The notion that the Warchief of the Horde could be an expansion's final boss was shocking when they announced that this was how Mists of Pandaria would end. (Chronicled on this very blog.) But as exciting as it was (primarily for Horde players - Alliance players were sort of forced to look in from the outside,) I think most players would agree that it's not something we want to happen again, at least not for a long time.
The main reason is that it's simply repetitive, though I think another factor is that Alliance players don't want to be roped into another internal conflict within the Horde. Horde players might also feel chagrined about the idea that they've got to pingpong between undying loyalty to a monstrous tyrant and being an honorable freedom fighter. Maybe it's the Alliance's turn to be conflicted internally?
And yet the actions we've seen Sylvanas take as Warchief have been seeming to take us down a very similar path that we walked with Garrosh. There are even equivalent characters playing similar roles. Saurfang, for example, is positioned strongly to be the leader of a rebellion against Sylvanas, which echoes the role of Vol'jin during Mists of Pandaria.
Now this is where we talk about Blizzard and their writing. I think anyone who enjoys or has enjoyed the game's lore would agree that it's a very cool fantasy setting. And there are many iconic characters whose stories sort of embody the larger conflicts and arcs of the greater narrative. The question is whether Blizzard would actually be so lazy or myopically forgetful to really run us through the same narrative we did in Mists.
I don't think they will. They claim they aren't, and while such claims are not always promises, I intend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
While a lot of this post is about stuff that we already have, there are some mentions of 8.1 events, so I'll put the spoiler cut in:
SPOILERS AHOY!
Let's assume for the sake of argument/this post that Sylvanas is not going to wind up like Garrosh. We won't be fighting a revolution against her as Horde. That scenario is not impossible, but it does present a few problems:
Sylvanas' Villainy:
Ever since she was raised as a Banshee, Sylvanas has struggled to fit into a "good guy" context. When her primary enemy was the Scourge, we naturally cheered her on as she fought to provide the Undead with an alternative that included free will and some semblance of dignity. But even at her most benevolent (again, we're talking Banshee and later Sylvanas, as the living Sylvanas was presumably a righteous defender of her people,) Sylvanas was engaged in shady dealings. She happily employed the Royal Apothecary Society in the production of plague, which tested its bioweapons on prisoners of war.
Still, caught between the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade, there was an argument to be made that she needed to fight with any means necessary to ensure her peoples' survival.
But after Arthas' downfall, her tactics in the invasion of Gilneas were just as brutal and cruel - and indeed more so, as she began raising fallen enemies and immediately conscripting them into her own Forsaken forces. Despite the fact that Blizzard insists they joined of their own free will, this just does not seem plausible given that many would begin fighting the very moment they were raised.
Still, nothing she had ever done compared with the Burning of Teldrassil - directing her forces to destroy the tree with all the civilians sheltering within it rather than taking it (likely with very little resistance) as had been the plan.
I could go on, but the point is that Sylvanas has established herself to be truly evil and likely irredeemable. It seems that the Horde would need to depose her to restore any moral authority they would like to claim.
But if we're ruling that out, I think there are only a few options here:
One is that the Horde simply embraces its identity as the bad-guy faction. Personally, I'd hate for them to go this direction, as it would remove one of the most interesting nuances of the game. It also wouldn't make sense for many of its constituent people. Even though their support for the Horde gets more and more questionable over time, it's hard to think of, say, the Tauren as going full bad-guy. I'd say this option should be off the table.
The next is actually quite elegant - we aren't the ones to remove her. We've seen other Warchiefs and factions leaders die or disappear for myriad reasons. Why does that only have to happen to the good ones? Indeed, finding Sylvanas to either rescue her or capture her could be a great kicking-off point for an expansion that takes us to, oh, I don't know, the Shadowlands?
Lastly, while I think redemption is unlikely for her, I'd actually enjoy seeing her realize just how far she's gone and make an honest effort to atone for her sins. She might step down as Warchief, or, if they wanted to make things more interesting, she might dissolve the very office of Warchief and force the Horde to come up with a better leadership system that relied less on blind loyalty to a single individual. Indeed, if she were to go missing and have us spend an expansion trying to find her, that period in, I don't know, maybe the Shadowlands, would be a great time for her to be forced to confront her own actions and realize the extent to which she has become everything she hated about Arthas.
But what of her rival within the Horde?
Saurfang's Rebellion:
Just as Sylvanas is showing parallels with Garrosh, Varok Saurfang is playing a very similar role to Vol'jin. Indeed, just as we got in 5.1, we're getting a quest in 8.1 in which a soldier loyal to the Warchief attempts to kill a potential revolutionary leader. We attempt to track down Saurfang after he escaped the Stormwind Stockades only to discover that the Dark Ranger that was sent with us actually had orders to assassinate him.
So how do we avoid having Saurfang simply lead a rebellion against Sylvanas?
Well, for one thing, if any of the above scenarios come to fruition, the rebellion might fail or just be unnecessary. Sylvanas could simply win and have Saurfang killed or have him flee into exile. But if she goes missing or sees the error of her ways, maybe Saurfang can return to the Horde peacefully.
But there's a third, messier (and thus more interesting) possibility for what happens with Saurfang. As it stands on the PTR, the quest where you track him down has the Horde player disguised (along with the Dark Ranger) as Alliance civilians traveling through Redridge Mountains. When they come upon a group of guards, we hear that Matthias Shaw himself had encouraged them to slack off on their guard duty, right in the very path that Saurfang would be coming.
The story is thus heavily implying that Saurfang's escape was aided by SI:7, and that they want him to be free.
And it makes sense - the last time, Vol'jin kept Garrosh occupied while the Alliance could mobilize its forces to strike Orgrimmar. They might see Saurfang as someone who would naturally become Warchief after Sylvanas and would be more likely to negotiate a peace deal, or they might simply mean to divide and conquer.
We don't know if Saurfang is aware that his escape appears to have been orchestrated by SI:7. If he does know, the Horde might brand him a traitor. If he doesn't, he's an unwitting pawn of the Alliance. If either truth comes out, he becomes somewhat tainted in the Horde.
(And now I'm imagining that Matthias Shaw did not intend him to break out, but is now making a lot of effort to make it look like he did in order to trick the Horde into not trusting Saurfang.)
The point is that the Alliance potentially plays a bigger role in Saurfang's actions, which would complicate matters for the Horde and also allow Alliance players to feel more involved in such a plot.
The Larger Context:
We're clearly not ending with another Siege of Orgrimmar. Given the Battle of Dazar'alor raid and the Siege of Boralus dungeon, I actually think we might be done with home-city attacks as dungeons in this expansion.
In Mists, despite the dangers of the Sha and the Mogu, the ultimate bad guy was the faction war, with Garrosh so invested in it that he was willing to embrace the dangerous power of Y'Shaarj to crush his enemies.
I could see BFA working in reverse. This expansion started with the faction conflict, but even though that conflict was central in Mists, it was still all in the context of exploring a new continent and its cultures. BFA has intentionally taken us to places that, yes, are culturally different from what we've seen before, but are ultimately more familiar. Kul Tiras and Zandalar have been presences in the game for a long time now, and this is just a case of finally getting to see them ourselves. We're learning more about these particular Trolls and these particular Humans, but it's not a whole lost history we have to learn from scratch.
That allows the faction conflict to really take center stage, leading to the Dazar'alor raid.
But in a way, if we think of the faction conflict as one of the big bads of the Warcraft universe, one might be able to think of Mists as the Burning Crusade to BFA is to Legion - we touched on that conflict and seemed to defeat it for a time, but now we're having the big fight.
The big question is whether there's something big enough for us to actually end the conflict.
I think the release of N'zoth could be a big enough threat to have the Alliance and Horde come to some real reconciliation, though obviously the Legion's invasion was just as if not a bigger deal.
If we carry on this notion that the faction conflict is one of the game's big bads, we could also take a look at how a lot of major threats have been defeated but not entirely dispelled. The Legion is beaten, but Sargeras is still alive and those demons do still exist. We beat Arthas, but there's a new Lich King and the Scourge still exists.
A lot of this is, I think, Blizzard sort of hedging their bets - it's the same reason they never kill off the Joker, as epic a takedown as Batman might get on him. But BFA seems like the perfect opportunity to end the faction conflict in a significant way, while still allowing some old resentments to simmer beneath the surface, just with no promise that they will eventually boil over.
Yet achieving that peace is going to require a greater gesture than we've ever seen before. The faction conflict is bloodier than it has been since the Horde razed Stormwind at the end of the First War. It seems impossible that the Alliance could accept peace with Sylvanas still running the Horde. So how will it go? I really don't know.
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