I was going to pen a few words about the recent "Sylvanas burns down the world tree" drama, but I kept putting it off, public opinion kept meandering, and by the time I finally found the energy to sit down and put my thoughts into writing I didn't really care enough anymore. After all, I'm only an outsider looking in these days.
I did go back through my archives though and found this post from seven years ago, in which I made the case for Cataclysm's (then) new quests showing that Sylvanas and the Forsaken were actually becoming slightly less evil and more relatable. I had forgotten about most of that. (Though it also made me chuckle to be reminded of just how long people have been suspecting Sylvanas of getting ready to become the new Lich Queen any day now.)
Taking that into consideration, it seems even sadder though that her character appears to have regressed to the point of simply being all about "death to the living", even if any of the expansions or books that have been released in the meantime might provide an explanation for it. Do they, though?
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Day Twenty-One - Nice
6 hours ago
I suspect her character regressed because the basic premise that Blizzard holds onto with WoW is that it is always Orcs vs. Humans at heart, and you can't have that without a real war. It seems to me that Blizz has forgotten that Vanilla, BC, and 1/2 of Wrath were in the premise of a cold war. With the absence of an external Big Bad, the story reverted to having one of the faction leaders be the Big Bad instead.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as usual, it's the Horde faction leader that gets the nod.
I look at it as a scenario where you can't continue to have a faction frequently described as misunderstood and nice when you get to know them while at the same time having that exact same faction provide all of the Big Bad roles in absence of an external Big Bad.
At least SWTOR and Wildstar are honest about having one side being the definitive side of the stereotypical "Bad Guys." I'm getting a bit tired of Blizzard shaping the character's actions and motivations to suit the needs of keeping the central conflict front and center.
That doesn't mean that there can't be some real drama, but this whole thing sure feels a lot like "haven't we been here before?" with Cataclysm and Mists. Given that those are two of the least well received expacs by the playerbase, this reversion back to a hot war doesn't give me a good feeling for this new expac.