The worst part is that Sylvanas doesn't even have a Vaguely Sympathetic backstory.
Sylvanas has always been an entitled cunt, She got handed the position of Ranger General because of her last name, Told her King to fuck off because she liked Human Cock, decided her entire defense in the face of an undead army that had just caused their nearest ally to fall (which they did NOTHING to help with despite her boy toy being from that nation) would be "LOL LETS ANNOY THE GENERAL WHILE HIDING BEHIND OUR MAGIC ROCKS" and after she gets her body back and has Arthas at her mercy and is within a stone's throw of murdering the son of a bitch..she paralyzes him so she can torture him instead of just killing him.
Sylvanas is exactly what would happen if you take an Entitled Upper-Class Middle Child and hand her the power that Sylvanas has. After she Yeeted herself off Icecrown because somebody ELSE got to kill Arthas..she realized that she would fucking go to hell and has now decided to kick over the table on a universal scale because SHE DIDN'T GET WHAT SHE WANTED, all while complaining that she is the victim.
I can bitch about Warcraft's story in places, but Sylvanas' arc is not one of them because Sylvanas is peak Antifa-member and the fact that I am going to get to punch her Smug Karen face next patch makes me super excited.
I haven't played WoW since the end of Cataclysm/ early Mist's of Pandara (Blizzard was pandering to China before it was cool, didn't do the game any favors if you ask me), but...holy shit, it's canon now that she did all that? I know WoW's lead writers changed hands a lot since Wrath of the Lich King... but damn, I can't believe I'm saying this, but speaking as someone who's enjoyed WoW and it's story & lore since the Burning Crusade, enough to buy and play through Warcraft 3, but I have to disagree with you a bit, as that was not the take away I got from Sylvanas' character when I was playing WoW, and it certainly not in Warcraft 3.
Back around when I dropped of WoW Sylvanas was still a fairly tragic semi-villain who was at one point a good commander and hero to her people who was turned into a monster by the leader of an invading undead army. However, unlike Arthas, who fell completely from grace, there was always a bit of a hint that Sylvanas still had some good in her, like in the game she briefly lamented her presumed dead sister when presented with her necklace, or in a graphic novel she went out of her way to lead a rescue team to rescue a few of her people from execution. I could go on, but the core appeal of the character was that, while she was dark, cold, and ruthless, there was still the occasional spark of the person she was, and it was interesting to she her struggle with the connects to her past life while making a future in her new one. Hell, that's what made the Forsaken faction as a whole interesting, I was mostly an Alliance player, but the faction that always interested me the most was the Forsaken.
But that's beside the point. I guess the retconed it sometime during Legion/ BfA that Sylvanas was just a bad egg and her evil tenancies where just her being a spoiled brat not getting her way instead of, you know, it being that years of existence as a zombie/ghost abomination has twisted her soul and has gradually compelled her to gradually darker actions.
God, I remember back when Blizzard was the master's of the "fallen hero" trope. Yeah, maybe they overused it a bit, but damn if they weren't good at it. They gave us Arthas, Illidan Stormrage, the entire Orc race up until WC3 where they redeemed themselves, Sarah Kerrigan, the Diablo II antagonist who was the protagonist from Diablo I, hell, even Reaper from Overwatch was shaping up to be one of these before Blizz decided banning people for spamming emotes in game was more important then writing a fun narrative.
I'm sorry, I know this thread is supposed to an Archive about Lily's spuring, but if there's one thing I can find common ground with her, it's how sad it is that Blizzard has fallen so low. Someone here mentioned a page or two back how it was odd that Lily wasn't getting pissy at people who were hyped to kill Sylvanas? Honestly, I think that's because once Sylvanas is out of the picture she can finally being ripping of the band-aid that is dropping World of Warcraft. We know Lily likes to hold onto properties long after they've jumped the shark, even when Lily herself admits that they've done so, but she over-invests her time into these properties and that makes her unwilling to drop them even when she knows she should, so long as there's one or two things she still likes about them. For WoW, that's Sylvanas, once she's out of the picture they'll be nothing really tying her to the game and she can finally let herself drop it.
Personally, I dropped WoW early on in the Mists of Panderia expansion's life cycle. I was already noticing a slow but steady drop in writing and game-play quality during Cataclysm, but it was still fun. However, once Mists dropped and made it apparent that Blizzard preferred pandering to China over making a quality game, that was all I needed to realize that WoW's golden age had passed and it was only downhill from here.
