Just like in Destiny 2, I think it is a failure if the lore and information about major characters is absent in the game, even in a kind of wiki form found on bookshelves, or more specifically a tl;dr version. ESPECIALLY in such a big and fleshed out game as the Warcraft series. If you have to go and google something and take you out of the game then I feel that is not right. We got lore and info on dungeon and raid bosses in the dungeon journal but nothing on major characters? WHY? No wonder why people are confused.
Well toss chronicle out the window toss all the lore out the window cause none of it has made sense since Cataclysm. Now to go back to almost rewrite Wotlk ugh . . . why?
People can trash Perc if they want, but this was a great lore article and shes gotten everything right and presented it objectively. Sylvanas fanboys and fangirls are just flipping tables about their precious waifu actually being evil, blindly ignoring everything she has done in the past.
I'm not sure where all the hate is coming from. I'm not a fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but I look up the lore that interests me and kinda see where they might be going. I don't see retcons anywhere so much as just obvious handling of her character to set her up for "something". What that is can only be conjectured at this point. It does feel obvious, much like how they handled Garrosh in pandaland, but that doesn't mean they'll do the same thing with her. I feel a classic misdirection coming on, and while its not very apparent where things are headed, they won't "Kerrigan" her either. Thats too obvious and no fun at all. They are building up something and smiling behind their microphones at the thought of whats to come, even if they can't say anything. That doesn't spell out anything so obvious as a repeat of whats been done before. I'm happy to see these kinds of posts, but as with any opinion column, there's more than a few folks that will reply with more salt than sense. Keep up the good work.
For me WG was about her killing the Lich King.That said - i think the thing a lot of people are missing is when Sylvanas jumped from Icecrown and killed herself she ended up in the void!When you die in WoW world you go to the shadow lands or skyhold not the void? why did she go there?Now lets take Xal'atath - This was a vessel that imprisoned an old god entity. *spoliers*We know in 8.1 that the old god in the dagger gets released. Leaving it empty. Is it not that Sylanas wants to imprison the last remaining old god to escape her eternity in the void?Is this why the void goes crazy at Alleria when shes meets Sylvanas? They sense that she is coming for them to escape her future........
@perculia, there is another quote from the Chronicles Volume 3 that you have missed.Remember the cool Wrathgate cinematic, it is even in the article? All a lie, Lich King doesn't fight Saurfang Junior, Dranosh dies to the Blight, your memory betraAaAayYyys yOoUu. * stops channelling Sindragosa * Read on below:
Mightylorddk comment in 5, 4, 3...Naw, but honestly, it makes sense when you think about it. Prior to Cataclysm, Sylvanas's singular goal was killing Arthas, and the Forsaken were a means to that end. The Wrathgate was a time when Arthas was going to be drawn out into the open - something that could rarely be prepared for, as he usually just popped in unexpectedly and then returned to Icecrown after a villainous monologue. We know from the Battle for Lordaeron that Sylvanas cares more about achieving a goal rather than collateral damage or friendly fire; the Blighting of Horde troops at Angrathar and Lordaeron were similar.Once Arthas was dead, Sylvanas was planning to off herself, with little concern for the Forsaken in an Azeroth without a Banshee Queen. It would have mattered little to her if the Horde turned against them, as long as Arthas was gone. However, in case Arthas didn't die, she likely relied on Putress being the scapegoat for the action. This is likely why Sylvanas herself chose not to stand on the ridge and triumphant swagger about the "hour of the Forsaken."What Sylvanas likely didn't bank on was Varimathras and Putress staging a coup. While this caused her to lose face, it actually would ultimately work out well in her favor. It saved her the trouble of having to pin the blame on Putress, as he appeared to do so himself. All she got was some upped security in the Undercity, which ultimately proved ineffective considering she went on to bring Scourge assets under Forsaken control - and in time, become Warchief.This scenario is not an absolute, but given Afrasiabi's comment and Chronicle's purposeful casting of doubt, it's certainly possible.
I think... a lot of people here don't understand how writing works. World of Warcraft is 14 years old. That enough time for a baby to not only become a teenager, but to gain a lot of the personality traits that they'll carry into adulthood. That's a long time!And writing... well, for a book, you have ideas. you plot things out. You plan ahead. But you can only plan so far ahead. When you're scribbling down plot ideas for book one, it's impossible for most of us to look ahead to book 10. We might have ~something~ in mind, like, say, "struggles with the opposition of the secret counsel discovered in book 9, in preparation to what's gonna happen in book 11" but when we're writing book 1... that's SO far away. Maybe the secret Counsel actually is revealed in book 5! Or maybe that whole storyline is scrapped because it's dumb. Or maybe it's changed dramatically and the main character is PART of the counsel! ooo. You can't plan too far ahead. We change, as authors. Our audience changes. The world of storytelling changes. Our stories have to change too.Nathanos Blightcaller started out as a random NPC in a random village in a plague-filled zone. He handed out a few quests, he was also teh subject of other quests. He had a backstory, then, certainly. Not much of one, but a little bit. A few words described to give the world a little more dimension. Since he was the subject of a kill quest, once COULD argue that he shouldn't exist at all anymore, except as a footnote.And yet: After the cataclysm, he moved to the Undercity where, near as I can tell,he didn't have much point except grumbling at new players up until Legion, where he suddenly became more relevant. With a single bit of fiction, His back story is fleshed out, Sylvanas gains more depth, history is rolled out before us. Motivations bloom, and the shadows gain shape and form.When they made Vanilla, they didn't have some grand scheme that they'd put this NPC here, and in 3 expansions, move him THERE, and then a bit later make him a major player in the politics of the horde, around the time that Sylvanas is made warchief. They just made and NPC. And when they decided that they needed another character to step to the front, Nathanos was chosen. And why not? He fit the part.That's how writing works sometimes. Sometimes you know that Grimface McAngry is your secret bad guy from the start. And sometimes you realize that the true villain is someone else entirely. Sometimes your story 'tells you' that you're wrong, and you realize that the plot needs to change from what you first envisioned. Writing is hard, haha. But it's a lot of fun! Sometimes you have everything laid out perfectly, and when you actually write the story, you realize that one character is head over heels in love with another character and you just... never realized it. But it makes perfect sense, and it makes 3 of your 4 major storylines flow so much better--but the 4th one needs to be totally reworked, and that's when you find out that Grimface is actually being manipulated by someone else and... well, writing is fun :)To wrap this back around: When they wrote Wrathgate, they probably left the question of Sylvanas' involvement open on purpose. (This is another fun thing about writing. You don't have to say everything explicitly. You can leave things unsaid and fill it in later, and this isn't bad writing. It's not bad to leave details out until the right time) ... they almost certainly knew that Cata would come after Wrath. They probably knew Bolvar's final fate even as the first players were experiencing Wrathgate. (Or perhaps they didn't! Maybe Deathbringer Saurfang could have been Deathbringer Bolvar! Maybe they thought about letting an orc sit on the frozen throne! Oooh, or maybe--with all the lore and backstory we know now--Imagine Varok Saurfang taking on the mantle of the Lich king for the good of everyone. Wow. That would have been something to see-- but that's me speaking with all of Saurfang's characterizations since Wrath under my belt too.)But Sylvanas' involvement was more than likely left open on purpose. I remember questing in the undead areas after Cata's release, watching corpses being raised. I said then, that she was going to be the thing we were going to have to worry about next. That she was going to be our enemy. I was about 8 years early, but I was right. Because they left it open.It's not retconning, or character assassination or anything. Sylvanas has always been a very complex character. her involvement in wrathgate might simply have been looking the other way to let others do something, so that she could claim innocence. There are a dozen ways I could say that she allowed wrathgate to happen, and not all of them involve her personally plotting to destroy everyone there. The statement of "Do nothing, for now" is an order. the statement of "Let them try" is an order.I am excited to see what happens in the near future. I've always enjoyed Sylvanas as a character. But I trust blizzard to tell a good story with her. She has a lot of fans and I trust that they're gonna do their best to tell a good story with her. Maybe it's not the story they had in mind at the end of Wrath--but that's okay. That's how writing works
That sounds incredibly dumb! Why put her as a Warchief then?
Who else would have started a War with the Alliance? Vol'jin was put in place by them, Baine is best buddies with their leader and I don't see Saurfang starting a War with his "Meh Honor" mentality
I think yes Sylvanas surely oredered to use the blight if needed at the wrathgate but still itsnot her order to let varimathras take undercity but still the use of blight is her order in the way you can say she ordered to use it and its putress who wrong with the order she gave him
The reason why is because it ISN'T just about Sylvanas. The whole story was based around her getting ousted by a conspiracy by Varimathras and the Forsaken on his side. Just brushing off our criticism by saying Sylvanas has always used the blight therefor she must have been vaguely behind the plot is ridiculous.