Blizzard Tried To Salvage Sylvanas...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2024
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This Sylvanas book is basically Christie Golden doing what the game itself CAN'T - telling Sylvanas's complete story. It's a great book, but man...
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0:00 Intro
2:49 Little Lion, Little Sun - Family!
6:23 An Unjust World
9:18 If Not Slaves...
11:45 Wrath
14:34 Madness On A Cosmic Scale
16:58 Ideological Blindness
19:20 It Was There All Along
20:57 Can't Turn Back
22:32 The Edge Of Madness
24:51 Teldrassil
28:42 Hope
33:51 Golden - เกม
Sponsored by Audible! Read World of Warcraft: Sylvanas FREE today with our Audible trial: www.audibletrial.com/bellular
Is this USA only cause i live in europe and the link i get is not atleast obviously getting that free book
How can I get it for free? Are you seriously ? I am trying, I do not know.. it doesn't work :( HELP please.
for godsakes turn on the close captons for your deaf and Hard of Hearing community pisses me off when people like u don't care about the Deaf or Hard of Hearing Community.
i just finished the audiobook minutes ago. only reason im even here for this video.
you don't even need to bellular link to do this, It's been a option to do it without clicking on anybody's link and all you need to do is go to their site and just sign up its legit no point in clicking his link, it's just giving him free money when you can do it the exact same way if you didn't click it.
Its a shame they didn't tell this story in the actual game. They managed to ruin her character in a span of two expansions when her story is tragic and makes complete sense when we have the full picture.
Not only that, they could have gone all the way with the Shadowlands are actually unfair and evil and it would have been a great expansion.
I don't know how they could tell all of this in game. Its bad if they don't do it, but if they do it like FFXIV which is do a quest, watch a 3 minute cut-scene, do a quest, cut-scene, it also sucks. Maybe context cinematics you can watch outside of playing.
@@keithb6344 If you dont want the story you could Skip it.
More Story in WoW would be great even If you watch a 4Hour Movie in one Expansion
Agreed. Throughout the entire time as I was reading/listening to this book, I kept saying "WHY IS THIS SYLVANAS NOT IN GAME??!"
"Poor Sylvanas ... killed thousands and probably millions just because she was sad." ... Hey Arthas come here and hold my beer .. also Arthas you will be forgotten and discarded away .. but come on man come hold this beer.
Arthas was a lovable anti-hero whos tragedy we wanted to see resolved in Shadowlands. He didn't deserve the ending he was given by the end of Shadowlands. Honestly I wanted him to return back to Azeroth, have closure with Jaina, and come to terms with Uther ...
But no .. "poor Sylvanas ..."
"No one escapes the Maw... but if you want to take a trip to do a few chores for me, no biggie." -the Jailer
"Sylvanas has an older sister, Alleria, who was pegged..."
go on...
"Christie Golden is basically dead lifting the lore with this book"
I say this with all respect, she shouldn't have had to.
Agreed, especially since she is getting caught in the crossfire of certain "fans" frothing at the mouth while they scream and shout at Danuser, and just have to toss her in as well because they can't actually be bothered to read the book and just want to keep their hate boner raging for all things Warcraft. (I'm legitimately disappointed with Shadowlands and the lore they presented too, and even more so after the book because the book showed there could have been some good stuff there all along, but I'm not gonna throw hate at the book itself.)
@@acronen Agreed. Golden wrote Arthas, Lord of the Clans, War Crimes, and the Shattering. She is a fucking fantastic author. I hate reading, but will 100% read a book she wrote. It's a shame she has to turn shit into gold and people still blame her for things that Danuser fucked up.
@@TheMonk3613 Criticism of Golden's books are perfectly valid. Now I try not to blame Golden herself because she is a competent enough writer and definitely has a passion and respect to the world I can appreciate, but there are moments that are frustrating.
Arthas and Rise of the Horde are two in particular that always bother me, since there are so many 'and then this happened' moments where she seems to fast forward to get to the next scene. Rise of the Horde summarizes the entire orc history in a single generation. Warlocks just show up and replace shamen, and everyone who's not a Frostwolf just seems to jump on board with it. Arthas makes the mistake of summarizing all of WC3 from Arthas' perspective... which is of course going to run into problems since that story is a combination of several stories and events happening simultaneously. The Scourge working for the Legion is a very important aspect of their story, but the book kind of glosses over it because its not personally important to Arthas himself (though it could've been).
I suppose where Golden fails is instead of leaving certain transitions open ended, like say, a few months or years pass by as other events are going on, she sloppily seems to connect events within hours or days which creates this horribly inconsistent time crunch when her books tackle major events. The Third War is more interesting when it lasted years rather than months, same with the rise of the Horde, which originally took generations but the book makes it seem like it happened in maybe a decade.
How much of this is Golden and how much is Blizzard giving her bad information and pointers will never be clear. Where I will give Golden credit is in characters. The best moments in any of her books is when the characters are being themselves. She also doesn't shy away from tragedy, which is a good thing too. I don't hate her, I'm just annoyed when the little details and inconsistencies stack up over time and create the clusterfuck of a lore we got today. For better or worse, Golden IS one of the writers involved in that.
WoW requiring you to read books to understand the narrative and the characters' motivations has vastly lowered the enjoyment of a lot of its content over the past years. The more "behind the scenes" we were denied as players, the more cartoonish characters appeared in the actual game and the more distrust grew towards the writers.
Even with this book, written long after all the events, feels more like someone trying their best to do damage control than to try and make people understand a character's motivation. A classical case of "too little, too late".
Also, the Arbiter splitting families apart in the afterlife - yeah, when the original guy in charge of judging people decides to abuse his position and betray his allies (somehow?), and is replaced with a construct that does not understand the concept of family bonds and similar, kind of makes you blame the Jailer even more for this, no? So in a way, that's a self-own on him (and Blizzard's writing).
Its always been like that though, i really dont get how this has only been a narrative in recent years.
As someone who doesn't play wow, from the outside this sounds like the equivalent to receiving the script to a muted movie post credits. Sure it makes since now but the emotional connection and weight that it should have had has missed the target. Now going forward, you have bad soil and trying to grow a new story from this will leave a weird taste in your mouth cause the roots are funky.
that's a nice way of describing it
so then what??? start fresh with classic and let the story do somthing new?
@@soulsreaper7145 imo, full reset / scorched earth isn't that great of a solution, it can work but comes with its own risks. And I'm no writer nor do I know enough about wow to give suggestions.
Whichever path they choose for the story won't be easy
It's pretty sad they've made the game go so downhill now that thousands of people who don't even play the game care enough to give such accurate opinions.
Thing about these reveals though is it causes me to ask the frustrating question: why couldn’t we get even just a portion of this in-game?
Because they thought of it after they made a mess of her in the game
because u very very very very very scary DARKKNIGHTOFANIME
"Poor Sylvanas ... killed thousands and probably millions just because she was sad." ... Hey Arthas come here and hold my beer .. also Arthas you will be forgotten and discarded away .. but come on man come hold this beer.
Arthas was a lovable anti-hero whos tragedy we wanted to see resolved in Shadowlands. He didn't deserve the ending he was given by the end of Shadowlands. Honestly I wanted him to return back to Azeroth, have closure with Jaina, and come to terms with Uther ...
But no .. "poor Sylvanas ..."
It's a retcon to fix glaring issues.
*inhale hopium* well we did get a portion but I get it. Sylvanas was always a well-acted character with some great lines. This writing staff has been through a lot though. You don't just lose your showrunner and keep things rolling. Most stories would fall apart entirely there or at least descend for a while before rising back up. The fact that they managed to make this into anything good should be a positive sign for the future of their writing. I still contend that some of the story moments were good though. "This world is a prison" was a really good villain line as well as the way she says "little lion" so creepily to Anduin. it's a shame those little things that would have elevated the story felt too lacking in foundation to mean anything to anyone though. but like I said, the writing staff was going through a lot. we're lucky this book shows any positive direction on the lore and I'm hopeful this will lead to a better wow *exhale hopium*
Wait.. the jailer tells her Arthas was his plan, meaning the source of her pain and she went along and joined him anyway knowing that? even with the soul cut thing finding it still hard to go with her reasoning.
Yeah that bit was a bit lolcow
She even joined with kelthuzad the guy who denied her "vengeance for her people".
Yeah, they still put Arthas as a still big bad, even though he was mind controlled, unlike Sylvanas, whom went willingly. The writers say, "Sylvanas only did those thing because she was sad." It was so stupid.
Yes, because the jailor convinced her that Aarthas was just a part of the plan too that would lead to a brighter future for everyone. So Sylvanas basically replaced him.
From the what it seems to have been told in the book, although Arthas did a lot to make her suffer, he was not the TRUE source of the problem. The universe is still unjust. Same as when she lost her brother, that she thought "Well, I guess I'm glad you died before, or the one to kill you would have been me", Arthas wouldn't have done all those atrocities if the universe had been RIGHT from the start. Basically the idea of "every bit of suffering everyone suffered, is justified in the goal of remaking the universe the way it SHOULD be". Because then, no one else would experience suffering anymore.
The book was great up until the Jailor parts. It was basically just him convincing Sylvanas that he would be a better arbiter because the current arbiter is emotionless, and she views a few random Shadowlands zones and agrees.
She didn't even go see where her brother or parents ended up, which could have made her falling for his plans actually believable imo - but since they didn't even do that it just makes Sylvanas seem exceedingly gullible and arrogant to think she could be partners with this Titan+ level entity and help him re-write the cosmos.
She does explain why she doesn't go to see her brother or parents in the book. They are the most important aspect of her existence and she never fully trusts the Jailer and knows he would likely use them to control her directly if he knew how much they meant to her.
@@aaronhodgson4959 I never said she didnt try to explain it, I'm saying if she decided to actually do it and she didnt like where they ended up, then her being convinced by the Jailor would have been a much more compelling sell story-wise, as opposed to her trying to put herself in the shoes of random beings (like the lava centipede thing) and people she had only fleeting connections with (like kael) and thinking she knew what would be best for them.
I just read the book and everything after arthas I feel has to be viewed with the fact that her soul was split. She couldnt even conceive of love or happiness unlike other forsaken even nathanos. I believe the jailer knew this and knew he could basically manipulate her because of it.
"What can Zovaal give you for such a high cost?" "Everything." // "And what, Gul'Dan, must we give in return?" "Everything." Nice little parallel there. Maybe that's really the overall theme of the Warcraft universe. You can make pacts with Cosmic forces for incredible power, but at the cost of everything that you are. So be careful what you wish for.
Also, imagine a fire eel ending up in Revendreth. "Wth dude? What is this place?" "Oh, you got sent here for eating the wrong eggs. You didn't need those to survive and it was an immoral decision because you are a fire eel and understand morality, probably."
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
LOVE the little in-game "cutscenes" you threw together :)
Yall asking why this wasn't in the game? Because the story didn't exist until now. It's likely the dev team did not have a cohesive narrative flushed out when making this expansion. At best, it's been catch up.
With so many retcons, do you think that they could put forward a story?
Also agree with you on that the story did not exist.
They should have put it in game. They should let actual writers like Golden create the plots for the game since it's painfully clear that the writers at Blizzard don't know how to make cohesive plot lines and characters that make sense.
Come patch 10.2 Sylvanas will have saved all the souls in the maw, Merged with Galacron and rises from the Shadowlands as a Proto-dragon far stronger than any dragon ever before to save everyone.
i hope so
Don't give them ideas pls
This book also made Nathanos Marris/Blightcaller a rather excellent character. He isn’t some simp, like Lorthermar (who was obviously jealous about Nathanos), but instead is a rather charming gruff ranger. He is rather humorous and him bantering with Sylvanas was one of the greatest parts of this book. We also get a understanding of his thinking and honestly I feel vindicated for liking him.
He is just an asshole in game which makes Lor'themar's dislike of him seem logical.
Just wish it was in the game for 90% of all players the books might as well not exist and only what's in game is Canon to them
Yes! I'm kinda hoping that whenever Blizz dips into the Maw and recovers Sylvanas, she brings him back with her.
You can't just make the guy an annoying shitter who pisses everyone off in the game then retcon him in a book.
@@chrisanderson7820 except he doesn’t piss off everyone. Moments like Garona’s conversations with Nathanos and some during the battle of Teldrassil aren’t pissing anyone off. He generally has a attitude with most, but he does in conversations praise people like Lorthermar and us a couple times, he is just a very reluctant man to say that.
The book does seem to soften Shadowlands around the edges. However, why Sylvanas didn't try to reason with others, up to city leaders? Iirc, Khadgar told Jaina that Karazhan had some knowledge about Shadowlands. And knowing the nature of this tower (we were in it multiple times), they could do worse than looking for information there. None of that happened. Imagine how deep they could go into fatalism and opposing your fate.
The point is - the novel tried to explain Sylvanas reasoning (hence, the title, of course). Despite this, in the grand scheme of things, the story is still not good.
Nah sylvanas wouldn't reason with mortal idiots
Don’t forget, for god knows what reason the Jailer didn’t try to reason with anyone either. And he’s the one controlling Sylvanas the whole time. If he didn’t think to speak to anyone, he’s not gonna have her do it either.
@@ArcadeStunfisk hey, he at least has a reason for being dumb, he's just a robot.
She couldn't. Don't forget that Sylvanas sent representatives to Stormwind and the guards instantly killed them. Even the Horde, who took her in, didn't trust her that much. The Blood Elves believed that their Sylvanas was dead and all that remained was a monster, humans feared her (and the undead) and the Horde didn't trust her. How could she possibly "reason" with those who see her as an abomination? Sylvanas' story makes sense but only if you read the book. What I don't understand is why didn't she have a plan B. I see why she desperately wanted to believe the Jailer but still....
It was funny for me how although she gets the ideea that the Jailer is behind most of her misery, she chooses to ally with him in order to change the order of things. Orcs were brought into Azeroth by Burning Legion + Medivh --) killed mom an dad and afterwards Lirath and sent Alleria of home. Arthas ( Scourge of the Lich King) kills her and 90% of the people she was supposed to protect but, as a Banshee, kills. Destroys Sunwell and ends the High Elves civilisation. Keeps a bank of half souls in Torghast ( hers included). Funny.
Remember that she sided with him because of what the Arbiter is doing with peoples' afterlives. He might be the cause of her personal misery, but eventually what she found to be intolerable was going to happen to them anyway. She saw the Arbiter's afterlife sorting to be inhumane and decided to go along to undo the system. It's not a perfect reason, but that's just life.
The story was so hard to get through from Anduin and Sylvanus near the very start basically playing 'who is the biggest victim in life' to the idea that 'nah Arthus was always in control and was an actual villain' even though the end of the LK fight in no way makes you think that he was in control with lines such as 'Father.....is it over?"
"Poor Sylvanas ... killed thousands and probably millions just because she was sad." ... Hey Arthas come here and hold my beer .. also Arthas you will be forgotten and discarded away .. but come on man come hold this beer.
Arthas was a lovable anti-hero whos tragedy we wanted to see resolved in Shadowlands. He didn't deserve the ending he was given by the end of Shadowlands. Honestly I wanted him to return back to Azeroth, have closure with Jaina, and come to terms with Uther ...
But no .. "poor Sylvanas ..."
@@yrazu05 She didn’t just kill millions, it was full on genocide. Call a spade a spade.
He chose to sacrifice his men, chose to embrace the frozen throne...his soul was restored but he was definitely evil
@@ryanmoore6259 True ... the making of an anti-hero, but at the end his mind was corrupted by Ner'zhul and character of the Lich King.
Sylvanas was just a sad lady who basically said "life sucks" and followed the Jailer because reasons ... the very person who created the Lich King and made her life "sucked." 🤨
Ryan,he didn't choose,he couldn't.....he had anymore a soul because he Lost It picking Frostmourne...in a soul there Is the Essence of a personality,so if you loose your soul,you loose yourself...in such conditions,hiw can you mantein control and free choice???All this Is clearly visibile in the end of WotLK,when Arthas loose the ekm of domination and the sword,and regain his humanity and his personality..He was not evil,he's never been written as a villain,but as a fallen Hero,and that's why in the end of WotLK everyone,Jayna,Muradin,Uther,mourns him instead of being Happy for his death
I think the book just confirms what many of us have known for years, that blizzard cant write women, and that they have a VERY different idea of who sylvanas is compared to the fans and the community.
To them, sylvanas is vulnerable, emotional, gullible and really just plain stupid. To players, sylvanas was a strong, smart, pragmatic character that cared for their people even though she didnt make a show of it.
Exactly. The book shows Sylvanas is just a stupid teenager who never grew the fuck up. It makes her character worse, not better, especially since even though she admired Thrall she never even talked to him about what she experienced, and Thrall is a fucking shaman, he was supposed to know about the whole thing from the beginning through his connections to the spirits, same as dumbass Vol'jin.
THIS 💯
Yeah could have easily had her be Warcheif and a love for her Forsaken. Azshara and Nzoth should have started the fire to world tree and made everybody think it was Slyvannas.
Yeah, I thought Sylvanas would've been a great warchief.... hell, even in the cinematic trailer for BFA she was. I'll never not be disappointed with the direction they took her and her story in BFA through Shadowlands.
I mean, Azshara exists. They can write women, seems they just forgot how xD
Sad I’m never really going to know cause I don’t want to buy the book if I pay for the game too. Give me the whole story on game
I'll gladly buy the books cause the books are awesome. Like Arthas Rise of the Lich King.
@@blackrose8418 Books can be awesome, but in this case they should be supplementary to the story. Not an essential part of it. If you need to write a novel in order to retroactively explain the games plot, or to explain a character's motivations, then that shows there has been a failure in storytelling.
"Poor Sylvanas ... killed thousands and probably millions just because she was sad." ... Hey Arthas come here and hold my beer .. also Arthas you will be forgotten and discarded away .. but come on man come hold this beer.
Arthas was a lovable anti-hero whos tragedy we wanted to see resolved in Shadowlands. He didn't deserve the ending he was given by the end of Shadowlands. Honestly I wanted him to return back to Azeroth, have closure with Jaina, and come to terms with Uther ...
But no .. "poor Sylvanas ..."
@@yrazu05 they did Arthas pretty dirty didn't they..
At this point you are better off buying neither, the story of this game is dead, and Steve Danuser killed it.
mentioning nathanos made me realize, did he even show up after we killed him in the pre patch? lmfao
This is a really amazing story. I am so sad it wasn’t told in the game.
With this story I now really understand why all the blizzard writing team loves Sylvanas.
They bear the responsibility of how bad this amazing story was told to the fans of the game.
A terrible shame.
I overall liked the book, however it proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Shadowlands and how it's frankly parasitic connection just don't gel, with the rest of the narative, however that's something Christie Golden could not change and no matter how well she could polish this turd, at the end of the day it is what it is. We could go on for ages about all the ways Shadowlands doesn't work, but to be honest we've been doing that since 8.2.5, if not earler so it'd be just repeating the same old stuff.
Wish the book didn't cause more plot holes and retcons. It makes things more convoluted, and creates another schism where which do you take to be canon, the lore from the game or the book and some of it's one-off snippets?
What plot holes did the book create?
@@monody okay so let’s just focus on the ones you pointed out. What motivational contradictions did you find that the Jailer had? What Arthas retcons? Which explanations that the Jailer have contradicted in game lore?
@@bdenneysr85 - Go through the comment section. How about you go read WOTLK books, or just look up old WOTLK lore on TH-cam. You will find all your answers.
I know research is hard.
@@cainabel6356 You and people like you are saying that there are obvious retcons. If you cannot give me any examples on your own then you don’t know what the hell you were talking about. Instead you are just parotting the words of other people.
@@cainabel6356 There certainly are plenty of examples aside from what I already stated, really doesn't matter if they want to acknowledge the issues or not.
It's up to them if they want to actually look into it, or if they simply turn a blind eye out of preferences.
"Christy is deadlifting the lore"
So Christy is carrying her ungrateful team 🤔... Must be a healer main 😎
I refuse to consume extra media to understand story, much less pay for it. Plus I checked out after they tried the scapegoating to cover their asses lol
having a huge diarrhea makes also sense after eating raw chicken, does not mean either of those things are any more appealing
We should not have to pay blizzard more money to hear the story that attempts to fix their mistake.
Except thats how its always been, yet its only been a problem to idiotic fans in recent years......
Man, they really did try to cover everything. Honestly I gotta respect the effort there, it's much more than we usually get out of Blizzard for anything. So naturally it has to come from an author instead of the lore team.
I would care if this would be part of the natural progression of the story. But this book screams that it's an afterthought, another retcon, a collection of "how to explain everything we screwed up", a fan service to try to save the butchered characters, to save Danuse's simping ...
Agreed. This is just a quick explanation on how they screwed everything up and try to fix it, but end of screwing it up even more.
My impression of Sylvanas,having bought the game in vanilla days, was that she was calculating, deliberate, and always about 9 steps ahead of everyone else in the scheme of things. The forsaken were her children that she would protect with her last breath. The orcs were the rage and together with the trolls the strength of the Horde, the Tauren were the soul of the Horde, but the Forsaken (Sylvanas' children) were the sheer analytical side of survival. I think this is how the original narrative portrayed her. Since the change in the creative team (8.1)they are trying to explain the calculated choices she made by tempering it with a lot of backstory based on emotional decisions. This new Warcraft lore might be amazing and I will always love the voice acting for her, but I would rather have a panel discussion with (what's his name) that could dig deeper into the original story. I see that cannon being fired, I see all of the major cities in ruins, I see factions torn to the ragged edge, because this is what gives the Forsaken the best chance to thrive, in a new home with desolation as a barrier to any alliance interference.
Shadowlands should have done Sylvanas' story similar to the Illidan legion quest chain. Everything would have made more sense.
Golden seems to be doing her best, the problem is elsewhere.
...the prophecies that Zovaal told Sylvanas are all things that HE HIMSELF set up to happen!
AND SHE FELL FOR IT!?
Sylvanas: Prove that you can see the future, and I'll serve you!
Zovaal: Okay- I foresee me punching you in the face. (PUNCH!)
Sylvanas: ..Master!
Sylvanas a smart and cunning ranger general. Then all of a sudden she becomes a sad and stupid person. What a great retcon.
You shouldn't have to buy books to follow the story in game, this is just proof that the current WoW creative team are complete and utter dogshit.
If you follow this book as canon, you just ignored the canon of WOTLK and everything before that. Arthas was mind controlled by the Jailer, since he asked his father if it was over. It is also funny how Sylvanas still did everything by her own choice. Then followed the Jailer, after knowing he was in control over Arthas.
@@cainabel6356 They've completely ruined the lore.
Christie is the member of the group that does the whole project, blizzard just shows up on presentation day.
Makes you think why isn’t she in charge of the narrative when we have a bumbling fool like Denuser in charge.
I keep hearing "Retcon Warning!" in my brain. When you need to write a book to salvage a character ... I feel for the author.
this video does a good job at highlighting blizzards story telling problem. They seem to not be able to convey a story in the format which is the game and somehow expect people to use books/3rd parties to do the work for them. The game suffers immensely from this inability to convey these types of details in game via the story line, quests and cut scenes.
Why did argus' soul went to the shadowlands and not to titan's plane ?
Blizzard can not find a single reason for that one, until they retcon it. They retcon WOTLK and everything before that. So, they will do it again.
Wasn't it because the Dreadlords spent thousands of years using Death Magic to link him to the Shadowlands so that when he died, he would go there instead?
It's really depressing that the book is essentially necessary to enjoy the story at all, at least since Legion.
Something you left out was the trial of Garrosh. The Four spirits, according to Sylvanas, either did not know about Revendreth or LIED about death not holding redemption. That’s pretty important, that deities on their level might be either or those two…ignorant or lying
well, from an in-universe PoV, making Sylvanas run choregast for thousands of years sounds about right for all the crap she put everyone through...
I'm sick of Blizzard utterly fucking up characters in games and leaving it to the novels to pick up the pieces. Enough already!
I'm really sick of Blizzard retconning stuff and destroying the lore and characters.
Awesome, thank you so much. I would never have bought the book out of principle (and I love Sylvanas) so I hugely appreciate you doing this.
If you are wondering why this was not in the game, it is because the story was never written to begin with. They just now created this book.
You can't just write a book overnight
how did the jailer get freed from the chains of domination in the maw, prisoned by the primus, and how could zooval prison him? still unanswered...
The problem i have with this story as it never asks what her family actually wants. I doubt any of her family want to spend their afterlives with such a monster as Sylvanas. It just tries to push a narrative that family should be together for ever regardless. yet doesn't take into account that family can be terrible to each other. Blizzard/golden have to stop trying to push social justice messaging(because they are terrible at it) into the game unless the story reaches that organically
I miss Knaaks novels, sure they had issues but they did a better job of building up the world rather than shrinking it to a handful of characters.
"social justice messaging" the fuck are you on about?
The problem with what they did to Sylvanas and Arthas, (because they needed to save their beautiful golden boi Anduin and make his character unimpeachable) is they took away their agency. By essentially retconning what it meant to be raised in undeath to serve the Lich King, and insinuating that even after Sylvanas broke free from Arthas' control, she was still a pawn of the Jailer, they cheapened 16+ years of her story, by making none of it HER story, and really, it was all what the Jailer forced her to do. The implication is that this is what happened to Arthas too, and that none who were raised in undeath ever truly had free will (except the Knights of the Ebon Blade somehow) and they were actually doing the bidding of the Jailer.
The writing team really screwed this up. Sylvanas should've been an agent of her own free will, Anduin should've had to die before being dominated by Zoval, and if he wasn't destroyed by the Jailer at the end of the raid (which he should've been, giving the Jailer real staying power in the memory of Azeroth), then he should've broken free as a death knight-esque priest, wielding powers of both the light, and of death. This would create new lore implications far more interesting than anything we ended up getting, and even set up a new class that can be a necromancer/Valkyr/witch(drustvar style) class, which already exists in lore but hasn't been presented to players as a playable class.
So now Arthas was never truly evil, he was a slave to the Jailer, and so was Sylvanas, and they can't be held to fully account for their actions. All because the Alliance needed their golden boi back.
Its hilarious and sad at the same time that a book being good is the most damning review of a games story telling. I will never not be upset over how they fucked up Sylvanas by just not showing why characters are doing anything. I stand by the burning could have been grey in that it could have lead to a bustling horde town/port. But instead we have the classic example of Blizzard refusing to bridge their stories in-game. Imagine if they didnt keep their cards so hidden and in BfA we started to learn of the Jailer. That amount of time with him would have been great and could have made the alleged original shadowlands jailer possible. Its just sad. Even the audio dramas for legion were amazing compared to what we get in game.
They simply shouldn't have gone down the 'how death works' route, but here we are.
Great video dude
I am not going to buy the book. Maybe it fixes Sylvanas's story, and maybe it doesn't. I think it is too little too late, because the bitter taste that I have had for this character for the last 2-3 years is still there, and can't be washed away with a single novel.
It's a god damn shame too. Sylvanas was awesome before this shit happened. sad to see.
@@techno0suck3r The only shame is that you are to afraid of being happy with the story that you won't give it a shot. You literally have nothing to lose by doing so...
and in reality... how much of the book is the team really going to honor? there's a fair chunk of material in the old novels that are ignored or retconned.
@@bdenneysr85 I'm confused, how did I not give it a shot? I played the game. It should give me the plot there not in a book.
I am not happy with the story because it should have been so much better.
I wouldnt even be mad at the story if they actually put the stuff from the book in the actual fucking game.
@@techno0suck3r then what reason do you have to buy the book? You know Blizzard is a company, right?
I've don't even play Warcraft and I enjoy watching these videos and learning about the Lore
The real issue is it seems like the developers don’t talk to the writers at all because literally the game is nothing like the book and you can’t say they can’t put the book lore in there they really could even if it’s only in text format or in suggestion but they don’t do anything of the sort ; I really don’t think that devs read the books and they should because they suck at writing
Great compilation
Great job! I couldn't stop watching!
I think a major issue was that Shadowlands/BFA changed so much of Sylvanas' backstory and overall lore retroactively. It's no wonder all this stuff is missing in game when at that in the game nobody knew that something like the Jailor existed. To make this story work in game you would need to add tons of questlines to old content from Vanilla to now.
Yes there are some tricks you can do like dream/memory sequences and maybe even time travel... but that book has a lot of story to tell and it's not wasting a single minute on any of it. It's just too much change to make it work within the game... as cool as the story might be in concept they've biten more off than they could chew.
I just finished the book on Audible and I loved it! I’m going to get more of the books.
I loved this video, thank you for doing it for us. : )
This entire jailer thing is so lackluster.... it feels someone trying to sound smart and different, and in the end overutilizing a overwhelming amount of clichés, the entire philosophy of this approach to the concept of afterlife is so narrowminded and superficial, I simply can't stand it
Soooo fucking right,dude
The new Arbiter should just pull all of the souls not already destroyed out of the Maw and rejudge them.
Either directly or via the Kyrians.
i know it's just a harmless goof but when you said "sylvannas has an older sildur" at 4:22 i really had a chuckle
If literally any of this had shown up in the game I would be happy as a lark. Instead I am sad that clearly the best writer Blizzard has in their pocket is having her talent wasted writing books that cannot fill the gaping void they have in their narrative. Give her a chance to write the story of a zone, or a few quests, and see just how beloved her writing is. Because this? Even paraphrased? Is a beautiful story I would love to see in WoW. If we’re going to move forward into the future, with games like FF14 in the market, you cannot compete with cheesy, basic fantasy. You can offer more. So do so.
Edit: if she already does the stuff that I said, then why the hell doesn’t she have a bigger position in the writing team? Bellular literally said it: she is deadlifting the lore. Give her a staring role damn it. She’s doing what the rest of the mooks over there can’t.
if only they did their storytelling in game, where it belongs. maybe i would still find a bit of will to play what was once the only game i ever wanted to play
Good hopefully that's it for Sylvanas for a while now. Cannot stand her character so hopefully we don't see her for a while. Great breakdown though of the book.
I also don't buy this unintentional way of not putting this narrative in the game. Why buy the book if the story is covered in game? It's clearly a marketing setup to support sales.
I don't mind some of the lore being in the books, it would be near impossible to stuff it all into game play. But the problem is we are getting almost none of it in game play at all. Its like watching a movie thru a keyhole and ear muffs on.
So basically, she went mad and crazy and that's why she did horrible things, but it's okay, she's not mad and crazy any more because Anduin said one thing about her being right... Great story guys
Splitting the story delivery into two media sources during "ongoing events" is always going to cause confusion about character motivations. Christie did a good job in trying to salvage this crap.
Now, Sylvannas is doomed to do the Maw dailies for at least the next expansion.
Thanks for the feedback. I just recently purchased the book and I am reading it now. Really enjoying it.
If this was told in the game, there would be a drastically different opinion on her character and the xpac as a whole
Conclusion: You can be a meniacal self righteous insane person. You can bring as much pain and suffering as you want for what you want. In the end, you get it.
Halfway into the book, so I'll put this one on the watch later list ;)
Where do you get all the video excerpts from, I haven't seen many of them before. Is there a stockpile you can draw from. Btw it looks like it's a really good read.
A general grievance I have with WoW is that the game never bothers to make me care about any of the characters. So much story and lore is presented to us outside of the game, and the whole universe is generally very captivating, but I don't want to have to read a book to know what's going on in my computer game. I'm a long time player and I loved Sylvanas until they did her dirty. But there are many BIG characters in this game that I struggle to care about because they were never actually presented to me in game. Until they *were* and the game suddenly expected me to care deeply about this character. EG I have more meaningful interaction with Lilian Voss than I ever had with Tyrande. She means nothing to me (except I'm told that I'm supposed to care?)
Hey great vid. Just one question, what's the theme during the "Hope" section of the vid?
Just came to leave my like but it hurts to see what they have done with Sylvannas she was so cool up to legion then it makes no sense. These last two expansions felt like a kick in the balls for all us lore nerds.
At the moment it feels like the WoW team is a dog sled. The art, music and outside content (books n stuff) teams being the dogs, the marketing team and higher-ups being the riders pushing them to exaustion, and the story team being the one guy to accidentally fall in a frozen lake and is now unconscious and tied up at the back of the sled.
I was really suprised how "young" sylvanas was i expected that she would be at least few hundred years old and from the book i get feeling that she had less then 100 years
Where are the cinematics in this video taken from? I don’t remember seeing them before.
Remind me please, why Silvanases good part of a soul was in Jailors hands? While good part of the Utheres was In Kyria.
That one was explained in the 9.1 patch that the split wasn't good evil it was just a random split in two, with one part passing on and the other bit shoved in Frostmourne/Jailer's crystal. Beyond that its mostly a blame the VI they replaced Zovaal with for not being taught to recognize fractured souls, and the Primus not installing a fire wall to protect it from other cosmic beings that were seeped in death energy.
But thrall didn’t have his soul cut in half lol it’s hard to compare him to sylvanas when she had that happen to her apparently. It just feels like a massive retcon at this point. It’s a scape goat for bad writing.
Yeah the shadowlands suck and as far as I can tell maldraxxus is the only area where you retain your past self.
How about Arthas, who had his soul stolen, and then became a mind controlled pawn? Oh wait, Sylvanas still had her soul to make choices, and was still in control of her own self. Yeah, she was a villain after all.
Blizzard's retcons are what is destroying WOW.
@@cainabel6356 well personally I really liked the retcons in legion making illidan more heroic, but all this has been a real letdown.
great video
Lol nice name change bellular🤣 love ya man.
I'm a few hours into the book and really enjoying it, but like many are saying, just wish more of Sylvanas' motivations were in the game. Love the vids tho, keep it up!
They should have kept the Sylvanas loyalist story line going. That would have been a prime game function to flesh this lore out
I love Bellular, but I almost don't even want to watch this video. Based off of previous book review videos, I'm fairly certain that it's going to significantly alter my mostly negative view on things with all of the context that it provides, and I'm just not sure that I want to do that to myself again. If they want to write such grand stories and keep this stuff up, they need to find a way to integrate it all into the game in a way that makes everything digestible. Recently, whoever's been handling implementing the story in the game has absolutely been putting less than the bare minimum amount of effort into it, while relying ENTIRELY on the books (external material that you have to pay for, for a game that I typically already pay well over 100+ dollars a year for) to compensate, and it's honestly sickening at this point.
As someone who's been a lore nerd and game-player for well over a decade, putting aside the fact that the gameplay itself has been largely subpar for years, the story has really started to reach a new low. The only recent expansion that I feel was good in this regard (and ironically enough, more broadly as well) was Legion. It was wonderful, and I have to give them a lot of credit for that. I wish I would have been able to play and experience more of it at the time. There was so much lore-relevant content to engage with, as someone who's typically more casual. WoD, BFA, and Shadowlands all promised to fix on past mistakes and, with their themes, assured lore nerds that they'd be taking us to incredible places that we've only heard legends about for so long. The world itself for each has been great. The atmosphere of the zones and the more grounded questlines in each were largely fantastic. I love Kul Tiras and Draenor especially, some of the best areas they've ever made. I just wish we got more of it, with the developers having leaned so much more into that angle, since it's without a doubt their chief point of strength.
I could sit here and rant forever, but one example of the recent direction being so stale and frankly painful to bear is the current cast. Why the hell are Thrall and Jaina still main characters? People like Baine and Anduin as well, arguably. And this isn't even a complaint of them being bad or otherwise boring characters (which most are at this point, in my view) and using them to replace objectively more complex, interesting, and entertaining characters like Varian and Garrosh. We're in the after life for seemingly the game's ENTIRE universe, and universes beyond? We've got the Jailer as the main guy. A being who's supposedly a "Titan++" level threat in his own power, who commands an army that dwarfs even that of the Burning Legion, and still the Azerothians are pulling up and changing the fate and course of everything like it's Tuesday? I suppose, for me, this is more of an issue of them never being to live up to expectations, yet still attempting to trudge on and increase the scale of everything so massively in spite of it, while trying to have their cake and eat it too in having it remain grounded with the same small, humble group of mortal.
Returning to the point on the cast, people say they don't have any interesting characters, but that's just false. Every single large, zone-questline based character from Legion (apart from Val'sharah, since those characters were preestablished) had the potential to be big players, if they only leaned into them and gave them just a little bit more time to breath and stand on their own, rather than busting out the old work horses and not even giving their new characters a chance beyond a few very limited, isolated allied race quests. Geyarah from BFA is another example of this (not to mention the night elf FORSAKEN that they invented and then immediately brushed to the side). They introduce this character so casually, who's literally the alternate version of Thrall, who actually leads all of the combined Mag'har clans and was so unique in taking the honorable path in being the only racial leader to stand at the back of her warchief when Sylvanas was, in the context of the story, getting BETRAYED on all sides. And she was just written off after all of that, when the power-ranger, super-friends, peace and love "let's all hold hands and be best friends" Horde council formed, as having been vaguely bad for that totally valid, justified decision. I don't even want to get into all of the ways that this is stupid. And they've quite literally done nothing with her since then. Fair enough, since BFA was the last expansion and she hasn't had the chance to be relevant due to the main plot of Shadowlands, but the trends are all there. This cycle really is maddening, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon.
I remember when MoP came out and everyone was calling it the worst lore and story that WoW had ever had, in spite of the fact that it generated some of the deepest, richest lore that exists in the universe of WoW to date. Even the controversial war with Garrosh looks great by comparison, despite how shallow even that felt back then.
This is almost definitely a jumbled mess of a comment, but my frustration with all of this really has no end. Hopefully most of it makes sense.
That is what you get when you put a person that thinks the end all and be all for an MMORPG is raiding in charge of your game. Forget the MMO part it is the RPG part that is important and think back to the original RPG's people played and it is the story they tell that is remembered, dungeons were just a setting where a story was told. Now the dungeon, and that is all a "raid" is, is what they focus on and the story is just a vehicle to it a chore to get through so you can raid or speed run a mythic dungeon for the 5,000th time.
Does this book salvage Sylvanas' character? I don't know. Why don't I know? Because I'm not going to read the damn book. Why am I not going to read the damn book? Because I shouldn't have too!
seems like it puts a piece of scotch tape over slyvanas's character yet still leaves a gaping hole in jailer lore and basically everything else SL related.
Khanlusa's rant about this is a really good break down of everything.
The number of retroactive explanations in this novel is just.. Staggering. The fact that this book was needed just to fix so many things, to answer so many questions, is such an insane failure on the part of Blizzard's writing team. Most notably, the Burning of Teldrassil. *Everyone* saw that as a pointless event, hundreds-of-thousands if not *millions* of elves burned alive on a whim, all because Sylvanas lost. And even then, even in the context of this story, it's such a half-assed explanation. Throughout the story as we played through it in-game, the war in Darkshore from the beginning was only about killing Malfurion to de-moralize the Night Elves. That failed because not all of Sylvanas' subordinates were spineless murderers (Saurfang literally helped Malfurion escape). So then it became "capturing" Teldrassil to break the Night Elves. She realizes that won't work, and so she BURNS TELDRASSIL ON A FUCKING WHIM. The explanation of "She just needed souls to send to the Jailer" DOES NOT WORK when it was already established that she BURNED TELDRASSIL on a FUCKING WHIM. Since the end of Legion, Blizzard has been absolutely flying by the seat of their pants continuously trying to craft a narrative from NOTHING. They keep having to go back and fix shit because they've never made any plans for the future. MoP, WoD, and Legion were all planned out in advance. BFA ALONE was a fucking mess from start to finish, and they only got worse with Shadowlands.
This book is just more of the same, more of everything that is wrong with WoW's writing and what happens when you make two expansions in a row that consist wholly of the worst that the Warcraft universe has to work with. Warcraft lore doesn't have to be overly complex, it can just be fan-service and cool moments and fun adventures with characters that we like. Enough of this 4D chess bloated self-important dogshit. Most of the remaining playerbase aren't there for the lore anyway, so I just wish the writers would write a story that is actually ENJOYABLE again.
I bought the book on Audible (as I have with the last Warcraft ones since War Crimes) but I'm really unsure whether or not to listen to it. Sylvanas is a monster and I really have no desire to sympathize with her in any way.
Just wait until we get Ethereal edition Sylvanas after her "thousands of years" in the maw, that won't be nearly as long in actual game time.
20 years and the jailor was behind all of it. Ggwp Blizzard
So I bought the book when it came out and have been working so I haven't been able to read much, I'm only maybe 50 pages in. I had NO IDEA that Patty Mattson narrated the audio book. I'm an avid listener to audio books (they're great to make work go by faster) and so I have an Audible subscription. I'm really glad I saw this video, if anything to get the audiobook now too. Sylvanas has always been my favorite Blizzard character and one of my favorite female fantasy, nerd, video game characters of all time.
Is it really salvaging a character by making them incompetent, weak and generally all around gullible to the point of stupidity? Like Sylvanas now exists as a character primarily out of nepotism and dozens of functions of the universe just deciding to just not work *coughGodfreycough*. Giving "emotional context" doesnt fix things, and it doesnt condone them.
Sylvanas's story is literally amazing, it's just sad that Blizzard didn't put it in the game. I love Christie Golden though, so i'm glad that the book exists.
This should not have been Golden's mess to fix.
With that said, fucking mad kudos to her expertise with the craft!