There are heel turns, and then there’s what World of Warcraft’s Sylvanas Windrunner — current leader of the game’s Horde faction — did in a new short released by Blizzard yesterday. She torched the World Tree, a major Alliance landmark, and slaughtered countless innocent night elves in the process. Now Horde players are revolting.
If you don’t really follow WoW, you might be wondering what the big deal is. The Horde is a raucous brood of toothy green murder men, and the Alliance is all knights, elves and night elves in shining armour, right?
Well, as it turns out, the 14-year-old MMO rivalry has — after enough expansion content to fill multiple new games — become a wee bit more complicated than that. The short version is that the Horde has always had a noble streak, and the Alliance has pulled some questionable stunts over the years. Neither side has ever really been “the good guys” or “the bad guys”.
Players have been worried, however, that the Horde was cruising to lose any moral high ground it’s ever laid claim to in new expansion Battle For Azeroth. The lead-up, known as “the War of the Thorns”, has turned the Horde into aggressors in an increasingly bloody conflict.
In April, game director Ion Hazzikostas responded to players’ fears that the Horde was turning evil by explaining that evil is “a matter of perspective” and that both Horde and Alliance should be worried about crossing the line.
“There’s a lot of story to tell going forward,” he said. “Both sides should be worried about this. Azeroth is a world of grey. It’s never been a world of black and white.”
Then, yesterday, the World Tree reveal happened.
Originally, Sylvanas just wanted to invade (rather than destroy) the gargantuan tree to prevent the Alliance from gaining more of a powerful mineral called Azerite. But then she had a conversation with a wounded night elf warrior named Delaryn Summermoon, who caused Sylvanas to flash back to her time as a regular high elf, which concluded with her having her soul ripped out by a previous major series villain, Arthas, and ultimately joining the Horde.
“Life is pain,” Sylvanas said to Delaryn in the short. “Hope fails.”
“You’ve made life your enemy,” replied Delaryn, defiant. “That is a war you’ll never win. You can kill us, but you cannot kill hope.”
In response, Sylvanas changed her plans in a rage and callously lit everything on fire, giving WoW fans flashbacks to the time a previous Horde leader, Garrosh Hellscream, ruthlessly destroyed a major human city. Garrosh proceeded to become crueller and crueller until he went full villain and became a raid boss players had to defeat.
Players are now worried that WoW is retreading old ground, and a similar, less-than-grey fate awaits Sylvanas. They’ve reacted with everything from jokes and fan art to anger of their own, and even harassment of writers (which other players have called for an end to).
me as a horde player right now: #Sylvanas #ForTheHorde pic.twitter.com/1pUp3R8bsH
— ☁️ – tulip???? (@tulipwitch) July 31, 2018
Me after watching the new #worldofwarcraft #sylvanas trailer pic.twitter.com/cNgOfXZ9Q4
— Shane Cisler (@Shanecisler) July 31, 2018
Sylvanas in expansions 1-6 “the Forsaken may be a magical accident, but we have a right to exist and defend ourselves”
Sylvanas in expansion 7 “I’m basically the Lich Queen now”
— Dan Olson (@FoldableHuman) July 31, 2018
Me and other Horde players looking for that “Morally Grey” like…
#Warcraft #Sylvanas pic.twitter.com/vr0cs9v4yY— Xavier Newell???? (@Pyrolife0) July 31, 2018
Before watching Warbringers: Sylvanas:
Hype levels so high they’re on mars or something
After watching it:
Barely above the desk, having witnessed the beginning of the downfall of my favourite character’s writing
— Elendrial, Disappointed with Sylvanas’ Writing (@ElendriaI) July 31, 2018
I’m feeling really disappointed in the new warbringers animation. Blizzard had the opportunity with the first female warchief to do some really great things. Instead Sylvanas is an emotional wreck of a leader, granted her past isn’t great but there was opportunity for growth.
— Lady Duskfall (@Lady_Duskfall) July 31, 2018
Just a little meme for you guys while this is trending :^) #Sylvanas #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/MUpqweRN1q
— Justin (but Ret works too) (@RetributionAura) July 31, 2018
#spoilers #Warcraft
Literally everyone: your making sylvanas evil arent you
Blizzard: no!!! mOrAlLy GrEy!!!
*Sylvanas burns the tree killing shitloads of nightelves to “destroy hope”*
Literally everyone: pic.twitter.com/8P3uBvKKAY— Mang0cat????????????❤Marie (@mang0catmarie) July 31, 2018
“She’s gone mad” Made a quick speed painting, I don’t think my orc druid would agree with Sylvanas #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/S0vJ2O2FgX
— Ioana Muresan @JW-Madrid (@IoanaMuresanArt) July 31, 2018
When you could sit around on Twitter crying about Sylvanas or you COULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT INSTEAD…???????? pic.twitter.com/F57fa8rxSz
— Taliesin & Evitel (@TaliesinEvitel) August 1, 2018
This… is War. #Sylvanas #ForTheHorde pic.twitter.com/KKYwHqCxzO
— Mandy????Moving Hell (@SpittfireArt) July 31, 2018
“Azeroth is a world of grey.”
Unless there’s a quote elsewhere, this is what Ion said. He didn’t call out Sylvanas specifically as being morally grey. Nor the Horde. Nor the Alliance. Azeroth.
— Mitch (@MitchFizzl) July 31, 2018
Btw I simply love all of this spicy Sylvanas drama. Look at how ALIVE the WoW community is right now. Morals being brought into question, Alliance AND Horde considering their allegiances. Blizzard knew what they were doing with this cinematic and this is exactly what they wanted.
— Pyromancer (@PyromancerSarg) August 1, 2018
Question: How is Sylvanas burning Teldrassil vastly different from when she Blighted Gilneas?
How can ANYONE be surprised over this?
— Wolfsung and Friends (@Ulrich_Wolfsung) July 31, 2018
Sylvanas can burn down my house and I’d still be like yes queen do it
— Ram Djemal (@brokenshard) July 31, 2018
call me sylvanas cos i be burning trees ????????????
— Barny❄️ (@Barny) August 1, 2018
Comments
109 responses to “A Major World Of Warcraft Character Turned Evil, And Fans Are Freaking Out”
Uh, yeah? But it’s not like that’s anything new for WoW.
Surely you mean Blizzard games as a whole right?
You’re not wrong. Aren’t, like, most WoW antagonists former good guys? Arthas, Sargeras, Deathwing, Garrosh – all former good guys “turned to the dark side”. Even Archimond and Kil’Jaeden were turned to the dark side by Sargeras. It’s a well that Blizzard have been drawing from for an awful long time.
Yes, Blizzard basically has one plot that they keep rehashing. And as @thatteemo alluded to above, it’s not just WoW. Kerrigan’s story arc in Starcraft is basically the same thing too.
It’s entertaining enough but WoW isn’t something you play for the plot. If you want a plot-based MMO you should be playing FF XIV or SWTOR or similar.
Anyone acting surprised by this must if stop playing over 9 months ago… the whole thing has been prefesed by some terrible writing ingame to get her sisters on the frontline.
They just ran out of bad guys with Legion…so its Old God corruption and Death again!
I stopped playing 6 years ago and this isn’t a shock.
She didn’t turn evil, she has always been evil since the moment she was turned into a banshee. Only now no one is there to keep her in check. Look at how she formed her Forsaken faction in the first place, she manipulated and betrayed Garithos and the surviving humans. Then she invaded Southshore and killed everything with the blight. She moved onto Gilneas and used the blight again.
She is just a bad person and that is fine. So called “fans” are throwing temper tantrums online over basically the first chapter of a book. I’ll be more annoyed if they try to make out it was the Old Gods after all or they go the Grommash route and ignore an entire expansion so he can say “Draenor is free”.
There’s merit to the old god theory, though. There’s been something beneath Tirisfal for a long time, that drove the original elven settlers mad. It’s entirely possible it’s connected to this story, I’d love to find out.
I would just find it lazy though. Old God corruption has been done again and again. I would rather the writers at Blizzard back themselves and write a character who is evil or flawed without having to rely on evil void monster magic made them do it. It is on par with “and then they woke up and it was all a dream.”
It’s kinda a necessary part of the current story trajectory though. The Legion attack on Azeroth that culminated in the final cutscene of this expansion was about Sargeras trying to kill the nascent titan soul inside Azeroth before the void lords could find and corrupt it. The old gods are the creations of the void lords, so with the Legion defeated but Azeroth wounded, it makes more sense now than ever to bring the void lords and old gods into play for their actual goal, and not just side story Lovecraftian horror.
Sorry, to be clear, I mean the old gods/void lords seem like a necessary part of the story, not necessarily that in this specific instance it’s necessary that Sylvanas is being influenced by one. I don’t know what they have in store for her, but I’m more than happy to wait until it plays out before making judgements about her actions being ‘bad writing’ that ‘ruined the character’, as one person I know was recently arguing.
I kinda feel the same. So many of the comments in the article and this thread echo what I was thinking when I started on the BFA pre-quests.
First thing I thought was “oh great trolls are gonna be bad guys AGAIN”, then “Yep we’ve got the Old gods as bad guys AGAIN” then “Trifecta! The Horde’s warchief has gone mental and become evil. AGAIN!”
I feel like it’s lazy to reuse the same old ideas again and again, and I really wish there had been a way to create additional factions. My main is a druid and when Sylvanis wanted to kill Malfurion my attitude was” no screw that, he’s my druid bro!” I wish they’d taken this as an opportunity to figure out a way to create a splinter group from the horde who refused her command.
I’m honestly tired of “bad warchief and we blindly follow” them stories.
I will say, there was a clear opportunity with this expansion to make the Alliance the bad guys for a change, and I’m definitely disappointed that they haven’t taken that route, yet. Genn Greymane especially is a terrible person.
Have we ever had an xpac where the Alliance are outright evil (on the scale of Garrosh)? I can’t recall one. So it’s definitely overdue.
We haven’t, no. Which is why the time is ripe. Alliance aggressors driven by warmonger Greymane would have been a fantastic lead-in to a hot war between the factions, but evidently they don’t want to go that way.
If by warmonger you mean the guy who’s kingdom was invaded by an unprovoked attack by the Forsaken where he son was killed and then he watched as the same person who did that also retreated on the battlefield leaving his High King to be sacrificed to the demons. I can understand Greymane’s disdain and downright hatred for the Forsaken and most of all Sylvanas.
@Simocrates: That’s why it’d actually make perfect sense. Yeah it’s an evil act and for once we could get an xpac where the horde aren’t the baddies. But at the same time there’s a strong sense of moral “greyness”. His actions are a hell of a lot more relatable than Sylvanas.
@Simocrates By warmonger, I mean the guy that is so personally hell-bent on going after Sylvanas that he’s happy to sacrifice his own people and any and all semblence of strategy so he can have a one-on-one with the woman. Greymane is a monster in every respect, and that’s not just rhetoric. He’s the closest, right now, that the Alliance has to a bad guy.
It was explained in Chronicles as well as cleared up in the Artifact Quests for Shadow Priests, Arms Warriors and Holy Paladins.
Well that’s why nobody knows the story, nobody plays those specs 😉
My Worgen Priest is a Shadow Priest!
Also planning to make a Troll Shadow Priest for Horde side 🙂
Shadow’s the only Priest spec I’ve played. Not a fan of playing healers.
It’s a bit of a running joke, to be fair. Shadow priests were like the least played spec until Legion’s class shakeup that turned them into void priests. Then they were…the second least played spec 😛
Personally I’ve always advocated playing whatever class and spec you want, there are no bad choices. Too many people look at the top raiding guilds and say “oh they have no X, X must suck” or they look at shoddy DPS metric sites like Noxxic (don’t use Noxxic, it’s garbage) and see “oh X is only 80% the DPS of Y, X sucks and Y is king”. It’s all nonsense. Everything is perfectly viable until you’re in the absolute upper tiers of play, where most people aren’t going to end up anyway.
Play what you want.
“Play what you want”
Always have, always will 🙂
I typically take a look at Icy Veins’ “Easy Mode” setups and just use those. I’ve never been one to worry about max DPS etc. So long as I can complete content and have fun doing it I’m good 🙂
I mean, come on, I just made a Highmountain Tauren Brewmaster Monk named Alcowholic 😉
I think a lot of people aren’t annoyed because she’s ‘turned evil’ because yeah, as you said, she’s been pretty damn dodgey ever since Arthas brought her back.
I think many are annoyed because they were hoping the character would grow and the Horde would have a decent leader for the first time in a while. Instead they’re burning down a world tree because someone made them mad.
The thing is, she isn’t even that upset. If she was furious, yes okay, she was goaded into it. But she’s doing it in more of a “You like hope? It would be a shame if I took that” manner, throwing away the time, effort, resources and lives intended to capture the elven city and hold it hostage to prevent retaliation to the isolated cities on the other continent.
It’s just such a dumb move. I don’t care if it’s evil, I just hate it being such a tactical blunder from someone who’s skilled at manipulation and tactics.
Yeah, for me it’s that combined with the fact that no one (like specifically Saurfang who was right there) says or does anything about it. “Oh you want to do something evil and stupid for no reason? Seems fine to me.”
Well despite the evil of the Old Gods… they are whispers, we havent seen the Gods of Death (undeath) come out to play. Plenty claim to be part of the system, but their role like the Valkeryies is life after death.
Alliance is just waiting for her sister to go full Void God messiah and then Battle of Azeroth will again be a group of raiders beating up one god while the other god waits bored on the sideline to steal our kill shot with a cinematic (so many legion bosses got killed by NPCs) or at the brink of victory fail and gets consumed by their magic (its usually a portal)
The issue isn’t that they turned her evil. As you’ve said she’s always been evil. Look at the plaguelands.
The issue is that everyone in the horde, including Baines and saurfang go along for the ride, even though it makes very little sense for them too
The premise for the war makes little sense.
The actions of players without choice makes little sense.
The context, post-Legion defeat and order halls, makes little sense.
The destruction of a world tree with catapults, when previously it withstood far worse, makes little sense.
Of couse she was always evil. Wrathgate, Southshore, Gilneas …. now Teldrassil. It stops when she is ….. errr …. permanently deader.
Wrathgate wasn’t her, that was Putress. While she did have some plans relating to the blight, his attack on Horde and Alliance forces there was completely unsanctioned. The Gilneas conflict was started by the worgen in the first place, although you could argue she used excessive force in finishing it.
You could say she took the ideas that germinate with Wrathgate and ran with it.
Gilneas had walled itself off. The extermination of Gilneans was unwarranted. Another city full of innocents, wiped out without consideration. Remember that not all Gilneans were Worgen.
Before the Cataclysm breached the Greymane Wall, both forces clashed at the wall itself but neither gained any ground. While that stalemate was going on, Gilneas was attacked by the Wolf Cult and most of its civilians were evacuated by Greymane’s order. The breach to the Wall during Cataclysm happened after Gilneas had been taken over by the worgen and at that point worgen infiltrators had already started to push into Silverpine Forest. The first territorial change was there in southern Silverpine, before the Horde attack on Duskhaven.
At the time the Forsaken used the blight on Gilneas, the city was already almost completely evacuated of civilians. The first evacuation during the Wolf Cult attack took most to Darnassus, and the second evacuation just before the Forsaken attack took place. When the blight hit, there were practically no civilians left in the city, only military forces.
I think it’s awesome, bout Time she had her way #Horde forever #undead Gods
Yeah, I’d buy that if there was any option other than having your main just get taken along for the fucking ride.
Oh, I guess my character is fucking evil, now. I wonder if I can do some sort of rebellious quest line to bring my faction back to nobili– oh, what’s that? The only way I can reject this is to play a different character?
Fuck off. Wake me when there’s ACTUAL consequences like characters getting to switch factions as a result of in-game events like this, or entire races changing allegience (lookin’ at you, Blood Elves. Lor’themar Theron nearly did it against Garrosh, and would’ve if Jaina hadn’t been a colossal overreacting psychopathic murdering bitch).
Roll a Pandaren. We fine creatures enjoy the moral high ground no matter what faction we’re on, because we can easily switch with no consequences (except the faction change fee).
Yeah, but they don’t use any form of Elf models, so I’ll never play them. 🙂
Exactly, that’s a selling point 🙂 Join us and appreciate exemplary Pandaren physique. You know you want to.
Selling point?!
Elves. Are. Always. Best.
I don’t play anything that isn’t slim with pointy ears.
So you got stuck playing Eldar in Dark Crusade? Tough break, brother.
Well. I played necrons in that, but that wasn’t me controlling a hero, that was an ARMY. Different!
It was a trick question – EVERYONE played Necrons in DC.
(Also, when I was… ‘experimenting’, literally the first minute after siding with Horde and getting flipped off by Garrosh, I felt exactly like Ji Firepaw.)
Fortunately, Garrosh wasn’t actually representative of the Horde. At one time he only cared about orcs and Tauren, then later he even bitched about the Tauren and said they weren’t part of his Horde. I notice Alliance players often forget that the only reason the siege of Orgrimmar was successful was because both the Alliance and the Horde (minus Garrosh’s orcs) worked together.
Oh, totally. And the game doesn’t dissuade them of that notion, either. Alliance players are all, “We totally took Orgrimmar, the Horde Capital! Big damn heroes right here!” And we’re all, like… “Uh, no you didn’t. We fucked you up on the way in, just like we did at Icecrown Citadel, and then WE took our god damn city back.”
Or be the panda that continues to reach max level each expansion, by not choosinga side staying on the island.
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/03/world-of-warcraftplayer-reaches-level-100-without-choosing-a-faction/
Tauren all the way. Saurfang for Warchief. #MAGA2019 (Make Azeroth Great Again)
I did the quests last night, saw the cutscene and then standing where you hand the quest into Sylvanas was a panda. And I thought “surely you have some moral objections to this.” Ji had his second thoughts when he first met Garrosh, and then when the Korkron army almost killed him during SoO, so surely this has got to be crossing a line for the pandas.
I’m surprised the whole pandaren race don’t just pull out of the horde after this.
(obviously they can’t do that from a game perspective, but as a story it would make sense!)
People have the same question about the Tauren. Baine hated that he got dragged into the massacre at Theramore, he can’t be happy about being involved in Teldrassil too.
Ah the Pandaren. The massive racist joke Blizzard got away with.
None of those words are true.
No, big fat lazy pandas is in no way playing on racist stetotypes of the chinese. Hang on I better meditate on this was my uncle Drunk wise hobo (also has the non stereotype long goatie).
Then kung fu panda will help save me from these evil spirts and protect mu families business all while traditional style Chinese music plays in the background.
They draw on cultural influences, the same way Tauren draw on native American cultures and trolls on Caribbean cultures. They’re not racist, the drinking monk thing is a nod to the Jackie Chan comedy film Drunken Master. Anthropomorphised martial artist pandas were done by Blizzard artist Samwise Didier years before Kung Fu Panda was ever a thing.
Mists of Pandaria was very well received in China too, it had the highest concurrent numbers on record from Chinese players. There were plenty of Reddit threads at the time asking Chinese players what they thought of the expansion too, if they thought it was offensive; every response I saw from Chinese players was they loved it, they didn’t find it offensive, it was a great fantasy take on Chinese mythology.
I respect that you feel offended by it, but I don’t consider it fair to call it racist. Given the history of Pandaren in Blizzard, it wasn’t a joke (their appearance in WC3 was an easter egg, but that doesn’t make Pandaren as a whole a joke). So I stand by my statement, none of the description you gave is true.
Who did she murder?
I’m not sure if it got retconned somewhat, but she was killing Blood elves in Dalaran during MoP after they abused their neutrality to use the city to transport a weapon of mass destrcution.
Against the wishes of the rest of the council, which is the important part. She didn’t make an official decision, she made a personal one expressly against the wishes of the others.
Well, I don’t remember if Jaina murdered civilians herself, specifically – she apparently teleported people to the Violet Hold. But she unleashed the Silver Covenant on the Sunreaver civilians: the shopkeeps and bar-staff who got killed in the purge of Dalaran. Her order was for all Sunreavers to be arrested, and any who resisted or fled were to be killed.
I said much the same in a different post. I think this would have been a perfect opportunity to create another faction or two. If you refuse Sylvanas orders you join “the outcasts”. It could have made some interesting gameplay to create a faction where players from both alliance and horde can join. Then you wind up with three factions at each others throats instead of just two.
Hell, they could have introduced a storyline where the pandaren all go “screw you guys, you’re nuts” and pull out of the horde and alliance. At which point the “outcasts” could have joined them to form the third faction.
I know it’s a hard ask in such a massive game, but it shits me to know end when our characters get railroaded in something that’s obviously a terrible idea (Garrosh and now Sylvanas).
Yeah, Highmountain Tauren & Nightborne Elves just joined the Horde then Sylvanas turns around and do this?
Both those races should be looking to drop their Horde allegiance pretty damn quick after that!
Wait a minute. A tree full of people, a mineral deposit, an invasion that turns into full on destruction of the tree? Did Blizzard just rip this plot straight from Avatar?
Don’t you mean fern gully?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it but I thought Fern Gully was more about Hexas being released from imprisonment within a tree and then using the power of industry to destroy the rainforest. This seems to be more about a war over resources that turns into genocide.
https://youtu.be/9Wj7ZA5PPGk
The issue is more just Blizzard not making up their mind. They kept up the attitude of “She’s morally gray” until the point where she flat out murders a bunch of people and destroys the tree. Most WoW characters of the old days are pretty much crap now, especially the Horde ones. Thrall went from leader to green jesus and now he’s too powerful for the Horde, Cairn got killed off in a comic with no fanfare, Vol’jin’s reign as Warchief got him stabbed and he died and did nothing and Sylvanas went from singing lovely songs lamenting the Highborne to being a straight up murder witch over time. Even characters like Jaina are getting a rough run, going from peaceful to angry “Horde Must Die” attitude.
I’ll be disappointed but not surprised if we end up with Garrosh 2.0, really I just play the game every once in a blue moon to see what’s new but I don’t care much for the story any more.
To be fair, she went though a fucking lot.
I thought Thrall was pretty ineffective now. Having played the Shammy artefact quests (up to about 108) he seems pretty much depowered.
That was another thing that never made any sense… He couldn’t use the Doomhammer anymore because the elements had abandoned him (after cheating in his duel with Garrosh), ignoring the fact that the Doomhammer was wielded just fine by a warrior with no elemental connection before him… It’s just a hammer, he should still be able to crush skulls with it :/
Uhhhhhh… only warriors have the pure physical strength to wield it. A shaman needs his mystical elemental connection in order to enhance their strength enough to wield it? Which is why melee shaman are ‘enhancement’ shaman?
Plot polyfilla!
WoW is terrible, the faction conflict should have been long since over if they wanted to tell a good story, there have been countless threats that they should have banded together for as they did in Warcraft 3.
The only – AND ONLY reason it’s pushed so hard narratively is to push faction transfer sales and new character boosts. Splitting the player-base (not only between faction but also server for HC content) so they can’t play with new found friends without spending either a lot of time in game or money is obviously a huge (yet overlooked) positive outcome for Blizzard.
I’m not even going to touch buying tokens and selling gear carry runs for real life cash. WoW is a dying Pay-to-win/RNG-skinner-box addiction inducing mess.
Were you wearing a tinfoil hat while writing that comment lol?
Did WoW touch you the wrong way?
If you think this is tinfoil as opposed to obvious reality you’ve got blinkers on.
If as you claim its reality,
Please provide documented internal records from Blizzard stating that the only reason they made BFA a faction conflict is to sell faction transfers. Because you totally wouldn’t be talking our your arse would you?
Ill wait.
WoW is terrible, the faction conflict should have been long since over if they wanted to tell a good story, there have been countless threats that they should have banded together for as they did in Warcraft 3.
The only – AND ONLY reason it’s pushed so hard narratively is to push faction transfer sales and new character boosts. Splitting the player-base (not only between faction but also server for HC content) so they can’t play with new found friends without spending either a lot of time in game or money is obviously a huge (yet overlooked) positive outcome for Blizzard.
I’m not even going to touch buying tokens and selling gear carry runs for real life cash. WoW is a dying Pay-to-win/RNG-skinner-box addiction inducing mess.
#StillYourWarchief KEK!
First interesting thing to happen to WoW’s story in years.
The problem is, Blizzard has been raising everyone to be such dull-as-dishwater noble intentioned world-saving “hero-commanders” for such a long time, that the players still left playing the game will be upset.
Very exciting!!
LOL, I for one could’t give a shit about lore, I am here purely for the PVP 😛
I don’t know what the Horde players are so upset about. It was a tree full of filthy Alliance as you all refer to us constantly. Live it up, breathe in the Night Elf ashes and get ready for us to kick your asses out of the Undercity.
FOR THE ALLIANCE!
This is the best response. I wish people would just enjoy the ride instead of always second guessing writing and story decisions.
YOU DON’T GET TO MAKE THAT DECISION, JUST TRY TO ENJOY YOUR GAME OR MOVE ON!
The death threat thing is nuts. I hated what they did to Luke in the last star wars but I don’t get to make that call. So I moved on. They made their decision, I made mine. I can still dig an x-wing. Nothing really changes.
It’s hard for them to just enjoy the ride when until now they’ve been doing so as a Tauren shaman or any other number of character combinations from the Horde who would fight to protect a world tree but now have no choice but to help burn it down along with the innocents inside.
Death threats have and always will be just stupid as hell but this isn’t really equivalent to the Star Wars mess.
To get to this point in the game you’d HAVE to have spent hundreds of hours playing a character and getting immersed in the world. People that deeply invested are not going to be exactly calm when a storyline tears them out of their immersion and Blizzard of all companies should have the experience and resources to see this kind of thing coming and avoid it.
Yeah but…. blizzard own the story and this is what they want to do.
It’s the worst part of loving something you don’t control. But it’s just the way it is. I know that’s not helpful, I’m sorry. But it is the truth. Does suck if you’re a ‘good’ horde player and you have no way to play towards that alignment, but Blizzard have the control.
I agree with both you, and @deoff.
Also… well. Siding with evil is not actually out of character. If anything, being a pacifist hippie is what’s out of actual character – a player imagined construct overlaid over the character’s in-game reality.
After all: it’s pretty clear that any player character who has completed most quests is basically a mercenary with a morality level best compared to a black hole, devoid of light – a character awarded rank and titles by factions as a way of quieting the NPCs who would otherwise have serious complaints about the level of agency and irresponsibility afforded to such a chaotic, literally immortal demigod.
Depending on your starting zone, day one may very well involve poisoning the food supplies of a rival tribe’s village. Civilians and all. Your journey through WoW will have you kidnapping children to keep as slaves and pets. Outright genocide of sentient creatures with language, emotion, and culture, because another species considers them, ‘vermin’. In fact, if the player character were ever questioned about their role in genocide, they’d be forced to reply, “Which one?”
If you complete the quest lines available in Wow, you will prove the existence of an immortal soul… and then use it as fuel for frivolous entertainment, feeding to demons, and all manner of other horrors. You will commit crimes and injustices such as grave-robbing, interfering with corpses, theft, vandalism, industrial espionage, assisted suicide, framing innocents, ‘enhanced interrogation’ (ie: straight-up torture for information), torture for funsies, animal cruelty, forgery, counterfeiting, misappropriation of military munitions for recreation, book-burning, raising the dead, killing people for the express purpose of raising them from the dead, hate crimes (by race, colour, creed, and species), impersonation of an official, mail tampering, illegal street racing, reckless endangerment, doing [every activity ever] while drunk, public nuisance violations, god knows how many acts involving inappropriate use of feces, war crimes of all kinds, use of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, biochemical weapons development, distribution and deployment, and endless counts of sacrilege or blasphemy ranging from defacing icons through to the actual, literal murder of Gods.
These crimes are all just dressing, drizzled on top of a lifetime average of roughly one murder per minute.
All because someone asked you to, and maybe promised a few gold coins for your trouble.
Burning the world tree’s intended replacement is big, sure… but realistically, you’ve personally been directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of thousands of times more innocents across the lifespan of the game.
Wow. So the people complaining are complaining because…?
Awesome write up btw, Really well said. I haven’t played a lot of WOW but i’ve spent a lot of time with many other RPGs and more often than not my ‘good’ character is actually an angel of death, snuffing out all they deem unworthy or even just ‘in the way’.
The difference is that’s a movie, this a game where your character represents you. So it feels bad when you’re forced into actions that don’t match decisions you want to make. We *should* be able to make some decisions.
I didn’t like that Garrosh railroaded the horde, but given that it was the first time let it go. Now that Sylvanas is doing exactly the same it’s like hang on, the entire horde went through this shit only a couple years ago and NONE of them learned from it? That just feels wrong.
As a horde player I actually wouldn’t mind getting kicked out of Undercity, change of scenery would be nice. I’ll be more interested to see if they continue the storyline from the books involving the sister of Arthas, I haven’t played or looked at content from the beta so not sure if they do or not
Because if we wanted to actually beat the Alliance, holding the tree would have been much better. Burning doesn’t give the horde any real advantage… As for Undercity…
Again that comes down to shitty tactics from Sylvanas. She could put time and effort into defending the city but instead they build bombs so when the fight starts going bad they just blow the city up – with most of the undead citizens still inside (because killing our own people is such a great idea….)For what it’s worth, I play both sides (though I’ve always preferred Horde after the orc storyline in WC3) so I couldn’t really care less if the conflict didn’t exist anymore (it barely even makes sense at this point anyway) but if Blizzard really want to keep pushing the war and faction pride, I just wish they’d actually do it well… This story at the moment just kills any motivation I have to fight on the Horde because our leader is a useless nutjob.
All I can say is we’re going to need an army of Scrub-o-bots and a metric shit ton of disinfectant!
And anyway, all those Undercity “citizens” …. they’re already dead. They just forgot.
Idc if she’s evil. The writing is just do bad. Garroshs rise and fall was 1 billion times better. This feels like it was handled by a twelve year old who isn’t even in their top English class.
Never been prouder to be ALLIANCE!!!
As someone who hasn’t played WOW since the Burning Crusade (which feels like a millennia ago) and doesn’t know as much of the lore as many here … maybe just let the story ride out before jumping to conclusions? Just a thought, though my allegiances have never changed. FOR THE HORDE!
Imagine being upset by the story in an MMO. Teldrassil was a dump, I’m glad its destroyed.
Yup. First room was a night elf. I levelled up till I could fly to elwyn. And only went back for mounts. I mean it wasn’t ideal watching my night elf brethren burn alive but far out… What a pathetic attempt to stop the horde
I think I ran from Darkshore to Booty Bay, then from STV to Elywnn on one of my early toons. What a trek.
And we know this.. how? I don’t believe for a second that the razing of Teldrassil was a kneejerk reaction to Sylvanas’ conversation with the Nelf. She went into the war of the thorns with the mindset of “Strike a wound to bleed the alliance dry”, ie Kill Malfurion Stormrage. She thinks she’s suceeded in this, and to add insult to injury she razed a symbol of the Night Elves. If she wanted pointless destruction she’d go after Hyjal, it’s closer to Orgrimmar after all.
Sylvanas’ narrative started to get steam in Wrath, and it’s been one blow after another for her. Failed to prevent a coup d’état in the Undercity, failed to defeat Arthas (the sole belief of her existence at the time was to get revenge), failed to secure any future for her people over multiple expansions and storylines, failed her family (War Crimes), failed to protect Vol’jin on the Broken Shore, and now she’s Warchief. My understanding is that she would feel impotent as a leader after so many failings, and now she’s been designated as Warchief by the whims of Gods she doesn’t understand or accept. Why should she believe any higher power exists when she was denied her rest, forced to kill her bretheren, and lived as a prisoner in her own body until finally breaking free of Arthas’ control?
And besides, when all is said and done if things were going to go absolutely sideways, like world shakingly and endingly sideways, the Bronze Dragonflight would do something. But all Siridormi (the time travel NPC in Darkshore) says is that “All things that live must also die. World tree’s are no different”.
It’s known from the entire questline that leads up to seeing the video. The whole invasion was about capturing Teldrassil so the Alliance lose their last major port in Kalimdor (Writers seem to have forgotten Exodar and it’s fellow spaceships exist) along with giving the Horde a city full of hostages. The only time it ever changes from that objective is during that video when an elf says some nasty things and Sylvanas burns down her home for it – throwing away the tactical advantage they were about to get…
Despite Blizzard’s repeated attempts to paint the Horde as noble savages they’ve always leaned more towards the dark side of things. The Forsaken and Sylvanas in particular. Keep in mind this isn’t the first city she’s destroyed. She nuked Gilneas with the plague back in Cataclysm.
My hope is that the game just acknowledges her as evil instead of trying to play it off as morally grey or having her actions be the result of Old God/Void Lord corruption. I don’t have enough faith in Blizzard writing for something like that though.
I’m going to miss Teldrassil. It was my first introduction to the Warcraft universe when I rolled a Night Elf back when I started WoW and was always one of my favourite zones.
I miss Auberdine.
You can never go back… until WoW Classic comes out, I guess. 🙂
What?! The Horde players were always revolting!
https://giphy.com/gifs/tim-kaine-98jU7NxuNSSZ2
Sylvanas – “Burn the tree!”
Me – “No, this is madness, this isn’t the horde I know!”
Sylvanas – “I’ll give you this shiny new mount”
Me – “Hand me that torch…”
I never found Sylvanas to be a great fit for the Horde. They sort of shoehorned the Forsaken into the Horde because they needed a playable undead faction. A lot of people argue that the Horde have always had a bad guy element but that bad guy element is a conflict between their past and future. The Forsaken don’t have anything to do with that they’re just jerks who fit the Horde slightly better than the Alliance.
Same with the Night Elves really, they went from complete xenophobes to best buddies with the Alliance overnight just so there were playable elves in the two-faction MMO.
tbh the whole BFA story doesn’t make much sense (currently). I mean we are literally going from “I will lead all of you and we will work together to fight this evil” to “fk you, I’m going to kill you (because our Warchief / King said so)”. If you apply logic to WoW’s story it tends to falter so it’s best to ride along, like it or not
Yeah, what the hell Blizzard…
“Morally grey” would have been having the Night Elves burn the tree down themselves to kill the invading Horde army.
Having Sylvanas do it on a whim/out of spite (and out of character) just smacks of lazy writing.
There is no way that Horde druids would be okay with the burning of Teldrassil. No. Way.
I miss Thrall…. He might have ended up being Green Jesus but at least he didn’t do evil shit for the sake of doing evil shit. From the looks of the short plus the opening of Legion, Sylvanas is just Garrosh 2.0… why? She opened berated Garrosh for what he did during the events of Warlords only to end up doing the same thing herself. “Because…” seems to be the reason.
The Horde are just having a shit run on leaders since Thrall left.
Just remember guys, ‘da spirits’ told Vol’jin it was the best thing to put Sylvanas in charge… I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he was literally dying and probably out of his mind at the time of making that decision.
On another note, most of the comments I’ve seen in-game on Alliance side have been along the lines of, “Nobody liked Darnassus anyway.” so they’re clearly super broken up about it.
I didn’t mind Darnassus but I’m more upset about the blowback, I loved Undercity :'(
Darn was just too far out of the way. In Vanilla it didn’t have an AH (originally) so people either went to IF or SW depending on need/want. If it had been more accessible (say a portal to and from Darn to SW / IF near the main hubs (like the bank/AH) then it would probably have seen more traffic. It wouldn’t surprise me if Blizzard decided to torch both Darn/UC just because they know that 2% of players would spend time there if that. Not sure how the UC is in terms of population, but everytime I’d invade there or make a horde alt, it was an annoying maze to navigate.
‘da spirits’…. Vol’jin was high on Pandarin herbs.
Also this was released today. Brilliant move by blizzard to hold onto this for a while. BRILLIANT