Well, Her Heart Is Rotting
In preparation for the next World of Warcraft Expansion, Blizzard is implementing a preamble event that will alter the state of affairs between the Horde and Alliance. According to an all-new trailer, the longtime hero of the Horde, Sylvanas Windrunner, has fallen off the deep end.
WoW’s new in-game event is called War of Thorns, and it makes the Queen of the Horde responsible for the massacre of Night Elves and the burning of Teldrassil, the World Tree. Since this location is a primal homeland of the Night Elf playable race, as you can imagine, it shakes up the lore and boundaries of the game quite a bit. But it’s more than just a boundary shift that has Warcraft fans in a tizzy. The WoW player-base is not happy with the new, ruthless and tree-hating queen. In fact, it seems Blizzard is resorting to the old black and white portrait of Alliance and Horde that started the franchise—in lieu of the dynamic grey areas that gave neither faction the moral high ground.
In the new World of Warcraft trailer, titled “Warbringers: Sylvanas,” Sylvanas more or less fills the role of a mustache-twirling villain. It is such that, if a newcomer discovered her character via this trailer, they might believe she’s story’s antagonist of pure evil. She’s cold, ruthless, and seemingly demented. In previous cases, her dark and forlorn past could explain (maybe justify) her coldhearted decisions, but she seems to have crossed that evil threshold.
At the time of this writing, “Warbringers: Sylvanas” has 42k likes and 15k dislikes. While the number of likes more than doubles dislikes, the ratio is rare for a WoW trailer. There will be more events leading up to World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, but they’re unlikely to justify the massacre. Time will tell.
As Blood Elf player from back in the day, I never cared about Night Elves or the Alliance, but I don’t think every player in the Horde should be evil either. What are your thoughts on the World of Warcraft developments? Feel free to comment down below.