New upcoming novel

Lore Story
41

I’d have a hard time reconciling the fact that Sylvanas was to ally herself, willingly, with the one responsible for the decimation of her kingdom in life.

And draw all looks towards her, by becoming the most apparent and obvious Evil Warchief after Garrosh, after several decades of being specifically careful about not ending up having to confront everybody.

And the above is leaving aside stuff like her randomly dropping all care regarding Lordaeron, or how it defined most of her drive in the EK.

Its not about dropping certain traits for the sake of fostering others. There are bits that downright conflict each other.

I do not think the game has the means to fully clarify underlying motives of any character. Specially in regards to controversial/complex ones that also work with deception and hidden agendas.

We’ve had several quests where Sylvanas downright states her goals, and yet people kept going “Nuh-uh she is lying”. We even had inner thoughts about it and people remained unconvinced.

For characters such as these, there is simply no way to fully convey what the character is about through ingame means.

The game means only works for superficial and simplistic characters. There is simply no room to have them have any depth.

And once you’ve thrown the likes of Sylvanas around, there is simply no way for you to wrap it up with a few voice lines.

The way i see it, this book seems like an apologetic “Look, we know that Sylvanas arch has been all over the place, sorry about that. We are going to try and stitch it all together however we can and in full detail”.

I’ll content myself knowing they reached said conclusion and realised the messed up big time trying to sell on her arch.
That having some writer try and piece together back this mess, has some merit.

Are there other writers that could’ve written it better? Probably. Brooks and Stackpole come to mind.
But at this point, i’ll take what they give.

42

This story IMO also could’ve been told. Just not the way it was handled. It could’ve been a story of outer forces step by step severing her connections to those who could influence her:

  • place more seeds in Varimathras’s hands to push Garrosh onto his path, to lead Sylvanas away from Vereesa after her huband was killed.
  • Lothraxion convincing Alleria to research the Void for the greated good™… which would also mean she would be absent to support Sylvanas when she was most vulnerable.
  • put more emphasis on the forsaken - living conflict to drive her away from the former alliance connections.
  • play more on Lor’themar speaking against raising blood elves as having consequences and her becoming less trusting to other.

[edit:
Not to mention that the whole thing could be presented as the Jailer making everyone (most) hate / hunt down Sylvanas and use her as a decoy to lure others away. Or at least that seems to me like a story that kind of would make sense, but I can be wrong and the Jailer as puppeteer might not be an interesting story to tell after Old Gods]

And tell the story when the Jailer played her to make it seems as if the only way to deal with the bonds of fate is to take the necessary power and do “what must be done”, or so he could present it.

Now, that story can’t be easily told, because we have Illidan and Medivh stories touching the same fate thing, so that would require extra thinking on how to resolve the thing, rather than pretend that they would never meet or that the player character would never say “hey, I’ve heard about it a dozen times in different places already”, or Khadgar being all pro-peace, etc.

But it is a possiblity. Just like taking her in a direction of understanding more about Arthas and possibly becoming more and more like him… but that would need to be a story told in Cata - MoP time, that train is long gone to flow decently.

All of the above is IMO and might as well be a lot of nonsense.

Blizz IMO are good at hyping things up. Or creating interesting concepts. Then it comes to the execution. And on the execution front we have sound, art, and most cinematics that are considered good. And… the rest of the execution raises more questions than gives answers (although I have to say, this expansion launch was tenchnically their best so far)

There are dialogues, possible diaries, possibly investigation style quests (one of few good things in the Secret World, rip), visions like that of Light and Void, tools like time travel, Eonian Archives, sinstones, already mentioned cinematics and 2d animation used in the game (with possible evolution of it, maybe like what Guild Wars 2 occasionally used, very dated, but good enough example at the end).

I am not saying that would resolve all the problems, but there are quite a few tools already present in the game, and more could be explored. On paper at least.

Ret-conning inner thoughts probably was one of reasons for this take, I imagine.

IMO the style chosen by the devs currently might work with simplistic characters. But there is more that could be done, at least conceptually.

For example, my favourite story bit from the 1st BfA patch is not even a story. There is a cave in Tiragarde Sound. When you go there, you can see 2 corpses. And when you kill a rare mob called Twin-Hearted Construct, it only says “But she said we will be together”. And there is a witch hut nearby. And while the whole story is not told in details, through archaeology and doing quest about witches, necromancy and drust, it’s possible to puzzle together a rather sad, but IMO easy to relate to story, interestingly executed, and being both simple yet touching many things around.

So, I can’t agree that a decent stories, or emotional ones, can’t be told in the game. It depends IMO on the execution. And things like timing and understanding the interconnections of the game elements are not what I would call the blizz strong sides.

Mentioned example with some basic mixing of 2d and 3d, old, but decent. Today tech might allow for more experimentation and different takes on animation, composition, etc.

gl hf

43

That’s quite interesting.

It ties exactly with what I would expect of her. Female characters described as:

  • Strong, successful (military), independent.

It’s also interesting that many players described Saurfang as a coward, Anduin and Baine as weaklings.
So we have in BFA:
3 male characters being described as “emotional” to put it lightly.

Golden also twitted that she’s concerned with the young males and the type of message her writing sends.

Tide this to Sylvanas lack of accountability for her actions and things start to make sense.

What exactly I expect in the future ?
More female empowerment, no accountability for their actions, (that’s on both sides: Alliance and Horde) because we apparently need to feel sorry for them.

“She wasn’t in her proper state of mind”.
“She didn’t know what she was doing”.
“It’s the other person’s/faction fault”.

Males described as either emotional or like Mathias Shaw also, being punished as soon as they even sneeze outside of their limits.

“Justice has been made”.

After Garrosh, Vol’jin, Varian and Saurfang, the only one I see fitting the measurements of being the next to be taken down is Genn Greymaine as he’s not as submissive as Malfurion, to his wife.
Thrall is too emotional so he won’t go down.
Maybe Lor’themar as well as he’s single and that might send the wrong message to the young males.
Gallywix is not important because not many are fond of him (none cares).

I hope I am wrong, honestly, but there’s so many red flags going on the narrative lately, you can’t help yourself to think it’s done on purpose.

P.s. I know it’s a controversial topic, but sometimes, you just want to let it out.

P.s.2 Lor’themar is dating Thalyssra, even though mentally they are about the same age, she’s still lived longer than he.
So she’s older than him.
He might get away, because if that.

P.s.3 I forgot to add Nathanos as well.
Sylvanas get away, Nathanos gets to be turned in to Raid Boss.
Once again:
“Justice was served”.
/S

Cheers.

1 Like
44

Feels like it’s okay in this context, knowing who is the one in subject and that the material has already expressed such views with cringy contexts as to where it shouldn’t belong.

Like I - and i’m sure many others - can also abide: Fantasy is Fantasy for a reason. It is not a platform of communicating political messages and influences. And if one were to compare, it should be noted that there is a huge world of difference between taking inspiration and putting it onto text, and text being used as a platform to communicate said controversies.

Easy answer: They don’t, and shouldn’t.

This kind of writing - even if the material is not 100% soaked in it - is still made a controversy of and hotly debated. For the wrong reasons.

Why do we need to know about female empowerment in a fantasy setting? Why do we need to explore gender issues in a game where Dragons and such are written? Why do we need to know about the controversy of male toxicity?

Instead of being made to ponder why our protagonist chose this route, or did this act, or went through with this risky choice, we are instead made to consider why these said acts were politically fuelled and decided upon from a context that… just doesn’t belong, which results to often strange conclusions that just hurt the eyes or disinterests the reader.

Etcetera. It just doesn’t fit and gradually produces material just… like this.

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45

If the devs have favorites the whole story may degrade into “everyone and everything else is a tool / stepping stone to validate why my agenda is the correct one”. As if there is 1 size fit all answer that could work equally well in every time and every context.

And it’s also one of reasons for why with the current writing team there can’t be a good faction story - because IMO these people can’t fathom telling a story where things that they praise and claim to be unquestionably correct, would not be the only good path to follow in a given context.

gl hf

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46

Premature reply, will edit if needed:
First; Golden’s editor must send her big cheques judging by her twitter post. She’s a writer???

Second; I don’t judge books by their covers so I will wait for the reviews, but I am interested in it.

47

To be honest, that’s quite a recurrent way of thinking even amongst players.

I’ve seen people downright insult some other simply because they are shown interested in developing or having more of characters that carry out questionable methods.

The lines between real and fictional moral values, are extremely blurred for some.

That said, yeah, there is definitely a tendency to rein what would’ve been basic fantasy, and tie it more with what some would call political correctness.
And honestly, i find it weird when Orcs and Trolls or Werewolves, are paraded as mouthpieces for our RL modern western values.
It’s sort of immersion breaking if you ask me…

2 Likes
48

I am going to start a petition to remove the she-burnt-Teldrassil-card out of the deck.
She used to be a night elf and YOU abandoned her because she was turned into undead.
Forsaken used to be Lordaeron (Alliance!!!) humans, and YOU abandoned them because they turned undead. But you don’t see Horde players bring that up every single time an alliance poster has an issue with Horde narrative.
Or Orc internment camps.

We don’t need to ignore Teldrassil. Now I despise comparing wow to real world, but hey lets do it here so maybe you can feel better:
Germany is still paying reparations for WW1 and 2 to the rest of Europe. Horde might get the same penalty. Ofcourse that would likely start en entirely fresh resource war since Alliance won’t have us settle anywhere so how we get the resources is beyond me but yeah.
Now think of the Forsaken. We lost our home, our leader, procreation, our identity is lost, other races in Horde despise us. Forsaken objectively lost more than night elves. Nelves still have Nordrassil, procreation, a respectful alliance…

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49

IMO an important problem is not that somebody could use questionable methods, but that the story is likely to go in a direction of “it was never a good idea”, “was not worth it”, “here are the correct™ characters that do the right™ things”, etc. So, regardless of what would be done, it could just lead to more of validation for the selected character roster and that their way is the one to follow.

To make it would it would not be enough to say “this character does questionable things”. It would require also “sometimes questionable things are the lesser evil”, “sometimes there are no right answers acheivable”, and, more importantly “however good something seem to be on a surface, it could lead to tragic results”.

And it is this extra staff that is IMO what is missing so far comepletely. There is no point in loyalist story in this game, because it can’t tell “yeah, what Anduin / Saurfang / others do might lead to horrible things actually”. It does not tell the story of “there are different views on the same event”, but rather “there is the right™ way to look at it, and others are wrong”.

Or at least that’s how I see it currently.

gl hf

50

It likely won’t, because some characters, like Baine, are seemingly dev favourites (ideology that he represents). Which means that labeling those who fought for Sylvanas post the tree™ story as “criminals” (for a lack of better word) at least in the eyes of the alliance, would not be on the table.

Even though Shadows Rising was among WoW novels a rather good one (subjectively), is still only portrayed “burning Orgrimmar / Thunderbluff” as the only options presented by Baine, not a hint at “maybe let’s try to fix the mess together”, which, you know, probably would’ve fit Baine / Anduin characters better.

Conceptually, if we for some reason try to look at all available resources in the narrative, it turns out, that those night elves know a thing or 2 about druidism, and nature. Which means that Barrens / Durotar probably might be restored over time to a better state.

And given skills of Oculeth, instead of trying to focus just on the Kirin Tor story as the only magical institution, there might be more development among the blood elves and nightborne. Which could make things like getting resources from Un’goro suddenly actually viable, and potentially rather profitable / effective.

Zandalari over time can get the control over a rather sizeable territory, reclaim Nazmir, and become an important ally for topics of transportation, resources, and maybe some ancient knowledge, some of which could be good, and some - potential for the future stories.

And so on.

Interestingly enough, just like the living side of Lordaeron. Both sides have quite a lot in common. Would those sides be willing to work together though - that is a different topic.

Same thing again. With the difference that the undead part is represented in the game and story, and the living - barely at all. So it seems like one side suffered more than the other.

IMO the main question is not the tool to raise undead, but where to get corpses of those who would be willing to fight against the alliance. On a regular basis.

Not really. At least if the novels would stay canon (and not everything from them is), Thrall stated in Shadows Rising that the horde is not the horde without the forsaken. So, currently both sides of ex-Lordaeron are kind of accepted in their respective factions.

Forsaken objectively managed to evacuate before the attack on Ruins of the Capital City.

However, if the story would stay consistent, and the devs will go against the community and push Calia Menethil into the horde, that would be the end of the forsaken as we know them, because the side effects of exposure to Light are rather dramatic for the undead.

Might have it eventually. So far it seems in a “maybe” state. Plus, Hyjal was a neutral place related mostly to the Circle. Which is not quite what could be considered “night elf territory” in such neutral status.

There are ways to fix it in the story should the devs wish for it.

According to the same book (and I do not think there is any info about it in the most recent one, “Eastern Kingdoms”) night elves supposedly see alliance and the horde as both betraying them and showing that the trust was misplaced.

Sylvanas? Don’t think so. Although there are some really odd images of elves that look like high elves in places dated to pre-Sundering, and high elves should not exist at that time. But that is a mystery for now.

That is an odd story, that would need more details afaia. Although I do not think Onyxia would acutally welcome the forsaken. On the other hand, time when Onyxia ruled was actually the most peaceful in the horde-alliance relationships… go figure :man_shrugging:

gl hf

2 Likes
51

I’m not having a quotewar with you. Write a decent, coherent post and I’ll discuss with you. Don’t break up your post in an ungodly amount of quotes and make it a full-time job to reply to each and every sentence.
Yes I’m exaggerating on purpose.

52

You do you.

gl hf

53

Not in de mood rn but my vibrator will be ready when I am.

54

The day this happens will be a happy day, Genn Greymane deserves to be taken down more than any faction figure has ever been in WoW let’s be real

Also yeah it’s obvious that rejecting undead Lordaeroni was the worst move the Alliance has ever done, this story def needs to be deepened but if it turns out it was just something like “boo undead scary and not light-friendly” in the same fashion as Draenei’s behavior towards Brokens, then they really doomed themselves out of biggotry and the joke’s on em
I’d say chances are that’s what happened, considering how Zelling’s family reacted

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55

Going a bit off topic and in the speculation field.

I will also add that Genn Greymaine has a adult daughter: Tess Greymane.
So he can be seen as in the same position as King Rastakhan and Princess Talanji.

There’s also Turalyon.
He has a adult son: Arator Windrunner.
He can be in the same position as Varian.
Popular between the Alliance players, but needs to be taken down, for the shock value.
Considering a Rastakhan scenario where he got raided by the Alliance players and than the Horde players played as Alliance mode, that can happen in Turalyon case.

He can be raided by the Horde players and than the Alliance players do the raid as Horde.
This would:

  • Be shocking.
  • Increase faction tension.
  • Aleria would become a vengeful widow, just as her sister Vereesa Windrunner.
  • Lead to another Varian > Anduin situation.

On Horde side:

  • Baine is too sentimental, so he fits in.
  • Thrall is less agressive than Garrosh, also his two sons are too young to replace him.
  • Lor’themar is dating Thalyssra an older female and he doesn’t have any sons.
  • Rokhan just replaced Vol’jin recently and he’s not as popular.
  • There’s no Forsaken leadership atm.
  • Gallywix has already been replaced by Gazlowe and none cares about him as much as Garrosh and Sylvanas. His death wouldn’t be as shocking as the other 2.
  • The rest of the Allied races leadership are too recent.

I might be wrong ofc.

Cheers.

56

If they’re making a novel about her, well, rejoice because she’s dead. Considering she is a raid boss, it’s safe to say that her fate is truly sealed at this point.

I expect the novel to shed some light on her character and maybe bring some side lore for the Forsaken, but at the end of the day, this book is a fan tribute imo, nothing else.

So you can all breathe now, she’s not getting a redemption. But knowing Blizzard, she will go down in a blaze of glory and will probably reveal some crazy twist to the story that is supposed to put her character and actions in a better light.

Frankly, I don’t care about any of that anymore. The Sylvanas I remember will forever be in Undercity, this new age junk story can go to hell.

I will read the book, but I will not set foot in the raid. I refuse to play the game any longer.

Ps: If they don’t make Patty voice her audiobook I will call that such a wasted opportunity. Even if you hate Sylvanas, you have to admit her voice actress is amazing and really breathes life into her character.

1 Like
57

Nah, the main possibilities have been death (probably with some degree of redemption in death), or ascension to a role above us mere mortals for quite some time. Having a farewell novel still fits both of these possibilities just as well. Yeah, it’s increasingly unlikely that Sylvanas will come back as a faction leader, but that was never really on the table anyways.

58

Well I don’t care about any of these 2 outcomes. For me it’s a lost character either way.

Most fans are going to be unhappy with a merciful death or ascension scenario. We just wanted the good ol’ Warcraft bickering. Now that’s gone.

59

Sure, but no twist that they ever could have written had the power to change that. Before the Storm already pretty much buried any chance the character might have had.

I have no idea what most people want, all the people who talk about what everyone wants seem to contradict one another on most claims. And I certainly don’t want a continuation of the empty bickering, I want to kill any main plot, and have a variety of little world- instead of character-building stories.

1 Like
60

She is indeed the one that is going to voice her audiobook.

One point of note, is that the audio version of this book will be narrated by the voice actor who voices Sylvanas in the game, Patty Mattson.

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