Afrasiabi's Sylvanas Sabotage : The Truth

[@TaliesinEvitel]

It looks like Bell's video isn't out yet but that's OK. I talked with him about some of the stuff I know so it will be well informed and quality content and I'm looking forward to seeing it :)

[@broombot1392]

My wife and I love your guys channel. Thanks for putting out funny, informative and enjoyable content. Cheers

[@briannelson3830]

I am demanding Ion Bates get a npc

[@robhugh535]

@@briannelson3830 There's the Widhammer Fact Checker wearing a red shirt standing next to Falstad in the Ironforge throne room. 🙂

[@zimattack9994]

Biggest problem I have with the war of thorns is how stupid they made the alliance ask your self this how do you march an army by land to silithus because you physically cant

[@EdBurke37]

I was about to be like "wait did I miss a video?"

[@Juniper_Rose]

Seems the takeaway is "It wasn't out of Spite, he's just kind of a tool who wants to hear people cheer for him even if it becomes everyone else's problem."

[@acidbrns]

"For the Horde Sylvanas" was fantastic. I loved it. Having her betray the horde and specifically, the Forsaken. That felt jarring and shitty.

[@metal_monocle7334]

Not only that, but also watching the BFA cinematic.. You see a Sylvanas who was both shocked, frightered and fighting to save her people. None of which would make A N Y sense if she was just going to sacrifice the world to the jailer and had planned it all.

[@RalphEvangelista]

When she screamed for the horde and went full banshee, still gives me actual goosebumps.

[@JamailvanWestering]

@@metal_monocle7334 given how she’s written since WoTLK, I disagree, need I remind you that she wanted to continue on working with the Blight after the Wrathgate incident

[@acidbrns]

@@JamailvanWestering And? Even since wrath, (even since tft frankly) she's just pro forsaken. metals right, it didn't make sense for her character unless you force yourself to view her through the lens of what she became.

[@metal_monocle7334]

@@JamailvanWestering Oh I'm not saying that her writing was coherent - good god no! I'm just saying that the way she's portrayed in the BFA cinematic, shows that whatever happened with her story afterwards, regarding the Jailer and what not - had not been planned. Hell even at one point Blizzard really tried to convince us, that the burning of Teldrassil wasn't just "she did it lulz". Why try so hard to tell us that, and try to show us that there was a bigger image... When there clearly wasn't.

[@Lauren88nl]

Treating every expansion like it was the last is the biggest problem. Not tying the lore of one expansion to another and letting stories drop without finishing them, is something a lot of players are so annoyed with. I have this fear that 2 expansions in the future, refugees are still sleeping in tents in Stormwind and nothing is done for the kaldorei. There are so many interesting points of lore that have been left untouched in bfa, that we all keep wondering about. Of all expansions I dislike Shadowlands the most. It feels so terrible disconnected from the world that I love, Azeroth. I just hope the next expansion will set some things right. There are plenty of games who take their lore and stories a lot more serious, I wish Blizzard did the same.

[@felbae1431]

Fully agree. The next expansion feels like the right time to go back. We need something on a smaller scale to focus on. We need another Mists of Pandaria. lol

[@systematic]

Here's my (not so) hot take. Everyone's shouting and accusing one another of sabotaging the story, but the current WoW story is in such a bad state because of the current writing team. Nobody held a gun to their heads when they wrote the Jailer as the most boring, bland villain of all time (and we STILL don't know what his motivations are after all of this time). Nobody threatened their jobs when they decided a genocidal undead banshee "wasn't really herself" when she did an oopsie (which is another can of worms as she WAS herself when she turned on her nipple showing daddy? which is it? In control or no control?) and no one was going to be dropped in a vat of acid when the build up of the night warrior and it's epic conclusion was reduced to "Choose revenge or regrowth! Oh, you chose revenge? Pick again!" It's the current writing team who are responsible for where we are right now and there's no defense of it. As much as I want it to get better so I have an excuse to play again, I don't see it happening.

[@EScott410]

Not a hot take at all. Everyone I know and have talked about to with this thinks this is such a huge cop out to blame one person. Let's just casually forget every other terrible story this expansion while we're at it. But ya know, floating trees and water we can walk on!

[@scorpionlord9175]

tell us you didn't understand the cinematic about her fractured soul without telling us you didn't understand it............... sigh, they even did a video on this explicitly explaining it and YOU ARE WRONG COMPLETELY. I get it, you don't like the writing. but that cinematic was really good and you don't have to fabricate bullshit to try to push that you hate the current writing. if you had actually watched the video(and not just ignored blatant, clear parts of it) you would know it isn't a cop out at all. it isn't "her not being herself". cause that isn't the way the soul fracturing stuff works at all(there is in game stuff between a quest and a "stay awhile and listen" talk that CLEARLY explains how it works). so sorry, your wrong. you can not like the story if you want, it is bad writing. but you don't need to make up utter bullshit to do so.

[@CrashB111]

@@scorpionlord9175 The "soul splitting" thing was just the writers writing in their own retcon to Sylvanas because the lead writer gets boners thinking of her and couldn't stomach the idea of her actually dying for her actions like she should have. I don't give a shit how "good" you think the cinematic was, the whole concept was created completely out of whole cloth just to justify a way to not make Sylvanas actually pay for her crimes. It's lame and shit writing. A Deus Ex Machina of the worst degree.

[@scorpionlord9175]

@@CrashB111 lol, except she is paying for her crimes. They did it in a satisfying way that is universally liked cause it satisfies everyone. Well, almost everyone it seems. She is still alive(my side) and she is punished and paying for her crimes. And I'm well aware it's a retcon. But, they did it in a good way that they at least explained well. They made it very clear that no, it isn't two separate people, they are one and the same and she accepted that it was her and had to pay for her crimes and she has. At this point your whining just to whine. Has there been bad writing? Oh hell yes, this whole expansion has been wack. But when it came to ending of her, they actually did well.

[@odst123451]

I’m late but this is my take. The Banshee is more Banshee than ranger general but even with a soul divided, she can still love her sisters, kinda. People forget that Sylavanas(banshee) was planning on killing her little sister with poison so she could raise her. She later planned to kill both of them. The Banshee wants to be free of a bs system that in her view is punishing her for wrongs she hadn’t committed. The jailer was her ticket to that freedom. The burning of Teldrassil was necessary to achieve her goals and it was justifiable. The banshee uses twisted logic so killing the Nelfs in the tree was in a way, an act of mercy. When we talk about control, we need to take into account that different types of control exist. The Banshee stopped being enslaved when she broke free of Arthas. The trauma she suffered along with the darkest parts of the ranger general being what makes the banshee, she is easily manipulated. Anduin was just dominated. That domination seemed to elevate his darker impulses which is why he’s so confused even after being freed.

[@FancyTophatDude]

just a couple of things BfA set up and did nothing with: Xal'Atath, Derek Proudmoore, the relationship between humans and forsaken, Calia Menethil and her being a light forsaken thing (especially with info from Shadowlands this makes even less sense than before), Zappy Boy's story culmination, the Sylvanas loyalist story culmination, Xal'Atath (the dagger this time), what nyalotha is, why it is on a different plane of reality, what exactly was G'Huun, what was his status in comparison to the other Old Gods, where do the night elves and forsaken live now? how do any of the characters that lived in those cities feel about their destruction, the horde council and how it is received by the people and by the alliance, Sylvanas burning Teldrassil because she wanted to "Kill hope", the big ol sword, did all the Azerite all over the world just disappear? the aftermath of the war and I'm sure there's a lot more.

[@wesleykruger5460]

Wasn't G'huun an "artificial" Old God accidentally created by the Titans when experimenting in Uldir? I don't even think the other Old Gods were aware of it.

[@Ryquard1]

There is some kind of info on Ghuun in shadowlands, is basically a gorm that was given flesh from an old god, thar gorm got there because Brokers love to trade stuff and learned that Gromlings were a big no no to trade because unsatiable hunger, fast reproduction ruin mortal worlds, or so i heard

[@dakotaravenwood7755]

In one of the last books, the Night Elf leadership had moved to Nordrassil. Most of the civilian population are dead because of the Horde sacking Astranar and the burning of Teldrassil. The few survivors are in Stormwind and their enclaves around the world. Most of their survivor are the military now, which will be very interesting development.

[@xavierzabie8184]

75% of this is just story threading and probably has been put on hold for a future expac. Mainly because a giant hole opened up in the sky breaking the veil, that we learned a little bit about as both DKs and DHs, between the realms is shattered alongside the helm. And the other comments go over like another 20%. The remaining 5% can be argued as genuine, Calia Menethil and the forsaken are examples. But that's it. And it can only be contested not concluded as an abandoned story beat.

[@raornelas]

Writters: I think I forgot something Blizzard: if you forgot, then it wasn't important Writters: yeah you're right

[@hexachord4828]

As someone who has mained Night Elves for a long time, burning Teldrassil certainly did add some emotional weight to Battle for Azeroth. There was an Alliance quest like halfway through leveling in BFA where you steal a Goblin shredder and use it to torch a Horde base. First time I did that quest I think I spent an extra 45 minutes after completing the quest objectives just burning Horde NPCs and buildings for... fun? Revenge? It was disturbingly satisfying.

[@RokkitGrrl]

Somehow Blizzard manage to let all of that emotional weight just evaporate by the end. "Sorry about your tree but we have to deal with the rise of the Black Empi...oh. Well now we're chasing Sylvanas into the Shadowlands. Anyway."

[@MegaChickenfish]

I agree it added emotional weight to the story, the main thing is it placed so much at the feet of "now what happens with Sylvanas and Tyrande?" which we're now almost to the last patch of Shadowlands and we still haven't gotten resolution for it, with many players justifiably concerned Blizzard's response is just going to be Tyrande stopping caring about it and Sylvanas getting out without punishment. Taliesin did a video on why that's not happening, thankfully, but it still leaves to be seen how it'll be handled. I read Shadows Rising, the ultimatum was clear: Sylvanas's head for a night elf signature on Anduin's Horde/Alliance treaty that ended the Fourth War, nothing less.

[@corypopowich7046]

The burning of teldrassil was hugely a great idea. It was how the dumbass writers decided to go about the aftermath, and not even developing the characters along the way. It was inconsequential. And then Danuser needed to redeem Sylvanas. A Hitler-level villain got redeemed after committing numerous genocides. What the hell is Danuser trying to say here?

[@sorcererscott5326]

I was actually disappointed with the lack of emotion in the burning. I also main Night Elves and was really prepared for the feels then it just kinda happened and was done in a couple quests. There were so many really emotional cut scenes in Legion I was expecting something like that and it was just kinda...there.

[@RokkitGrrl]

@@sorcererscott5326 There was just anger and rage with the Night Warrior. There was no sorrow, no lamentations, no period of mourning, nothing that we would consider a natural progression of emotions in dealing with such a catastrophic loss. Same goes for the Forsaken and the loss of their city. Sylvanas's scorched earth policy didn't elicit more outrage amongst the Horde. Nobody questioned anything. Terrible writing.

[@briancole8176]

TBH I never had a problem with Sylvanas being behind the Wrathgate. I always took it as she told the forsaken that if you get your shot at Arthas, you take it . when it didn't work she disavowed any knowledge of it.

[@zennim125]

which would be awesome framing, but i hate that is has to stay as fanfiction

[@moonrazor2039]

His statement was stupid and made no sense.

[@Keira_Blackstone]

I had always assumed she was behind it, from the moment I played it as current content. It looked to me like an attempt to take out all of the threats to her power in one fell swoop, and when it didn't work she pinned it on a fall guy. But then, I'm a lifetime alliance player that has always viewed Sylvanas as a villain so take my viewpoint with a grain of salt.

[@Massivecow1337]

@@Keira_Blackstone Yeah this was exactly my thought too. Everyone likes to point out that she barely escaped the Undercity with her life... but, according to who? Oh, right. According to her. And we all know Sylvanas would never, ever lie to save her own skin or to use other people for personal gain.

[@zysis]

You don't even want to know the full and proper story told by the creator of it. Blizz shelved it. Half of it. They got scared and in true Blizzard style; released an expansion WAY too early in order to grab those shiny gold coins. I learned long ago that Blizzard cares about stories as much as it does sexual harassment of women in the workplace.

[@Wyrmshield]

Honestly, for an expansion whose whole theme was to bring the faction war into sharp focus, I think the burning of Teldrassil was an absolutely amazing idea. A massive, visually striking Alliance loss to kick the war off was an epic start to (what should have been) an epic conflict. That and the whole Night Warrior follow-up gave the night elves so much depth and freshness that they have been lacking for years. It's just a shame that everything since then has been so meh

[@user-rb3yx1bf6g]

Here's the thing about faction war. It can't end decisively. There can be no satisfying end for either side. So you rile people up, and then deliver a wet fart into their faces, because that's the only possible resolution.

[@Raziel-zm3dv]

BFA was great at the start i liked that the narrative will focus on faction war but the moment they start to interduce Naga and Na'zoth to BFA story that how they messed up, they could have done so much with BFA and highlighted many of the idle characters .

[@Eladelia]

It would only be an amazing idea in the context of an actual plan for how it should play out. An amazing idea would have led into an expansion where people largely felt that the game had told a story that was at least mostly coherent and sensible. This was the absence of an amazing idea, desperately covered up by being as flashy as possible to try to distract people from the fact that no good ideas were available.

[@BernardCharles]

Night Warrior should have been fleshed out to be more subclass flavor with skills but alas players are more creative than the actual dev team.

[@RokkitGrrl]

@@BernardCharles The rise of the Black Empire and the resulting Night Warrior bit should have been saved for an entire expansion instead of stuffed at the ass-end of expansion and then brought up tepidly in the next.

[@jbutler8585]

It's irrelevant if Afrasiabi planned badly. There have been plenty of opportunities to turn the story around and none were acted upon. If the jailer had character development they could have easily leaned into Sylvanas' story and it would be fine. The only takeaway here is that Danuser is not a writer and the story staff has zero improv comedians, competent RP DMs, or even book readers, let alone *writers* in their employ.

[@RokkitGrrl]

I know people like to blame COVID and Activision for everything that's gone wrong with Blizzard but this proves that Blizzard themselves are their own worst enemies.

[@fredwin]

It's true, the fact that someone would complain they're stuck writing game of thrones instead of WoW is insane. They've made worse and more confusing story decisions. They haven't cared about their own convoluted story for decades, but now they're stuck with one guy did?

[@happyclam1266]

They could have made the Jailer story work just by giving it a little muance and more backstory, yeah. It's not irrelevant what Alex did because he screwed up the team dynamic, though. It sounds like Danuser didn't have a good mentor to ease into his new role. People do need that. It doesn't seem like the two of them would have been close (to Danuser's credit).

[@RokkitGrrl]

@@happyclam1266 There's really no possible way for the Jailer story to have worked with the way things went down. They can't just start introducing NPCs of cosmic-level power and say, "Oh yeah they've been pulling the strings all along" by rectonning everything to hell. It's stupid, it's sloppy, and the writers should be ashamed of themselves for being so conceited to try to take ownership over the Warcraft story, or whatever is left of it. It would have been far more interesting to understand the implications of "killing" N'zoth especially with how easy it was to get rid of it. They could have written it to be a prelude to an all-out incursion into the Shadowlands by the Void. But then again, some things should be left a mystery and what happens to us when our characters die should be chiefly among them. Maybe an expansion of dealing with the fragility of peace between the Horde and Alliance after the Fourth War would have been more appropriate. Make it so that some important Horde NPCs and some important Alliance NPCs don't want peace and ironically work together to stage events that could break that peace. We don't have to keep dealing with cosmic threats to make things interesting, and I wish the writers would start working on establishing better lore and more nuance with politics. You can't have war without politics.

[@mistermakebelieve]

This

[@Nymph0M13L]

As a French actress who plays WoW and always felt kinship to the Nightborn... I feel slightly insulted that my accent would annoy Blizzard creatives.

[@Luc.Hewett]

Yhhh that feels weird, I think it could've been rly interesting

[@Nymph0M13L]

@@Luc.Hewett same. We don't know the whole story though. But yes, new accents in the game adds to the world building, so it's a shame.

[@happyclam1266]

I think it had more to do with the actress they decided to play Thalryssa, although she probably could have done the French accent. She was awesome.

[@dvides89]

The real crime is who came with the idea of the Jailer and him being the master manipulator of every single event in the cosmos. While the Sylvanas thing made us hate her, it wasn’t completely out of character and context. But when they brought in the Jailer, that absolutely broke everything and cheapened the story. Also who decided to make Nzoth a 1-patch thing made another much bigger mistake than the burning

[@sarahanan7015]

You might want to check out Tali's The Jailer's 5000 IQ Plan & Why People Are Angry kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmXPmnSHa5KMp7M And yeah, totally agree on N'Zoth, especially after that amazing video with the fish and Azshara...big letdown

[@dvides89]

@@sarahanan7015 and now with the speculations that the Primus was the real villain , it makes much more sense. Again not defending Afrasiabi’s terrible behavior, but at least in the storytelling side of WoW, the guy with Metzen really understood the core of WoW’s lore and what made people engage with it.

[@mastring1966]

I always kind of wondered what the mechanics of "BURN IT" actually entailed. I mean. You lob fire at a living, non dead tree, of that size? it's not really going to do much. Magic fire? well...the tree is kid of magic too. and so are a lot of those inside of it. there's a lot of NPC's who were totally capable of ice magic. The whole "yeah, just burn this massive giant tree that's got no dead limbs to catch on fire and spread it" just never seemed like something that was within the realm of things the orc's could even manage. I mean, lob cotton balls on fire at a giant oak tree and see how long it would take to set it on fire. You're going to be there for a minute.

[@Paveway-chan]

You don't think the Horde could have assembled some sort of crude napalm bomb for use during sieges, that they lobbed at Teldrassil? The sort of stuff that sticks to a surface and burns for *hours* if you're unlucky. Flamethrowers are canon in WoW, so why not the high fantasy equivalent of an F-4 Phantom airstrike?

[@Ststw0131]

I mean I always assumed it was weaponized azerite.

[@Sylentmana]

The only thing I could think to justify it working was they were using a specially designed alchemical pitch. It’s designed to bypass magic and it would splatter and stick, allowing the flames to take hold and burn.

[@tarksurmani6335]

Oil and gunpowder would solve it easily with their technical means, add a pinch of magic and burning a tree is even easier. What seems to be the problem? Greenwood is known for being hard to light, but burning really quickly and giving off lots of smoke. I want to see the elves cast a spell, with lungs full of smoke. Teldrassil wasn´t also as magical, as other World trees, because it was corrupted and wasn´t blessed by all of the drakes.

[@Mycenaea]

@@Paveway-chan Well. Show, don't tell.

[@Schrei205]

Evitel's audible ad was absolutely savage and perfect. 10/10

[@admcleo]

To bad there wasnt a race of perfect shapeshifting infiltrators specialized in devestating entire worlds that was alligned to the villain of the next expansion that had a personal history with Sylvanas that would make them want to screw her over person ally in particular. If there were they could have served as the perfect twist introduction and bait for speculation on what was going to happen upon finally seeing their true master. To bad they didn't exist to save the narrative, they could have even had a neat name like the "Feardukes" but not as lame. Yeah I think if the writing team thinks Sylvanas burning the tree is why people are fed up with the writing then thats a sign the problems is even worse than most of the former fans thought. Maybe say the word fractal a few dozen times and make a story about how Carbon and Boron have an eternal feud with the noble gasses of the periodic table. Good video actually though, major props.

[@thierryfaquet7405]

And people says Blizzard can't write 🤣 Your idea is of the worst fanfic garbage level one can imagine. "iT WaSnT hEr AlL AlLoNg" lol

[@admcleo]

@@thierryfaquet7405 Would you mind explaining how that's worse than the current 'split soul' narrative?

[@Quantumpencil]

@@admcleo Because the current "split soul" narrative doesn't actually absolve sylvanas of agency or undermine the events of the story. Watch the cinematic again, she isn't "getting back the good part of her soul". The split soul is a narrative device that is being used to force sylvanas to re-examine her actions by allowing her to 'see' them through the eyes of the ranger general. The split soul narrative is honestly pretty good. They aren't saying sylvanas was innocent, it's literally meant to be a high fantasy version of the experience a person has when you meet someone who knew you 10 years ago before you made a series of poor decisions, or you dig out the old photos that remind you of who you used to be and then you have an existential crisis -- because there are things you've done that your 'past self' would be ashamed of. That's what's happened here. The part of sylvanas soul that she received was frozen in time. It's been returned to her now -- which has triggered an identity crisis because it's a powerful, visceral contrast of "how far she has fallen". The cinematic shows her trying to deny responsibility, before ultimately realizing that she is responsible for her atrocities -- much the same way that a man who neglected his family until they left might stumble upon an old family photo while going through his things and descend into an existential crisis as they grapple with the reality of who they have become, what they have done, etc.

[@admcleo]

@@Quantumpencil I'm sorry, but that isn't what is happening with the split soul. It's clearly what Blizzard are hoping people interpret it as, but it requires completely ignoring the lore of the undead and forsaken in the setting. And frankly after this point with so many retcons, bungled plot lines and ignored characters and stories my tolerance for them 'fudging' the story has long run out and I'm now holding them accountable for every botched detail. All Undead and All Forsaken come back with their personalities radically altered, because they are brought back to serve as weapons and their maker only wanted those certain violent and evil parts back. In Sylvanas' case in particular Arthas raised her with the intent of making her as cruel and malicious as possible. Blizzard can't retcon that. She was MADE to be what she is as the Banshee Queen through artificial means outside of her control, her ability to care about other people was taken away from her. I don't care how many content creators in friendly discords with Blizzard make videos swearing that it was really just some sudden ability to reflect on her decisions, it doesn't make it true. This isn't a narrative where Sylvanas was pierced by frostmorne, got away seemingly unscathed, and then slowly over the course of years finds herself making increasingly more rash and pragmatic decisions up until the point she starts making some truly heinous choices. If that were what happened then the split soul thing might actually work as a device. But no, Sylvanas was possessing people and forcing them to commit heinous acts and die in the process since day one of getting her freedom back, as far back as warcraft 3. The thing that makes the split soul narrative particularly egregious is that Blizzard knows that this is the case. They know what the moral math is in this situation and are trying to exploit it to redeem a character while stating to the public that isn't what's happening. Blizzard is literally gaslighting its fans about Sylvanas. "This outcome of events that clearly absolves Sylvanas of her crimes and will involve her being treated as such by the other characters and the story isn't doing that." They want their fans to just take what they are saying at face value over their own eyes, established lore, and basic narrative logic. And are hoping that because they say they didn't 'redeem' Sylvanas that they didn't write a lazy cop-out ending to the story.

[@kylinsky]

I wouldn't mind the Sylvanas arc if the Jailer wasn't such a boring uncharismatic waste of space of a villian. The two characters are entwined and ironically the Jailer drags Sylvanas down.

[@Sylentmana]

If the WoW story were a cake and the characters were ingredients, the Jailer would be month old spoiled milk.

[@constrainedanacronysm1370]

And the Jailer was all Danuser, so even if you try to excuse him for Sylvanas he is damned for that "effort."

[@Aggrofool]

Nah Sylvannas' arc is nonsensical. A charismatic Jailer won't change that.

[@naejimba]

The best way to salvage this would have been to go with the idea of the Jailer wanting to remake the cycle of death. Sure, it might have originally been to "undo" all existence, but at the very least this would allow them to not pull a complete 180 out of nowhere (eternity or torment wtf?), to make the jailer nuanced and a bit more interesting, to have something to work with for a redemption arc for Sylvanas (still not much to work with but better than we got), and to have a conclusion that would only effect an area we would probably never return to again (a FFXIV type reset would be awesome, but that would have had to been planned years and years beforehand). So, how to fix the rest of the mess? Tyrande was looking for Sylvanas the whole time, we wanted that big fight scene. So we could have had that, and in Ardenweald like in the cinematic, but have the battle stop once Tyrande realized Sylvanas was there with the Night elves souls and the anima to rebirth them. That way, she could have a change of heart without it seeming forced out of nowhere and making Elune look like a dumbass. She could still harbor hatred for Sylvanas (not like they were going to be best friends) and Greymane would still have it out for her, so the seeds of Alliance power struggle on that front could still be done if they wanted to go that route later on. The Horde would likely still be pissed at her for everything, so that still works as well, meaning any plans they have going forward would likely still work. After all, this makes sense since she thought the cycle of death was unjust, and in her mind would be a necessary sacrifice that she could make right. Hell, maybe on top of it she could have a special little pod for Nathanos, which would be another thing to give her nuance. He was yeeted into the maw and largely forgot about. Pelagos should have never become the arbiter. It's stupid and makes no sense. Just have him get his wings and that be the end of his arc. Either, we could have the jailer "remade" at the end to look like the leaked first images of him, with him acting as the arbiter, or we could have him sacrifice himself at the end to create a new arbiter. Hell, I would rather have seen Uther have an arc and become the arbiter over Pelagos, or Vol'jin, or any other character we give a shit about. Denathrius was the best part of this expansion, he is brought back and escapes; we don't know where he went or what he's planning, and this could be something to let simmer for a long time and come back to later on. Maybe the distraction at Zereth Mortis could allow him to obtain some hidden knowledge he was seeking, and the whole time he was going along with the Jailer in order to further his own goals. The players could see this in some way and it is great set up for something to happen much further down the road. The helm of wills was dumb. Either 1) leave the fragments so that later on it could be reforged by someone for a nefarious plan or 2) have it reformed and someone still has to control the undead of Azeroth. Either way, the undead plot hole needs to be dealt with in some way or the other. Perhaps this could be part of what Bolvar does going forward, helm or not. He didn't really do all that much this expansion, and he is a really unique character that is largely wasted. Maybe Ner'zul is freed in all of this, and something could be done with that. Just pick something that doesn't leave a plot hole and that sets up something for the future instead of burning through the lore. There is also the question of all of the souls in Frostmourne. I don't know how they explained that in game (maybe I missed it because I didn't read a fucking novel?) but this is another thing that could have consequences going forward. And while I'm writing my own novel on what I would do if I were the king of the WoW dev team, lets go back and fix BFA. The expansion is stretched out with more impactful war stuff in the middle (make it feel like an actual war), and the final tier is Azshara. You know the cinematic after her defeat? That is the FINAL one of the expansion. An old god is freed, he revived her and took her with him; no one knows where N'Zoth went, what he's planning, or when he will strike. Big things set up. No time to deal with that though, as the cinematic for Shadowlands happens and we have to go deal with that. They said there would be a time skip as time works differently in Shadowlands, and things would be different when we get back. N'Zoth had foreseen this possibility and used our absence as his time to strike. At the conclusion of Shadowlands we return back to Orgrimmar and Stormwind respectively, and find that they are the only bastions holding out against the Black Empire, which has taken over the rest of the planet, corrupting and driving insane all of the wild life and other races of Azeroth. The next expansion is WoW: The Black Empire, and it all deals with taking back territory in a corrupted version of Azeroth. Raid tiers can deal with taking back various Horde and Alliance cities and defeating mind bending abominations of the void, culminating in a battle with N'Zoth. In short, writing is about 1) set up and pay off. You have to set up things or no one gives a shit, and you have to pay off on them or no one gives a shit. 2) Characters and their development. Pick an arc and follow through. Characters can change, but you have to SHOW these changes IN GAME and OVER TIME. If your story has characters acting in a way that doesn't make sense, or contradicts an existing arc, you are doing it wrong.

[@Avrysatos]

That’s an interesting idea. I would have been interested in seeing that.

[@naejimba]

@@Avrysatos , thank you. The funny part is I'm spit balling, and apparently coming up with better ideas than entire teams of professions working at a billion dollar corporation. XD

[@Avrysatos]

@@naejimba Not surprising.

[@Zearonith]

This is all well and good for an explanation about how BfA went down. But what are the decision being made for Shadowlands? The writers could have hard pivot Sylvanas at the moment when she was told that Nathanos was dead but not with her. They could have use the moment the Jailer said that losing Denathrius was of no consequence. At that point the writers should have made Sylvanas out to be a double agent. And to reiterate what others here are saying, why is the writing for the Jailer so bad? Did Afrisabi have a say in the story of Shadowlands?

[@Maria_Erias]

My big question is: if Afrasiabi set up a shit narrative and then left... Why did the new team go with it? The guy who took Afrasiabi's job (I'm assuming it was Steve Danuser) could - and should! - have said, "Fuck no, this is trash. Let's redo it." That's part of what being a team _lead_ does. Fucking _LEAD._ Not follow the crap plans of the guy who just got shitcanned.

[@xavierzabie8184]

She... Does make a hard turn though. I'm pretty sure shooting a powerful dark magic arrow at your former boss who gave you the power to do so is a hard turn. And we see as she goes through the build up to 9.1 that she is having doubts in her role around all of this. As for the Jailer... What are you expecting? We don't even know what he did the first time around to get locked up in the Maw. He was introduced this expansion pack as that. We don't know what he plans to do in Zerith Mortis. We barely know his name. Tbh the Jailer's story looks more like a final push on his end than anything else. So out of all of that... What makes him poorly written? I agree he's flat. But so was the Lich King who antagonizes you just cuz he can. And he controlled the Lich King. So again I asked, what makes him a poorly written character? Not a flat one. A poorly written one.

[@Kanamon22]

In all honesty, I don't mind the burning of the world tree cause I enjoy the main narrative of war in, who would have think of, world of warcraft. Did Afrabasabi fucked up Sylvannas thinking she was a very big baddy regardless what the perception of the audience has of her? Yes. It's a fuck up to do something out of nowhere without a proper plan? Yes. Can we blame everything to him? No. They could have many ways, a doble agent like you said or other comment (cellphone hard to doble check), full evil, etc, who knows, even if he put the entire team into a position of having to follow up something nobody knew what the point of that was, they still did a very bad fucking job. Bfa wasnt the best (the systems of the expansions live in my memory more than the story), and Shadowlands is just plain awful.

[@MithrandirTheGrey]

@@Maria_Erias With all due respect. You simply cannot REDO central elements of whole expansions after their release or shortly before it. It just isn't possible anymore. The only thing you can do is try to turn the story around afterwards. I am 100% sure, cancelling addons or retconning whole expansion plots would have generated HUGE backlash back then

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

@@Maria_Erias you can’t just *redo* after an event as big as the burning of teldrassil.

[@dangingerich2559]

Afrasiabi sounds like many of the lead software devs I've known, arrogant and unaware of how flawed they are. It fits with other things we've heard about him. (I've worked corporate IT since 1997, and I have met a LOT of lead software devs, prob in excess of 30. Some were good, many weren't. I could count on one hand the ones I liked personally. The domineering, harassing, arrogant types were so many I couldn't count them on two hands, I can think of 8 right now, and one of those was a woman, and none of them deserved the pride them had in themselves. So, yeah, that's my qualification on why I can state the above statement.)

[@spockman4250]

Burning Teldrassil was the beginning of bad Sylvanas writing, but arguably could be a direction Sylvanas went considering her character up until then. She massacred, tortured, and experiment on whole communities up until that point, so having the same practical but brutal mindset like, "oh they'll never forgive us for attacking the night elves and we can't hold Teldrassil so lets burn it" could have worked. After seeing the Broken Shore cinematics and the BFA opening cinematic, I was actually hoping that she would go through a more redemptive arc where by being the Warchief she realizes what the Horde represents and learns to truly accept it rather than treating it as an alliance of practicality like she had been for so long. Like imagine if she starts off by burning the tree in her practical survivalistic mindset, and then through the whole expansion she has Nathanos on one side saying they should keep doing things like that and Saurfang on the other invoking the sentiments of honor, like a devil and angel on the shoulder type situation, so then by the end she regrets burning the tree and the war story concludes with her doing some act of repentence that brings peace. I would argue they made the worst possible choice when presented with this decision. Instead of trying to salvage her story, they just completely gave up and went in a different direction that contradicted how Sylvanas was presented for years. It became such a meme, but she really was a morally gray character, which made her interesting, but they decided the best thing to do was to make her have no justification for her actions and be flat out evil. Then they recycled the Mist of Pandaria storyline, replacing Garrosh with her and Vol'jin with Saurfang, which shows no creativity on their part, the only difference is that it didn't end with a raid. And on top of that they dragged horde players along with her evil actions. As a horde player, I don't want to keep being the bad guys in the story. The horde appealled to me because it was a group of cultures who have gone through intense hardships forming a union based around noble principles in order to survive, not 'evil dead elf queens pawns who commit war crimes for a whole expansion because she says so.' Then on top of that, the shadowlands story has been terrible apart from sylvanas, with the jailor being a completely bland villain, revelations that undermine previous story beats, and bland characters who stand around Oribos doing nothing. I don't care what decision this one guy made before he left, the creative team is completely at fault for the horrible state the story is in right now, and this rumor, whether true or not, just seems like they're trying to pass off the blame.

[@archvaldor]

"The horde appealled to me because it was a group of cultures who have gone through intense hardships forming a union based around noble principles in order to survive.' " What an eloquent summation of what made the Horde interesting.

[@omedon666]

That "stop treating WoW like game of thrones" line... I've been out since before the scandals and that got an audible, dare I say hopeful gasp, and maybe a happy tear or two from me!

[@Ralph-hq3ji]

That doesnt really save the writing team from my perspective. Because the burning of teddrasil was questionable, mainly because it seemed like a rushed but not rushed decision by sylvanas. (BfA book sylvanas before tedrassill was best sylvanas, intelligent, cunning, focused on threats and looking into the future war with Alliance that was inevitable.) And there were so many ways to go with shadowlands or even end shadowlands, yet the writers chose to turn sylvanas into yet another brain dead goody 2 shoes character pretty much killing the only semi interesting character in WoW. And no, I dont consider characters deep because someone can make 2 hour long videos about them, Emet Selch is a great character and we never needed youtubers to make videos to elaborate how deep he was, even though welcomed. WoW characters act like they are from cartoons, oh look Jenna has mommy issues and is mad at the horde, oh ok now she is friends with the horde and is back to the goody 2 shoes role of saving everyone

[@SoulDevoured]

I don't understand why people get upset about characters being black and white when it's literally always been this way. The only grey there ever has been is "in the process of turning good" or "in the process of turning bad."

[@venerac2759]

That Audible ad is perhaps my most favorite KZbin sponsorship ad ever. Well done! *chef's kiss*

[@MrPigfarmer23]

Evi the add for audible was the best ad I have seen for a long time, snarky and on point, smiled the whole way through

[@emmy4889]

I think trying to just shove all the blame onto Afrasiabi as sabotage is just a coping mechanism for being essentially painted into a corner and knowing they'll never be able to resolve the story where it has a satisfying end. They won't kill Sylvanas; she's too popular for that and it would cause issues. At the same time, they can't let her get a light punishment because that wouldn't be satisfying to those who feel she has wronged them and demand justice. In other words, there is no resolution possible for her except some meek result that leaves neither side happy or one that angers half the player base. So after you acknowledge that reality, that there isn't going to be a satisfying ending, it comes down to a decision: Do you blame the guy who set it all in motion on impulse and is a genuine POS of a human or do you blame the current writers who literally can't resolve it to a satisfying degree. The easy answer is to blame the former guy, because that means the current one will get less harsh judgement for their choices. The current team is doing the best they can with the crappy hand they were dealt and should be applauded for their efforts, no matter anyone's personal opinions on the outcome.

[@Lelqtii]

The POS guy may have started something he didn't know or had a plan at the time how it will turn out, and sure, you can blame that for the mess BFA was. Can you blame the whole of Shadowlands on the Burning of Teldrassil though? I don't think so. If they are smart, they'll put Sylvanas in a box ala Illidan for the time being, let's say, make her the new Jailer or something, and let's forget about her for the time being. Let the current writers do or die on their new thing.

[@donjames5761]

yup they're making Alex Afrasiabi the Covid 19 of the internet. im not saying the man don't have his faults. but this does feel like a cop pout just blame blame blame

[@vanyel_etc8695]

I follow a group of folks who write alternate stories for various wow lore - there was zero reason to think she couldn't have been written better back in pre-bfa. Christie golden's book was also a total piece of garbage too. You wanna know who is to blame? Blizzard. To prepare for legion, blizzard hired over a dozen writers. By the end of legion, they were all fired or left.

[@vukkulvar9769]

Don't worry, she'll escape and travel back in time to change history or something like that...

[@misumi6312]

I've heard that sylvanas is too popular before but does anyone actually like her, honestly never seen anyone say they like her and more to the point have seen a lot of people say they don't. So I'm not sure that's true.

[@12d0d0ng0s]

There's two kinds of Lost viewers. Those who actually watched the show and those who still don't understand why the polar bears were there.

[@iamsyntai2565]

So it turns out that the "Even the writers don't know what Sylvanas is going to do next" meme was true all along.

[@Desolaytore]

How do you let one man dictate an entire story for an expansion?

[@r3v3rbs0ul]

That's what "Directors" do.

[@pryodragon07]

People of power abusing their power.

[@Desolaytore]

@@r3v3rbs0ul I assumed that they sat at a table and decided on a idea collectively.

[@abydosianchulac2]

@@Desolaytore Welcome to the corporate world.

[@itsanixela]

"Nightborne were conceived as having French accents" No shit, with names like Aurielle, Aurore, Clotaire, Elisande, Emille, Favre, Iltheux... As a French speaker it was obvious they were supposed to be French 😉

[@Ordo1980]

Would you like a french accent on them? ^^

[@FallenHerotic]

Never noticed this before! Although Grand Magistrix Elisande does sound really majestic to the ears.

[@ragnajonsdotter8333]

Afrasiabi turning a previously nuanced female character into a psychopath? No way! (I never understood why Sylvanus seemed reasonably nuanced in the cinematic that kicked off BFA and then turned into uber-villain.

[@us89na]

She's always been evil - in leveling you come across several forsaken and goblins who call her out in Arathi for example.

[@trundelbum]

YES DUDE! I remember that opening cinematic. It really demonstrates/gives the vibe of Anduin and Sylvanas coming into their roles as leaders of the factions..dude now that I think about it..the sudden turn makes no sense from the viewpoint of that cinematic..You literally see sylvanas looking around seeing a few of her horde being hurt or dragged back from the front line..and then she jumps into the fray and rips a HUGE FOR THE HORDE which leads to SAURFANG freaking charging back in to fight!!!!! Anduin seeing his soliders hurt and pulling a big ol crying heal...then somehow down the line we got "actually sylvanas wanted her soldiers to die..to cause as much death as possible"

[@Sylentmana]

If she had a mustache she’d have twirled it.

[@zugetzuzu]

Morality is subjective. Sylvanas did what she did so that her people and herself could keep thriving/avoid extinction. What she did was almost always in the best interest of herself and her people and some of those acts might include raising people from the dead (which most would consider evil), to avoid having the rest of her people from going extinct, or using plagues in Gilneas, to end the war quicker and to avoid further of her troops from dying (Kinda like how the US used nuclear weapon to avoid further loses against Japan). Edit: Grammar

[@monkeysk8er33]

Afrasiabi didn't ruin her character. People are just dragging his name through the mud because of the politics.

[@llabronco]

That ad integration was... *chef's kiss* ...perfection! One of the very rare times that I don't just skip past a creator's ad read. Good stuff!

[@thatdarnbandit]

The Audible ad was one of the best things you guys ever written. Thanks for the laughs.

[@EmreSahinGural]

Legion developer Mike Oxlong here, I confirm that Tali is right about that thing he is talking about.

[@RasguerWOW]

WoW's writing recently is like Game of Thrones'... Season 8

[@natalyst]

Which danuser believes is "brilliant"

[@florianschwalb6875]

I actually watched the audible ad, good job!

[@Maldor313]

this just seems to me like a bad attempt from the narrative team to say that they are not to blame for the CURRENT history. To say that it is Afrasiabi's fault for leaving them a story that the current narrative team did not like is no excuse for the story to continue in such a way, if Afrasiabi has not been part of it since the burning of the tree... why has the story been so bad in the current expansion? yeah Afrasiabi is a piece of garbage but he is not responsible for the current history...

[@CallistaZM]

Because the way the game works, story is written out two years in advance. Alex was still working at blizz until 2020. He didn't JUST influence the story of the Burning and nothing else after that. The Burning would have been written into the story about two years before we all saw it live and he was still part of the team for several years after that. Its likely he continued influencing the story well into Shadowlands pre-production in 2018/2019.

[@a-a-ron9027]

i love the behind the scenes stuff from the development side. I wish there was a full on documentary about how any of the xpacs were developed from concept to finished product.

[@syrensong4]

I mean there is a documentary from like 7 years ago about WoW development. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqqzq4evrLp1qbM

[@a-a-ron9027]

@@syrensong4 ty

[@EscaExcel]

Just looking at how they wrapped up BfA and what they are doing in SL, it's hard to believe it was all Afrasiabi and only after he left people start coming out to claim it was all his fault etc. They have a whole team of people that are just refusing to take any responsibility, but that is usually how it goes with blizzard in general.

[@belalhaifa821]

You’re right about this. I can see how Danuser could have trouble, but it could just be an excuse about the bad writing which is 1 of a million other excuses they have.

[@TheSilverwing999]

As tali has said before, you can absolutely judge Danuser for his ability to clean up after someone else caused a mess by looking at 9.x. But if you want to judge Danuser's ability to actually plan out the story of an expansion, you can't judge that until 10.x truly

[@r3v3rbs0ul]

It wouldn't have really been an issue before he left if the team expected him to land the plane. It's when the pilot disappears and there is no map, that's when the trouble starts.

[@johnperry9582]

That was the greatest ad in the history of ads. Thanks, Evitel! My sides hurt now, in the good, I laughed so hard I can't breath way.

[@gemini_starr]

From a family that loved Sylvanas, we're seriously pissed off now.

[@mrdraken87]

In all honesty, I think the biggest issue with the Sylvanas arc is that after he left, they have tried too backtrack. sure, they got stuck with it, and maybe they didnt like it... but I feel Sylvanas and the game would have been better served if they went all in on it instead of backtracking, whick is what it seems they have been doing

[@goblinounours]

It's good to know that, *BUT* Afrasiabi is gone, and he has been gone for a while now, more than a year and a half. As much as I despise the guy, he can't be blamed for everything bad going on with the story. Was he behind Zovaal being such a boring antagonist? Is he to blame for the story bits always looking like they don't get to breathe? What I mean by that is, for example, Jaina going "NO, I will never trust Sylvanas!", Uther going "please tho, for me?" and Jaina then immediately going "...yeah ok, sure, let's go in together!" If you don't see how badly written this exchange is, I'm sorry for you. I personally see it as a perfect example of why these things just always fall flat, with WoW.

[@keithb6344]

I don't disagree, but it takes a while to turn a boat around. SL was in development for way longer than 18 months ago. Many of the assets and story were made when he was still there assuming all of this is true. I played a DND game many years ago. The DM said everyone go wild with your characters, take time and make something you love. During the first game he switched everyone's characters around (dick move that didn't work at all). We wound up playing characters we didn't care about or even like. The game ended after two sessions. It's possible the current team was given a story and a villain they just don't care about and its hard to make that interesting all while trying to figure out how to "fix" it. I don't know if the story is true. I hate to say we wait till 10.0 to see because we keep doing that, but maybe it will be better???

[@cornishpasty4344]

In development, a lot of this stuff happens 1-2 years in advance. Probably too late to pull everyone off their current projects and have them fix things.

[@TheDazarth]

100% this. Waiting for all the people HUFFING copium to argue against it and trying to frame one man as a root of all evil and source of all the problems.

[@CarterArts]

Well, unless they did a mid-expansion retcon, what else could they do to change the Sylvanas story he set in motion (if all this is true)? I don't think the point of this video was to blame him for the entire Shadowlands story, it seemed pretty specifically about Sylvanas, and how her character changed over the past two expansions.

[@TheramoreIsTheBomb-neverforget]

Cosby tried to sip something in Sylvanas's drink, he failed, and Alex wasn't having any of it.

[@WhistleRgv]

I loved the audible segment. Tali & Evi sense of humor is one of the things that keeps me coming back

[@dragons_in_space7211]

If Danuser was quest designer behind Brennadam, then there is no chance of them salvaging anything. They had a plan to make it about the Quillboar, then pivoted it into Horde War Crimes because there apparently wasn't enough faction conflict. And since there were apparently different quest design teams for the Horde and the Alliance, it's hard to take anything regarding factions seriously because they can canonically write the opposing faction into unspeakable acts that make no logical sense, just to satisfy that "sports team" mindset.

[@termagant425]

I'd really like to believe that most of the shitty writing would root in Afrasiabi. Unfortunately another voice also tells me that its pretty easy to blame an already unpopular being which has already left the company. Thats what humans do. Just listen to your raidgroup when someone messes up. Its rarely their own fault. Of corse this is another case here. But look at the latest movies from the MCU, DC or Star wars. How often has "it looks cool" triumphed over "it makes sense"? Then theres so much of shadowlands writing around sylvanas which also feels pretty...well...mediocre. Is that their way to get out of Afrasiabi's writing? *sigh* I just wait and see what coming up next. As i said, i really hope things get better. Now is your chance blizz. Dont mess up.

[@bastalam]

Well done man. It's easy to put the blame for 2 failed expansion on a person that is gone.

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

@@bastalam let’s not forget, Afrasiabi was around until 2020. So BFA is absolutely his doing.

[@caz-tastrophe]

Just have to say that Evitel nailed that audible ad in the middle, 10/10 no notes

[@ReikaLady]

I had no problem believing Sylvannas being behind Wrathgate because she was well aware of the experiments with the Blight (and let's face it, just how Blight happy she was) and that she threw folks under the bus to save her maggoty ass (again, par for the course with her). There's no excusing the writing in SL, they had enough time to make the Jailer a convincing villain if they wanted to stick to that path. Or better yet make Denathrius the main villain using the Jailer as a patsy. Right now I have little faith in what we're going to see in the future.

[@DugNick3]

It's almost as if people have completely forgotten the OG lore where Teldrassil was actually not a blessed tree and possibly cursed and should never have been planted but was anyway and they tried to make the best of a bad...tree. So...meta? Kinda meta, actually.

[@JazzySlayer]

its not OG lore its basic lore, Teldressil was not blessed by dragon aspects so they didnt get their immortality, it was not cursed, it was just an normal world tree, and saying it shoulda never been planted its saying like maiev shouldnt become a warden. Completly random, but it was not an bad tree it was one of last remaining ones and in perfect defense location so they used it as city

[@TheShaofThirst]

THANK YOU! I kept seeing all over the place about how the burning of Teldrassil was a genocide and an attempt to wipe out Night Elven culture and I'm just like "Uh...Hyjal and Nordrassil are still a thing..." Don't get me wrong, it was tragic, but it was far from a genocide or an attempt to wipe out Night Elven culture...made even more tragic when we find out that it was an "oops" from Elune...

[@JazzySlayer]

@@TheShaofThirst Ye the Elune story is pretty ruined so far tbh, so presented almost creator few expansions later some life titan keeper who can bleed their power to our material world no problemo but cant know whats up with her sister in retconlands

[@alihorda]

I think you mix something

[@Ststw0131]

Error didn't staghelm put a corrupted root of xavius in it or something? It's been a while since I've brushed up on that lore. Also no mention of that beyond the stormrage book. Maybe in chronical too.

[@tomc4606]

I don't think having a half-finished storyline dropped into their laps really excuses Danuser and the current writing team. They were given a launching point which, controversial as it was, could have at least been spun into something passable with some competent writing. But here we are, all these years later, and I can't say that I feel like they did a good job. Were they dealt a bad hand? Maybe. But the story could have been salvaged. Instead they just let it unravel into the absolute dumpster fire it currently finds itself in, at least in my opinion.

[@Linkman247]

THIS! ^ Afrasiabi isn't there anymore. It doesn't excuse the current story direction.

[@TaliesinEvitel]

Yeah like I say in the vid no one is trying to excuse anything after Afrasiabi here.

[@r3v3rbs0ul]

Cards is a weird metaphor, as it's literally a game that you can have a bad hand dealt to you and there is no way to win.

[@alphablitz1024]

One of the few ad reads I've ever fallen out of my chair laughing at.

[@NoEnvyNoFear1]

On the subject of sources and credabiy: My teacher from 4-6th grade had a quote that was so annoying when she drilled it into our brains for three years, but as I got older realized how important it was. "Who says what, to whom and to what purpose?"

[@joshuaeley5701]

The way Sylvanas is depicted in the ongoing story stands in stark contrast to how Saurfang was depicted in his final story. Saurfang was a creation by Afrasiabi, probably his most well known and well regarded one, too. An argument could be made that Saurfang was a self-insert Mary Sue type character for Afrasiabi to play out his power fanasty in-game. Saurfang got multiple movie quality cinematics to tell his character arc. His hype masculine grizzled warrior got some much of the spot light during BfA and was the one who single-handedly defeated the unstable, untrustworthy, overly emotional female leader (framed as such by Alex) that it must have warmed that chauvinistic drunkard's heart.

[@gavrilutavlad3859]

Men are supposed to be masculine, you soy infused dolt. And you somehow compare Saurfang an old orc warrior that has been into countless wars, survivor of a blood curse full of rage, that had to watch his son die (twice) with a prick of a character whose whole involvement in the story should have ended after wotlk when she threw herself off Icecrown. The only things that made that have ever made her interesting were her sex appeal and the fact even within the Horde she still looked for a plague to kill everything, living or dead. An alliance of convenience as they used to say.

[@Papa-Ozz]

Burning of Teldrassil and Sylvanas being a bad guy werent bad plot points. The writing since then has been dire regardless of direction. This is 100% a cop out.

[@vknightbd]

Taliesin is basically saying: Don't attribute malice, from Afrasiabi, that can be adequately explained by incompetence.

[@MorganRhysGibbons]

Great job with the ad, Evi!

[@r3v3rbs0ul]

I haven't gotten to the story part yet, but I greatly appreciate your lead in. On how to view confidentiality, how to trust sources, and just generally how these things should go. You're a good person, keep being that. Going forward, I'm really excited to see the devs redemption arc as they move forward with (hopefully) less shit standing in their way. I've worked places where big people did bad shit and once they were gone the rebuilding was better than anything that had existed previously. I hope that's true for all of them. After the shit they've been through they deserve nothing less.

[@r3v3rbs0ul]

That went in a direction I didn't expect. I guess that's what I get for not being on social media, and having no idea about any of the speculation. I've worked with people like what you describe as well. Grand ideas with no respect for process. Everyone gets left picking up the shit they throw around and having to piece it together. Good riddance, for multiple reasons. Previous opinion about the devs still stands. Should re-iterate what a stand-up person you are. Appreciate it.

[@hannahs2058]

Scott Johnson is friends with Metzen, and interviewed him on his podcast multiple times. If Johnson says “can confirm”, he means it. I’m still mad at this story direction. I always loved Sylvanas. I suspect the real motive someone like Afrasiabi had was good old-fashioned “I hate women”. It just fits.

[@marcb.4401]

yes.

[@amouramarie]

It definitely reads like someone who thinks women are completely irrational and flip out over nothing, destroying everything, because they're _just so over-emotional_ nothing they do makes any sense to people with logic, _amirite guys?_

[@HivisoftheScale]

Huh... I always thought they were trying vilify Sylvannus ever since Cataclysm. But they changed their mind before Pandaria, and had Garrosh play the villain.

[@Corlwow]

Sylvanas was supposed to be the villain in cataclysm before they turned to Garrosh though, hence her storyline in silverpine. Then Alex left and when came back Sylvanas became evil again once Garrosh was out the picture.

[@okanidug6035]

Did Afrasiabi killed Nathanos and forget him? Did he make Pelagos the new Arbiter? Did he use water you can walk on as a sell point to a new patch? Did he wrote Jailer terribly? Did he decide on how Elune would act whole Shadowlands? One decision might have been entirely his and it might not be what the team would want to do but Sylvanas burning Teldrassil is a much cooler idea and moment then the any thing that came since BFA was launched. Like Tali said it opened up so many possibilities, we were all discussing, who? why? how? It created Horde vs Alliance feeling again. That decision is not the problem, problem is how the team handled it moving forward. Sorry but they are not telling their story, Wow is longstanding game and as a story designer it is your job to respect and improve the story that came before you. If you wrote 2 terrible expansions in a row because you didn't like one moment than maybe you are not that good at your job.

[@zysis]

I'll say this much; they ARE terrible writers. Awful. They are fed plot points and are more concerned with gender politics and the like to even bother with twists, foreshadowing or even basic tropes to get it right. If you knew how one-dimensional these people are (quest writers especially) you'd think the overarching narrative was brilliant in comparison to a given quest or quip for the player. There's so little depth that even the worst creative writer would do a far better job. Shadowlands is all D&D. All of it. The best jumped ship a long, long time ago. it's a burning ship and some of the rats are happy to make a go of it and pretend they can right the wrongs. No respect for anything done prior, mind you. They are given carte blanch on major plot points but are led by the nose on quests and minor lore. It's a strange beast, that's for sure.

[@larcenouslaugh]

Evitel’s Audible interruption was *chef’s kiss*

[@kelvinmartins]

I was just searching for a comment like this. If you skipped the sponsor bit, please do yourself a favor go back and watch it!

[@siliarba]

The only real issue I have with the burning of Telldrassil was that it was soo easy. A tree so big it can fit a small country on it shouldn't burn down instantly from it getting hit by a couple dozen rocks doused in oil and set aflame. I'm fine with it eventually burning down from it, but I feel like every single N.Elf would've had time to grab their stuff and peace out through a portal in time. If anything, with the reveal that Elune wanted to help her sister by sending as many N.Elfs to her as possible, the only logical explanation I can think off is that she was the one who actually burned Tell'Drasil, not just let it happen, but actively did it under the guise of it having been the Horde.

[@Fr0stybee]

So, the burning of Teldrassil is basically representing Afrasiabi burning down Blizzard.

[@starkiller34]

I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here... But wasn't the Polar bear on the LOST island simply there because he escape his testing facility on the island? I feel like I remember Jack and Kate being held prisoner by the others in a facility with lots of random animals in cages for testing. Underwhelming as fuck, but you know... its there.

[@moscanaveia]

The point is that the writers in Lost did not know any of that when they decided to put a polar bear in the first season

[@Paul-zh2jp]

@@moscanaveia to be fair, things are different with network tv. there are some inherent restrictions that come with that side of things, mainly that you don't always know how many seasons you'll have left. many tv writers blindly set up potential future story points, and they're vague because they have to be. the lost one was resolved in a sensible way though imo, and that's always the most important thing. if you're someone who liked the tree burning, you'd probably still be happy if they resolved it well. and there's really no excuse for not planning the broad strokes of a game expansion's story up front

[@DaveTV12]

Maybe when Alex said "Were gunna fire that Cannon", he was actually saying "Were gunna fire that Canon" as in, set fire to the canon on the Warcraft story. Mission accomplished Alex.

[@Haiyken]

There are a bunch of weird unanswered things in Lost, where an island is literally travelling through time and a man can turn into dark smoke for whatever reason, but the polar bear actually kind of makes sense in the story...

[@emilyhall4197]

Literally my favorite sponsored section.

[@krug7777]

After being familiar with Alex since his days in EverQuest as Furor of Fires of Heaven, yes. Yes he would absolutely do all of this purely out of spite. And the SA doesn't surprise me one bit.

[@maaax5092]

Maybe he did. But doesnt mean Danuser isnt Sylvanas fanboy and a terrible writer. Also i love how when you critisize Danuser people say "It cant be a single person failure, they are a team". But with Alex its "Well, the guy you guys hate is responsible for all the bad things in the story". Danuser at the very least could make Jailer an insteresting villain, but nope, he failed

[@pupperdoggo5982]

@@maaax5092 Don't question it. If you question it, they will call you a sexist for "defending Afrasabi", as if criticizing Danuser is somehow a defense of Afrasabi. They both suck in their own ways, but that isn't allowed in their world view. They pit them as opposites and assume everything is zero-sum.

[@moscanaveia]

@@pupperdoggo5982 Strawman much?

[@giordanocoresi2934]

@@maaax5092 look, this is understandable, but there is a difference if a project is shitty because your boss pulled rank and said my way or no way, and if a project is shitty because the team couldn't create a compelling story to enjoy because they have to start from another shitty story while doing cleanup of it too

[@maaax5092]

@@giordanocoresi2934 Alex has left 2 years ago, they couldve changed a lot of things, but they still went the same way. Danuser still admires and made Sylvanas mary sue. Maybe if the characters WERE ACTUALLY GOOD, i might have believed this was the case, but nope, plot is trash, characters are trash, DIALOGUES ARE TRASH. There is no way Alex still has a control over a story 2 years after TO MAKE SHITTY DIALOGUES AND SHITTY CHARACTERS

[@Salfriel]

Wow, Lost must have hurt Tali badly. Lost wasn't that bad, it's still one of my favourite show. And the polar bear was from a research facility btw, caged but broke out.

[@GoiaK]

So it's not a villainous plot but just sheer hubris and storytelling incompetence?

[@davidattia2315]

-Tali : I think the burning of Teldrassil was quite good actually ! -Me : WHAT ??? -Cutting to the ad segment -Me : NO DON'T CUT THERE !! TAAAAAALLLIIII !!!!!!!

[@joke_d]

Honestly Sylvanas character being trashed still does not change the Shadowlands and how it turned out, BFA was a mess but I still think the story there was better than Shadowlands. The Jailer is the worst villain and character in all of Warcraft he's so badly written that he ruins/destroys/diminishes every character that's connected to him, like Arthas and Sargeras. And if I'm not misunderstanding anything in the video Afrasiabi was only responsible for BFA and Sylvanas not Shadowlands and the Jailer.

[@shumen4u]

The fact that you and Bell have been siting on this for so long and release it now means that you've been green-lit in some form by the devs. I'm now quite sure what are they trying to accomplish with this. However, I reject the implication that this decision has led or in fact has had any bearing on the direction and quality of the writing post 8.0. This exact writing team has had whole two expansions to get a half decent narrative going and instead we got the hastily scribbled insertion of the Naga, the total botching of one of WoW most hyped and mysterious villains in N'zoth and of course the whole of Shadowlands narrative with the Jailer being the cherry on top. Statements like "10.0 is Danusers' baby" are worrying to say the least.

[@jarebear8139]

Two videos in one week? No explanation needed. Go on 👏

[@daniellerogers9671]

One thing that does frustrate me a little here, in this video specifically, is saying that Afrasiabi was 'good at his job' because he had a stunning and very hype-able event planned for the game. Being able to conjure hype should NOT be the creative director's task. That's for the people heading social media accounts, making videos that show off features and so on. A creative director's task should be weaving together his ideas and his team's ideas together into something worth navigating - worth telling as a story. Unfortunately, a lot of the senior team at Blizzard has been more 'rule of cool' and not working together on anything coherent. It's just especially telling when one dude thinks he has something awesome, doesn't plan it beyond 'isn't that cool?' and drops it in the lap of the team with no notes. Sighs. I wish we knew exactly what Sylvanas was planned for when she stared at Vol'jin's throne for hours. She was a favorite character of mine through Legion and I still mourn what could've been had she not been basically lobotomized for BFA and twisted into an unrecognizable form for SL.

[@amouramarie]

Yep yep yep.

[@Yamidoragon]

This would put the new cinematic into a different light. Like the team has something that they did and didn’t do at the same time, and now must face consequences of something their hands made but not entirely on their own volition. Sylvanas would be the allegory of the writers

[@Lionimia]

I was thinking this entire time that, wait, the burning of Teldrassil is a bad thing? Maybe the REASON for it burning is what makes people upset, that it was a seemingly spontaneous decision from Sylvanas, but the quest to go and rescue the people in the tree, seeing the time quickly diminish as you realize you can't save everyone, then ultimately failing the quest.. I'd never experienced anything like that and it was one of the most genuinely emotionally damaging quests I've ever done. Actually, THE most. It was a humbling reminder that we can't save everyone, it motivated me to kill that bitch Sylvanas more than ever, and it showed Blizz was not afraid to dip their hands into dramatic, world-altering consequences for the sake of story. And then 10:35 happened lul

[@maikelheetveld3425]

Sadly that quest to save the people - you know one of the more emotional quests they (ever) made - is no longer in the game. :(

[@happyclam1266]

Imagine how much more powerful the burning would have been if Sylvanas had showed some hesitation, or even if the burning had been an accident, for example if she'd meant to do a more targeted attack and somehow it got out of hand. In other words, if she had been more like Saurfang ended up being, except the Alliance would hate her just as much and think it was 100% deliberate. That would have been interesting.

[@kaylamisstress4774]

Evitel's ad was SO good I'd get that trial if I've not already tried it...

[@whatskrakalaken1940]

Telling a KZbinr anything “under the strictest confidence” is an oxymoron.

[@momokie]

Taliesin talking about having no plan with the story and rather just leaving random gigantic "breadcrumbs" with no resolution in mind just reminds me of so many terrible forms of entertainment over the last few years where clearly there was no plan, ie Star Wars trilogy having no cohesion episode to episode. I do think it doesn't really absolve the modern team though, not that T&E say otherwise, because the newer lore is still not great, at least in my opinion. Even if they had to deal with a poor set up, it doesn't inspire confidence that the resolution has gone so much off the deep end. The implication of the World Tree Burning having no plan for resolution would say that Danuser came up with the Jailor pushing her to do it to get free and the current story.

[@us89na]

Look at the end of Lost or GoT seasons 7 & 8

[@Jonny-Sniper]

The polar bear had a clear link to the DHARMA Initiative, one of the major parts of Lost. People who have only seen Lost once and brand it bad really make me laugh. It's deeper and more interesting than most of the shit that ends up on Netflix these days.

[@BartvG88]

True, I liked it, didn’t think it was that bad. But the first season is still the best.

[@TedManAte]

OMG, I burst into tears laughing when Evitel introduced that first audible book. Well done! I might sign up for audible simply for how great that was. Literally the best mid video add I have ever seen! Bravo!

[@cmciff4054]

Loved the audible commercial SO MUCH

[@Metsa25]

I feel slighted. I was, after all, the Gavrilo Princip of this particular conflagration. :) 1:10 I agree about the burning of Teldrassil. It, and especially the 'rescue' quest that came after were incredibly impactful. As people complained, my line for years was "we have to wait to see how it all ends. It could be great." Sadly they did not pull it off. I mean, Delaryn Summermoon is still in the Horde.

[@philliphopkins6268]

The burning was cool but it was difficult to accept it as a horde player who doesn't want their side to be evil. If there was an immediate horde separation after the events then I would have enjoyed it more. Too many made excuses for why they weren't doing anything even though they constantly talk about honor.

[@Desolaytore]

How is it evil? It was war, would it be evil if it was Stormwind instead?

[@Ordo1980]

My problem as an orc player since 1995 is that the Horde is not badass and brutal enough. The best Horde was the Warcraft2 Horde. My problem was not the aggression, but the fact that we don't have an orc Warchief. Garrosh was nearly ok, but he is not green as an orc should be (f*ck the retcons) and he was kinda stupid sometimes. I want somebody like the original Ogrim Doomhammer or Grom Hellscream.

[@Desolaytore]

@@Ordo1980 Ill take pre MoP Garrosh back

[@sera8792]

@@Desolaytore are you actually arguing that burning thousands of innocents alive isn't evil lol

[@Desolaytore]

@@sera8792 They had time to evacuate, they didnt. Yall expect wars to not be bloody, doesnt work that way. Lets also not pretend the Alliance woulnt have burned down Thunderbluff or Orgrimmar if they had the chance.

[@daggers6620]

that flawless audible integration

[@Magstarcutie]

I don’t normally watch ad breaks but I enjoyed watching today’s

[@ZanesZygot]

Man, the thread about this on reddit is atrocious, people don't get how game dev works or even what was Afriasabi role on WoW. The only thing they kinda get right is that Sylvanas is not the only problem, but most things on Shadowlands like the jailer also. Also treating wow like "game of thrones" is not the problem, since it usually refers to chaotic and political stories, they're interesting even more than celestial and high fantasy plots. And great video, the twist at the end that you don't really agree with all this was really nice.

[@captainglutenfree]

What is written can be rewritten… If they stay true to her character then all can be fixed. Dude destroyed is career, it will catch up with him.

[@stepanpytlik4021]

Honestly, it is very hard to believe that a single person ruined Sylvanas' story. Like, he could not have made ALL the decisions by himself.

[@HiIThinkImReal]

I’ve never seen so much subtext in an ad read before.

[@endofsamba]

Can I just say i LOVE this Bel-Tali&Evi teamwork. My two favorite WoW KZbinrs, uniting against a common creep!!

[@MrGatonegroish]

So this one man, influential as he might have been, overrode the entire creative team (who are clearly not at fault, of course), bypassed every stakeholder for the storyline (which in a company the size of Blizzard's, will number in the dozens) and purposely wrote a bad plotline that made people leave the game in droves, on purpose, to... Spite somebody else? And ever since he left, the creative team has been unable to fix his mistakes for some reason? And also our only real source for this is a VO actor that didn't even work on WoW, but Hearthstone? Come the fuck on.

[@V1CT1MIZED]

Blizzard dish out the Copium and this joke of a channel lap it up

[@yngvildrthevoracious]

Grandmother was French, French accent still sounding like an English person making a French accent 😂😂

[@desroth]

I wonder if that is why the opening cinematic for BFA showcases Sylvanas in an entirely DIFFERENT light than the tree burning... Like Sylvanas in the BFA opening cinematic seems heroic, she seems like someone who is leading the Horde, she looks and acts like someone who is not willingly stoking a war and is instead fighting to defend the horde. She looks like someone who didn't want a war, but saw that she needed to fight less the Horde was destroyed. And then we get the answer as to who burned the Tree down and the Warbringer, and she is more inline with how she is in the IN GAME cinematics for the Battle of Lordaeron. A self conceited, self serving, power hungry, and completely and unambiguously evil with no nuance. The Sylvanas we got in the Battle was entirely different. She didn't care people were dying, she didn't care about the losses, she didn't care about anything. She even didn't care about abandoning her Kingdom completely in a failed attempt to kill the leaders of the Alliance. I want the Sylvanas from Legion and the opening cinematic of BFA. Bring back that characterization and I will gladly pay you whatever you ask.

[@TacohandsPvP]

I don't believe the burning of the tree was a stroke of genius. It was, however, a master class on how to alienate your player base.

[@Elunayme]

I think it's a reach to call it sabotage. It's a different vision for sure, but not an invalid one. It's not like he twisted the character like they did with Garrosh, who suddenly forgot all about honor to be the bad guy. It's irrelevant if the team liked it, the story already went there and plenty of people got invested into the character because of it. Whether it is as rebel or loyalist. Same as with Kerrigan, it just feels lame to try and salvage the character.

[@kremlinkoa]

So the question is Malice vs Incompetence?

[@stormstrider1990]

It's been clear to me for a while Afrasiabi intended Sylvanas to become the next big villain. That she would become the very thing she hated, Arthas 2.0. The Warbringer cinematic was pretty obvious about that. It was even more obvious when he said Sylvanas makes Garrosh look like an amateur, and even blamed her for the Wrathgate which wasn't even canon. My personal theory is they didn't even plan to add the loyalist option, until complaints from that side of the Horde playerbase. But they also gave us the option to not kill Sira (not that it changed the story), so neither side would have to "betray their ideals". So already then, Blizz was trying to repair the damage. Regardless, the burning of Teldrassil had put them in a difficult spot. Sylvanas' arc in Shadowlands is Danuser's attempt to save her character. But because of her vague motives and the poorly presented narrative, there was a fear from many Alliance AND Horde players they would not only redeem Sylvanas, but use the "machine of death" to justify her actions, making her the hero all along. This idea was also pushed by Accolonn and Pyromancer. I'm relieved Blizz didn't go that far to please the fanboys, but Danuser's narrative still has many confused and disappointed. Afrasiabi is a piece of shit scumbag, and in my opinion, the burning of Teldrassil should never have happened. Honestly, I didn't even want another faction war. We already did that in MoP, and they should have just focused on Azshara and N'zoth, or maybe just Azshara, and given us the South Seas expansion we wanted. I'm still curious to see how Sylvanas' story will end, though. As for Teldrassil, there are some interesting leaks about the next expansion, so we'll just have to wait and see.