A thought just occurred to me about Sylvanas going to the maw, that son of a ***** gets her happy ending !!!
She gets to spend however many millennia scooping up souls with her ******* boyfiend down in the maw, we sent her to bloody Nathanos !!!. Also there shouldn’t even be that many souls left in the maw because we spent the entire expansion fetching them all out week by week. Sooooooo she’s got bugger all to do really and she gets to love it up with her BF 
Highly doubt that this is the last we see of Sylvanas in this series if they really wanted her gone they would have killed her off. Plus I’m positvly surprised by this, sure she gets abit of a redemtion arc but its not like shes treated as a goodie she still gets her punishment.
I think Blizzard bends a lot to player pressure.
That crowd of Sylvanas loyalists and devoted fans that are ready with torches and pitchforks if Blizzard so much as hints at the possibility of Sylvanas being killed off is enough for Blizzard to steer clear of that outcome.
Blizzard don’t have any interest in angering their own hardcore fans. They’re valuable customers.
On the other hand you have the crowd of Night Elf players who are up in arms about Teldrassil having been burned down. They want justice for what happened. And if they don’t get it, then they’re also ready with… well, maybe not torches, but at least pitchforks.
And again Blizzard don’t have any interest in angering these hardcore fans. They are valuable customers.
So rather than writing whatever story Blizzard would otherwise feel compelled to write from an artistic and creative point of view, they instead have to write a story that is conscious of the interests of different paying customers. I think this is called fan-service.
So of course they conveniently land on this outcome where Sylvanas is thrown into The Maw. That satisfies the Sylvanas fans, because they can hope that she gets out of The Maw again. And it satisfies the Night Elf fans, because they can hope that she stays down there for an eternity.
But more importantly, then it satisfies Blizzard themselves, because they manage to K-turn the story outcome without colliding with any of their fans, and they basically don’t have to worry about Sylvanas again. She’s a hot potato that they aren’t obligated to touch anymore. And if players start asking, then they can just vaguely hint at the future, which in WoW terms can be decades away. They can kick that can down the road for a long time. And they will.
It’s terrible writing because it does nothing for the story itself to see Sylvanas just jump into The Maw, but players do seem to agree on the fact that this ending is the least disastrous ending they could have written. And I think that’s exactly what Blizzard were going for. They weren’t aiming for good writing. They were aiming for a calm reaction.
It’s pure damage control.
So she’s Davey Jones now?
Not really. Well in the sense that she’s traversing The Maw for souls to be judged by The Arbiter, then yeah, she’s like Davy Jones who ferries the souls of the dead to their afterlife.
But in terms of character they’re not the same. Davy Jones took upon his task out of love for the sea. Sylvanas does it as atonement for her crimes.
As a trope she’s The Atoner. But not a very well-written one (the whole soul-splitting makes it confusing to understand whether she’s atoning for her own sins or the sins of her other soul-half who she seemingly isn’t very conscious of yet still feels responsible for).
Until when do we, Horde players, have to suffer this kind of humiliation?
Some Alliance dog giving us pep talks and acting all high and mighty because we can’t have more than “x Warchief has a bad day and wants to kill everyone” storytelling.
Pathetic, really. I’d rather go down as the evil faction than be subjected to this ever again.
Except it wasn’t. If anything it was a victory for the Horde.
As opposed to Danuser’s wet dreams of his waifu? Are you sure you’re playing the same game as everyone else? The entire WoW franchise’s main characters have all been merely McGuffins to string along Sylvanas. (Shouldn’t you be shouting MUH KWEEEEEN!!" more often btw)
Oh look. Someone who thinks all Blizzard devs play Alliance. Or Horde. Whatever. I don’t even take this drivel into consideration.
Yeesh…
Fixed that for you. Blizzard have been doing it since they killed of Vol’jin, another one expac “Warchief” who was merely keeping the seat warm for “muh kweeeeeen!!”
Night Elf players realised this long ago buddy, it’s not news to them. They are under no delusions of how much Blizzard treats them with utter contempt. Now they even have to suffer their leader being the “bad guy” because “muh kweeeen!” took the easy way out and “sacrificed” herself.
No doubt it will somehow be Tyrande’s fault.
Again. Nothing new there. NE players are used to their leader being the butt of writing team’s “jokes” about mediocre leaders, the irony seeming escaping you that Sylvanas was a catastrophic failure in EVERYTHING she did.
Lol… Another clueless fool who has no idea what betrayal is.
But to play at your game.
Nathanos, why are you hiding behind a player’s profile. isn’t it time to worship at “muh kweeeeen’s!!!” feet instead of ranting on the forum?
Your “kween” will hopefully never be heard of again except in passing mention in following expacs, much like the vast majority of Horde characters who have all been “sacrificed” by the shambolic writing teams desperate to make everyone feel at least sympathy for
“Muh Kween”.
The authors should be inspired in the Game of Thrones how harsh judgments are made. This punishment is a teapot for little girls. The only hard part of the punishment is that she had to look at the abomination called Arbiter Pelagos for a while. Blah, this luminous yellow creature is really repulsive. I only had a second to look at and I turned off the video. But the good thing is that I may never have to see Pelagos and Sylvanas again, that sounds promising.
Did you even play mists?
Yes I did play MoP! Still I think the story was kinda poo and rest nice. That was my experience then. Now I enjoy mop both story wise and content wise!
Jito, I respect your opinion, but I think that Blizzard has went too far with building up these characters. World of Warcaft; WARCRAFT itself never revolved around 5 characters, why should it now? We all grew to love the world building. I think that it is a good sign for the writers to take distance for the “original 5”.
It has been crap since WoD, just admit it.
Sylvanas’ punishment, commensurate with mass murder and destroying a entire city:
Find and collect souls in the Maw.
WoW’s weekly content for players for the first half of the expansion:
Find and collect souls in the Maw.
Not sure what the message is from Blizzard there.
Can’t wait for the next Sylvanas book though.
Sylvanas breathed a sigh of relief as the sentence for her crimes was dictated by Tyrande.
‘Well, it could have been worse, she could have made me farm rares in Kothia for 3 hours a day!’
THAT … is very well observed. 
Not in an MMORPG it isn’t. Also they were pushing Varian really hard as one of the main characters and yet they axed him, soooo why are you surprised they did that for Sylvanas (and Anduin btw) ?
Also x2 the great push for “main characters” in the game started in BfA, arguably in Legion before that we got:
Jaina- Character development in WotLK->Pretty much absent in Cata->Character Development in MoP->Absent in WoD+Legion->Character development in BfA-> Why is she even in SL ?
Tyrande- Didn’t really do much in any expansion->Some weird MoP scenarios that thought her not be so angry-> Skipped WoD-> “Malfurion my love”-> Imma be angry-> Imma not be so angry.
Anduin- One of the most static characters ever created (not that its a bad thing), and suddenly started getting more Screen time in BfA.
Thrall- Ok fair, he has been pretty much the “main character” since cata (and people were already tired of him back then), however he did skip out on Legion. Also why is he in SL?
Sylvanas- Same as Tyrande, didn’t do much in the previous expansions->LoL Imma be warchief (and yet wasn’t really present in the expansion that happened)->LoL imma start a war->LoL this life is a prison.
See the pattern here ? 4 out of 5 characters here became “main characters” in BfA, and the one out that had the spotlight people hated because he had it in the first place.
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
The storytelling in WoW may as well be a single-player experience for the way it’s presented. And Blizzard very much carries on in the same way they have since the RTS days with having the story revolve around the major NPCs. Your character is for all intents and purposes a non-entity. Anduin is scarred by his experiences in The Shadowlands. Your character is just…whatever.
Maybe other MMORPGs do it differently, I wouldn’t know, I don’t play them. But Blizzard have consistently done it this way for the past 17 years in their game. Then you’re free to label that game as you please.
I thought Blizzard told a good story with Varian. The story of the heroic king who dies in battle fighting for the ideals he believes in, securing his legacy, and passing the crown onto his son with pride.
That’s a straight-up medieval tale with all the proper ingredients of nobility, valor, and sacrifice that it consists of.
It was always in the writing and it was good writing I think.
I feel like I have covered my thoughts on Sylvanas plenty already, so I won’t repeat myself at length. But I don’t think Blizzard have told a good story with her, and I don’t think her ending has elevated the character the way Varian’s ending did for him.
And I suppose I am mostly surprised that Blizzard dropped the ball so hard with her story.
I don’t see Anduin as a character that Blizzard are giving the axe. Maybe a little timeout, but I believe Blizzard will write a lot of story with Anduin in the years to come.
He’s front and center in Warcraft and will be for a long time I think.
I think it’s fair to zoom out a bit more and look at Warcraft as a franchise and not just a brief time-period in WoW.
I also play Hearthstone. Blizzard will gladly sell me a Sylvanas portrait and card back. And they’ll sell me a cool mercenary pack with Sylvanas.
Their gear story will sell me multiple novels with Sylvanas. Hoodies. Art prints. Leggings. And so on.
She is a valuable intellectual property for Blizzard, the same way that Luigi is for Nintendo.
Again, I am simply surprised that Blizzard will throw all of this away rather than grow it.
From a business perspective I would believe that the shrewd decision is to make fans fall in love with this iconic character so that they will want to buy the hoodies and novels and art prints that feature her.
It seems counter-productive to make fans dislike the iconic character and then write it into obsolesce.
But then again, Blizzard don’t seem very good at running their business these days, so maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me.
I’m not sure what your point is.
If your point is that Blizzard don’t have a good handle on the story and where it should go and what it should accomplish and who it should feature, then yeah, I agree.
But I don’t think that changes the fact that Blizzard are very conscious about their iconic characters and wanting them to be main selling points of the Warcraft franchise. And that includes making them feature prominently in the stories – which they seem to do as well.
You mean Rexxar’s campaign, which inspired WoW? From a few faction leaders present, they have never handheld us this bad until now. It was basically go here and kill this in the name for your faction, leader does something, speech and done
Interesting take… Wheres this from? No hate intended.
Also dont want to interviene in my own thread guys >:c But keep it chill…
Well Blizzard tells stories about their characters and their worlds.
If it’s Warcraft, then it’s about Azeroth and Thrall and Sargeras and Jaina and Mount Hyjal.
If it’s Diablo, then it’s about Sanctuary and Diablo and Tyrael and Lilith and Arreat.
If it’s StarCraft, then it’s about The Koprulu sector and The Protoss and Jimmy and Kerrigan and Aiur.
If it’s Overwatch, then it’s about Earth and Tracer and Sombra and Talon.
In some way you can say that Blizzard games are a D&D campaign that others are playing. They’ll let you roll the dice and move their characters, but you’re really just spectating as their story unfolds before you.
And that’s fine. For the most part Blizzard are excellent Game Masters. They build fantastic worlds and create epic stories for their characters and it’s a wonder to partake in.
But sometimes they get it wrong as well. Like with Sylvanas, in my opinion.
Do you know where the difference between WoW and SP games lies? In a single player game you play as the main character. In RPGs where you create the character the writers offer you dialogue options and branching stories/endings. In WoW we don’t have that so Blizzard are trying to to do these “main characters” that aren’t you and that leads to people feeling like they are secondary characters in their own story. For example I’m a venthyr warlock (lol) I go to Zereth Morthis and Pelegos is there waiting for me because we are BFFs for some reason, I have barely interacted with that character, I barely know anything about him and what I know about him my character would stand on the completely opposite end of. There is a line from Pelegos in fact that goes something like “I’m not in danger, the safest place I could be is around Amonet”… 1st of I’m a warlock safety went out the window the moment I created the character, 2ndly wherever our PCs go insanity and escalations happen, it’s like we are a magnet for danger.
Varian is my favorite character and I agree we did have a good story with him, however that’s not the point I was making. He was a main character and he got killed, why are you surprised they did the same for Sylvanas. Also Varian’s story was not as front line and center as this new line of main characters is, his story was mostly done as side quests in books.
Again how does this not apply to Sylvanas and why are you surprised about it? I mean, hell we all know Illidan is coming back, probably with a now reformed Sargeras as his “inner demon”.
OK great do that like they did it Varian, via books about side quests. The way they are doing it now is Character A does stuff that impacts main story, motivations unclear find them out (maybe) in our newest novel. And people ask this a lot why does it have to be like that, because unless you want Sylvanas going on kill 15xBoar quest with all the while explaining her parental issues to you, you won’t be getting her inner thoughts unless it’s from a first person perspective via a book or another game… etc.
I’m trying to ask why do you consider these characters “main” when they have been focused on for just 2 expansions (poorly received aswell). We have had main characters for expansions sure, but we have not had main characters for the entire franchise, how are these the exception and why ?
Well this aint Jito’s fault honestly. But Blizzards. Who has called us the main character despite class race or anything we played up untill this point.