources in Blizzard itself Afrasiabi dunked on Sylvanas’s lore and decided to make her super evil to dunk on the current lore team and get revenge on the women who enjoyed a well established female lead by genocide at Teldrassil.
This is further attributed by randomly claiming she did Wrathgate for some reason to reinforce the idea and generally mess with the community through BFA onwards. No doubt because he knew he was doomed and wanted to taint as much as he could etc.
Oh, and there’s Tali and co in the posts claiming to have known this all along but didn’t say anything weirdly.
EDIT:
Here’s a fun thread on ‘How BFA was supposed to be’ https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/speculation-battle-for-azeroth-the-pre-rewritten-story/543911
So a literal case of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TorchTheFranchiseAndRun ?
Honestly, I’ve learned to take any claimed Reddit or mmo-champion “leak” with a grain of salt. “The Red Shirt Guy said that this VA claimed she heard from a trusted source that…” sounds suspiciously like those “friend’s cousin’s wife’s uncle” stories.
Also, are you telling me that the Burning of Teldrassil was a unilateral decision by Afrasiabi, and nobody else thought to oppose him? For something like this to happen, dozens of people would have to be involved — writers, artists, animators, quest designers, marketers, and managers.
It would be like trying to pin the blame for the Burning of Teldrassil itself on just one person… Oh wait.
I’m not sure to which extent it is true: Varimathras in Legion already tells us that Sylvanas is evil and working against life.
And the same goes in the three sisters comic.
To me it just feels like a “blame it on the devil” statement to get away with the mess they’ve made.
“Yeah his quote foreshadowing what would happen was completely unintended. It was so meta that Varimathras just happened to say what would happen without the writers being even aware of it up to a Maw reference.”
Yeah, I am going to be skeptical about this interpretation.
“So, your Alliance still endures. Longer than I expected, though she has already planted the seeds of its downfall. She is patient, that one. When your thrones run red with betrayal… when your holy places burn and the shattered mask hangs above your hearth… only then you will know. And it will be too late. It matters not. You are blind to the true darkness closing in around you”
doesn’t seem like any of that happened to me
Any Alliance thrones running red with betrayal? Shattered Masks hanging above their hearth?
That’s the forsaken symbol + her planning to attack and conquer the Alliance?
On horde he also mentions that Sylvanas has reached the throne through deception:
No… I’d wager you surrendered [the command] it willingly… or were convinced you did.
Foreshadowing that Vol’jin’s vision was manipulated by an external force to get Sylvanas upon the throne. Which we know was Mueh’zala.
And upon wiping he goes:
“Better that you died here where she cannot claim you.”
If that’s not a reference to the future idea of all souls being claimed by the Maw I don’t know what else could be. Yes, at this time Argus still hasn’t glitched the death machine, but it’s safe to say it’s a reference to Sylvanas’/Shadowlands upcoming plot.
But there’s so many clues to the planned expansion where the Alliance is the aggressor, including the opening cinematic. There’s not a single word about Teldrassil in it, what we get instead is Genn saying they’ll soon conquer Lordaeron.
This would be the sole thing actually foreshadowed, if that’s the case, lol. Still doesn’t mean anything for the Alliance, though.
Or it’s just a reference to Sylvanas’ plan of raising more and more people as undead to be her bulwark against, well. Whatever, really.
I don’t think I had ever seen many clues about it tbh.
Why should it matter? We’re speaking about Sylvanas’ depiction, not the Alliance.
It wouldn’t really make sense because her reach at that point in time is rather limited. Why would the characters have to be in another dimension altogether rather than just away from her val’kyrs? Clearly because we’re speaking about something different, bigger, hence why we’re speaking about Sylvanas in a moment in which our focus should be on the Legion’ upcoming triumph.
Arguing that this is just a coincidence when clearly intended by the writers to foreshadow something huge is not very convincing.
Even if the dreadlords are deceptive by nature, it is the writers to made them write those things. And they made this decision because they were aware of Sylvanas’ upcoming direction.
To reinforce that point: this has already been their modus operandi, to have characters drop clues and foreshadow future events. But this, in this specific case, should somehow not matter? It’s just not a good reading of the situation.
Look at the BfA cinematic, it was made before Afrasiabi supposedly made these changes. Including his decree that Sylvanas ordered the Wrathgate. Teldrassil isn’t mentioned once, instead the Alliance is painted as the aggressors there to conquer Lordaeron. Along with the whole “both sides are morally grey” schtick.
This, but Sylvanas’ actions in BfA and Shadowlands.
Because Elenthas posted Varimathras’ quote to the Alliance, whose thrones would run red with the blood of betrayal, not the Horde?
Her reach is only as limited as the writers will it to be. Her reach could be immense if she went ham with the plague, if the Val’kyr were utilised more frequently directly on the frontlines. We’re not speaking of something different, we aren’t speaking about something bigger.
And if we were, and this was all one big foreshadowing, god damn. Blizzard’s writing is worse than we all thought.
There’s more evidence for this than it being foreshadowing. Including several people employed by Blizzard confirming Sylvanas’ story was abruptly changed by one man, which would then greatly affect the story of BfA and later on Shadowlands.
Or rather. One man that would soon be fired threw a fit and greatly altered the initial premise and the writers that came after him had to salvage the story to the best of their ability. Which isn’t much.
The vibe I got from the BfA trailer stuff released around it was very strongly the Alliance starts it this time by invading Lordaeron, Teldrassil happens in response to the Alliance aggression so I can absolutely believe that it was reversed for release based on dumb internal management drama.
Sylvanas being foreshadowed to be up to no good is true but also she’s been up to no good in some way since like, vanilla and could easily have been that her no good wasn’t originally meant to be elf genocide.
It would explain everything pre-BfA beyond just being bad writing. Bringing up Before the Storm again, you had Sylvanas inner monologues about how nice she actually is/never wanted to be Warchief but proud to be and so on.
And yeah, BfA trailer showed Alliance as the aggressors, and their Q&A and Blizzcon stuff all took a huge tone shift from “You’ll see, its not what you think” to “Evil Sylvanas evil plans continues”.
