Words of wisdom, my friend.
Sadly, at the end of this nobody wins. It’s just a silly story to begin with. They played with fire and they didn’t have a point to prove in the end, because they didn’t consider this story further than a few patches.
Sylvanas being dumb is clearly inconsistent with how they’ve been writing her the past few years. They went from she’s master tactician playing 5d chess to she dumb as hell boys and this filler plot with her other soul.
Bleh.
don’t get me wrong, I’d have loved to have her story end with her Head on Spike… but seeing the character-story butchered in that way makes me sad…
They did it right with Garrosh. His sendoff in Shadowlands makes sense for the Character as being a Trusting Idiot doesn’t fit Sylvanas.
I don’t think that its so clear that anyone was in the “right” side until it’s all clarified.
Because as Ceressa said, this cinematic didn’t show Sylvanas as being “wrong”. This cinematic showed that she was deceived by the one she allied with.
The loyalist route basically went along the lines of having a segment of the Horde believing that Sylvanas knew better regarding some things.
And the fact is, that Sylvanas indeed though she knew better and worked towards a goal that demanded certain sacrifices (sacrifices some would obviously consider unbearable).
This didn’t end with a “Buahahaha!! I was never truly fighting for any greater goal! This was all me being Evil!”.
This ended with a " Crap, I’ve just noticed that this dude that told me that we would fix stuff, is as bad as those that i’ve hated all my life".
Sylvanas didn’t end up being a scheming villain.
In this situation, she ended up being portrayed as a deceived fool.
And this isn’t a situation where anyone can point at her and go “See? I was right, she is a villain”.
This is a no-win situation where those that oppose her will have to accept that she isn’t a full-blown villain, and indeed tried to accomplish some weird greater goal, and those that supported her, that she was apparently stupid enough to believe Satan.
Nobody ends up in the “right”.
I had a good laugh, thanks 
Pretty much sums it up. It’s quite sad frankly, but I’m honestly a bit curious on where is this going. I mean I got so invested in this story, I MUST know what happens next.
Well, to be fair here… They weren’t exactly consistent on Garrosh, either. Golden, who wrote most of his fall from grace, described him like this:
The guy who cried why Thrall was responsible for everything he became in his death cinematic isn’t exactly the same guy as the fully unrepentant badass we are presented with in the new cinematic, is he? Maybe he is what Garrosh should have been all along, but it’s not what he “always” was. And not the end point of a clear character arc.
Btw has anyone here finished the new raid already? I wonder what’s the follow up to this cinematic. Is there a quest or something?
Also Sylvanas isn’t the only one who is lacking in “smarts” department. Our player characters
and npc are written as gullible and naive aswell. From Shadowlands alone
Don’t forget that famous quest line with Xal’atath in BfA… 
Lots of evil people thought they were doing the right thing. In fact, that is usually why people become evil. A villainous fool is still a villain. If anything, the fact that she is such a imbecile drives home just how malevolent she truly is. She was completely fine with, in fact enthusiastic, about causing misery for a goal so clearly false to everyone with two eyes. She did not even need assurance of a good end. As long as she had an excuse to inflict suffering, she was content all the way up until it was too late. The fact that she remained oblivious for so long shows how comfortable she is with evil.
The goal wasn’t “false”.
The cinematic proves that the Jailer was in fact a “true” ruler of the Shadowlands.
Regardless of whether Sylvanas gamble on him ended up badly, fact remains that the system had been patently manipulated in a way that removed the “original” ruler, and put in its place an automaton controlled by who knows what to do something we’ve yet to know.
If the premise behind Sylvanas actions was “I’m going to fix this borked system”, then she was indeed acting towards the goal set.
Still, much of it is irrelevant to the loyalist alternative.
The only thing asked for them was to believe that Sylvanas operated on information nobody else knew about, and was working towards some greater goal that demanded certain degree of sacrifice. And that much is true.
Whether you consider it agreeable, or how the payoff ended up being, is beyond the point.
This all reeks of your own personal opinion. And goes against the explicit information (whoever little), we’ve just been given in this exact cinematic.
One where Sylvanas tried to stop Zovaal from causing unnecessary harm to Thrall, Bolvar and Jaina, and downright turned against him after a regretful glance at what he had done to Anduin.
Lol. Why?
Now being fooled makes someone a villain too?
Because yeah, having Sylvanas beaten by her own ego to the point it clouded the rather obvious warning signs surrounding a dude literally imbued in Domination magic, is sort of dumb.
But that doesn’t make her any more villainous, nor does it negate the fundamentals behind the loyalist premise. Even if it certainly cheapens the experience behind it.
Remember when the Church of the Holy Light followed blindly the Twilight Father? Or when Night Elves created a mountain size piece of wood to serve as key for Old God contamination, under the orders of someone that wanted to usher the Nightmare to destroy reality?
Or when humans were led by a Black dragon?
Every race/faction has had its time wearing the fool’s hat. And same could be said regarding characters.
Honestly, Sylvanas is but a few steps behind Illidan in terms of motivations, actions, and impact on those that surround them.
And he ended up as a hero of sorts.
If the goal was not false, then it is also not possible that Sylvanas was deceived. Either the Jailer wanted to set everyone free, or he did not.
No one is disagreeing with that. Problem is, the way she was planning to accomplish this was obviously never going to end well, yet she went along with it anyway, causing massive suffering in the act.
This all reeks of your own personal opinion. And goes against the explicit information (whoever little), we’ve just been given in this exact cinematic.
One where Sylvanas tried to stop Zovaal from causing unnecessary harm to herself, and downright turned against him after a regretful glance at him when he said what he would to to her and everyone else.
Again, this betrayal was obvious from the get go. Sylvanas never had any assurance the Jailer would do as she wished. Regardless, she went along with it. And she went out of her way to maximize suffering while doing so.
You are missing the point her. She was being told by a guy called the Jailer to send thousands of souls to suffer for eternity, surrounding herself with evil armies, dark magics and countless innocent souls being tortured. Everything about the Jailer screamed “this guys is the true enemy” and she never picked up on it. Because she is immensly comfortable with causing suffering and misery. Her mind is so steeped in sadism she cannot she it as a red flag.
You do not seem to get it. Do you know what Sylvanas could have done? She could have sat her butt down and waited. Literally, all she had to do was wait until the Maw filled up with souls automatically as people died of natural causes. In that case, she would not even be culpable.
Instead she chose to commit genocide, she chose to incinerate thousands of children so they could be tortured even more, she chose to start a war solely to kill people. And she relished in it. She could have asked Zovaal to brainwash people, like with Anduin to build an army, but instead chose to let him torture all the people she killed, not even batting an eye.
There is a reason why “Just following orders” does not hold up in court. Especially if those orders were clearly just meant to cause suffering.
The half soul situation pretty much explains the whole thing. I mean yes, it’s a forced plot but we are discussing established lore.
Arthas denied her the side that was capable of loving and empathizing. He needed a weapon, filled with rage and hatred.
Can’t really accuse her of being cruel when she’s literally incapable of feeling more. Again, this is established lore now, no matter how forced it is.
Zovaal also took advantage of this. He lied to her, presented her afterlife as an eternity of torment and sorrow. And then appeared as the savior that she and all of mortality needed. And to prove his good intentions, gave her the Valkyr to keep her away from the “certain” Hell that was awaiting her.
Broken Sylvanas didn’t need more than that to fall for it. With only rage and hatred left in her (and the occasional glimmers of humanity) she was willing to do anything to change a messed up system.
I don’t feel like these are traits of an evil person at all.
Actually I can. In fact, that makes it even more justified to call her cruel as her actions cannot be attributed to anything else.
A person with only rage and hatred left in them, agrees to cause massive suffering to save themself does not strike you as evil?
No, as they are literally incapable of feeling any remorse for their actions.
They’re not evil, they’re broken. And she did not want to cause suffering for the sake of it, but for a cause that she thought everyone including herself would benefit from it.
She was cruel but there is a difference between cruel and evil. Her actions were cruel and yes, evil, but her intentions were not.
This is why I think she’s not a villain, she’s an antihero.
Psst. That is what we call an evil person.
Yeah, you will find that a lot of the most cruel people in history were “broken”. Abused as a child, undiagnosed mental illness, drug problems etc. Still evil.
Problem is, any reasonable person could see that no one would benefit from her cause. Anyone could see that the acts she would take in service of that cause were unnecesarrily cruel, and in fact went against that cause. Sylvanas did not, because she was busy causing suffering.
I will grant you this one. Sending people to be tortured for eternity is not something and evil person would do.
And antihero is someone who commit morally questionable actions with good intentions in mind. Sylvanas commited heinous crimes to send people to be tortured based on a vague promise of “it gets better eventaully”, without even gainign some assurance. Literally, she is willing to do all of this, without even giving the people she is trying to “save” the respect of actually being certain she can save them eventually, because it gives her an excuse to cause suffering. Those are cruel intentions, no matter how you look at it.
Like, we still do not know what Sylvanas wanted to achieve at the end beyond a vague theme of “freedom”. Knowing who Sylvanas picks as allies, and how comfortable and happy she is with controlling other people’s minds, it is far more likely that her ideal world would be one where she is free, and everyone else is limited by her.
Ok, if we are to parallel the game with real life, I must remind you that when a criminal is found to be mentally challenged is absolved of the crime and sent to a medical settlement, to prevent him from harming himself and/or other people.
We do not have the soul parallel in real life but I imagine it must be infinite harder to have a normal life and take responsible decisions when you’re literally missing half of yourself.
I give you on the fact that we tend to label a murderer as evil, regardless of their state of mind at that time. Which is, perhaps foolish on our part, considering someone who isn’t capable of functioning like a normal person is also incapable of taking the same decisions a healthy person would take.
But the fact is no matter if Sylvanas started the war or not, these people would still go to the Maw because remember, the machine of death was already broken. She just sped up the process foolishly thinking that the Jailer would eventually let them go and make SL a better place.
The argument that Sylvanas is literally too stupid to think her descisions through would have held some merit, if she had not been capable of manipulating an entire empire into commiting genocide and carried out multiple succesful military operations.
But that is the thing though, she could have just sat by and waited and her plan would still succeed (well, fail). Instead she chose to start a war solely to kill people, by burning thousands of innocents alive. She did not have to do that. She chose to cause that extra bit of suffering. Because the only thing Sylvanas loves other than Sylvanas, is seeing people in agony.
Like, if she were too stupid to realize what she was doing, she would not have been intelligent enough to succeed.
Never said that she’s stupid, she clearly had complete agency on her actions throughout the entire BFA and SL.
She was not mind controlled, enslaved or an idiot. Just seemed to trust Zovaal blindly enough to commit all these crimes for the sake of salvation.
It doesn’t make much sense to either of us but this is the clear message that Blizzard is sending right now.
You mean give more time to suffer to all the souls that would slowly make it to the Maw until Zovaal was powerful enough to break through?
What you’re suggesting sounds even more cruel to me.
If her plan had succeeded and the Jailer would have been the cool lad she thought he is, the story would have finished before the next patch and all the souls sent to a better afterlife.
Then we agree. Sylvanas was in full control of her evil actions, making her evil.
Might wanna think that one over.
Unless you are one of those weird people who think being alive is suffering, you are reading something wrong.
Like, sure, they still go to the same place, but at least they get to live a bit longer instead of having their life end uncerimoniously by fire and then being tortured for eternity.
I mean, maybe what you are getting at is that Sylvanas believes living is worse than being in the Maw, but forcing your good intentions on people without asking them what they want is evil.
Yeah, but it did not succeed, and everyone else had to pay the price.
Yes, believing in him blindly makes her a total idiot, I get you. What I meant is she was capable of planning and executing the plan so she was capable of critical thinking at least, even if she was cold as ice.
Well, in her mind that didn’t make a difference in the long run and, to be honest, it really didn’t.
Would that short moment of blissful ignorance save them from the eternal torment? No.
So naturally, someone who’s already damaged enough that they can’t feel empathy and love, would decide that a swift death was acceptable if it would fix their eternity.
Clearly, that’s wrong. Nobody has the right to end somebody else’s life, under no circumstances. It is something all of us can unanimous agree to. But in her mind the end justifies the means.
Is that evil? Yes. What’s the morale behind it? The end never justifies the means, especially when innocent people are concerned.
What a normal person would do is try to warn their fellows about the dangers that await them and try to fix it together.
Sylvanas messed up big time. But I can’t help but feel like her intentions warrant her a chance to make this right.
If you disagree, you’re absolutely entitled to your opinion and I respect that.
I can think of about 982 Darnassian citizens who disagree.
Would it make the entirety of their existence better? Yes.
Which comes back to how obvious the Jailer’s true intentions were. She had every opportunity to make things right, and only chose to do so when it became too late, because she herself became inconvenienced.
Maybe with the reunification of her soul, she might finally be capable of feeling remorse, but I doubt anyone is going to trust her enough to make things right.