Contrary to what others think, I don't believe Sylvanas will become a raid boss. Not even Blizzard is ignorant enough to redo Garrosh's story. I can't see Thrall becoming Warchief again, as there's too much changes in his character for that to happen. I can't see others becoming the Warchief either, as they "have" to keep the faction conflict alive somehow. Why else would they kill off Vol'Jin?

So how can Blizzard portray Sylvanas in a way that won't end in a rebellion? Turn her into someone the Horde needs. I don't expect the Horde to become as ruthless as she is, and she may need to be reigned in somewhat, but being honorable is a direction I can't see the faction go anymore.

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Make her please the general Horde populace, while still ignoring inner tensions between other leaders.

They can't spark a rebellion if the people don't follow through.

I believe Orcs would be dying to raid Stormwind with the backing reason of rescuing Saurfang, for instance.

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Sylvanas should become a caretaker of the dead à là Helya, except working for Odyn.

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Daelin was right.

When I read a statement like this one, I don't think you're all that confident in your own prediction, and who can blame you? Blizzard, even during the good years, loves to rehash old stories, and we've seen foreshadowing from Varimathras, from Saurfang dialogue, and from her presentation and voiced lines that the raid boss ending is very much possible. I don't think this is a good thing for the story, mind you, but most of my predictions usually are of that sort of cynical nature.

Sylvanas becoming Warchief was a red flag for me back when it was announced. Part of what made that character work was that she had to be pragmatic in her moves and was never in complete control of the situation. She could play the role of the villain, or of the uncompromising champion of her people. When a Warchief does that, specifically the first part, you do get broad segments of the Horde playerbase expressing frustrations because this isn't what they signed up for. I've been seeing a lot of that quite recently.

I'd even call that worse than Garrosh. Garrosh could at least be accused of wanting what was best for the Horde, but with Sylvanas, it's difficult, if not impossible, to dismiss the claim that she's doing all of this for her own ends between wanting to stay out of WoW hell, to what Varimathras had said, to possible Old God corruption. Again, all of that works if she's a minor faction leader, but as Nu Garrosh, she's sucked in all of the Horde to travel on her character arc, and by extension the Alliance as well. Could this have been avoided? Possibly, but Teldrassil screws that up. Remove Teldrassil and you have a hyper paranoid Alliance starting a war with the Horde, with Sylvanas striking back as an inflamed defender. (Hey look! A conflict where both sides have understandable reasons to fight!) Instead, Sylvanas crosses a kind of moral Rubicon with Teldrassil, resulting in the whole Saurfang debacle, the Alliance having a pasty-white reason to invade Lordaeron, and the Horde once again being seen as the acting aggressors for the Alliance to merely react to.

Oh well, can't change that now. Iacta alea est and all that - but what is to be done about it?

Well, we have this character around whom the entire story now revolves, and who is probably if not evil, engaging in this war for her own personal reasons - not for the Horde's. Any one of those things I would regard as bad, but both at the same time? I don't see that situation as being sustainable. She has become a sort of lore cancer, and even a cursory glance at any part of the official forums can confirm this. Mentioning Sylvanas at any point in a thread is a great way to transmogrify a discussion on any topic into a frothing debate between the Alliance and the Horde partisans, where before you could at least keep it contained to people like Fojar and Forsaken boosters. Now it's so intense you can't escape it. Her time as an interesting support character has passed - she must be done away with. But how?

My answer: Sylvanas should be killed by a stingray.

....

Hear me out.

If you just hand the Alliance the kill, the Horde will (rightly) feel like garbage, and this will be egged on by chuckleheads on the other side acting as though their favorite team just won the Super Bowl while ignoring that, by necessity, the game was rigged and the outcome was predetermined. Another Siege of Orgrimmar would be less awful, but awful nonetheless. The Alliance would feel cheated, the Horde would still feel like dirt, and we would remember it as a complete rehash.

A stingray solves all of those problems. It's random, it's sudden, it's meaningless, and no one faction can claim pride over it. It just happened.... and now the Horde has to figure out what it should do next now that this immense war has just kicked off and they're stuck holding the bag.

True, this will ignite widespread rage among the fanbase, at least for a little while. Horde players will claim Alliance bias because they're losing another character. Then Alliance players will claim horde bias because a stingray stole their kill. This will be followed by volumes of old god theories that the stingray was a secret agent of N'zoth who was trying to kill Sylvanas to usher in his glorious takeover... or that Genn or Jaina is secretly a stingray. You'll get widespread commentary on why Stingrays should be an Allied Race, and even more volumes on stingray customization and outfits, and viability of Stingray druids. This will be followed by "Stingray totally confirmed" and will slip into accusations of Horde bias because Stingrays are stupid in comparison to the totally-going-to-happen Shark allied race that the Horde "must" get as compensation - because a shark killed Anduin off in a throwaway parity move - did I mention that? And this will go on... and on... and on...

.... and then it will peter out. Once it has, there will be harmony in the lore once again. Azeroth will no longer revolve around Sylvanas Windrunner, but rather, around the innumerable, complex, and interweaving stories of the people that live there.

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The problem with Blizz is how "in-the-present" their writing is, so we can't really use the past of a character to predict their future. Hell, i'm 90% sure that Legion's Titans were meant to be watcher whose inner titan spirit awoke at some point (explaining Freya being missing)

Going back to the topic, we as omniscient-ish viewers know that Sylvanas is a self serving asshole, but in-universe while the Horde leadership may have personal reasons to dislike her, she hasn't really done anything to make the general population feel the same, other than being guilty by proxy of the Wrathgate.

We have yet to see what BfA does to her story

Where are the Eyes of Hellscream when you need them?

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Upon you.

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So you wish to join the unofficial SoL Discord? Say no more!

Ah, there they are!

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She's being all sorts of secretive with Gallywix. If I was part of the Horde leadership, I'd be VERY wary of this. But yeah, you're right, I suppose that she hasn't publicly done anything terrible.

A leader of a Mary Sue race who can never get any real comeuppance suiting their atrocities.

You clearly read only the thread title and didn't even bother to read Noitora's post.

What is this, MMOC?

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Completely disagree. With the possible exception of Maiev, these characters do have relatively consistent motivations and characterizations - at least within the post-wrath era. With Sylvanas, that manifests and is built on with her voiced lines and her cinematic appearances so far.

I see five claims that I will address in sequence.

1. I agree with the first claim that she is a leader.

2. On the second claim that she leads [the Forsaken]: that doesn't capture the totality of her newfound role or the problems that go with it. She leads the Horde and therefore WoW's entire story unless and until she is demoted, removed, or displaced.

3. I must ask where you find basis in the claim that the Forsaken are a "Mary Sue race".

4. On a similar note to 3, I must ask where the Forsaken don't get their comeuppance. They are driven back from Gilneas in Cata, Genn prevents Sylvanas from realizing her goal in Stormheim, and the Alliance specifically takes the Undercity as a response to the throwaway parity move. If these do not qualify as "comeuppance", I have to ask what would, and how that would fit into a game model that requires creating a good experience for the major roles a player can choose.

5. I am in agreement that the Forsaken commit atrocities.

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Someone go and light up the Fojar-signal.

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She'll be Sarah Kerrigan 2.0.

You mean the race of playable zombies that are easily as villainous as the Scourge or Legion but the setting keeps twisting itself so that they keep more or less getting away with their antics so they can continue to be a playable race that's a significant force in the world?

When Tirion doesn't go around smiting Forsaken when he and his posse are well within striking distance.

Pyyrhic victory. Last time I checked Gilneas was a garbage dump when the Forsaken were done with it.

She ends that same expansion as the Warchief. At worst it's win some lose some.

You know it won't last.

If you're asking me what to do here that doesn't include the Forsaken getting the Axis Power treatment (purged with fire and reformed), then I'd say the Forsaken are tainted as a race. And that we need to go back to the Frozen Throne and re-characterize them to be less of a playable Scourge and more of a society of lost souls who are trying to rebuild and relearn what they lost from WC3's carnage (which should include reconnecting with Humanity, if only cautiously).

I hope not, but what I hope for and what probably will happen are two different things. Again, I humbly propose a stingray as an answer to that.

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How does this make them Mary Sues?

I missed the part where despite victory in battle, the Gilneans lose so many that it costs them the war. "Pyyhic victory" is a clearly defined thing, and we really need to get out of the habit of calling anything short of a complete victory "Pyyhric".

Ok, but she is still thwarted. That's my point. They don't just get everything they want, they don't just win all of the time, and the Alliance does get victories over them.

No I don't.

I'm not sure if we need to go all the way back to Frozen Throne, but I like the end product of that.

Edit: One word of caution I'd throw at the end of that though: the Forsaken have always had a shade of darkness, scheming, and ruthlessness about them that players have enjoyed. You can't just take that away, so whatever solution you have must make substantial provision for them. Otherwise? They will rightly claim that their favorite race has been neutered - and as someone who knows how that feels, it is something I have to bring up as an outcome to avoid.

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This reminds me, I'm really surprised we're not getting an NPC race of shark people in BfA; they'd be perfect as the gnolls/quillboars/kobolds "vermin race" of Kul Tiras. Coastal scavengers who sink ships and raid harbors for chum and stuff.

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I am now a writer for Blizzplanet!

Yeah... that's not what he asked

She's probably a little bit of both. Though I don't have too much faith in Blizzard to not regurgitate the same stories. Aside from vanilla and MoP, they have been just coasting on old stories.
lol nice.

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http://www.formspring.me/TerrorhoofMayo

You just did the same tbh

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I think Sylvanas will keep increasing the Horde aggression, until she's hoisted by her own petard. I don't expect her to be a raid boss like Garrosh, but I do expect her to die, most probably in some cinematic like Varian/Vol'jin.

I don't know how to make that satisfying. Maybe she dies in an ambiguous enough way that the Horde perceives her death as a sacrifice (even thought it isn't), and thus it causes the Horde to crave Alliance blood even more, while the Alliance gets to call dibs on the kill but is not entirely responsible for it.

It would happen before the end of the war. Things get even worse after that.

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- Sorry for any typos; english's not my primary language.

- A better signature coming soon(ish).

Thrall definitely can become Warchief again, they could easily have Sylvanas assassinate his family and try to pin it on the Alliance or to stop him from suing for peace but her Deathstalkers botch it, and then have him start a rebellion over it, and reset the Horde. And, yes, Blizzard is absolutely that ignorant to redo Garrosh's story, especially if they want to give Alliance players more fistpump moments. They even had her commit an atrocity, just like Garrosh, to escalate a war that was already going on, combined with a lot of dislike for her among the Horde leadership.

They also don't "have" to keep the faction war going. It should end, permanently, in this expansion. Otherwise there is no point to this expansion if the entire point is to "settle" it.

If she isn't honorable, she WILL face a rebellion eventually. If the Horde isn't "honorable" anymore, than the faction has no purpose to exist. The only option left, is to kill her off. They can't reform her (unlike Illidan, she's loathed by players on both factions for being an evil and manipulative sociopath), and she has been building up to a great fall ever since the death of Arthas. It's like what happened to Garrosh, but in very slow motion.

In short: they can't portray her in a way that won't end in a rebellion. We're talking about the evil fruitloop who thought that a world-ending demon invasion was a perfect time to go skipping off to try to enslave some Val'kyr in some hare-brained evil scheme. If she can pull something that retarded, and commit an atrocity like the burning of Teldrassil, there is absolutely no way she's surviving this expansion or can have her portrayed positively without severely raping suspension of disbelief.

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I'm not at all sure this is true. I think the Illidan comparison is apt.

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I read the whole thread, otherwise I wouldn't have seen your post.

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http://www.formspring.me/TerrorhoofMayo

Illidan was largely beloved by a good chunk of the fanbase. Sylvanas, on the other hand, has never fit the Horde. She may be an outcast, but her ideology has never fit with the Horde's beliefs. That, and the unmistakable failure of all of her plots for immortality and the decline of the Val'kyr, and all of the hints they've been dropping about her inevitable fate.

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Sylvanas is largely beloved by a good chunk of the fanbase.

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