Spoiler! The end and final judgement of Sylvanas Windrunner!

Community General Discussion
23

To some degree, honest to God, I would be inclined to accept that if it was offered as a possibility.

Which is insane to even say. But there you go.

Not just because of how Blizzard have destroyed Sylvanas as a character, but because Shadowlands as a whole just screws up so many characters, so many plotlines, and so much lore and worldbuilding. It would arguably be better if it had not existed at all – if it had all just been a bad dream.

As it is now it is very difficult to see how the story can move on from here.
Some players have this hope that 10.0 can be really great and then we get Dragon Isles and forget about Shadowlands and all is fine again! But story-wise it’s not so easy to get from A to B. And Blizzard have made it really hard for themselves to transition to a new story focus that isn’t hamstrung by everything we take with us from Shadowlands.

Maybe.

But that doesn’t change the story that already is.

Hence why I said that this is irreparable damage to Warcraft.

Because even if Blizzard pulls an Illidan, then it doesn’t change the fact that Shadowlands happened and everything the characters went through is part of who they now are.

And what they went through is crap story development. No character, not Tyrande, Thrall, Baine, Bolvar, Talia, Calia, Shandris, Anduin, Jaina, Arthas, or Sylvanas, goes out of The Shadowlands as better character than they were prior. In terms of story they are all worse characters now.

Darion Mograine is the only character I can think of where I feel that something was gained by going to The Shadowlands. Him seeing his father and them interacting with each other and coming to terms with their lot in life (and death), that was a good story and a good character development – however short and simple it was.
But besides him, it’s all crap.

I am not going to join the choir of people who project all their criticism onto Danuser or Golden or any individual at Blizzard.
I think it’s the company and the team as a whole that’s just not structured in a way that enables them to make a compelling WoW experience the moment that things don’t go according to plan.
When things go as they intend, like with Legion, then they can clearly make good stuff.
But the moment something forces them to change and adapt, like COVID-19 or the over-ambitious nature of WoD – then they are completely incapable of adjusting their plans. Everything just falls apart then.

And one might be inclined to say that oh that’s just WoW because of Ion and Danuser!

But it’s not. It’s a recurring theme within Blizzard.
Titan? Whoops, doesn’t go according to plan. Falls apart.
Diablo III? Whoops, doesn’t go according to plan. Hello decades of development hell.
Overwatch 2? Over-ambition happening right now! Overwatch has just been left to die for years now.

Blizzard are crap at making games in general.

They release a gem every now and then, but for the most part there’s only poop coming out of that company.

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24

Holy crap I truly feel the grrrrrrrrl power emiting from this cinematic, us guys just have to sit back and be humble

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25

It amuses me how Thrall, Jaina and Anduin looked like dogs who have had muzzles placed on when Pelagos asked if anyone objects to this outcome.

Overall, I am way past being disappointed. I can’t even bring myself to care anymore. This cinematic is just a rubbish ending to the rubbish expansion that destroyed the Warcraft franchise beyond repair.

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26

Loooooooool this part made me laugh out loud. Do you truly believe this or did you write this to be ironic? Holy crap, please do yourself a favor and count the amount of lore characters you see in warcraft 3. Everyone is sick and tired of the standard 5 always reappearing

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27

Well I don’t attribute much intelligence to Blizzard right now, so I can’t say that I believe it anymore.

But if you had asked me back in Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria, then I would have believed this with a lot of conviction.

For one because Blizzard seemed to go out of their way to develop each of those 5 characters as poster-images for heroes that fans could associate with. They were a little different from each other, emphasizing different qualities and traits and represented different races and genders and backgrounds, so every player could identify with one of them.
For a company like Blizzard that wants to reach a broad audience and appeal to lots of different people, it seemed smart to develop 5 iconic heroes that players could identity with in the ever-changing world of Warcraft.
Blizzard just needed to angle Sylvanas so that she became chaotic good and she would fit the hero mould like a hand in a glove.

And secondly because Blizzard themselves have spent years building these characters up and getting players hyped about them and invested in their storylines.
These are the characters that Blizzard prints on t-shirts and makes statues of and writes novels about. These are the characters that Warcraft makes $ out of.
Just like Nintendo makes $ out of the character Mario and Microsoft makes $ out of the character Master Chief, so does Blizzard make $ out of the character Sylvanas.

So for those reasons I would have believed that Blizzard had reasons for focusing the franchise around these characters and developing them the way they did.
Because it was sensible.

But now that they’ve flushed Sylvanas down the toilet, I don’t really know what to believe anymore.

28

Oh yeah?
What did Anduin do up that point?
What did Sylvanas do to make her stand out of characters like Garrosh, Saurfang, Vol’jin, Cairne, etc?
What did Tyrande do up that point?

Calling these 5 the face of World of Warcraft… just kek…
You’re mad that Sylvanas is written out, imagine how Cairne fans feel, or Garrosh, or whatever character from Warcraft. They come and go and they can’t remain the “face” of WoW forever and it is up to Blizzard to build onto older characters, which they failed, or introduce newer once, which besides Garrosh Hellscream, they failed, because they still had to ride out Warcraft 3 characters to the point they even brought back Arthas to tell the fans through Sylvanas to forget about him kek.

Imagine how Arthas fans feel? Hell, Arthas is more known than Sylvanas because Sylvanas exists thanks to him, is he not part of the face of Warcraft?

I really hope Blizzard doesn’t take advice from you, because Thrall isn’t cutting it for me, neither are the other four you named.

Right, right. Garrosh never had statues made of himself. I believe their statue infront of their HQ is Grommash Hellscream.

What the hell are you basing this upon. As a lore fan since the early days of Warcraft I could /slap you for uttering this mumbo jumbo nonsense based on nothingness…

29

It’s not just Sylvanas. The rest of the main cast had zero point to them in the Shadowlands, and have received close to zero development whatsoever. The entire expansion was utterly pointless and only served to utterly and irreparably destroy the franchise.

At this point, there’s nothing they can do to fix this. Shadowlands is a gigantic Pandora’s Box that should never had been opened. Right now I truly believe that it’d be for the best to just retcon everything that’s happened after Mists of Pandaria and start clean, but we know that’s not going to happen. We’re stuck with this garbage forever.

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30

I feel sorry for the owl.

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31

Characters like Arthas, Anduin Lothar, Grommash, Garrosh, Muradin, Magni, Varian, Uther, Maiev, Moira, Magatha Grimtotem, Orgrim Doomhammer, Blackhand, Nazgrel, Falstaad, Daelin, and on and on are unknown, unpopular and not known by many in the Warcraft franchise apparently, because Jito never chose to explore the Warcraft lore and thinks merchandise around characters warrants them in the storyline.

Do Sylvanas stans really lmaoooo welcome to Warcraft.

32

You’re perceiving it as if all of these 5 characters need to be well and truly fleshed out and completed in order for them to be the front-facing characters of the franchise.

That’s not how it works. And it’s not how it worked.

In WoW there are some characters who have defined beginnings and endings. Like Garrosh. Or Saurfang.
They are story characters. They exist for the purpose of telling stories within the Warcraft universe.
Within the Warcraft universe Blizzard can create a lot of characters in order to tell their stories.

But characters like Thrall and Jaina are permanent characters. They are not meant to have an end. They’re meant to exist in the world and grow with it. Their stories are supposed to reflect the Warcraft story as a whole because they are part of it all.
There’s not a Thrall story per se. There’s just Thrall in the Warcraft world, and that’s the story.
You can tell most of World of Warcraft through the eyes of Thrall, because he has experienced most of it. He provides us with the story aspects of family, home, honor, and The Horde. If we know who Thrall is, then we know a lot of what WoW is.
Jaina is likewise a character that has lived the story of Warcraft and will continue to live it. And her story reflects her character, so through her we learn of the story aspects of loss, sorrow, love, innocence, grief, kindness, and so on.

So if you tell the story of these 5 characters, then you’ve basically told the story of World of Warcraft.
They’re a clever way of taking something big and sometimes very confusing and difficult to keep up with – the World of Warcraft – and boil it down to something players can easily follow and be invested in. What’s happening to Tyrande? What’s Anduin going to do next?

He is its legacy.

But he is not its future.

A character like Jaina is.

Does it look like they are?!

Haven’t I just spent the last hour slamming them for their treatment of Sylvanas?

Does it look like I am patting them on the back for a job well-done?

Does it look like they’re doing what I say they should?

But hey, if you like the story as it’s currently being told, then good for you. But it’s not what I consider good.

No. It’s just a random Orc.

Observation and opinion. I’m allowed that. If you struggle to tolerate it, then you can just piss off and spare me your petulant whining.

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33

Stopped reading right there. You think your theory is true but it ain’t. Sylvanas is gone, just like Garrosh, Vol’jin, Varian, etc etc.

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34

It boggles my mind why you would engage me in conversation if you only intend to say: “Nu-uh!”

Like, who gives a hoot whether you agree with or like what I have to say?!

Either you have some interesting input you want to contribute with yourself – and you clearly don’t – or you keep quiet and let others talk.

The teenage whining syndrome around here is sometimes baffling.

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35

Now say that without crying.

The fact that you think the huge world and depth of World of Warcraft and its world building can be contained and told through five characters that you think is good, is a big fat fart in the wind and one of the reasons why lore has gone to crap is because of Blizzard trying to force these characters through our throats, which comes along with their personalities changing on a whim (Look at Sylvanas and Jaina) just for the story to progress further.

And please, look into a mirror next time you accuse someone of teenage whining syndrome. Be happy Sylvanas might show up in a future expansion. She’s not dead or killed, they’ll probably prop her into a 2nd Illidan.

36

I didn’t say that.

I said that Blizzard seemed to establish a line-up of main characters for Warcraft as other games do for their franchises, because that is a smart thing to do. It makes those franchises recognizable because everyone knows who Master Chief is, or Mario, or Link, or Thrall.

And then I said that those main characters aren’t story-drivers like Garrosh and Saurfang, because the story is never really theirs and doesn’t revolve around them per se. They’re just part of those stories because they’re a constant presence in the world of Warcraft.

Superman is part of The Justice League. But not every story in The Justice League is about Superman, even though Superman is always participating.
Likewise, then Thrall is part of World of Warcraft. But not every expansion in World of Warcraft is about Thrall, but Thrall is always participating when there’s a new expansion to come.

And my point being that those 5 characters I mentioned are a bit like the characters in The Justice League.
Thrall and Jaina are a bit like Superman and Batman. Permanent.
Tyrande hasn’t always been around as much, so she’s more like The Flash. But just like The Flash, then you kind of sense that Blizzard also wants Tyrande to be more around. More permanent.

And in that regard it strikes me as stupid for Blizzard to write Sylvanas out of the story when they have spent so much time and effort on establishing her as a permanent presence in the game. Like those other characters I mentioned.

Why would I be happy about that?!

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37

I think this ending is far from the worst they could have done, which is a pretty high bar for Shadowlands.

38

I like how they ended her arc.
Finally Danuser did smth right.

You dont get it, its ok. Most cant stop the winewagon even when things get better. But that was one of the better endings she could possibly get… or was it ending? :slight_smile:

Nicely done.

39

Oh, another cinematic victory for the alliance.
The alliance does not make any impact in the game, does not make progress and is so small in number that even murlocs are perhaps the most formidable faction in the game, but in the cinematics we will let the alliance win for 10 years in the row. How ooking original, I suppose the author of this TWIST used to work as a welder or a pig farmer.

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40

So, how did you like your king’s been incompetently flushed out in Legion for Golden’s wet fantasy of a soy peace-loving boy, kissing with black dragons in own time? That is why the alliance is melting, Blizzard writers manage to inadvertently cut even worthy representatives of their own faction just to please the hysterical reclusers who play night elves. By the way, your race will not have the plot development for another five years either, just because it is very important to reveal the mediocre character of the Tyrande for the amusement of 3.5 NE players.

41

Didn’t know my search history is a public knowledge…
blushes

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42

At first I was like “Is a man going to judge her??? Really???”. I was so relieved when I saw my girl Tyrande step in.

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