wow Will Sylvanas Die at the End of the 9.1 Raid?

[Grumar 188]

15 hours ago, Starym said:

Oh come on now, Legion was legitimately solid writing, from the giant amount of artifact mini-stories to the main one (idiotic "a wild Sargeras randomly appears and ends the Burning Legion/old Warcraft storyline without any confrontation" ending aside). And even if you want to go all "lol Activision ruined Blizzaed nothing good after MoP", Cataclysm had some pretty shitty writing too, so it's not like it's ever been old days = good writing, new days = bad.

Legion was one of the worst offenders they butchered Illidan, and Vol'jin. Neutered KJ and Maiev and it really at this point in the story where it stops being about Azeroth and they turn it into this dumb universe spanning super gods with their super powers that we have now. It's no longer about the characters (as we saw with them disregarding character appropriate reactions so they would do stuff that better flows the story into new cosmology importance) it's all about powers and where they come from, characters are reduced down to the magic they use or believe in.

[Zeem 1]

Calling it now. The over the top Sylvanas we have been dealing with has been a bogart the whole time (as far back as mid BfA) and we will have to save real one in 9.2.

[Devylknyght 83]

How about this: 

Arthas shows up, Sylvanas kills him again somehow/ gets revenge on him. 

Night Warrior Tyrande shows up to get revenge on Sylvanas and Sylvanas kills her too, she goes to ardenweald to be reborn.

The Jailer realizes she has grown too powerful and tries to stop her, she turns on him ends him too (really does anyone care about that character anyway?)

And now for the twist ending of the expansion. The split sylvanas soul is true  The players find and save the good sylvanas soul and we take it to her to merge/save her.......and She kills/ends the good Sylvanas! 

She now has nothing left, not even revenge to drive her. We use some Bolvar McGuffins to repair the veil and and she is locked in the Shadowlands or Maw as the new exiled ruler of death....

Bonus point that will never happen: she leads a 3rd playable shadowlands based faction.

 

Didn't really put a lot of thought in and I am sure most will hate it lol. But I was bored on lunch so what are ya gonna do haha. Have a good one.

[Starym 3,800]

4 hours ago, Grumar said:

Legion was one of the worst offenders they butchered Illidan, and Vol'jin. Neutered KJ and Maiev and it really at this point in the story where it stops being about Azeroth and they turn it into this dumb universe spanning super gods with their super powers that we have now. It's no longer about the characters (as we saw with them disregarding character appropriate reactions so they would do stuff that better flows the story into new cosmology importance) it's all about powers and where they come from, characters are reduced down to the magic they use or believe in.

Gonna have to hard disagree on Illidan, he got more characterization in Legion that anything post WC3 IMO (and got a good sendoff). I thought that it was stupid that they un-killed him to bring him back at the time, but I'm ok with it now. Kil'jaeden I felt got a fair shake, I mean he was "just" a general in the army, the problem there was we didn't get anything with Sargeras so it felt as if KJ was empty because there wasn't anyone above him we got a good sense of (although the KJ fight was awesome and that counts for a lot IMO).

Voljin just suffered the fate of plot taking over, and the sad part is... that's where all the Sylvanas nonsense started (although I personally don't believe all this Shadowlands stuff was planned back then, Sylvanas as warchief was an interesting idea in general at the time). As for your universe spanning thing, that was inevitable, that was what the main story of WC3 was all about - the Burning Legion, and this was its conclusion, so your problems with it go waaay back. But I do agree with you that characters do not act as themselves but as tools for the plot, but this is the case EVERYWHERE, in all media, with VERY few exceptions. I can't think of one game where all character decisions are their own and not due to plot/game design and that's actually almost unavoidable in this medium tbh.

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, Starym said:

Gonna have to hard disagree on Illidan, he got more characterization in Legion that anything post WC3 IMO (and got a good sendoff). I thought that it was stupid that they un-killed him to bring him back at the time, but I'm ok with it now. Kil'jaeden I felt got a fair shake, I mean he was "just" a general in the army, the problem there was we didn't get anything with Sargeras so it felt as if KJ was empty because there wasn't anyone above him we got a good sense of (although the KJ fight was awesome and that counts for a lot IMO).

Voljin just suffered the fate of plot taking over, and the sad part is... that's where all the Sylvanas nonsense started (although I personally don't believe all this Shadowlands stuff was planned back then, Sylvanas as warchief was an interesting idea in general at the time). As for your universe spanning thing, that was inevitable, that was what the main story of WC3 was all about - the Burning Legion, and this was its conclusion, so your problems with it go waaay back. But I do agree with you that characters do not act as themselves but as tools for the plot, but this is the case EVERYWHERE, in all media, with VERY few exceptions. I can't think of one game where all character decisions are their own and not due to plot/game design and that's actually almost unavoidable in this medium tbh.

Agreed about more characterization for Illidan. There was also more of it in the books. One thing though, they made him more sympathetic. Like in TBC he wasn't exactly a good guy, making more fel orcs, turning some demons to his service etc. There was also that discrepancy when our character were blamed for fighting Illidan by a Naaru in Legion, yet it was also a Naaru who sent us in TBC to fight him, and even some of them participated in siege of Black Temple.

With Burning Legion, there is a problem of power creep, there always has to be a more powerful cosmic threat. Legion wasn't enough, Old Gods weren't enough, so we've got Jailer and Void Lords. I guess some people would prefer a more "grounded" approach (if that word can even be used in this context) to Burning Legion. For example, we would have mostly stayed in Azeroth and Draenor, and Legion would remain as a constant threat, invading from time to time, but never completely defeated. Sort of like Chaos in Warhammer, albeit Warhammer destroyed it's old setting and went into a similar direction to Warcraft... Now we've got cosmic threats almost every year in a story. It's kinda funny, because in lore there have been hundreds or thousands of years between major wars (and except War of the Ancients, most of them were on a lower scale), and now more recently everything is densely packed. Another thing is that once universe went that way, every small scale story might feel a little weird now (sort of like a start of BfA) and somewhat disconnected from everything else if they return it.

[Starym 3,800]

4 hours ago, Arcling said:

Agreed about more characterization for Illidan. There was also more of it in the books. One thing though, they made him more sympathetic. Like in TBC he wasn't exactly a good guy, making more fel orcs, turning some demons to his service etc. There was also that discrepancy when our character were blamed for fighting Illidan by a Naaru in Legion, yet it was also a Naaru who sent us in TBC to fight him, and even some of them participated in siege of Black Temple.

With Burning Legion, there is a problem of power creep, there always has to be a more powerful cosmic threat. Legion wasn't enough, Old Gods weren't enough, so we've got Jailer and Void Lords. I guess some people would prefer a more "grounded" approach (if that word can even be used in this context) to Burning Legion. For example, we would have mostly stayed in Azeroth and Draenor, and Legion would remain as a constant threat, invading from time to time, but never completely defeated. Sort of like Chaos in Warhammer, albeit Warhammer destroyed it's old setting and went into a similar direction to Warcraft... Now we've got cosmic threats almost every year in a story. It's kinda funny, because in lore there have been hundreds or thousands of years between major wars (and except War of the Ancients, most of them were on a lower scale), and now more recently everything is densely packed. Another thing is that once universe went that way, every small scale story might feel a little weird now (sort of like a start of BfA) and somewhat disconnected from everything else if they return it.

Yea they definitely changed Illidan a little, but honestly since he was a villain in BC I think the Legion characterization (which some might consider a retcon, and I wouldn't argue too much with them) works well. They did make up the backstory but to me it made perfect sense with how Illidan was in WC3 and BC, actually made him a better character. And the killing the Naaru was just pure Illidan from WC3, the only thing that was forced in there was the prophecy, but that was basically a red herring as he just got rid of that directly.

[Calorat 78]

On 6/27/2021 at 5:22 PM, durdyenglish said:

Her soul is definitely split, there's no way they introduced the idea with Uther (showing you how it can affect even the most noble of souls) just to have it not matter in some big moment with another fallen character killed by the same rune blade. She's been wavering this entire expansion, already uncertain of the domination of Anduin.

You can call it bad writing, but this is literally how stuff like this goes down in fantasy/sci-fi/popcorn-munching media all the time. I'm not sure why people expect World of Warcraft, a high-fantasy, steampunk sci-fi comic-book-in-motion, to be anything less than gaudy with its storytelling. 

It's basically a western anime at this point.

 

no it's not, it's been bad writing period.  You can do everything you listed, with GOOD writing, but that's the exact opposite of we've been getting with the WoW writing team

[Halock 156]

On 6/28/2021 at 7:27 AM, Starym said:

And I really enjoyed the emo-scars cutscene, it genuinely got some emotion out of me (and I don't particularly like Illidan in general either). The aftermath of that was just stupid, I'll give you that (Turalyon basically saying ah well, he killed our god, *filtered* it let's move on, get the broom), and the Sargeras thing is unforgivable, but that had nothing to do with the writing IMO.

That cinematic is simultaneously the best and worst bits of storytelling they've done recently imo. '... So much... for so little' and 'I am my scars!' are plain terrific lines, cutting deep into and expressing both characters at the same time. 

I do think the aftereffects are due to the limitations of their writing though.

When Xe'ra says Illidan has sacrificed much for little she's speaking the truth. That's why it hits home. It's an excellent expression of both their characters. But when Illidan subsequently never sees the slightest comeuppance for having sacrificed much for little, indeed, when everything points towards his being right in all respects, that tramples over the truth Xe'ra expressed earlier.

They can express their characters, but they can't write a plot which uses them correctly.

Which you said something similar to above, so I'm sure we're not too far off. 🙃

Edited June 30, 2021 by Halock

[ORCSMASH 29]

On 6/28/2021 at 2:34 PM, Starym said:

Gonna have to hard disagree on Illidan, he got more characterization in Legion that anything post WC3 IMO (and got a good sendoff). I thought that it was stupid that they un-killed him to bring him back at the time, but I'm ok with it now. Kil'jaeden I felt got a fair shake, I mean he was "just" a general in the army, the problem there was we didn't get anything with Sargeras so it felt as if KJ was empty because there wasn't anyone above him we got a good sense of (although the KJ fight was awesome and that counts for a lot IMO).

Voljin just suffered the fate of plot taking over, and the sad part is... that's where all the Sylvanas nonsense started (although I personally don't believe all this Shadowlands stuff was planned back then, Sylvanas as warchief was an interesting idea in general at the time). As for your universe spanning thing, that was inevitable, that was what the main story of WC3 was all about - the Burning Legion, and this was its conclusion, so your problems with it go waaay back. But I do agree with you that characters do not act as themselves but as tools for the plot, but this is the case EVERYWHERE, in all media, with VERY few exceptions. I can't think of one game where all character decisions are their own and not due to plot/game design and that's actually almost unavoidable in this medium tbh.

I have to respectfully disagree. Although I liked the idea of Illidan being brought back as a "good guy", the amazing Illidan tie-in novel was the only thing that actually gave him any new characterization outside of his baseline "look at me, I'm the edgy guy fighting on the good side". Also, that novel was really the only place where they explained we had been played like chumps during the Burning Crusade by the Legion to take down Illidan and do their dirty work for them. This should have been WIDELY explained in-game during the expansion as well, but it was not - and it was only slightly expanded on if you rolled a demon hunter.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and sweep a broad generalization about the writing sucking after a certain point, but I will agree I am in the camp of "pre-WoD storylines felt better". It's not that the cinematics or in-game VO or anything like that was better, but it felt more like WarCraft than anything post-WoD has (with the exception of early BfA - sue me). It's hard to explain exactly why, but I feel WoD was just a big swing-and-a-miss (with a LOT of lore mistakes being made; and hand-waves at best to make up for them) and Legion was really the start of the massive wave of retcons the WarCraft story has gotten. Sure, there were some before, but the beginning of Legion was when I noticed it getting really brash. (I know "no one has said it's canon" but to release Chronicle right before Legion and then immediately retcon it in-game within 16 months doesn't ring out "good writing and storytelling" to me...) Add to that the end of the expansion - when they completely jumped the shark with the heavy sci-fi elements - and I don't know how anyone still thinks this expansion was well-put together or well-thought-out, story-wise. Yes, the Legion has existed as a universe-spanning entity for a long time, but it was in a more traditional fantasy 'ones from beyond' kind of way. (I noticed when you said this you didn't mention that the architect himself, Chris Metzen said years ago we would 'never fight a Titan, since they are on another scale than us' yet....Argus.) When they put us on spaceships and retconned Argus completely I was pretty much just waiting for the next expansion at that point. However, beyond that, one of the biggest things that bothered me about Legion was the lack of any focus on the orcs at all. I mean, this was a race that was ALSO corrupted and ALSO lost their home to the Legion's machinations, but there was no big revenge focus for them like there was for the elves (especially the purple and blue ones - I mean why is it at the end of the Argus cinematic Nightborne are in-focus?) and the Draenei. But, somehow, they had time to shoehorn in a new race of Tauren, two new races of elves, and a new race of Draenei as playable characters, as well as introducing other new races as NPCs.

WarCraft has been shooting itself in the foot for years by rushing stories that shouldn't be rushed (Nazjatar and The Black Empire, anyone?) and by elongating stories that were smaller in scope, making them feel very out-of-whack with each other. WoD was a terrific example of this, as the second half of the expansion (arguably, the heavy part) was over in a flash, while all the buildup felt like it took forever and had much more content devoted to it. Legion was also a good example of this, and I'm not just talking about patch length here, I'm talking about the actual content they devote to major story beats. From small things like 'Aren't the Halls of Valor supposed to be floating in the sky?' to major things like, let's face it, making the player one of - if not THE - main character in the expansion. Anyone can argue that point, but I think it was a foolish mistake to make the player the order hall Leader in 12 of the 13 classes (sorry, Death Knights!). Frankly, when it comes to Legion, I think the tie-in novels and audio drama were better stories than what we actually played through.

One more really good example of Legion's retconning can be found with Maiev and Jarod Shadowsong. Literally the last time we had heard from Maiev before Legion, she had gone completely insane and was hunting down - and murdering - the Highborne Shen'dralar who had rejoined, and the worgen who had joined, Night Elf society in Teldrassil and was plotting to murder Malfurion himself! (This was during the Cataclysm in the novel Wolfheart, which I highly recommend, by the way.) She escaped at the end of the novel, but Jarod had vowed to set out and bring her to justice. And, then? The next time we see her is either in the Vault of the Wardens (if you're a demon hunter) OR half-naked in Val'sharah, where Jarod seemingly forgets all the atrocious things she did just a few years prior. Now, given that they are family, I could forgive this if it was only Jarod who treated her like this, but his selective amnesia seems to have spread not only to the rest of the night elves, but to everyone on Azeroth as well, and she is treated as a mini-savior for the rest of the expansion, with players even taking orders from her (regardless of faction). Call me crazy, but I don't think that's solid characterization at all. It's more like the consistency of 3-month old milk.

With the announcement of BfA, I breathed a huge sigh of relief*: no longer would we be loading ourselves into spelljammers to deal with extraterrestial threats, the baseline WarCraft Horde vs. Alliance rivalry was going to be re-ignited, and we would be exploring regions of Azeroth hitherto unknown to the players. It had everything I wanted - the War of the Roses was an amazing heart-of-WarCraft storyline (especially when you pair the in-game playthrough with the short stories) - then 8.1 hit and everything went to warp speed, which I believe was to the players' and the game's detriment. We had a nice, slow build-up when BfA launched. And, yeah, you need that at first for leveling and everything, but we had a new instance we couldn't have predicted for raiding in Uldir that was still tied to 'archetypal WoW' but not re-hashing anything. Now this may seem skewed since I main Horde, but I did play both factions in BfA for the stories. The Battle for Dazar'alor raid was amazing, but at the same time a huge disappointment. I always thought it felt weird in Legion to take out Xavius, someone who's taunted us from the shadows for years but we never really interacted with until Val'sharah, in the first raid of the expansion. Again, it was that 'rushed' feeling - and it only got worse when a few weeks later we were fighting Gul'dan - one of the biggest bads in WarCraft history - in the first tier raid of the expansion. But, I accepted it, because at the time it felt more like the "true" end of WoD than the beginning of Legion. However, the BFD raid, story-wise, was another level of messed up, imho, in that they killed Rastakhan pretty much right-off-the-bat. I didn't know a Horde player who didn't like him, and after players of both factions had been waiting so long to meet this guy and see what he could do after he'd been mentioned for so long, to kill him so quickly felt like a waste of a great character and great storyline potential. And to make Horde players kill him was, I still feel, more than a little cruel. I don't like this paradigm of "travel Azeroth, meet new and interesting characters, and then immediately kill them".***

Back to the topic of characterization, let's talk about Jaina: she literally abandoned BOTH factions when a world-ending demon invasion was descending on Azeroth, no one hears from her for years, she never shows up to fight Argus or the Legion - even at the zero hour, then she goes and raises a ghost warship to wage war on the Horde, burns with hatred for the Horde - and the Kirin Tor for letting them back in, leads and launches an attack - as the main antagonist - against a sovereign nation for merely aiding the Horde (as the Zandalari were not formally allied with and/or part of the Horde yet), kills their king and escapes leaving the city burning and who knows how many of her allies behind, and yet we are to believe that she's somehow a good guy now because....? She helped free some prisoners from Sylvanas? She put up with Lor'themar for five minutes in Nazjatar? She was taken prisoner by the Jailer and Sylvanas? I've read the books, I've played through all of the content and I can't wrap my head at all around why we're supposed to trust her all of a sudden. She has blamed the whole Horde for Theramore since MoP, committed genocide in Dalaran, committed other war crimes with the backing of Kul Tiras and the Alliance, and has generally betrayed everything she once believed in. Her characterization alone shows the teeter-tottering nature of the new writers of WarCraft and sadly, it seems that they have no qualms about shoehorning in or changing anything that doesn't fit the story they want to tell. That, to me, is my biggest issue with newer WoW storylines: go ahead and tell the story you want to tell, but don't trample on what came before - respect those who started and crafted this world. It just doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of that happening.

Regardless, I'll wrap this up quickly (since, in my typical fashion, I have written much more than I intended to) as I loop back to one of my original points: Sylvanas is one 'big bad' villain I wouldn't mind seeing die this early into an expansion. She has more than had her time in the sun, and it doesn't feel like it's rushed to have us beat her wholly now. I felt - and still feel - that Nazjatar should have been a bigger part of BfA with it's own dungeons and keeping Queen Azshara (and her escape) as the final boss, Crucible of Storms should have been expanded for the second tier, we should have fought Sylvanas at the end of BfA (with her escaping to the Jailer and doing the Saurfang mak'gora at the end of her fight) in a kind of SoO 2.0, the Black Empire should have gotten it's own expansion to do N'zoth (and the other Old Gods) justice, and THEN we should have gotten Shadowlands, if at all. I feel this would have made the tier and storyline progression steps feel a lot more even and not like 'one calamity after another' that we're just reacting to. But the last few expansions have made everything feel so rushed and we've fought (and killed) way more big lore characters than we really should have since Xavius, imho.**

Anyways, sorry for the late (and super long) response, but I have a lot of feelings and opinions on the lore in WoW, and especially, as you've read, the lore and storylines over the last few years.

*Note: In this post I level some praise at BfA, which people might be stunned by. I am merely talking about storylines and lore here, not gameplay mechanics. BfA had well-documented gameplay and balance issues, such as Azerite Armor, which I am in no way defending.

EDIT: P.S. - Re-reading this after I posted it, I think WoW really needs a 'six months later...', et. al. header/footer during the break cinematics or someway in general of better communicating to us how much time has passed in-world during the last patch, expansion, or raid campaign.

**EDIT #2: This actually makes me a bit nervous, as the last two expansions or so have felt like a 'clearing house' for big bads. Azshara, N'zoth, Gul'dan, Blackhand, Archimonde re-dux, Argus/Sargeras, Kil'jaeden re-dux, Xavius, etc. It has kind of felt to me like they were making sure we'd get to fight these characters because internally they're not so confident WoW will continue for long enough to organically come to all these encounters.

P.P.S. - I didn't even get started on Vol'jin, because that was a whole other can of worms. He was done dirty, no two ways about it and should be the one character that gets brought back from the Shadowlands. He could easily come back to take his place as Warchief, because yes, the Horde *does* need a Warchief, since we are apparently perpetually at war with something. As a sidenote, I thought that was the silliest justification for ripping off Game of Thrones: "oh, we don't need a leader, we're not at war". You literally just got done fighting four or five back-to-back wars and you don't think another one is right around the corner? C'mon now...

***EDIT #4: I completely forgot to mention how the writers all but totally forgot about Throne of Thunder and the Zandalari attacking both the Alliance and the Horde in Pandaria with a full-scale invasion not 5 years prior! There is only one NPC who mentions it at all, and there's a good chance most players will miss the dialogue, as the quest doesn't require them to hang around for it. There is also one /silly line that basically hand-waves it. This is literally what I'm talking about when I say "respect the established lore". There is really no way we should have had to prove ourselves to the Zandalari - after ZG in classic and then us totally roflstomping their forces on the Isle of Thunder, they should have had to prove themselves to us. Either way, it's not respecting the lore and previous writers, it's spitting all over them - and the players who remember and dare to question it.

Edited June 30, 2021 by ORCSMASH

[durdyenglish 298]

On 6/28/2021 at 10:13 PM, Calorat said:

no it's not, it's been bad writing period.  You can do everything you listed, with GOOD writing, but that's the exact opposite of we've been getting with the WoW writing team

okie dokie

[Starym 3,800]

10 hours ago, ORCSMASH said:

I have to respectfully disagree. Although I liked the idea of Illidan being brought back as a "good guy", the amazing Illidan tie-in novel was the only thing that actually gave him any new characterization outside of his baseline "look at me, I'm the edgy guy fighting on the good side". Also, that novel was really the only place where they explained we had been played like chumps during the Burning Crusade by the Legion to take down Illidan and do their dirty work for them. This should have been WIDELY explained in-game during the expansion as well, but it was not - and it was only slightly expanded on if you rolled a demon hunter.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and sweep a broad generalization about the writing sucking after a certain point, but I will agree I am in the camp of "pre-WoD storylines felt better". It's not that the cinematics or in-game VO or anything like that was better, but it felt more like WarCraft than anything post-WoD has (with the exception of early BfA - sue me). It's hard to explain exactly why, but I feel WoD was just a big swing-and-a-miss (with a LOT of lore mistakes being made; and hand-waves at best to make up for them) and Legion was really the start of the massive wave of retcons the WarCraft story has gotten. Sure, there were some before, but the beginning of Legion was when I noticed it getting really brash. (I know "no one has said it's canon" but to release Chronicle right before Legion and then immediately retcon it in-game within 16 months doesn't ring out "good writing and storytelling" to me...) Add to that the end of the expansion - when they completely jumped the shark with the heavy sci-fi elements - and I don't know how anyone still thinks this expansion was well-put together or well-thought-out, story-wise. Yes, the Legion has existed as a universe-spanning entity for a long time, but it was in a more traditional fantasy 'ones from beyond' kind of way. (I noticed when you said this you didn't mention that the architect himself, Chris Metzen said years ago we would 'never fight a Titan, since they are on another scale than us' yet....Argus.) When they put us on spaceships and retconned Argus completely I was pretty much just waiting for the next expansion at that point. However, beyond that, one of the biggest things that bothered me about Legion was the lack of any focus on the orcs at all. I mean, this was a race that was ALSO corrupted and ALSO lost their home to the Legion's machinations, but there was no big revenge focus for them like there was for the elves (especially the purple and blue ones - I mean why is it at the end of the Argus cinematic Nightborne are in-focus?) and the Draenei. But, somehow, they had time to shoehorn in a new race of Tauren, two new races of elves, and a new race of Draenei as playable characters, as well as introducing other new races as NPCs.

WarCraft has been shooting itself in the foot for years by rushing stories that shouldn't be rushed (Nazjatar and The Black Empire, anyone?) and by elongating stories that were smaller in scope, making them feel very out-of-whack with each other. WoD was a terrific example of this, as the second half of the expansion (arguably, the heavy part) was over in a flash, while all the buildup felt like it took forever and had much more content devoted to it. Legion was also a good example of this, and I'm not just talking about patch length here, I'm talking about the actual content they devote to major story beats. From small things like 'Aren't the Halls of Valor supposed to be floating in the sky?' to major things like, let's face it, making the player one of - if not THE - main character in the expansion. Anyone can argue that point, but I think it was a foolish mistake to make the player the order hall Leader in 12 of the 13 classes (sorry, Death Knights!). Frankly, when it comes to Legion, I think the tie-in novels and audio drama were better stories than what we actually played through.

One more really good example of Legion's retconning can be found with Maiev and Jarod Shadowsong. Literally the last time we had heard from Maiev before Legion, she had gone completely insane and was hunting down - and murdering - the Highborne Shen'dralar who had rejoined, and the worgen who had joined, Night Elf society in Teldrassil and was plotting to murder Malfurion himself! (This was during the Cataclysm in the novel Wolfheart, which I highly recommend, by the way.) She escaped at the end of the novel, but Jarod had vowed to set out and bring her to justice. And, then? The next time we see her is either in the Vault of the Wardens (if you're a demon hunter) OR half-naked in Val'sharah, where Jarod seemingly forgets all the atrocious things she did just a few years prior. Now, given that they are family, I could forgive this if it was only Jarod who treated her like this, but his selective amnesia seems to have spread not only to the rest of the night elves, but to everyone on Azeroth as well, and she is treated as a mini-savior for the rest of the expansion, with players even taking orders from her (regardless of faction). Call me crazy, but I don't think that's solid characterization at all. It's more like the consistency of 3-month old milk.

With the announcement of BfA, I breathed a huge sigh of relief*: no longer would we be loading ourselves into spelljammers to deal with extraterrestial threats, the baseline WarCraft Horde vs. Alliance rivalry was going to be re-ignited, and we would be exploring regions of Azeroth hitherto unknown to the players. It had everything I wanted - the War of the Roses was an amazing heart-of-WarCraft storyline (especially when you pair the in-game playthrough with the short stories) - then 8.1 hit and everything went to warp speed, which I believe was to the players' and the game's detriment. We had a nice, slow build-up when BfA launched. And, yeah, you need that at first for leveling and everything, but we had a new instance we couldn't have predicted for raiding in Uldir that was still tied to 'archetypal WoW' but not re-hashing anything. Now this may seem skewed since I main Horde, but I did play both factions in BfA for the stories. The Battle for Dazar'alor raid was amazing, but at the same time a huge disappointment. I always thought it felt weird in Legion to take out Xavius, someone who's taunted us from the shadows for years but we never really interacted with until Val'sharah, in the first raid of the expansion. Again, it was that 'rushed' feeling - and it only got worse when a few weeks later we were fighting Gul'dan - one of the biggest bads in WarCraft history - in the first tier raid of the expansion. But, I accepted it, because at the time it felt more like the "true" end of WoD than the beginning of Legion. However, the BFD raid, story-wise, was another level of messed up, imho, in that they killed Rastakhan pretty much right-off-the-bat. I didn't know a Horde player who didn't like him, and after players of both factions had been waiting so long to meet this guy and see what he could do after he'd been mentioned for so long, to kill him so quickly felt like a waste of a great character and great storyline potential. And to make Horde players kill him was, I still feel, more than a little cruel. I don't like this paradigm of "travel Azeroth, meet new and interesting characters, and then immediately kill them".***

Back to the topic of characterization, let's talk about Jaina: she literally abandoned BOTH factions when a world-ending demon invasion was descending on Azeroth, no one hears from her for years, she never shows up to fight Argus or the Legion - even at the zero hour, then she goes and raises a ghost warship to wage war on the Horde, burns with hatred for the Horde - and the Kirin Tor for letting them back in, leads and launches an attack - as the main antagonist - against a sovereign nation for merely aiding the Horde (as the Zandalari were not formally allied with and/or part of the Horde yet), kills their king and escapes leaving the city burning and who knows how many of her allies behind, and yet we are to believe that she's somehow a good guy now because....? She helped free some prisoners from Sylvanas? She put up with Lor'themar for five minutes in Nazjatar? She was taken prisoner by the Jailer and Sylvanas? I've read the books, I've played through all of the content and I can't wrap my head at all around why we're supposed to trust her all of a sudden. She has blamed the whole Horde for Theramore since MoP, committed genocide in Dalaran, committed other war crimes with the backing of Kul Tiras and the Alliance, and has generally betrayed everything she once believed in. Her characterization alone shows the teeter-tottering nature of the new writers of WarCraft and sadly, it seems that they have no qualms about shoehorning in or changing anything that doesn't fit the story they want to tell. That, to me, is my biggest issue with newer WoW storylines: go ahead and tell the story you want to tell, but don't trample on what came before - respect those who started and crafted this world. It just doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of that happening.

Regardless, I'll wrap this up quickly (since, in my typical fashion, I have written much more than I intended to) as I loop back to one of my original points: Sylvanas is one 'big bad' villain I wouldn't mind seeing die this early into an expansion. She has more than had her time in the sun, and it doesn't feel like it's rushed to have us beat her wholly now. I felt - and still feel - that Nazjatar should have been a bigger part of BfA with it's own dungeons and keeping Queen Azshara (and her escape) as the final boss, Crucible of Storms should have been expanded for the second tier, we should have fought Sylvanas at the end of BfA (with her escaping to the Jailer and doing the Saurfang mak'gora at the end of her fight) in a kind of SoO 2.0, the Black Empire should have gotten it's own expansion to do N'zoth (and the other Old Gods) justice, and THEN we should have gotten Shadowlands, if at all. I feel this would have made the tier and storyline progression steps feel a lot more even and not like 'one calamity after another' that we're just reacting to. But the last few expansions have made everything feel so rushed and we've fought (and killed) way more big lore characters than we really should have since Xavius, imho.**

Anyways, sorry for the late (and super long) response, but I have a lot of feelings and opinions on the lore in WoW, and especially, as you've read, the lore and storylines over the last few years.

*Note: In this post I level some praise at BfA, which people might be stunned by. I am merely talking about storylines and lore here, not gameplay mechanics. BfA had well-documented gameplay and balance issues, such as Azerite Armor, which I am in no way defending.

EDIT: P.S. - Re-reading this after I posted it, I think WoW really needs a 'six months later...', et. al. header/footer during the break cinematics or someway in general of better communicating to us how much time has passed in-world during the last patch, expansion, or raid campaign.

**EDIT #2: This actually makes me a bit nervous, as the last two expansions or so have felt like a 'clearing house' for big bads. Azshara, N'zoth, Gul'dan, Blackhand, Archimonde re-dux, Argus/Sargeras, Kil'jaeden re-dux, Xavius, etc. It has kind of felt to me like they were making sure we'd get to fight these characters because internally they're not so confident WoW will continue for long enough to organically come to all these encounters.

P.P.S. - I didn't even get started on Vol'jin, because that was a whole other can of worms. He was done dirty, no two ways about it and should be the one character that gets brought back from the Shadowlands. He could easily come back to take his place as Warchief, because yes, the Horde *does* need a Warchief, since we are apparently perpetually at war with something. As a sidenote, I thought that was the silliest justification for ripping off Game of Thrones: "oh, we don't need a leader, we're not at war". You literally just got done fighting four or five back-to-back wars and you don't think another one is right around the corner? C'mon now...

***EDIT #4: I completely forgot to mention how the writers all but totally forgot about Throne of Thunder and the Zandalari attacking both the Alliance and the Horde in Pandaria with a full-scale invasion not 5 years prior! There is only one NPC who mentions it at all, and there's a good chance most players will miss the dialogue, as the quest doesn't require them to hang around for it. There is also one /silly line that basically hand-waves it. This is literally what I'm talking about when I say "respect the established lore". There is really no way we should have had to prove ourselves to the Zandalari - after ZG in classic and then us totally roflstomping their forces on the Isle of Thunder, they should have had to prove themselves to us. Either way, it's not respecting the lore and previous writers, it's spitting all over them - and the players who remember and dare to question it.

You won't get ANY disagreement from me whenever you say that a relevant piece of lore/characterization should have been in-game and not in some ancillary product. I never read any of the side-stuff for WoW, so I had no idea about the Legion setup (although it makes sense/is pretty much the only way they could justify BC's plot with regards to Legion).

And it's totally np to disagree in general, I'm not saying Legion's writing was perfect, but I would easily put it up against anything that came before (ok, the ending I wouldn't even put up against the horror of BfA, but... yea 😄 ).

One of the big things I want to focus though is comparative writing quality between WoW and the average/vast majority of other games. Even at it's worst it's still somewhere in the middle of game writing I think (and I HATE BfA with a fiery passion, but I've also played many other game stories and... ugh...).

[durdyenglish 298]

On 6/27/2021 at 6:22 PM, durdyenglish said:

Her soul is definitely split, there's no way they introduced the idea with Uther (showing you how it can affect even the most noble of souls) just to have it not matter in some big moment with another fallen character killed by the same rune blade. She's been wavering this entire expansion, already uncertain of the domination of Anduin.

Let's go