Thanks Blizzard, this really sheds some light upon the whole thing doesn’t it. Tbh I still don’t understand what does that mean in practice.
She’s speaking about giving agency to everyone in the cosmos, making everyone “control their fate”. There are a few problems with this viewpoint.
She was never an altruist - why care about other people’s fate other than her own?
How do people use this new freedom of theirs? What for?
What are they replacing this “system of death” with? It can’t be anarchy because well, it is through the Jailer that we will be given control of our lives in Sylvanas’ mind. Some sort of new order has to be established. So what will happen? What was she expecting, really?
What will -Sylvanas- use this freedom for? Just to avoid the Maw? Bang Nathanos? Become alive again? Or for something else? What she wanted in all of this, aside from a rebellion against the system? If she wanted to simply destroy it, why speak to Anduin as if she had further plans?
Demonstrably does not as an enthusiastic authoritarian and autocrat who has a whole subplot of killing her people’s only hope of an alternative to her rule.
Irrelevant.
Teaming up with the guy whose whole private realm is a torture dungeon to promote freedom. Expecting Zovaal to free everyone and not enslave all of reality is something that should’ve come up over her literal years of service.
All of the above by her own choice of self revelatory melodramatic rhetoric.
Giving him a choice, because free will is important except when it’s not. See her treatment of the forsaken. Ignore that it’s no choice at all. See her treatment of the forsaken.
And yet we’re also told she does, to the point of feeling pity for Anduin, Thrall and jaina when they’re chained by the jailer (“we don’t have to hurt them, we already have what we need!”).
Correct me if I’m wrong but she never stated she would undo her undeath. Perhaps I missed it due to my lack of investment in the Shadowlands (that would actually be a decent character motivation) but she’s more focused on Nathanos and freedom than anything concrete.
Aside from maybe returning to life, it doesn’t look like she really needed to undo the whole fabric of reality to get along with Nathanos.
Yep! Still wondering what she meant when she spoke about Zovaal giving everyone control over their lives - aside from the fact that indeed, as you pointed out, the dude is obsessed with domination and denying people’s freedom - what does that exactly mean? Because it should be the main point of her quest to reforge the system. What new rules, what new hierarchy will there be? Why would they be better than the one we have? it’s never addressed but she [seems to] have a project about improving the system herself, which is a huge thing considering it is how she justifies her loyalties to the Jailer to others. It should be fleshed out somewhere and yet all we have is a one-liner.
And yeah, we can pull her a “she never cared about free will and was just thinking about herself” card, but then why complain about the treatment of Jaina and Thrall (or Anduin) to her boss?
You know, now that Maiev is popping up in the Shadowlands, I hope she will do what Tyrande couldn’t or didn’t want to do and that is decapitating Sylvanas.
[blows up thunder bluff and orgrimmar in lunar wildfire]
Last chance saloon for Blizzard not to completely butcher a character. Maiev would never compromise over such a thing. She has always been a cold, hard Fury of Vengeance.
Illidan just happened to successfully survive his execution.
Guys come on, Maiev is clearly there to tell Tyrande that sparing Sylvanas was the right decision, since the Warden herself had lost herself to vengeance in the past!
Jeez it’s like you don’t even pay attention anymore.
Comparing Legion to Shadowlands almost seems unfair. In that Legion did have some satisfying narratives on offer. To name the perhaps most obvious example, Suramar remains something close to the pinnacle of WoW storytelling in my books.
Legion was bombastic and to a degree cosmical… But it wasn’t being a try-hard expansion. “Defeat the Legion and all the auxiliary forces assisting them in the invasion of Azeroth.” there you go, that’s their goal, you didn’t need to entirely retro-frame their entire backstory to fit it as they were already woven into the lore.
it’s never addressed but she [seems to] have a project about improving the system herself, which is a huge thing considering it is how she justifies her loyalties to the Jailer to others. It should be fleshed out somewhere and yet all we have is a one-liner.
