Today's announcement of 8.3 tells us a few things: obviously it shows us how BFA's final patch is going to look (so far it looks like a thumbs-up from me) but also, by showing us what we are getting in 8.3, we're also seeing what we're not getting in 9.0, which narrows the possibilities for next time.
Having N'zoth and Ny'alotha in this patch, we're getting the biggest glimpse of the Black Empire in-game that we ever have. Ny'alotha is less of a single location than a whole alternate reality that N'zoth has built and wishes to essentially overlay onto the true world.
So the notion that next expansion will be the Black Empire seems less likely now.
We have yet to see what story content we get in 8.3, but unless Sylvanas sneaks back into the spotlight, I think we can truly consider not just the Alliance/Horde conflict over, but also we can see her schemes being pushed back.
And that means that Sylvanas (whose image is part of Blizzcon's key art much as Jaina's was when BFA was announced) could be a major player in the next expansion.
So while rumors that we'd be seeing a big "assault on Stormwind" raid have clearly proven false, that does not mean that we couldn't get the fabled Shadowlands expansion that I've been advocating.
That being said, given that Ny'alotha is being portrayed less as a singular location than a whole other realm of existence, I do wonder then if they'd want a whole expansion set in the Shadowlands, or if that would be too similar.
Another popular theory for the next expansion would be the Dragon Isles, and there certainly have been a number of references to dragons in the last couple patches, with a startling (and hopefully reversible) part Wrathion will play in the next raid.
We of course don't know what exactly will happen at the very end of the expansion, when the final raid is completed. What happens to the World-Soul of Azeroth? The answer to that question will, I think, be a very important one to understand in order for the next expansion's story to make sense.
I think my only real doubt about a Dragon Isles expansion is that I don't see who the big bad would be. And to be fair, Blizzard has made their last few expansions (Legion as a sort of exception) ones in which it wasn't entirely clear what the greatest threat was behind everything.
Obviously, it's trademark-hunting season, so we'll keep an eye out for that. But with the Black Empire hitting in 8.3, I really think the two biggest possibilities are the gothic/spooky horror of the Shadowlands or the ancient primordial power of the Dragon Isles.
Less than a month now to find out if it's one of those, some combination of the two, or neither!
Monday, October 7, 2019
8.3 Visions of N'zoth
Well, in case it wasn't apparent: N'zoth's the big bad and we're fighting him in the final BFA patch.
The patch will focus on a sort of otherworld where N'zoth's vision for the world is real, and which he attempts to infect Azeroth with. The result will be a lot of familiar locations rendered horrific and corrupted.
Let's talk major features:
New Raid: Ny'alotha, the Sleeping City
Ny'alotha is the Black Empire in its classic form, and will be the seat of N'zoth, where we fight him/it. This place looks pretty much exactly as I hoped and thought it would - all ziggurats and obelisks and horrible mutated monsters. I haven't been keeping up with raiding this expansion (I still haven't set foot in the Eternal Palace and barely saw any of Battle of Dazar'alor) but I'm going to try to get back into it for this. Hey, will we see Ilgynoth here? He did say that was where he was going.
New Feature: N'zoth Assaults
N'zoth is going to be attacking two major Titan facilities: Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. These will work like the assaults in Legion and 8.1, though I'm sure the formula will be tweaked. One good note is that when the Vale isn't under assault, it's been returned to its beautiful, pre-4.4 state, sans Sha corruption.
New Feature: Horrific Visions
This might be the thing I'm most excited for: in what seems like a riff on the Deaths of Chromie scenario from Legion, this will be repeatable content that scales from one to five players (with no role requirements) in which we journey into N'zoth's horror-realm versions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar and try to defeat the monstrous creatures within. This will apparently tie into both a legendary cloak quest we do with Wrathion (that's three Legendary chains for him!) and some new Heart of Azeroth essences.
New Allied Races: Vulpera and Mechagnomes
People have been speculating on these two for ages, and now we have it confirmed that we'll be getting these two as allied races for the Horde and Alliance, respectively. Given that the Vulpera use, I think, the same basic skeleton as the goblins, they might count as the "goblin equivalent" allied race, meaning we only have Worgen, Undead, and Pandaren to get variants. You'll need to have exalted with the Voldun'ai and Mechagon respectively to unlock these.
Heritage Armor for Goblins and Worgen:
Goblins are going to be getting some very explosion/junker themed armor. Worgen are going to get some (kind of tacky with so much gold) armor that obviously has a top hat.
Auction House Rework
The AH is getting a nice rework that basically eliminates those annoying one-stacks of materials. Now, you can just choose how much of a given thing you want to buy at a price-per-unit and it'll take the correct amount at that price. Meaning if you're selling a stack, the buyer can purchase a portion of it for the proper amount, or if you're buying a large amount, you can just purchase it all at once, even from multiple sellers. Seems really good.
I've got to say that I'm pretty excited for this patch. I do recognize some peoples' concerns that Ny'alotha could have been a whole expansion, like Argus, but I'm really glad to be getting a real Old God nightmare phase to this expansion - something I actually wish had been more prominent from the beginning.
I do think that this probably puts the notion of a Black Empire expansion as 9.0 as less likely. I keep hearing rumors that Blizzard folks have privately been very hyped for this year's Blizzcon, and I'm extremely curious to see what the next expansion will be. But at the very least, I am actually quite excited about 8.3, and it's good to finally see what it'll be about.
The patch will focus on a sort of otherworld where N'zoth's vision for the world is real, and which he attempts to infect Azeroth with. The result will be a lot of familiar locations rendered horrific and corrupted.
Let's talk major features:
New Raid: Ny'alotha, the Sleeping City
Ny'alotha is the Black Empire in its classic form, and will be the seat of N'zoth, where we fight him/it. This place looks pretty much exactly as I hoped and thought it would - all ziggurats and obelisks and horrible mutated monsters. I haven't been keeping up with raiding this expansion (I still haven't set foot in the Eternal Palace and barely saw any of Battle of Dazar'alor) but I'm going to try to get back into it for this. Hey, will we see Ilgynoth here? He did say that was where he was going.
New Feature: N'zoth Assaults
N'zoth is going to be attacking two major Titan facilities: Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. These will work like the assaults in Legion and 8.1, though I'm sure the formula will be tweaked. One good note is that when the Vale isn't under assault, it's been returned to its beautiful, pre-4.4 state, sans Sha corruption.
New Feature: Horrific Visions
This might be the thing I'm most excited for: in what seems like a riff on the Deaths of Chromie scenario from Legion, this will be repeatable content that scales from one to five players (with no role requirements) in which we journey into N'zoth's horror-realm versions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar and try to defeat the monstrous creatures within. This will apparently tie into both a legendary cloak quest we do with Wrathion (that's three Legendary chains for him!) and some new Heart of Azeroth essences.
New Allied Races: Vulpera and Mechagnomes
People have been speculating on these two for ages, and now we have it confirmed that we'll be getting these two as allied races for the Horde and Alliance, respectively. Given that the Vulpera use, I think, the same basic skeleton as the goblins, they might count as the "goblin equivalent" allied race, meaning we only have Worgen, Undead, and Pandaren to get variants. You'll need to have exalted with the Voldun'ai and Mechagon respectively to unlock these.
Heritage Armor for Goblins and Worgen:
Goblins are going to be getting some very explosion/junker themed armor. Worgen are going to get some (kind of tacky with so much gold) armor that obviously has a top hat.
Auction House Rework
The AH is getting a nice rework that basically eliminates those annoying one-stacks of materials. Now, you can just choose how much of a given thing you want to buy at a price-per-unit and it'll take the correct amount at that price. Meaning if you're selling a stack, the buyer can purchase a portion of it for the proper amount, or if you're buying a large amount, you can just purchase it all at once, even from multiple sellers. Seems really good.
I've got to say that I'm pretty excited for this patch. I do recognize some peoples' concerns that Ny'alotha could have been a whole expansion, like Argus, but I'm really glad to be getting a real Old God nightmare phase to this expansion - something I actually wish had been more prominent from the beginning.
I do think that this probably puts the notion of a Black Empire expansion as 9.0 as less likely. I keep hearing rumors that Blizzard folks have privately been very hyped for this year's Blizzcon, and I'm extremely curious to see what the next expansion will be. But at the very least, I am actually quite excited about 8.3, and it's good to finally see what it'll be about.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Running Down the List of D&D Settings I Know About and Determining Which Might Get a 5E Sourcebook
Next month (something I'm very excited for,) will see the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, the official Fifth Edition D&D sourcebook for the Eberron setting. Introduced in (I believe) 3rd Edition in the early 2000s, Eberron is one of the most popular settings, with its pulp/noir tone and modern-but-magical feel. Plus, Warforged, which is only one of four playable races introduced with the setting but by far the most iconic of them.
Fifth Edition has been out for five years, and while certain adventures have been dips of the toe into other settings - Curse of Strahd being the quintessential Ravenloft adventure and Descent into Avernus starting to get us out into the Outer Planes of Planescape - the only other official setting sourcebook is Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, taking the 14-year-old Magic the Gathering setting and fleshing it out as a D&D one (which yes, is a very "corporate synergy" kind of move, but damn if I don't freaking love Ravnica and its crazy guilds.)
Admittedly, we also got Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which is a series of adventures set in the world of Greyhawk, but I'd hardly say it's a sourcebook, just as I wouldn't say that Curse of Strahd is a full-on Ravenloft sourcebook.
So let's go down the list: what settings do I, the writer of this blog and not a veteran of decades of D&D, know about, and which seem likely candidates for a new sourcebook?
Greyhawk: While this is a classic one - Gary Gygax's own setting - my understanding is that it's still the same medieval fantasy style as the Forgotten Realms, just with a perhaps more cynical tone. While history and maps would be useful, I doubt there's much more to be added in the way of monsters or class options.
Dragonlance: See above, though my understanding is that Dragonlance is a little more on the idealism side rather than the cynicism side. I could be wrong, but again, I think this is one of those settings that's mostly covered by existing stuff.
Dark Sun: Here we go: Dark Sun's Dune-like dystopia would, I think, feel very different than other settings. On top of that, you've got the heavy presence of psionics, which would be a great opportunity to introduce a psionic-based class (though if it's the Mystic, please seriously go back to the drawing board because that thing was utterly insane.)
Planescape: While we've already gotten a little detail on the Outer Planes, there's very little in 5E about the Outlands (the True Neutral plane) and we could certainly see places that aren't the Nine Hells or the Abyss fleshed out a bit with new creatures and people. I love the weirdness of Planescape, though, and the way in which the whole medieval aesthetic kind of flies out the window.
Spelljammer: Again, this is one of my top picks. D&D Star Trek based on medieval notions about how space works? Awesome. Like Planescape, this would be an opportunity to do something radically different from what one usually gets in D&D, and I think players would love it.
Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd remains one of their most popular 5E published adventures (and one I'm hopefully going to start playing next week!) but having a larger sourcebook to help DMs build their own Ravenloft campaigns would be really cool. I think the existence of CoS might put this one on the back burner, but I imagine this would be a popular choice as well.
Something Totally New: 5E has brought more people into D&D than ever before (myself included,) and so perhaps revisiting all these classics is the right move. We did effectively get a new D&D setting with Ravnica, but it would be cool if someone came up with a radically different setting to introduce. Off the top of my head, perhaps something that is to the Feywild like Ravenloft is to the Shadowfell - maybe leaning hard into surrealism and a kind of Alice in Wonderland/Myst aesthetic.
Fifth Edition has been out for five years, and while certain adventures have been dips of the toe into other settings - Curse of Strahd being the quintessential Ravenloft adventure and Descent into Avernus starting to get us out into the Outer Planes of Planescape - the only other official setting sourcebook is Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, taking the 14-year-old Magic the Gathering setting and fleshing it out as a D&D one (which yes, is a very "corporate synergy" kind of move, but damn if I don't freaking love Ravnica and its crazy guilds.)
Admittedly, we also got Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which is a series of adventures set in the world of Greyhawk, but I'd hardly say it's a sourcebook, just as I wouldn't say that Curse of Strahd is a full-on Ravenloft sourcebook.
So let's go down the list: what settings do I, the writer of this blog and not a veteran of decades of D&D, know about, and which seem likely candidates for a new sourcebook?
Greyhawk: While this is a classic one - Gary Gygax's own setting - my understanding is that it's still the same medieval fantasy style as the Forgotten Realms, just with a perhaps more cynical tone. While history and maps would be useful, I doubt there's much more to be added in the way of monsters or class options.
Dragonlance: See above, though my understanding is that Dragonlance is a little more on the idealism side rather than the cynicism side. I could be wrong, but again, I think this is one of those settings that's mostly covered by existing stuff.
Dark Sun: Here we go: Dark Sun's Dune-like dystopia would, I think, feel very different than other settings. On top of that, you've got the heavy presence of psionics, which would be a great opportunity to introduce a psionic-based class (though if it's the Mystic, please seriously go back to the drawing board because that thing was utterly insane.)
Planescape: While we've already gotten a little detail on the Outer Planes, there's very little in 5E about the Outlands (the True Neutral plane) and we could certainly see places that aren't the Nine Hells or the Abyss fleshed out a bit with new creatures and people. I love the weirdness of Planescape, though, and the way in which the whole medieval aesthetic kind of flies out the window.
Spelljammer: Again, this is one of my top picks. D&D Star Trek based on medieval notions about how space works? Awesome. Like Planescape, this would be an opportunity to do something radically different from what one usually gets in D&D, and I think players would love it.
Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd remains one of their most popular 5E published adventures (and one I'm hopefully going to start playing next week!) but having a larger sourcebook to help DMs build their own Ravenloft campaigns would be really cool. I think the existence of CoS might put this one on the back burner, but I imagine this would be a popular choice as well.
Something Totally New: 5E has brought more people into D&D than ever before (myself included,) and so perhaps revisiting all these classics is the right move. We did effectively get a new D&D setting with Ravnica, but it would be cool if someone came up with a radically different setting to introduce. Off the top of my head, perhaps something that is to the Feywild like Ravenloft is to the Shadowfell - maybe leaning hard into surrealism and a kind of Alice in Wonderland/Myst aesthetic.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Unearthed Arcana: Twilight Domain, Circle of Wildfire, and School of Onomancy
Even more new subclasses with a new Unearthed Arcana. I really have to wonder if Wizards of the Coast are gearing up to release a new Xanathar's style supplement. We've only seen one new subclass per class in these, but nearly all of them have really gotten me excited, and this one might be the most exciting to me.
So let's go through them:
Clerics' Twilight Domain is themed around darkness and darkvision. Despite this, there's also a lot about bravery, meaning this is looks like a very good option for "dark is not evil" characters (also, I love that the page quote is Mark Rosewater talking about Black in Magic: the Gathering, which I credit as probably the biggest influence for me to enjoy playing dark characters in RPGs.) Mechanically, you get darkvision and certain ways to protect allies in magical darkness while also allowing yourself and others to see through it.
Druids' Circle of Wildfire is maybe my favorite of the three. This is all heavily about fire damage, and gives you access to spells like Scorching Ray and Fireball. The key to it is that you can summon a fiery elemental spirit to assist you, helping allies with healing flames or just burning things. I've always wanted to play a sort of scary pagan druid (there was a show I saw as a kid about building Rome that had some animated segments, and I remember there was a scene with a Gaul cursing Caesar, wearing a big stag's skull as a helmet, and I've always thought that was a really badass image.) While Circle of Spores mostly fit in with that idea - druidic zombies, and the like - this might be even better. I imagine a druid with a wildfire spirit that looks like a walking wicker man with a stag's head.
Wizards' School of Onomancy is positively dripping with flavor. The concept behind it is that you can empower your magic by learning a creature's true name - which can be beneficial if you're casting spells on your friends (you get Bless and Bane for free and have an alternate way of casting them without using spell slots) or, of course, you can use it on your enemies (you also get an ability at level 2 that lets you try to get a creature to tell you their true name.) I feel like this is the kind of subclass you can build a campaign around, with a mysterious enemy whose name the party needs to learn in order to defeat them.
Anyway, I've been really enjoying these new subclasses. Basically all of them have been really exciting, and so I hope this is all a prelude to the introduction of a new book that will have the ones that make the cut, editorially.
So let's go through them:
Clerics' Twilight Domain is themed around darkness and darkvision. Despite this, there's also a lot about bravery, meaning this is looks like a very good option for "dark is not evil" characters (also, I love that the page quote is Mark Rosewater talking about Black in Magic: the Gathering, which I credit as probably the biggest influence for me to enjoy playing dark characters in RPGs.) Mechanically, you get darkvision and certain ways to protect allies in magical darkness while also allowing yourself and others to see through it.
Druids' Circle of Wildfire is maybe my favorite of the three. This is all heavily about fire damage, and gives you access to spells like Scorching Ray and Fireball. The key to it is that you can summon a fiery elemental spirit to assist you, helping allies with healing flames or just burning things. I've always wanted to play a sort of scary pagan druid (there was a show I saw as a kid about building Rome that had some animated segments, and I remember there was a scene with a Gaul cursing Caesar, wearing a big stag's skull as a helmet, and I've always thought that was a really badass image.) While Circle of Spores mostly fit in with that idea - druidic zombies, and the like - this might be even better. I imagine a druid with a wildfire spirit that looks like a walking wicker man with a stag's head.
Wizards' School of Onomancy is positively dripping with flavor. The concept behind it is that you can empower your magic by learning a creature's true name - which can be beneficial if you're casting spells on your friends (you get Bless and Bane for free and have an alternate way of casting them without using spell slots) or, of course, you can use it on your enemies (you also get an ability at level 2 that lets you try to get a creature to tell you their true name.) I feel like this is the kind of subclass you can build a campaign around, with a mysterious enemy whose name the party needs to learn in order to defeat them.
Anyway, I've been really enjoying these new subclasses. Basically all of them have been really exciting, and so I hope this is all a prelude to the introduction of a new book that will have the ones that make the cut, editorially.
8.3 Likely Coming to PTR Soon, And Let's Speculate on Expansion 8
There is an encrypted patch coming down the line for the PTR, which is pretty exciting as, once it's open to datamining (or just goes "live" on the PTR) we'll get our first big glimpse of 8.3.
I think it's possible that they'll save the reveal for that for Blizzcon, though they haven't really done "final patch" announcements with a new expansion announcement since, like, the end of Wrath. It's also very possible that we'll get a big flood of info on 8.3 this month, which could happen any day now if that's the case, though I think it's unlikely it will actually come out this month.
My prediction is that the patch will truly revolve around N'zoth. The Old God of the Depths has been built up - subtly and not subtly - as the expansion's big bad all along, and I think that the people who say he couldn't be the final boss are holding out for something that could never happen. Already, N'zoth would be the first Old God to actually be a final boss (C'thun kind of retroactively became the final boss of Classic, but only after Naxxramas became a level 80 raid.) He's also the only one we got to hear about before the expansion in which we fight him - Yogg-Saron was new lore in Wrath, but we've been hearing about N'zoth since Cataclysm.
Will fighting and even killing him actually mean he's, you know, defeated? Certainly not (necessarily.) N'zoth has been built up since the beginning as a master schemer, and we keep hearing that his "losses" tend to wind up just being part of a larger chess game, so Blizzard has full license to bring him or at least his long-term plans back into the picture later down the line - much as they locked Sargeras away rather than killing him (I really wish we'd been able to fight him, though...)
So: If, as I've suspected, Ny'alotha refers to the physical location of N'zoth's body (I think maybe it was not just a cheap trick to have him appear as that shadow-monster at the end of the Eternal Palace and that perhaps the Titans imprisoned his body and essence separately,) then I think 8.3 will be, essentially, a journey to the Warcraft equivalent of R'lyeh, the sunken city from the Cthulhu mythos where big bad tentacle-face slumbers in death (for now.) The ominous city we glimpse in the Azshara Warbringers short would probably be Ny'alotha (and given how similar it looks to Ahn Qiraj in terms of architecture, I wonder if they're retconning Ahn Qiraj's status as being originally a titan facility - I actually like it better if the quasi-Egyptian/Babylonian ruins are really fragmentary remnants of the Black Empire.)
And I actually think that the events of 8.2.5 might mean that Sylvanas and whatever faction conflict remains (though it seems to be shifting from an inter-faction conflict to one or, possibly, two intra-faction conflicts) are getting placed on the back burner.
Indeed, I actually want 8.3 to really focus deep on N'zoth and Old God stuff, because A: we could use some interesting lore there and B: the cinematic Mak'gora scene felt like a real end of this volume of the faction war narrative, and bringing it back so soon would cheapen the results.
But then we turn to 9.0 and expansion 8.
So much of this is contingent on what actually happens in 8.3. After all, BFA wouldn't have happened (at least not in this way) had Sargeras not stabbed the planet. While the first few expansions were sort of their own plots happening independently, since I suppose Cataclysm, they've tried to have some sort of logical link between them. The Cataclysm broke the Mists that shrouded Pandaria. Garrosh's breakout led to Warlords. Gul'dan's reintroduction to the world caused Legion, and then Sargeras pushed us into BFA.
Which means that the exact story beats that will lead us into 9.0 aren't really something I can predict until we know more.
I do have my theory, which involves the World Soul dying after we kill N'zoth, forcing us to travel to the Shadowlands to find a way to retrieve it from the land of the dead. But I have no idea if that's actually what will happen.
That being said, I feel like there are three popular theories of the next expansion's major themes. And I'll save my favorite for last (though if you read that last paragraph, you already know what it is.)
First is the theory that the next expansion will be some kind of resurgence of the Black Empire, and be a heavily Old God-based expansion.
I'm actually fairly skeptical of this. Given that it is looking very unlikely that the faction conflict will play a central role in the climax of BFA, I think that puts N'zoth as the obvious final boss. Is it possible that 8.3 will actually see Sylvanas playing the final boss role? Possible, sure, but man if they don't want this to be Garrosh 2.0 that would be a terrible way to avoid it. I think we've had the big confrontation with her for now, and it's time for N'zoth.
Now, there are some who speculate that N'zoth is actually plotting to use his death to bring back C'thun and Yogg-Saron. Again, not unthinkable, but that doesn't quite feel right to me. There may certainly be an expansion in the future where we ultimately root out the Old Gods once and for all, but I think that BFA is already an Old God expansion. Sure, Warlords wound up getting very demon-themed by the end before going into Legion, so I could be wrong, but I just don't really believe this is where we're going.
Next, there's the theory that we're going to the Dragon Isles, and that it will be a dragon-themed expansion. I think that such an expansion makes a lot of sense - you could easily create a new "continent" with five zones - one for each dragonflight - and there has certainly been some dragon theming in BFA to foreshadow it. What I wonder, though, is if we could have a kind of Broken Isles situation here. The Broken Isles had plenty of stuff that wasn't directly related to demons or the Burning Legion, but it nevertheless made a perfectly good location for an expansion about them. I'll confess that I think an entire expansion set on Argus could have been cool, but on the other hand, I think we were given just enough of Argus to leave us wanting more, which might have been the right call. The Broken Isles had plenty of other things going on that we didn't feel bogged down in "demons, nothing but demons" for an entire expansion.
In other words, I could imagine the Dragon Isles as the location of an expansion that isn't 100% about the dragons. It could even be about some larger cosmic force. Hell, the Void has been the downfall of three of the original Aspects (or in the case of Nozdormu, will be the downfall,) so it would make sense for a heavily void-themed expansion to be set there.
Finally, we come to my preferred expansion 8: the Shadowlands. Throughout Legion, an expansion that was built around the Burning Legion, fel stuff, and demons, we got a lot of references to the Old Gods sprinkled throughout. And as it turned out, the next expansion wound up being pretty heavily Old God-themed, with N'zoth as the likely final boss.
And so, upon coming into BFA, we've been seeing tons of references to Death as a cosmic force. We've got Bwonsamdi and his unidentified boss. We've got the Drust using death magic to curse the Kul Tirans. We've got this big question surrounding who brought Vol'jin's spirit back and who told him to name Sylvanas his successor. We've got the Lich King's daughter showing up in Kul Tiras. And we've got a focus on Sylvanas using new necromantic powers that we can't explain. It's arguably a bigger factor in BFA than the Old Gods were in Legion.
Also, despite the big Old God presence in BFA, for the most part this expansion has been about fighting a war against a (relatively) mundane enemy - humanoid versus humanoid. I'd really like for the next one to be a truly supernatural threat.
Lastly, I also think that it would behoove Blizzard to build up a new cosmic-level threat. With the Legion pretty decisively beaten, that leaves pretty much just the Old Gods as the apocalyptic danger. For a world as heightened as WoW, we could use more. The Scourge used to be that. Now, I'd actually be pretty happy to get another Scourge expansion, except that it would risk just undoing what happened in Wrath. What I could see if we get a Shadowlands expansion is, essentially, the discovery that the Scourge was just the tip of the undead iceberg.
As of today, we're less than a month out from Blizzcon. So this is the time to keep your eyes open for rumors and trademarks. There's also going to be a ton of fake "leaks" to sort through, but I'll also say that sometimes those obvious fakes wind up being accurate (like when I saw the "Chinese Leak" that said, absurdly, that Sylvanas was going to become Warchief so soon after Vol'jin had, and that Demon Hunters would only be available to Night Elves and Blood Elves. So absurd, right?)
I'll confess that I've felt pretty burned out on BFA, for reasons I can't exactly articulate. I still have yet to even set foot in the Eternal Palace (and thus haven't done those Wrathion quests that came with 8.2.5) and I have not felt very motivated to play for a while now. I don't know to what extent that means I'm just burned out on WoW after playing for twelve years or if there's just some aspect to BFA that hasn't really done it for me (on paper at least, it definitely seems superior to Warlords of Draenor.) So I hope that the next expansion gets me feeling passionate about the game again like Legion did. If we believe in the "pattern," every other expansion is a "good" one, so hopefully the next one will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion.
Oh, I didn't even get into speculation on the mechanics of 9.0, which I intended to do in this post. Might make that the next one.
I think it's possible that they'll save the reveal for that for Blizzcon, though they haven't really done "final patch" announcements with a new expansion announcement since, like, the end of Wrath. It's also very possible that we'll get a big flood of info on 8.3 this month, which could happen any day now if that's the case, though I think it's unlikely it will actually come out this month.
My prediction is that the patch will truly revolve around N'zoth. The Old God of the Depths has been built up - subtly and not subtly - as the expansion's big bad all along, and I think that the people who say he couldn't be the final boss are holding out for something that could never happen. Already, N'zoth would be the first Old God to actually be a final boss (C'thun kind of retroactively became the final boss of Classic, but only after Naxxramas became a level 80 raid.) He's also the only one we got to hear about before the expansion in which we fight him - Yogg-Saron was new lore in Wrath, but we've been hearing about N'zoth since Cataclysm.
Will fighting and even killing him actually mean he's, you know, defeated? Certainly not (necessarily.) N'zoth has been built up since the beginning as a master schemer, and we keep hearing that his "losses" tend to wind up just being part of a larger chess game, so Blizzard has full license to bring him or at least his long-term plans back into the picture later down the line - much as they locked Sargeras away rather than killing him (I really wish we'd been able to fight him, though...)
So: If, as I've suspected, Ny'alotha refers to the physical location of N'zoth's body (I think maybe it was not just a cheap trick to have him appear as that shadow-monster at the end of the Eternal Palace and that perhaps the Titans imprisoned his body and essence separately,) then I think 8.3 will be, essentially, a journey to the Warcraft equivalent of R'lyeh, the sunken city from the Cthulhu mythos where big bad tentacle-face slumbers in death (for now.) The ominous city we glimpse in the Azshara Warbringers short would probably be Ny'alotha (and given how similar it looks to Ahn Qiraj in terms of architecture, I wonder if they're retconning Ahn Qiraj's status as being originally a titan facility - I actually like it better if the quasi-Egyptian/Babylonian ruins are really fragmentary remnants of the Black Empire.)
And I actually think that the events of 8.2.5 might mean that Sylvanas and whatever faction conflict remains (though it seems to be shifting from an inter-faction conflict to one or, possibly, two intra-faction conflicts) are getting placed on the back burner.
Indeed, I actually want 8.3 to really focus deep on N'zoth and Old God stuff, because A: we could use some interesting lore there and B: the cinematic Mak'gora scene felt like a real end of this volume of the faction war narrative, and bringing it back so soon would cheapen the results.
But then we turn to 9.0 and expansion 8.
So much of this is contingent on what actually happens in 8.3. After all, BFA wouldn't have happened (at least not in this way) had Sargeras not stabbed the planet. While the first few expansions were sort of their own plots happening independently, since I suppose Cataclysm, they've tried to have some sort of logical link between them. The Cataclysm broke the Mists that shrouded Pandaria. Garrosh's breakout led to Warlords. Gul'dan's reintroduction to the world caused Legion, and then Sargeras pushed us into BFA.
Which means that the exact story beats that will lead us into 9.0 aren't really something I can predict until we know more.
I do have my theory, which involves the World Soul dying after we kill N'zoth, forcing us to travel to the Shadowlands to find a way to retrieve it from the land of the dead. But I have no idea if that's actually what will happen.
That being said, I feel like there are three popular theories of the next expansion's major themes. And I'll save my favorite for last (though if you read that last paragraph, you already know what it is.)
First is the theory that the next expansion will be some kind of resurgence of the Black Empire, and be a heavily Old God-based expansion.
I'm actually fairly skeptical of this. Given that it is looking very unlikely that the faction conflict will play a central role in the climax of BFA, I think that puts N'zoth as the obvious final boss. Is it possible that 8.3 will actually see Sylvanas playing the final boss role? Possible, sure, but man if they don't want this to be Garrosh 2.0 that would be a terrible way to avoid it. I think we've had the big confrontation with her for now, and it's time for N'zoth.
Now, there are some who speculate that N'zoth is actually plotting to use his death to bring back C'thun and Yogg-Saron. Again, not unthinkable, but that doesn't quite feel right to me. There may certainly be an expansion in the future where we ultimately root out the Old Gods once and for all, but I think that BFA is already an Old God expansion. Sure, Warlords wound up getting very demon-themed by the end before going into Legion, so I could be wrong, but I just don't really believe this is where we're going.
Next, there's the theory that we're going to the Dragon Isles, and that it will be a dragon-themed expansion. I think that such an expansion makes a lot of sense - you could easily create a new "continent" with five zones - one for each dragonflight - and there has certainly been some dragon theming in BFA to foreshadow it. What I wonder, though, is if we could have a kind of Broken Isles situation here. The Broken Isles had plenty of stuff that wasn't directly related to demons or the Burning Legion, but it nevertheless made a perfectly good location for an expansion about them. I'll confess that I think an entire expansion set on Argus could have been cool, but on the other hand, I think we were given just enough of Argus to leave us wanting more, which might have been the right call. The Broken Isles had plenty of other things going on that we didn't feel bogged down in "demons, nothing but demons" for an entire expansion.
In other words, I could imagine the Dragon Isles as the location of an expansion that isn't 100% about the dragons. It could even be about some larger cosmic force. Hell, the Void has been the downfall of three of the original Aspects (or in the case of Nozdormu, will be the downfall,) so it would make sense for a heavily void-themed expansion to be set there.
Finally, we come to my preferred expansion 8: the Shadowlands. Throughout Legion, an expansion that was built around the Burning Legion, fel stuff, and demons, we got a lot of references to the Old Gods sprinkled throughout. And as it turned out, the next expansion wound up being pretty heavily Old God-themed, with N'zoth as the likely final boss.
And so, upon coming into BFA, we've been seeing tons of references to Death as a cosmic force. We've got Bwonsamdi and his unidentified boss. We've got the Drust using death magic to curse the Kul Tirans. We've got this big question surrounding who brought Vol'jin's spirit back and who told him to name Sylvanas his successor. We've got the Lich King's daughter showing up in Kul Tiras. And we've got a focus on Sylvanas using new necromantic powers that we can't explain. It's arguably a bigger factor in BFA than the Old Gods were in Legion.
Also, despite the big Old God presence in BFA, for the most part this expansion has been about fighting a war against a (relatively) mundane enemy - humanoid versus humanoid. I'd really like for the next one to be a truly supernatural threat.
Lastly, I also think that it would behoove Blizzard to build up a new cosmic-level threat. With the Legion pretty decisively beaten, that leaves pretty much just the Old Gods as the apocalyptic danger. For a world as heightened as WoW, we could use more. The Scourge used to be that. Now, I'd actually be pretty happy to get another Scourge expansion, except that it would risk just undoing what happened in Wrath. What I could see if we get a Shadowlands expansion is, essentially, the discovery that the Scourge was just the tip of the undead iceberg.
As of today, we're less than a month out from Blizzcon. So this is the time to keep your eyes open for rumors and trademarks. There's also going to be a ton of fake "leaks" to sort through, but I'll also say that sometimes those obvious fakes wind up being accurate (like when I saw the "Chinese Leak" that said, absurdly, that Sylvanas was going to become Warchief so soon after Vol'jin had, and that Demon Hunters would only be available to Night Elves and Blood Elves. So absurd, right?)
I'll confess that I've felt pretty burned out on BFA, for reasons I can't exactly articulate. I still have yet to even set foot in the Eternal Palace (and thus haven't done those Wrathion quests that came with 8.2.5) and I have not felt very motivated to play for a while now. I don't know to what extent that means I'm just burned out on WoW after playing for twelve years or if there's just some aspect to BFA that hasn't really done it for me (on paper at least, it definitely seems superior to Warlords of Draenor.) So I hope that the next expansion gets me feeling passionate about the game again like Legion did. If we believe in the "pattern," every other expansion is a "good" one, so hopefully the next one will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion.
Oh, I didn't even get into speculation on the mechanics of 9.0, which I intended to do in this post. Might make that the next one.
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Blizzcon Rewards Lore Speculation
Well...
We're going to be grasping a bit here. But as with any Blizzcon, we have some new rewards coming in for those who buy tickets or the virtual ticket (which I have never done.)
Given that these branch out across all their games, it's not always clear how much to read in anything in particular for what it means for WoW.
The most obviously Warcraft-related rewards are the Murloc pets for WoW and a pair of Overwatch skins.
The skins give Genji and Symmetra Illidan and Tyrande skins, respectively. I'm very hesitant to read too much into this, as Illidan was very firmly placed on the back burner lorewise at the end of Legion. While his death in Burning Crusade was a little abrupt - most players never even saw him before getting to his boss room - much of Legion was about giving Illidan a proper send-off, and rehabilitating his character just enough to push him out of the "villain" side of things and into the "very chaotic neutral antihero."
But looking at the Murlocs pets, as is Blizzcon tradition, these are a little underwhelming. The rewards are just an Anduin-themed Murloc for the Alliance and a Sylvanas-themed Murloc for the Horde.
Now, as the leaders of their respective factions through this expansion, the conflict between the two has been representative of the overall Alliance/Horde war. But BFA only has one more patch to go (one assumes), and we're expecting that at Blizzcon, we're going to get a new expansion announced. Two years ago, the Alliance/Horde airship mounts were a big hint toward the factional theme of BFA. But these feel like more of a callback to the current expansion than a hint to the next one.
Especially after 8.2.5, this doesn't even seem up to date. And furthermore, Anduin's role in BFA has been a fairly background one. Yes, he's been working with Saurfang, but he's been more backing him up than directly taking a part in this internal Horde conflict. Jaina, I think, has really been the Alliance character with the biggest story this expansion.
So I'll say now that my guess is that these pets are not any sort of hint at what's to come.
But what if they are?
Sylvanas (spoilers for the most recent patch if you haven't done the quests yet) is no longer Warchief, and is basically in hiding now. I've long suspected that if we do get the death-themed Shadowlands expansion (which, to be clear, is my preferred route) that introduces new cosmic-level threats beyond the Void and the Legion, that Sylvanas will be our lead-in to such a story. Indeed, the attention that the game pays to her newly-empowered magic seems to strongly hint that we're getting some kind of new force at play. While death magic is not exactly uncommon on Azeroth, the biggest expression of it, the Scourge, was introduced via the demonic power of the Burning Legion. Granted, Jaina seemed not to recognize the magic Sylvanas used, which you'd think she would if it were pure death magic after her tribulations in Thros with the Drust.
So even though she already had a big role in BFA, it's not unthinkable that she'd also play a big role in what comes next, especially if it's death-related, given that she's the big Forsaken faction leader (or was.) If the expansion kicks off with us pursuing her into the Shadowlands after she, say, bombards Stormwind with Blight, that'd make a pretty good hook.
So what of Anduin?
Well, so far Anduin has largely played the role of a young man trying to fill his father's shoes. Ending the war was a big win for him, especially given that Saurfang's challenge meant no actual battle over Orgrimmar (though given that a lot of that would be Horde vs Horde, if you're counting by pure Machiavellian standards, maybe that battle would have been a bigger win - except it would have risked Sylvanas remaining in charge.) Storywise, Anduin has always played the role of the idealist, tempering his father's desire for revenge with a sense of empathy toward the Horde's humanity. And make no mistake - that strength of his ended the war. He saw Saurfang as a person, and that ultimately led to Sylvanas' removal from power.
But is there something else they could do with him?
We've usually seen Anduin confronting the Horde, which is a distinctly humanoid group of people who are... people. Sure, they basically flip a coin with each leader whether they're going to focus on protecting the world or waging genocidal campaigns of conquest, but the ebb and flow of Horde politics is one that could, in theory, eventually be solved by just having them figure their shit out.
The Warcraft universe has plenty of threats that aren't nuanced in that way. And I think that it could be a great test of someone with as much empathy and patience as Anduin to confront something that is pure evil.
Again, I'm spitballing here.
There's a big chance that they're simply not going to give some hint as to what is coming next with the Blizzcon rewards. But we're only about a month away and I'm excited!
We're going to be grasping a bit here. But as with any Blizzcon, we have some new rewards coming in for those who buy tickets or the virtual ticket (which I have never done.)
Given that these branch out across all their games, it's not always clear how much to read in anything in particular for what it means for WoW.
The most obviously Warcraft-related rewards are the Murloc pets for WoW and a pair of Overwatch skins.
The skins give Genji and Symmetra Illidan and Tyrande skins, respectively. I'm very hesitant to read too much into this, as Illidan was very firmly placed on the back burner lorewise at the end of Legion. While his death in Burning Crusade was a little abrupt - most players never even saw him before getting to his boss room - much of Legion was about giving Illidan a proper send-off, and rehabilitating his character just enough to push him out of the "villain" side of things and into the "very chaotic neutral antihero."
But looking at the Murlocs pets, as is Blizzcon tradition, these are a little underwhelming. The rewards are just an Anduin-themed Murloc for the Alliance and a Sylvanas-themed Murloc for the Horde.
Now, as the leaders of their respective factions through this expansion, the conflict between the two has been representative of the overall Alliance/Horde war. But BFA only has one more patch to go (one assumes), and we're expecting that at Blizzcon, we're going to get a new expansion announced. Two years ago, the Alliance/Horde airship mounts were a big hint toward the factional theme of BFA. But these feel like more of a callback to the current expansion than a hint to the next one.
Especially after 8.2.5, this doesn't even seem up to date. And furthermore, Anduin's role in BFA has been a fairly background one. Yes, he's been working with Saurfang, but he's been more backing him up than directly taking a part in this internal Horde conflict. Jaina, I think, has really been the Alliance character with the biggest story this expansion.
So I'll say now that my guess is that these pets are not any sort of hint at what's to come.
But what if they are?
Sylvanas (spoilers for the most recent patch if you haven't done the quests yet) is no longer Warchief, and is basically in hiding now. I've long suspected that if we do get the death-themed Shadowlands expansion (which, to be clear, is my preferred route) that introduces new cosmic-level threats beyond the Void and the Legion, that Sylvanas will be our lead-in to such a story. Indeed, the attention that the game pays to her newly-empowered magic seems to strongly hint that we're getting some kind of new force at play. While death magic is not exactly uncommon on Azeroth, the biggest expression of it, the Scourge, was introduced via the demonic power of the Burning Legion. Granted, Jaina seemed not to recognize the magic Sylvanas used, which you'd think she would if it were pure death magic after her tribulations in Thros with the Drust.
So even though she already had a big role in BFA, it's not unthinkable that she'd also play a big role in what comes next, especially if it's death-related, given that she's the big Forsaken faction leader (or was.) If the expansion kicks off with us pursuing her into the Shadowlands after she, say, bombards Stormwind with Blight, that'd make a pretty good hook.
So what of Anduin?
Well, so far Anduin has largely played the role of a young man trying to fill his father's shoes. Ending the war was a big win for him, especially given that Saurfang's challenge meant no actual battle over Orgrimmar (though given that a lot of that would be Horde vs Horde, if you're counting by pure Machiavellian standards, maybe that battle would have been a bigger win - except it would have risked Sylvanas remaining in charge.) Storywise, Anduin has always played the role of the idealist, tempering his father's desire for revenge with a sense of empathy toward the Horde's humanity. And make no mistake - that strength of his ended the war. He saw Saurfang as a person, and that ultimately led to Sylvanas' removal from power.
But is there something else they could do with him?
We've usually seen Anduin confronting the Horde, which is a distinctly humanoid group of people who are... people. Sure, they basically flip a coin with each leader whether they're going to focus on protecting the world or waging genocidal campaigns of conquest, but the ebb and flow of Horde politics is one that could, in theory, eventually be solved by just having them figure their shit out.
The Warcraft universe has plenty of threats that aren't nuanced in that way. And I think that it could be a great test of someone with as much empathy and patience as Anduin to confront something that is pure evil.
Again, I'm spitballing here.
There's a big chance that they're simply not going to give some hint as to what is coming next with the Blizzcon rewards. But we're only about a month away and I'm excited!
Sylvanas' Next Move
So Sylvanas is no longer Warchief of the Horde. But she's not dead (well, not dead-dead) either. (It's a week into the patch, so... uh... are we past the statute of limitations on spoilers?)
I don't know exactly what she expected to accomplish when she answered Saurfang's Mak'gora challenge, but it does seem like when people do this, the victor usually pays a political price, like when Garrosh really confirmed a lot of the greatest concerns within the Horde over his warmongering leadership style. I mean, Cairne was basically the friendly grandpa of the Horde, and killing him didn't earn Garrosh much - (though given the whole honor-death challenge nature of the Mak'gora, it wasn't like he could afford to lose either.)
What do we know about Sylvanas and her plans right now?
In a lot of ways, she's an enigma. Since she became undead, Sylvanas has never been particularly trustworthy. Even before World of Warcraft, she made an alliance of convenience with Garrithos to defeat the Dreadlords attempting to rein in the Scourge under the control of the Burning Legion once again. Upon defeating Detheroc and Balnazzar and securing the (as it would turn out temporary) defection of Varimathras, she turned around and just straight-up murdered Garrithos. Sure, the guy was a racist jagweed, but it demonstrated pretty early on that even if Sylvanas and her people had regained their free will, Sylvanas would be just as ruthless as the Scourge had been.
And this was borne out in World of Warcraft. Crafting the Forsaken Blight, she prepared the ultimate weapon to use against the Forsaken's enemies, both living and undead. The only time that Sylvanas ever appeared caught out of position was when Putress and Varimathras launched their coup. This betrayal made Sylvanas appear somewhat more sympathetic, letting us believe that perhaps she was not the pure Machiavellian schemer we had thought she was.
After Wrath, when she discovered that Bolvar had been made the Lich King in place of Arthas, Sylvanas hit her lowest point. She had dedicated herself and the creation of an entire culture around the need to get revenge against the Lich King. Yet here, for all their efforts, was just another one. So she killed herself.
There's a part of me that wonders if that was the last time Sylvanas had any redeemable qualities. Not, mind you, to say that suicide is a virtuous act in any way (seriously,) but that this act signified a descent into a kind of nihilism - a void in values and motivation that could be filled by an opportunistic force.
Like the force of Death.
Adrift in some fathomless darkness, like where we can assume Arthas' soul now resides, Sylvanas was pulled back from the brink by a group of Val'kyr that the Lich King had raised to serve him but were now untethered.
Big, big question: why were they no longer tethered? Given that Bolvar became the Lich King upon taking the crown, should the Scourge not all adhere to his will in lockstep? Well, perhaps not, as we saw a Crypt Lord in the Eastern Plaguelands declaring himself a new master of the Scourge. Maybe Bolvar had not consolidated his power yet.
The point is, upon having been brought back to (un)life, Sylvanas declared her intention to be the preservation of the Forsaken as a people, and this began her campaign of conversion, using the Val'kyr to raise the dead as Forsaken.
If you didn't play before Cataclysm, you might not realize that, prior to that, the Forsaken did not "recruit." Any "new" Forsaken was simply a former Scourge zombie that had regained its free will when Illidan managed to crack the Frozen Throne. It wasn't until Sylvanas got her Val'kyr that anyone else could become Forsaken.
Sylvanas makes the case for her actions to Horde adventurers in Silverpine Forest, basically saying that if they don't do this, the Forsaken will simply wither away as individuals are killed, and not only will this mean that they'll lose the number required to keep the former kingdom of Lordaeron under their control, but the Horde will also lose its key foothold in the Eastern Kingdoms.
Her characterization is a little muddled here, as she seems to show real concern for her people, but also gleefully pursues tactics that give even Garrosh Hellscream pause. Was her concern just an act?
After dying once again (and likely disqualifying her from anything special happening at the "hour of her third death" given that any future death of hers would be number 4) at the treachery of Lord Godfrey, she loses more Val'kyr, but also doubles down on her commitment to using them to preserve the Forsaken people. Again, one is left to wonder if she fears her people will all suffer the fate of endless drifting through darkness after death, as she did, or if she simply wants the power that comes with a fiercely devoted population that she has trained to worship her.
Ironically, as far as we know, she bears no real blame for the circumstances of her rise to Warchief. The Burning Legion had completely outmaneuvered the combined Alliance and Horde forces, and what looked like an abandonment to the Alliance forces was actually a desperate retreat that saved the Horde's greatest heroes from a slaughter. It would have been nice if Sylvanas had sent a letter to Anduin basically saying "I'm really sorry and I know this looks bad, but we were outflanked and getting killed up there. We had no choice but to retreat. If you don't believe me, take note of the fact that I'm Warchief now because Vol'jin was killed by the demons."
We also have yet to find out if the "spirits" that convinced Vol'jin to name Sylvanas his successor actually had anything to do with her. I even wonder if they set her up to fail.
Still, Syvlanas has done plenty of bad things. For one thing, she made that deal with Helya - the terms of which are still unknown - yes, Sylvanas had probably just expected to get that lantern to enslave Eyir, but what was Helya getting out of it? And her actions over the course of BFA have been horrendous, maybe especially so given how she has made most of the Horde leadership complicit in it.
But Saurfang got her monologuing, which is always a bad look for villains who have contempt for the people whose respect they require. And she's flown off, abandoning her position - to the point where the Horde, for the first time, doesn't actually have a Warchief.
We know what she's done. But what the hell is she doing now is the big question.
We've gotten clearer confirmation that she had coordinated with Azshara to wreck much of the Alliance fleet (though I'm not clear if this totally took the Kul Tiran navy off the board like the Battle of Dazar'alor took out the Zandalari or if this was just a nasty loss.) But she doesn't seem to have really aligned herself with Azshara and N'zoth. In fact, the magic she used fighting Saurfang is explicitly considered a previously unknown type of magic - and Old God shadow magic is pretty identifiable, I'd think.
Sylvanas seems smug if anything when her loyalists go to see her after the Mak'gora. If this is things going according to plan, you really have to wonder what her endgame is. And what she hopes to accomplish.
We still do have one major patch in BFA. In all likelihood, it will focus on N'zoth. I wonder if Sylvanas might just slip back below the radar for the remainder of the expansion.
But on the other hand, I also wonder if she's getting ready for her big goal, which, as stated in the novellas released before the expansion, is to attack Stormwind.
Could we see our heroes bravely delve into the eldritch horror of Ny'alotha or wherever we find the Old God of the Depths, only for them to return and find that Stormwind (and maybe even Orgrimmar now) have been blasted with blight by Sylvanas and her loyalists?
At best, we have a serious wildcard in play now, and even player characters who represent that underlying threat to the peace that those like Anduin, Saurfang, and others have fought to achieve.
There are some big story hooks surrounding Sylvanas that have been introduced, and I think we're going to spend a long time following them and figuring out what they mean. But for now, Sylvanas is at large, with loyalists in the Horde, and the problem has only transformed, not gone away.
I don't know exactly what she expected to accomplish when she answered Saurfang's Mak'gora challenge, but it does seem like when people do this, the victor usually pays a political price, like when Garrosh really confirmed a lot of the greatest concerns within the Horde over his warmongering leadership style. I mean, Cairne was basically the friendly grandpa of the Horde, and killing him didn't earn Garrosh much - (though given the whole honor-death challenge nature of the Mak'gora, it wasn't like he could afford to lose either.)
What do we know about Sylvanas and her plans right now?
In a lot of ways, she's an enigma. Since she became undead, Sylvanas has never been particularly trustworthy. Even before World of Warcraft, she made an alliance of convenience with Garrithos to defeat the Dreadlords attempting to rein in the Scourge under the control of the Burning Legion once again. Upon defeating Detheroc and Balnazzar and securing the (as it would turn out temporary) defection of Varimathras, she turned around and just straight-up murdered Garrithos. Sure, the guy was a racist jagweed, but it demonstrated pretty early on that even if Sylvanas and her people had regained their free will, Sylvanas would be just as ruthless as the Scourge had been.
And this was borne out in World of Warcraft. Crafting the Forsaken Blight, she prepared the ultimate weapon to use against the Forsaken's enemies, both living and undead. The only time that Sylvanas ever appeared caught out of position was when Putress and Varimathras launched their coup. This betrayal made Sylvanas appear somewhat more sympathetic, letting us believe that perhaps she was not the pure Machiavellian schemer we had thought she was.
After Wrath, when she discovered that Bolvar had been made the Lich King in place of Arthas, Sylvanas hit her lowest point. She had dedicated herself and the creation of an entire culture around the need to get revenge against the Lich King. Yet here, for all their efforts, was just another one. So she killed herself.
There's a part of me that wonders if that was the last time Sylvanas had any redeemable qualities. Not, mind you, to say that suicide is a virtuous act in any way (seriously,) but that this act signified a descent into a kind of nihilism - a void in values and motivation that could be filled by an opportunistic force.
Like the force of Death.
Adrift in some fathomless darkness, like where we can assume Arthas' soul now resides, Sylvanas was pulled back from the brink by a group of Val'kyr that the Lich King had raised to serve him but were now untethered.
Big, big question: why were they no longer tethered? Given that Bolvar became the Lich King upon taking the crown, should the Scourge not all adhere to his will in lockstep? Well, perhaps not, as we saw a Crypt Lord in the Eastern Plaguelands declaring himself a new master of the Scourge. Maybe Bolvar had not consolidated his power yet.
The point is, upon having been brought back to (un)life, Sylvanas declared her intention to be the preservation of the Forsaken as a people, and this began her campaign of conversion, using the Val'kyr to raise the dead as Forsaken.
If you didn't play before Cataclysm, you might not realize that, prior to that, the Forsaken did not "recruit." Any "new" Forsaken was simply a former Scourge zombie that had regained its free will when Illidan managed to crack the Frozen Throne. It wasn't until Sylvanas got her Val'kyr that anyone else could become Forsaken.
Sylvanas makes the case for her actions to Horde adventurers in Silverpine Forest, basically saying that if they don't do this, the Forsaken will simply wither away as individuals are killed, and not only will this mean that they'll lose the number required to keep the former kingdom of Lordaeron under their control, but the Horde will also lose its key foothold in the Eastern Kingdoms.
Her characterization is a little muddled here, as she seems to show real concern for her people, but also gleefully pursues tactics that give even Garrosh Hellscream pause. Was her concern just an act?
After dying once again (and likely disqualifying her from anything special happening at the "hour of her third death" given that any future death of hers would be number 4) at the treachery of Lord Godfrey, she loses more Val'kyr, but also doubles down on her commitment to using them to preserve the Forsaken people. Again, one is left to wonder if she fears her people will all suffer the fate of endless drifting through darkness after death, as she did, or if she simply wants the power that comes with a fiercely devoted population that she has trained to worship her.
Ironically, as far as we know, she bears no real blame for the circumstances of her rise to Warchief. The Burning Legion had completely outmaneuvered the combined Alliance and Horde forces, and what looked like an abandonment to the Alliance forces was actually a desperate retreat that saved the Horde's greatest heroes from a slaughter. It would have been nice if Sylvanas had sent a letter to Anduin basically saying "I'm really sorry and I know this looks bad, but we were outflanked and getting killed up there. We had no choice but to retreat. If you don't believe me, take note of the fact that I'm Warchief now because Vol'jin was killed by the demons."
We also have yet to find out if the "spirits" that convinced Vol'jin to name Sylvanas his successor actually had anything to do with her. I even wonder if they set her up to fail.
Still, Syvlanas has done plenty of bad things. For one thing, she made that deal with Helya - the terms of which are still unknown - yes, Sylvanas had probably just expected to get that lantern to enslave Eyir, but what was Helya getting out of it? And her actions over the course of BFA have been horrendous, maybe especially so given how she has made most of the Horde leadership complicit in it.
But Saurfang got her monologuing, which is always a bad look for villains who have contempt for the people whose respect they require. And she's flown off, abandoning her position - to the point where the Horde, for the first time, doesn't actually have a Warchief.
We know what she's done. But what the hell is she doing now is the big question.
We've gotten clearer confirmation that she had coordinated with Azshara to wreck much of the Alliance fleet (though I'm not clear if this totally took the Kul Tiran navy off the board like the Battle of Dazar'alor took out the Zandalari or if this was just a nasty loss.) But she doesn't seem to have really aligned herself with Azshara and N'zoth. In fact, the magic she used fighting Saurfang is explicitly considered a previously unknown type of magic - and Old God shadow magic is pretty identifiable, I'd think.
Sylvanas seems smug if anything when her loyalists go to see her after the Mak'gora. If this is things going according to plan, you really have to wonder what her endgame is. And what she hopes to accomplish.
We still do have one major patch in BFA. In all likelihood, it will focus on N'zoth. I wonder if Sylvanas might just slip back below the radar for the remainder of the expansion.
But on the other hand, I also wonder if she's getting ready for her big goal, which, as stated in the novellas released before the expansion, is to attack Stormwind.
Could we see our heroes bravely delve into the eldritch horror of Ny'alotha or wherever we find the Old God of the Depths, only for them to return and find that Stormwind (and maybe even Orgrimmar now) have been blasted with blight by Sylvanas and her loyalists?
At best, we have a serious wildcard in play now, and even player characters who represent that underlying threat to the peace that those like Anduin, Saurfang, and others have fought to achieve.
There are some big story hooks surrounding Sylvanas that have been introduced, and I think we're going to spend a long time following them and figuring out what they mean. But for now, Sylvanas is at large, with loyalists in the Horde, and the problem has only transformed, not gone away.
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