Sylvanas' motives do not matter

Lore Story
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There has been a great deal of speculation as to why Sylvanas is doing, well, all of this. It is quite clear that the Shadowlands are broken and Sylvanas wants to destroy it and replace it with a better system according to her and Zovaal’s design. What does she seek to replace it with?

Well, whatever it is, it is definetly not going to be better than what we already have. Sylvanas complains how people are not able to control their own fate, and sends thousands of people screaming and burning to their deaths. She says she will set everyone free, then sends the souls of everyone she has killed into “eternal torture prisons”, where the lucky ones are destroyed, never able to experience her supposed “freedom”. She wants to end the system in which people are just puppets being played by greater cosmic forces, while simulataneously abusing, deceiving and controlling anyone alive or dead for her own power, all with the promise of “it gets better eventually”, without ever asking for people’s consent to “aid” in her plan, or even informing people what it is.

Whatever new world of “freedom” Sylvanas has planned, it will not be an improvement over the current Shadowlands.

But even if it were, it would not matter. Why? Because Sylvanas has no way of realizing her ambitions. She is not the one running the show. Zovaal is. He is the one who decides what the new world will be like. And based on everything he has shown us so far, it will be infinetly worse than whatever mistakes the Arbiter made.

Sylvanas plan is literally to give the most evil person in the universe, a guy whose literal job it is to torture souls for eternity, unrestricted power in the hopes that he will suddenly turn over a new leaf and make everything better. She looked at a guy whose brand of magic is literally called “domination magic” and thought he was the champion of freedom.

The person whose entire scthick is “abandon hope”, is basing her entire plan on hoping that the antithesis to everything she claims to believe in is just making his entire existence a performance.

After Mal’ganis, Putress, Galen, Godfrey, Vereesa and Saurfang, you would think she has wisened up to obvious betrayals, but apparently she is suffering from very real brainrot.

Which is why arguing about what she wants to accomplish, whether it redeems her or vindicates her is pointless, because she is just a tool. Only Zovaal’s ambitions matter, and, well, there is a reason the Maw zone is rather unpopular.

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I can think of different reasons where her motives do matter. I don´t think any of these will at the end be her motive but i think there are still ways to sell her whole shenanigans.

  1. I mean Sylvanas could simply use Zovaal as a means to an end and do realizie whatever she wants to accomplish.
  2. You could handwave everything she has done by simply raising the stakes and for example put her up against literal gods. So you could then ask the question what is better sacrificing millions of lifes to rid every living being of external influence or have them be bound to them for all eternity. Suddenly the audience is faced with a new perspective where a “The End justifies the means” approach becomes much more reasonable.

I don´t know whats in store or if it will be good but I think if someones puts their mind to it you could find even more reasons to find a scenario where her motives do matter. I only think that an Mmo is not the right medium to tell any of this or at least a Blizzard Mmo.

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Sooo… pretty much any kind of loose ends plot, really. If a plot keeps it open without any solid interpretation, anything can come out of it. And with a loose world of a story like WoW, where retcons happen seemingly anytime, anywhere, and even worse, without backing or meaning, this takes the term out of the window.

I wouldn’t say this is totally a bad writing technique, but as this writing and development have shown, it is also an easy way of skipping things out, gutting them, and remodeling them at the same time.

After so many revisions, it has turned into this horrific blob composed of inconsistent storylines, retcons, and forgotten plots.

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Problem is, she is making all those sacrifices to a guy who wants to bind them all for eternity.

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Regardless of how right you are with the rest of the post, this is not true at all.

She isn’t surrendering all power to the Jailer. She is using him as a means to an end.

There is a cinematic where she downright states such.

Also, we’ve taken such risky gambles with characters like Illidan.
I find it highly unlikely, but Blizzard could still pull an ending that again, miraculously has enough payoff to excuse said actions.

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You can only use someone if you hold power over them. The Jailer is the one who gave Sylvanas her power. She is the one being used.

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How many times though.

Like, yes, it’s cool to have characters or even villains that have more than one brain cell, but this entire line of thought seems… to have been her entire line of thought with just about anything that touches her.

‘A means to an end’
‘A tool for her own uses’
‘Yet another arrow in her quiver’

Another thing that is… yawn.

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Or if you make them think they have power over you.
You don’t need to be incredibly strong in order to be manipulative.
And that’s like Sylvanas whole schtick.

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Like i don´t want to start a fight here but this is just how it appears. Take the Xal’atath scenario as another example. The Dagger clearly used the Shadowpriest Champion and later the Hordeplayer and Sylvanas as an means to an end despite not having Power over any of them. She supplied them with something they wanted but she never had the Reigns and as a Story wirter you could easily apply this to the Sylvanas/Jailer Situation.
Maybe you´re right and Sylvanas got all her initial Power from the Jailer to Laser Saurfang etc. but you could just then explain that she sought Power of her own or only allied with him to get a good look behind the Curtain so to say to understand what the Cosmic Power of Death is. Who and What they are fighting against etc.

Again I don´t think it will play out like this I´m just saying in an Mmo like WoW that has very little in regards to Consistency you can pull something out of your … and thats it.

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The Jailer is literally the one who gave Sylvanas her power. He is the only one who can make her dream a reality. He has power over her.

Sylvanas whole schtick is being repeatedly betrayed by other people.

It is just that in this scenario, the Jailer is Xal’atath, who tells the player, or rather the played, Sylvanas, to set up everything for them to achieve ultimate power, all with the promise of saving the world, but oops, when they had everything they needed, they threw their tool away.

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My bad. Is this some masked Sylvanas-bashing thread, or were you genuinely trying to debate the story?

I mean, bias aside…yeah. Being manipulative is definitely one of Sylvanas defining traits.
Being salty about it won’t change the fact.

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Those are not mutually exclusive, so I do not undertsand why you would ask that. But even so, that was just as much a legitimate argument as you saying her schtick was being manipulative. Like, in the OP, I mentioned numerous people who has betrayed her. That is just as much an indicator of her future story as her being manipulative. That, and most of the people she manipulates end up hating her.

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Could happen but then again if the Climax of a character arc you told for 4? years or so accumulates to “You served your purpose now die” that would be a massive waste of pretty much everything. I would not put it past Blizzard to go this way but then again i simply can´t accept that someone would be hired to write such a story and even get paid for it.
And regarding the Power thing other people in Warcraft have turned against the people that had power over them. The past Lichkings that defied the Jailer and Ner’zhul/Arthas later defied the Legion being a fine example and there are a ton more.

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So, basically Blizzard writing.

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So a waste of good waste?

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More like good waist!

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“To be betrayed” isn’t a character trait.
Being manipulative, is.

Writers do not get a hold of a character and randomly decide “Now, this dude will be known for being betrayed by lots of people”.

And trying to argue that the one or two times Sylvanas was betrayed, are enough to overshadow the overwhelming presence and relevance of her actual character traits, smells like bias seeping in.
Specially if it’s thrown during argument about whether she’d be controlled or not by the Jailer (Like, what’s the relation between that and how many times was she betrayed??)

Also, honestly, it requires some notable effort at disingenuousness in order to deny the fact that the dominant trait Sylvanas has as a character is to be manipulative and/or mischievous.

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I mean, I was not really arguing that being betrayed was a character trait, but a recurring trope of her story.

Regardless, arrogantly believing everyone else exists to serve your ends, leaving you blind to their true intentions, even if they are blatantly obvious, is a character trait, one Sylvanas personifies.

Yeah, you are going to have to up that number.

To diminish the regularity at which Sylvanas is betrayed, and thinking she has any level of control over what the Jailer does smells like bias seeping in.

The relation is that Sylvanas is very often oblivious to when other peoples’ interest conradict her own. She makes little to no attempt at gaining assurance that people will follow her designs. Also, this is not an argument about whether he controls her, but which one of them has the power in the relationship.

I am not denying that. I am merely pointing out that she is also manipulated. Ultimately, as Sylvanas herself said to Anduin, it is the Jailer who will create the new world. It does not matter how well she thinks she is manipulating him, when the decision to recreate the cosmos ultimately falls to him. Does he seem like the kind of guy who wants everyone to run around, free and happy in a field of flowers and happiness?

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I think the author actually is right. There is a new story about Veressa (spoilers)

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The story of Shadowlands is getting better and better with each new reveal.

We’ll see how it the end devs capitalize on the overwhelming amount of good will and support the expansion had from beta till early release days.

gl hf

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