Why did sylvanas do all of this in the first place?

Community General Discussion
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Hello community,

Even tough we had an ending i am satisfied with regarding sylvanas: She is not magically redeemed for what has been done, she is sentenced for what she has done.

However, i still have a big question that i never have seen an answer to:

Why did sylvanas do all of this in the first place? What was her objective?

She launched an all out war (BfA) for the sole purpose of sending as much souls to the maw in order to empower the jailer. Which then allows him to break free from the maw and go to zereth mortis. Together with the jailer, Sylvanas had some “great plan” of her own to save the world.

But what was that “great plan”? In the SL intro she says “this world is a prison and i will set us all free”, when we fight her whe says “the cycle will be broken”. But what did she mean honestly? Free from what? What cycle?

Bascially, what was her aim with all of this? Her grand project for which she though it was okay to act as the baddie all along for some “greater good” ???

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Nobody really knows.

It was just a really badly written story.

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Did you read the book?

In short yes her goal was for the “greater good” and in a sorta way she won and achieved her goal. Im not gonna spoil what goal she had for those that didnt listen/read it. She met the jailer long before legion/bfa.

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She wanted to break to cycle of being judged after death for her actions and have true freedom. Or that’s how she saw it anyway

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If we could see ourselves as she sees us. Toy soldiers in tin plate. Beasts who howl for honor. Standing as one. Savor it, nothing lasts.

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Nope, but nothing in the game was hinted on what were her true goals.

It would have been nice for players to have the answer for that question since that hidden goal is the reason why BFA and SL events took place…

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Because of awfully bad storytelling. I can’t belive they ruined sylvanas - the epic banshee queen - to make place for anduin and pelagos.

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Everything around you, time, space, the universe, life, and death needs a cycle to exist. Without cycle, there will be not any kind of existence.

Look around you more attentive and you will see the cycle. Moons revolve around their planets. The planets revolve around their suns, and the suns revolve around the center of their galaxies. At the same time, all of them rotate around an axis. Do you know how old Milky Way is based on its own rotation? Very young. Whatever.

Likewise, in outer space, life on the planet needs many cycles to exist. Everything on the earth cycling to maintain life. The quick is dying and their remains will become material for the newborns. Likewise almost all elements, the water cycles from one form to another.

Let’s take a look at human societies, those who claim they are superior to nature. All political, economical, and cultural systems/regimes are based on a cycle. It doesn’t matter which system they brought until today, only its facade changed and the fools are hated each other for it and even fought for it! But forget about those complicated things. Let’s go basic and take a closer look at your daily life.

What are you doing in your daily life? In a week? In a month? You repeat the same actions over and over again to maintain your existence. And this is your cycle. There is no escape from it if you want to exists. You can escape from a cycle but in short time you will find another one. You love it, you worship it. It is your God. But do you know the most fun fact about it? You are doing it unconsciously, with an instinct. There is no complex philosophy, education, or brain in it. Likewise Anduin, you are dominated by it!

Every single day you go to work/school again, you keep revolving around your job/boss/studies by repeating the same actions again. You eat again, you drink again, you login WoW again, and you do your daily actions in the game again. You ran the same dungeon again. You encounter a priest again, you do the same quest again.

You know your class rotation, if you are not good at it, you are facing problems again and keep pressing the same skills again. Again, again and again.

This is the cycle that Sylvanas mentioned. She was very angry about that cycle.

Are you understanding now? Have you ever heard the term Ouroboros? It is carved on the stones in Oribos.

Liu Flameheart: ‘‘The cycle must continue, the Jade Serpent must be reborn!’’

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She wanted to remade the reality, so that the dead beings be able to connect with their relatives in the afterlife. As depicted in the latest book, she was kinda devastated when she saw Shadowlands for the first time and realized that she is not going to reconnect with her little brother and parents.
War of Thorns, the Fourth War was just a part of a plan, a necessarry cost to achieve a noble (in her well shaped head) cause.

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Because reasons…

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In the novel (TL;DR spoilers ahead)

…when she tried to kill herself and ended up in the Maw, the Jailer used her feelings of anger, despair and uncertainty that came from the dark parts of her soul against her.

He claimed he wanted a partner to help him end the cycle of life and death and showed her what she needed to see in order for her to help him.

She was judged to the Maw while other evils (such as Zul’jin) went to Revendreth to atleast have a chance at redemption while this was denied to her. This didn’t sit well with her so she decided to help.

In a way I do agree that the afterlife of the Warcraft universe SUCKS hard and it had to change. Not sure how or what Pelegos is going to do, can only hope it’ll be better than before.

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You kinda spoiled the book, but yeah…
Before the new arbiter (which came to be because of the actions of Sylvanas) everyone was judged seperate and sent different places in shadowlands.
Which ment you would never see your family in “heaven” no matter how good you were when you were alive.
There was no justice and instead just a cold calculating robot arbiter working with no emotion. Very unfair in Sylvanas eyes and a thing she wanted to change.

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Alex A probably does…

Sensed his time was up, left the writers a parting “gift” to make their lives hard.

Spiteful man.

It still does! You die on the material plane, end up in the Shadowlands - and die again. Now you’re gone.

What was wrong with the idea that a soul would slowly reform over time, relative to how powerful it was (faster), and whether hindering measures were put in place? SL never needed “true death”, it would have worked with “by the time you reassemble, I’ll own this joint and everyone will have forgotten your name”.

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It’s not a bad story overall, Christie Golden really made a brilliant work there. But it should be published before the release of Shadowlands not after the last patch …
Or given to us in the game one way or another. Such a waste of potential.

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Okay…but i fail to see how this would break any form of cycle of life and death…or “free everyone from this world”

I mean, if she had acheived her objective, people would still die, end up in the shadowlands, a different version perhaps, but the shadowlands still…

But at least i have an answer to my question, thanks.

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It shouldn’t have been necessary to buy a book to learn this to begin with, so this is one of the few instances where I think spoiling released content is fine.

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Ok so apparently the afterlife is broken and “unjust” (even though there are countless ones and the arbiter can create even more on whim) because you are probably not going to be with your loved ones and/or family once you die (even though it would be unfair to go to a heaven-like afterlife even if you are a psycho murder but you are related to a saint) and Kael’Thas and Zul’Jin got judged as redeemable and got send to Revendreth while she was send to the Maw (even though that was because of the Jailer’s plan and she doesn’t know Zul’jin or Kael’thas’ full character, motivations etc, in other words she is not the one who gets to judge them).

She got convinced by Zovaal to help him because he predicted 1. The Legion returning, 2. Her becoming warchief 3. Sargeras stabbing the planet 4. Her holding azerite and 5. Her beating the Lich King. She was all on board after No.2 happened… Ok I have issues here, firstly 5 happened solely because the Jailor ordered her to do it, so how is that a prediction, 4 happened only because of 3, and during the events of SL how was it that she still did not know that 1 and 2 were all part of Zovaal’s plan, I mean in no world she doesn’t know that the Jailor has big Daddy D, Mueh’zala and dreadlords working for him (aka the key players in the Legion invasion and Vol’jin’s decision to make her warchief). Also the soul Argus was essential to “the plan”, how did she not realize that the Legion invasion was thanks to the Jailor.

Why did me attempting to answer a simple question ended up with me asking even more questions?

TLDR Afterlife is unfair, must fix it by killing everyone.

The idea was not to prevent people from dying, the idea was that once they die they would be send to “better” afterlives (again even though there are countless of them and neither we nor Sylvanas had seen all of them to decide if they are all $##ty) and that you would’t get separated from your nakama (yes we are going anime).

PS If the Jailor was so hell bend on stopping the “what is to come” why didn’t he tell us what actually is to come before he deaded… oh forget.

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just another mary sue written by terrible writers.

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I still don’t think there was any Fourth War at all. Whole BfA was meant to be a Alliance vs Horde expansion, yet the war itself was completely side lined.