So, what do you think about this? My first thought was “The light has struck a bargain with the enemy of all”. Also, even Elune’s power wasn’t enough to pierce this plot armor…
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The devs consider the 9.1 Tyrande arc a satisfying resolution. (https://www.pcmag.com/news/world-of-warcraft-devs-talk-the-new-raid-and-mythic-plus-score-coming-to)
The cinematic itself is goofy but flashy and felt fine-ish. Unfortunately, it suffers from what happened before and after the event. Just like in BfA, it’s a lot of hype (and the devs know how to exploit enthusiastic audience) for a flop of a pay off.
Powers of Tyrande look in-line with the Ardenweald colour scheme. Which is an odd change IMO from the visuals she had before, that were identical to the spells of mobs in Nazmir (in Bwonsamdi’s Necropolis to be specific).
Ysera roared and did nothing with Sylvanas, because plot I suppose.
Tyrande’s powers failed when they were needed.
Some contradiction with the surrounding story of “it’s my wraith” and what Tyrande says after the ritual later.
Is the cinematic fine? In the vacuum it is, and even in line with the BfA justice theme. But it’s disjointed with the rest of the narrative and the plotline offers no pay off. Just a way to “oh, let’s add another cliffhanger / mystery. That would totally not exhaust the players and would not lead them away”.
If this is what was the intention with the night warrior story line, there was no point to ever add it to the game IMO.
gl hf
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Idk man. I mean…nobody was naive enough to thing that tyrande will kill, harm or even hit her…
But to be honest Elune seems like a fun gal too… after getting pissed in Darkshore, tyrande got elunes power to stop Sylvanas…and when she finaly reach her…elune powers conviniently fades off…like this is the lamest writing ive ever watched…
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I… don’t care. That’s another piece character drama around characters I just want to go away. Power levels are random, motivations are undisclosed or stupid, and the pretty colors don’t hold my interest.
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Blizzard managed to give both sides here a victory.
I’m glad that Tyrande survived.
Why did Elune took that power in the last moment? I think because of this:
Tyrande: My life for hers!
Elune: No my child, your life is 2 valuable!
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I honestly cba about both the recurrent Tyrande drama and some new Sylvanas twirling moustache moment.
I did get interested in catching a glimpse about the Nathanos bit. I may be reading to much into it, but I hope that this whole thing about the Jailer keeping him away from Sylvanas, may point at a change of heart that ultimately salvages him out of this villain mess and hopefully returns the Forsaken their most notable character left after having to face the absolute destruction of their leaders story arch.
I’m mostly grasping and I know it, but one can hope.
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Can you strangle an undead? 
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Probably not, but if you want to tear her head off with superpowers ,the neck is a good place to start.
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I believe that as well. Elune doesn’t want Tyrande to die, even if it means Sylvanas lived as a consequence.
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At this stage, I find that the whole Shadowlands lore is a joke, on par with the last season of Game of Thrones. Sylvanas is so cowered up in her plot armour that nothing can harm her, “The night warrior” is a piece of “story” that seems to have been “invented” on the spot for the sake of “plot” and the whole “Maw” that is suppose to be inescapable has a revolving door where everyone has a season pass to come and go as they please.
The Tyrande cinematic is cringe deluxe in my opinion. It’s what you get when 2 major plot armour characters meet, and the writers simply have no clue how to resolve or do anything about it, so they just flail the around in a dramatic way for a couple of minutes.
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If you watch the cinematic with subtitles, you can clearly see Elune depowers Tyrande so she doesn’t kill herself in the process of killing Sylvanas.
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The idea has been out there for months to be honest. The de-powering was going to happen somehow.
Kinda lame it happened here of all places. That little part in me still hoping for some nice impact in the story - literally ala Tyrande or figuratively ala a good story regardless - would have loved to see Sylvanas’ face get caved in somehow.
But now everyone is super agile with super armor these days, ah well.
To think of it, the cinematic embodies the ridiculousness of the theme. “You get revenge! (Xandria), you get revenge (Monument to Vengeance quest in the Maw), etc. But not you specifically, because that would work so well among the other similar quests”
gl hf
In the end though, Tyrande gets to keep Elune’s power.
Following this, the power of the Night Warrior almost kills Tyrande - as you can see on the PTR where the Winter Queen arrives to help stabilise her, having sensed the power of Elune in Ardenweald. The cutscene happens and Tyrande has returned to normal.
Later on, you can stay a while and listen to her speak to one of the souls of the Night Elves who died at Teldrassil (the priestess who refused to leave). Tyrande mentions that she still holds the power of the Night Warrior, but it is now under control.
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blizzlard writers suck at writing
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You know what would be better, Tyrande majorly wounds Sylvanas then gets de-powered and Sylvanas escapes…It would still SUCK but at least they could have played it off as, Sylvanas being wounded during the raid and not being on her peak hence us taking her on.
Which would make it so that Tyrande’s powers actually had an impact in the greater story before she would get de-powered. It is a smlal change and doesn’t “fix” the story but at least it would have made this whole thing more bear-able.
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I think it wasn’t to not let her kill herself. Elune is literally goddess and Tyrande is one of her most loyal follower, if she didn’t want her to die, then she could simply make her powers non life-consuming. I think Elune not letting Tyrande kill Sylvanas was more about some pact between Elune and Jailer. And we know from N’Zoth that Light has bargain with “enemy of all”.
We do not know of if Elune is “light” though and I doubt the term goddess works like how gods are irl. Her power is potent and it is lethal that is what we know, I doubt she could just make “snaps finger” now you are undying to my power.
And obviously Tyrande is angry but not being able to kill Sylvanas, just taking away her power without any explanation or “vision” as Tyrande was known to have them. It would be even sillier, as it would only feel Tyrande’s anger and her feeling “forsaken”
Plus Sylvanas mentions something about last embers of Elune’s bargain.
I watched it earlier today, so I’ll throw in my thoughts for the heck of it.
The initial cinematic coolness was definitely there. I think Blizzard are really good at their craft. The music, the editing, the close-ups of iconic characters in heroic poses, the one-liners, and so on. It all adds up to a cinematic experience that gets you hyped and makes for great reaction videos on YouTube.
Whether it’s this cinematic or Illidan’s Rejection of the Gift, Fall of The Lich King, Tomb of Sargeras Finale, or whatever. They’re all superb cinematic craftmanship, as is per usual from Blizzard.
The story told is sparse and more of a tease than anything. Nothing is concluded or finalized.
Sylvanas learns about Nathanos. That may or may not matter. We’ve seen her have some inkling of doubt with regards to The Jailer using Anduin as a puppet. Is this more weight on the scale of morality? Who knows. It does strain the relationship between The Jailer and Sylvanas and it’s hard to believe that they’ll stick together to the very end.
But the Nathanos information doesn’t really add anything new to the Sylvanas speculation. And at this point it’s also just a matter of waiting a week and then we’ll know.
So then there’s all the Elune stuff. And that really seems to be all that the cinematic is about – adding more fuel to all the foreshadowing regarding Elune. And it’s turning into a huge tease that’s gone on since the burning of Teldrassil. We’re learning so much about Elune, yet we know so little. We have an increasing amount of questions and no real answers to any of them.
Blizzard are really foreshadowing a lot here, and my main take-away is that the next expansion is The Emerald Dream with Elune and all that stuff, because it feels similar to the build-up with Sylvanas in Battle for Azeroth – which culminated with Shadowlands.
And all-together the cinematic feels very symptomatic of a lot of the plotlines.
N’zoth. Azshara, Xal’atath, Sylvanas, The Jailer, Elune, and so on.
It feels like Battle for Azeroth (and even the ending of Legion with Sargeras and Argus) and Shadowlands is just one long storyline where Blizzard are refusing to reveal any of their cards, opting for the strategy of presumably going all-in at the very end, and then that’s when the story goes OMGWTFBBQ!!
It feels like the novels written by Richard A. Knaak. He always had this style where the first 450 pages of the book was pure build-up and tension and calm before the storm, and then in the final 50 pages everything exploded and huge events went down and the world gets saved and THE END!
It feels like that. Blizzard have built this plotline up since God knows how long – it is damn long!
And it feels like Battle for Azeroth was the prelude, the prologue, the introduction, the sowing of the seeds or whatever you want to say.
And Shadowlands is so far the dramatic build-up. Everything is coming together. It’s reaching a form of climax.
And patch 9.3 – the ending of Shadowlands – has to culminate in some pants-dropping-hair-on-fire-epic-event that just blows everyone away, because it’s literally years of story build-up that needs to tie together and come to some form of insane conclusion that makes the wait worth it.
Because that’s what it is. It’s just one long wait for that major conclusion that we all know is somewhere on the horizon. If there is to be a Ragnarok style event in WoW, the End Times or whatever…this has to be it.
And I hope it will be worth it. I choose to believe that Blizzard have had so many years to plan this and carefully put everything together the way they want it, so they can deliver a conclusion to a story that they are confident in is worth the time it has taken to set it up.
And what comes after that pants-dropping conclusion is surely the Elune stuff. That is what Blizzard are foreshadowing, and so that is what comes after Shadowlands.
I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to speculate too much about Elune and the hints provided in the cinematic, because Blizzard’s goal is clearly just to tease and build curiosity, so that when they announce the Emerald Dream expansion (or whatever it ends up being), then everyone’s already hyped for it and can’t wait to get into it.
So those are sort of my thoughts on the cinematic. It only confirms my feeling that everything comes down to the finale of Shadowlands.
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I don’t know if you honestly believe it, but i’m sorry to tell you that, given the new info the interviews gave us, this bit:
Isn’t really the case.
Their words:
The specific details of the patch, such as twists and turns, raid bosses, and even some major narrative moments came together at the end of last year and the beginning of this year.
So that lie about having this story be one “long in the making” has already been blatantly exposed by their own writers.
Not that it wasn’t already quite apparent given the obvious and radical changes and weird twists the story gave, or the lengthy list of retcons they’ve been leaning on to build their most recent developments…
But yeah, the cat is out of bag and they’ve spilled the beans.
No need to mask their modus anymore with some excuse about some “hidden hints” people somehow missed, or some weird innuendo that eveyone somehow misinterpreted: Their story decisions are set on the go depending on how they feel like doing at any given time.
So no, this story wasn’t all that planned.
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