World of Warcraft

[GenociderSyo]

Arresting a single faction isn't the same as wiping out a race's final, major population center.

She didn't arrest them though in the quest you are helping her murder them. Some she does teleport, but some she kills.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

She didn't arrest them though in the quest you are helping her murder them. Some she does teleport, but some she kills.

Regardless, we're still talking about a sub faction of a city compared to the systematic destruction of a racial population center.

She tried to do that immediately after.

Arguably she later did that to the Zandalari too.

What she might have hypothetically done is not what Sylvanas actually did.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Regardless, we're still talking about a sub faction of a city compared to the systematic destruction of a racial population center.

Technically, she magically deported or killed about a third of a cities population and then took a McGuffin of Mass Destruction to use for the systematic destruction of a racial population center
...in response to the systematic destruction of her city that happened after her soldiers attacked and destroyed the second largest Tauren city and attacked several other horde cities in Durotar and The Barrens.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Regardless, we're still talking about a sub faction of a city compared to the systematic destruction of a racial population center.


What she might have hypothetically done is not what Sylvanas actually did.

There's usually a lot of whataboutism when talking about characters like that, but for me what matters are the character arcs:

Jaina definitely gave peace a chance. Without her, the Horde wouldn't even exist. She allowed them to kill her father for the sake of peace. But shit happened, her city got nuked (courtesy of Thalen Songweaver, which is why she hunted down the Sunreavers), and she snapped. Could there be a redemption story there? Sure, with a good amount of work. She did stop short of completely drowning Durotar, after all. But I wouldn't trust the Warcraft writing team (former or current) to be able to pull it off.

Sylvanas has always been depicted as a major bitch with a mean streak a mile wide. And even the "oh, but she's undead now" excuse doesn't stick because there are plenty of undead in Warcraft who managed to retain their personality when the got risen. At every single point in World of Warcraft she was depicted as scheming to kill everybody else. You don't get a redemption story out of that, much less one as poorly written as the one they're trying to foist on the players.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Thinking about it, Jaina is a really well written character in that she depicts exactly the sort of thing that would happen if you took a basic Karen and made her one of the top 5 wizards in the setting without an struggle to have earned her power. Her whole plot in Cataclysm was her fucking around unnecessarily for emotional reasons (opening up a second front in response to Garrosh increasing logging and pissing off the nelfs), and then escalating problems when she inevitably finds out (getting her isolated and almost completely indefensible city wiped out).

Sylvanas has always been depicted as a major bitch with a mean streak a mile wide. And even the "oh, but she's undead now" excuse doesn't stick because there are plenty of undead in Warcraft who managed to retain their personality when the got risen. At every single point in World of Warcraft she was depicted as scheming to kill everybody else. You don't get a redemption story out of that, much less one as poorly written as the one they're trying to foist on the players.

I think they could have landed a redemption story if they actually stuck with "Sylvanas wants the best for the Forsaken" but every time she did that she immediately betrayed that she actually did it for selfish reasons. She was always depicted as exactly the sort of person you'd want leading your guerilla campaign to defend your people at any cost when living. Then the whole revenge thing with Arthas. She seemed to "get better" after LK was killed off but they subverted it because they needed a horde leader to start their good (Alliance) vs. evil (Horde) plotlines after they killed off Garrosh for the second time in as many expansions and they forgot Gallywix could do this and still be a fun character without reverting the past several expansions of writing.

Imagine, if you will, the bricks that would have been shit if the exercise in terrible writing that concluded with Vol'jin naming a successor while he died to unstoppable mega poison had had the spook that was mind controlling him name Jastor Gallywix as Warchief.

 

[Retink]

Lyse was a good concept hobbled by rushed pacing and too much focus and Zenos is sort of the thesis for player enjoyment through challenge and thrill made manifest into the schlockiest but fun character made in ffxiv (basically the definition of kino). WoW is just weak concepts made worse by bad writing and no focus.

Any writing by Blizzard that sounds good is usually by accident, not by intent. I've found that once they elaborate on any lore the reality is far more retarded than you could ever imagine and what made it good in the first place was that it was kept vague enough that fans could write their own story which was better.

Arresting a single faction isn't the same as wiping out a race's final, major population center.

Arresting and murdering a group of people based on their race that are in your neutral zone is pretty fucked up, you're normally not supposed to murder ambassadors or those you've invited with safety assured. A big part of why The Red Wedding was such a big plot point in Game of Thrones is because it happened in a place that was supposed to be considered peaceful after the breaking of bread and salt.

That and she was also about to flood all of Ogrimmar with a tidal wave, but she was convinced not to at the last second as she was casting the spell.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

A sub faction that had been harbouring a traitor, hence the arrests to find out what was going on.

Are Sylvs' simps in this thread as well.

 

[draggs]

Sylvanas was only interesting and a good character when she was roflstomped by Arthas then turned into a banshee in reign of chaos and was super mad butthurt over it, and then when she tried in frozen throne to get her revenge by trying to kill Arthas then taking Lordaeron away from the Scourge like the Scourge took Quel'Thalas away from her

Blizzard writing is great when it's simple, evil character wants supreme ultimate power, good character wants to save their race, antihero character wants revenge. Blizzard tries to go deep character lore it steps on a million rakes and everyone hates the final product (like uh literally every IP they have that they've ruined with their shit deep lore writing)

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Apparently the recent novel established that Sylvanas did not order the Wrathgate (except under the widest interpretation of her orders, maybe) but probably would have been OK with it if Arthas would have died.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

Then the Horde went and attacked Alliance troops engaged with the Scourge, leading to everyone getting killed anyway.

That was such a dumb quest.

 

[Well Intentioned]

Apparently the recent novel established that Sylvanas did not order the Wrathgate (except under the widest interpretation of her orders, maybe) but probably would have been OK with it if Arthas would have died.

Wasn't Wrathgate basically a coup from that chief apothecary dude and the Dreadlord guy? Why on earth would they need to clarify that, lol.

E: Jesus, that wowhead article is hilarious.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Wasn't Wrathgate basically a coup from that chief apothecary dude and the Dreadlord guy? Why on earth would they need to clarify that, lol.

E: Jesus, that wowhead article is hilarious.

Popular fan speculation was that the chief apothecary was the fall guy and Sylvanus had it done to get at the LK at any cost.

And then Afrasiabi indicated that she probably might have ordered it so it was word of god'd at that point

 

[Retink]

Popular fan speculation was that the chief apothecary was the fall guy and Sylvanus had it done to get at the LK at any cost.

And then Afrasiabi indicated that she probably might have ordered it so it was word of god'd at that point

That would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that Varimathas was the one leading the rebellion and not the apothecary. He had also opened portals to Argus or wherever in the Undercity and had demons pouring into the place before being banished and turning up in Legion as a gimp torture slave because he failed that coup. None of which makes any sense anymore from what we learned in Shadowlands about Dreadlords.

I'd be ok with Sylv just being that cunty, but the way the original quest played out doesn't make sense unless somehow Putris was the fall guy and Varimathras just decided to take advantage of the moment, but that just seems a little too stupid.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

That would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that Varimathas was the one leading the rebellion and not the apothecary. He had also opened portals to Argus or wherever in the Undercity and had demons pouring into the place before being banished and turning up in Legion as a gimp torture slave because he failed that coup. None of which makes any sense anymore from what we learned in Shadowlands about Dreadlords.

I'd be ok with Sylv just being that cunty, but the way the original quest played out doesn't make sense unless somehow Putris was the fall guy and Varimathras just decided to take advantage of the moment, but that just seems a little too stupid.

IIRC the argument was that he did just enough to make it look like he actually rebelled and was acting under orders or he was supposed to do a fake rebellion but actually rebelled for real at the last second.

 

[Abradolfus_Linclerson]

I think they could have landed a redemption story if they actually stuck with "Sylvanas wants the best for the Forsaken" but every time she did that she immediately betrayed that she actually did it for selfish reasons. She was always depicted as exactly the sort of person you'd want leading your guerilla campaign to defend your people at any cost when living. Then the whole revenge thing with Arthas. She seemed to "get better" after LK was killed off but they subverted it because they needed a horde leader to start their good (Alliance) vs. evil (Horde) plotlines after they killed off Garrosh for the second time in as many expansions and they forgot Gallywix could do this and still be a fun character without reverting the past several expansions of writing.

I mean...no? She's a baby-eating omnicidal maniac and was always portrayed as such in the game, at least to the extent I was ever familiar with her or the Forsaken. Pawns and schemes and schemes and pawns and mass murder for funsies while making it out to be super important and sad that it has to be done was her MO. Forsaken apothecaries are basically Mengele + Unit 731 and were working with her explicit blessings and instructions. I remember the Saronite mine dungeon with her, where you (Horde side, anyway) rescue a bunch of Horde soldiers made slaves to dig saronite that get ganked en masse after your slave revolt boss fight and her reaction was basically, "glad they're finally dead." Never mind that they could have been cannon fodder for the rest of the dungeon and more meat shields between her and superhell. And then there's the giant fucking war she kicked off after the Legion was defeated because she's a paranoid sociopath.

There was no redeeming Sylvanas and there is no redeeming Sylvanas.

 

[Well Intentioned]

That would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that Varimathas was the one leading the rebellion and not the apothecary. He had also opened portals to Argus or wherever in the Undercity and had demons pouring into the place before being banished and turning up in Legion as a gimp torture slave because he failed that coup. None of which makes any sense anymore from what we learned in Shadowlands about Dreadlords.

I'd be ok with Sylv just being that cunty, but the way the original quest played out doesn't make sense unless somehow Putris was the fall guy and Varimathras just decided to take advantage of the moment, but that just seems a little too stupid.

Yeah, this is what I recall. I remember that there were some Alliance quests in Grizzly Hills (I think?) where you were kinda investigating what the Horde were up to (and it revolved around the Blight) and trying to figure out what Sylvanas in particular was up to (very much like that questline in Legion) and that Sylvanas was clearly okay with developing and using blight, but it was sort of a hoisted by my own petard situation with Varimathas and Putress basically letting her engineer her (almost) demise.

Which might've been a cool direction to take the story in. But then again, almost literally anything than what we ended up getting would've been a cool direction to take the story in, lol.

 

[Fcret]

WoW desperately wants to be a story-driven MMO but it can't commit to it because the playerbase hasn't been conditioned to accept it. It also doesn't help that they're deathly afraid of making any group content mandatory so you get weird moments in the Shadowlands campaign where it seems like the story is telling you to go into a dungeon at the end of a zone (like you'd see in FFXIV) and then it just... abruptly switches to another zone without the dungeon being addressed.

I could take or leave a sprawling narrative in an MMO, but the way WoW does it now is basically the worst possible compromise.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Blizzard leaked the new expansion's name:

Data miners found this in the MPX:

Returns true if the ProductID is found or false if not.
*/
function testProductById() {
var listOfProductIds = [
// WoW Dragonflight Base prepurch
303013,
// WoW Dragonflight Heroic prepurch
303014,
// WoW Dragonflight Epic prepurch
303029
// WoW Dragonflight Upgrade from Base to Heroic
// WoW Dragonflight Upgrade from Base to Epic
// WoW Dragonflight Upgrade from Heroic to Epic

Rumors of a dragon expansion as well as a scourge type expansion (ptr has found info on scourge being in issue with no Lich King) seem to fit this.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

At every single point in World of Warcraft she was depicted as scheming to kill everybody else. You don't get a redemption story out of that, much less one as poorly written as the one they're trying to foist on the players.

I dunno, endeavoring to put this stupid game and series to rest seems like a pretty sympathetic endeavor at this point. She may have even been ahead of the game.

WoW had better writing when it had less of it. The way things are written in vanilla was pretty perfect - a bunch of scattered little snippets and vignettes of a bigger world, that you filled the rest in from. Obviously, as the rest of the game became more streamlined, that style of storytelling just didn't really work. But I'll honestly never get tired of it; there's something in the atmosphere of exploring with only breadcrumbs to go on that no other MMO has competently captured.

I still remember being told by some mook in a bunker to go through Stonetalon into Desolace to find some other mook at Ghost Walker Post or something and wandering around that zone for a longass time scared stiff of everything there. I don't think there's gonna be a game that is ever given the time to cook long enough for something like that to ever crop up again, really.

 

[GenociderSyo]

I still remember being told by some mook in a bunker to go through Stonetalon into Desolace to find some other mook at Ghost Walker Post or something and wandering around that zone for a longass time scared stiff of everything there. I don't think there's gonna be a game that is ever given the time to cook long enough for something like that to ever crop up again, really.

Those were some of the best quests go forth and find my friend among to skull level mobs.

Ranks up there with firey gnome ball of death quest.