Baine: - Travels to the afterlife. - Gets kidnapped, almost killed, kidnapped again and rescued. - Sits in Oribos for 3 patches. - “Maybe she shouldn’t”. - Refuses to elaborate further. - Leaves.

"so long as her soul remains divided, she cannot wake" "Maybe she shouldn't" Based bull spitting facts

"Never in a thousand lifetimes would I betray everything I stood for!" I'm sure Arthas thought the very same, alongside every paladin, and virtuous knight who followed him into damnation.

I miss the Old Pre Legion Sylvanas that only cared about saving her forsaken and keeping her allegiance with the Horde intact to benefit from their protection. Blizzard taking her in this direction in my opinion failed 1 of their greatest characters and was hard for this forsaken/blood elf to see her mistreated like this. For the Dark Lady!!

Blizzard’s favorite line to skip story telling: “You will never understand”

This isn't a reaction. This is a movie.

"Catches the arrow like a wiffle ball and the jailer thinks its funny" I would love to see Asmon do break downs on WoW lore but in that tone 😂

I'm convinced that the cinematics team runs everything through at .75x speed for the final cut of these cinematics. Watching and listening to this at 1.25x and 1.5x speed sounds so much more natural than the long, drawn out way it sounds on normal playback speed

The reason why the scar being in the wrong place matters, is because it shows that Blizzard doesn't care enough about their characters to even get the SMALL details correct about them.

Players: "Sylvanas story is so lame and inconsistent" Blizzard: "Hey, alright, check out this new HOTTER model we made for her"

Sylvanas is the one character that got me into caring about WoW lore. I remeber thinking how badass her brutal pragmatism seemed. To see them butcher her character like this has been so fucking sad. I'd rather have her dead than degraded like this...

Am I the only one who find Uther and Sylvanas' living model to be really weird in the cinematic? Like they look extremely cartoony. I feel the previous model have more gritness to them, but their models looks too clean.

Lol people in chat telling asmon to read the books is so damn stupid. You shouldn't have to buy and read a book just to understand the main villain's motivation and backstory in a damn videogame. People who still shill for Blizzard baffle me.

I think Baine is symbolic of the entire wow playerbase, you see him once in the beginning of an expansion and then basically disappears. He shows up to state the obvious but blizzard ignores him and goes ahead with a dumb plan

How i'm reading all this: She gets kill, soul gets splited (like Uther's), one soul fragment is TAKEN HOSTAGE by frostmourne, the other either goes to Shadowlands (Uther's case) or it's use for necromancy (Sylvana's case). Lets go with Uther's case, soul gets splited in two "Good" Uther and "Emo" Uther. "Good" Uther is held hostage in forstmourne (he talks to us in Halls in reflection), "Emo" Uther goes into Bastion and becomes a Forsworn. When Arthas/The Lich King dies all the soul fragments held hostage GET RELEASED (We see it in the ICC end cinematic) and go to Torghast (because it is conected to ICC). It is at this point that the Jailer gets to keep this souls in his secret S&M room. In the case of Silvanas the "Emo" soul stays in Azeroth as the Banshee Queen. She is not necessary pure evil as "Emo" Uther isn't either. The Banshee Quen gets character devolpment during WotLK, she acomplished her revenge and kills her self. At this point The Jailer has the "Good" fragment and (maybe cause she dies in ICC) the "Emo" soul goes to Torghast as well. In the dispair od the maw the "Emo" fragment gets recruited by the Jailer and sended back to Azeroth. From this point on, The Bansheed Queen (Emo fragment) slowly starts acting as The Jailer pawn but she is on copium thinking is for a "good cause". She finally makes her play in BFA and in Shadowlands she slowly realized she fucked up and she is serving the Jailer. She tries to the right thing on the 9.1 end cinematic, but The Jailer is amused and decides to give back the "Good" soul fragment held hostage so both fragments confront and torture each other. But now that her soul is whole again, by the power of friendship, redemptions arcs and therapist Uther she is gona overcome the situation and help us stop the jailer.

You missed more of the foreshadowing of her death, as she's laying there, everyone leaves slowly, just like in the scene with voljins death, as they all deal with the demise of the warchief and sylvanas became warchief.

Sylvanas needs a redemption arc like Bobby Kotick needs another yacht.

"So long as the Developers remains divided, WoW cannot heal." "Maybe it SHOULDN'T.."

I am here wondering why Sylvanas's eyes (before banshee form) do not glow. I haven't play for a while. Did they change elves' eyes in retail? Without a glow, she looks more human than elf.

This Sylvanas twist is something a 14 year old would write about their self insert.

These writers are so...unbelivably...... deep.... into their own butts. It's incredible.

Sylvanas’ “good soul fragment” looks like she’s from a free-to-play mobile game

What I think is that they should have shown every character's motivations. Developed their backstory. Gave us actual real hints on their plans well in advance, and unfolded that story across the expansion. They should've, but they couldn't. They don't think ahead unless it's on how to make a profit. They have lost that drive that defined them in the past and have recently only created content that will earn them more money, not the happiness of their fans. In the long term, they will lose everything. I guarantee it. Even with how loyal fans have been, you can only be burned by these pathetic efforts for so many times.

Evil/Dark Sylvanas didn't want to nuke Theramore This means nuking Theramore was the morally good option Nice one blizz Evil/Dark Sylvanas wanted her people to be safe and secure This means purging the dead no matter the circumstances is morally good, the alliance is right Nice one blizz

Sylvanas: "Her crime..." Chat: " YOURS BITCH" lmao

The most important thing to remember when it comes to WoW's lore is that at this point the devs only care about telling whatever cool new story they've come up with for the current expansion, and will treat everything that came before like a pile of magazines they're making a collage out of.

This was mentioned - in one form or another - a few times by others throughout the video, but I think Blizz are relying on the "undead (or, in this case, those struck by a Mourne-blade) don't have emotions" trope. I think that Banshee Sylvanas kept her "self", but lost her empathy. She understands what is "bad" and what is "good", but she is no longer capable of "feeling" which is which. Sometimes such things are obvious - few would think that killing your sister is not an "evil" act - but other times it's not. And the more time passed, the more blurry that distinction became for her. Banshee Sylvanas didn't want to be a villain, however, she didn't have the sense of morality to help her prevent that from happening only cold logic. And she failed. Soul Sylvanas was, basically, in denial of that failure. And had she stayed in denial, she would not have woken. It's not an uncommon trope - amnesia. The character did something they came to deeply regret, then simply forgot about ever doing it, and are now subconsciously rejecting their involvement, attributing it to someone else (which is what we see in the cinematic) - hence the "fracture".

Literally Kerrigan - and I will explain how. Both were initially victims, both had a mean streak of a personality, both ended up embracing the power granted to them by their circumstances (Scourge/Zerg), in their quest for revenge, both not just acknowledging, but even accepting and relishing the cruelty of their actions - both Sylvanas and Kerrigan would set their aims to conquer the universe/Azeroth, and at long last, despite being proven to be pragmatically irredeemable, both were given the exact same free get out of jail card by ascribing ALL of their misdeeds and agency to the ultimate big bad evil aka Amon/Jailer.

Uther: "We cannot change the past" Meanwhile the Bronze Dragonflight and the Infinite Dragonflight laughing their butts off (with time travel shenanigans). Are you sure we can't change the past?, just look how the f*** we got WoD.

its never her fault whenever she does anything wrong. "Leave it to Blizzard to take agency against another female." had me dying.

Some thing to consider, frostmourn splits souls into light and darkness, not good and evil and the jailer receives those light based soul parts. The jailer sent the helm of domination and frostmourn to the living world, we also see he is after Anduin for his power/connection to the light. We also know from Arthas that before he dawned the helm of domination that he was getting whispered to from frostmourn, more of a compulsion than a mind control. This might have been the case with Sylvanas as well and maybe the compulsion grew stronger the closer she got to the jailer. Like when she jumped.

Holy crap... That is my music compilation playing in the background in this video. Aaaah!! Love you Zach!! Thanks for choosing to listen to my remix.

after all this 4D chess, the endgame after all turned out to be, "the Jailer's just a really mean mean guy, just a MEANboi, and Sylvanas wasn't Sylvanas so everything she did wrong didn't count." Fuck...this game...

“We have to continue the story. “ “We have to continue the patch cycle.” *MAYBE WE SHOULDN’T*

I really like your idea for an ending. You raise a lot of good points with discrepancies in the written and spoken story. I wish that all the lore was told in the game instead of forcing the player to seek it outside of the game.

They're the same person, thats the point of the cinematic, they're not split in good and evil, the "good" one was just frozen in time at the time of her death and now has to accept that "bad" sylvanas is what she would have developed into. "bad" sylvanas is too far gone to be reasoned with but now that shes back with her old more idealistic self it'll be easier to talk to her. She will not completely be ranger general again, but definetly have more boundaries again.

Hopefully the next cinematic begins right after this one ends, with Baine crushing her head with a totem while Tyrande and Genn high five in the background

They're giving us the worst ending possible. I almost respect it

Garrosh: "I bow to no one!" Jailor: "My only weakness!" Sounds like cheesy Blizzard writing. Let it happen. KEK

Sylvanas goes nagasaki on teldrassil, np. Jailor: there is no gender inequality. Sylvanas: fk it you've crossed the line.

It's just embarassing. The split personality crap with zero setup is the kind of copout you'd expect from a rookie writer making a fanfiction. They desperately want us to care about Sylvanas (probably so she can sacrifice herself next patch and have it mean something to players) but they obviously had no grand scheme or plan for why she did all the crap of the last few years, so they resorted to this. I just feel so sorry for the few people left that actually give a damn about the story of WoW

Blizzard employees didn't harass woman, it was their evil splitted soul side who did it. Blizzard is innocent

What I would like to know is where has the "good" part of her soul been all this time? Uther gets killed by frostmourne and his soul is damaged but since he is not raised as a deathknight or undead he went to Bastion. His soul was damaged but remained pure enough to get sent to Bastion. Sylvannus got killed and turned into an undead but in her case her soul wasn't just damaged it was fragmented. Part of her soul stayed on Azeroth as the Banshee Queen and the other part did...what? If you look at the covenants that are shown to us in Shadowlands, I think she would have either gone to Bastion, sacrificing herself to save her people/doing everything she could to save her people, or Ardenweald, being a night elf and the connection to nature that implies. It is also mentioned that there are thousands or millions of afterlives in the shadowlands that she could have been sent to. So where has the good part of her soul been all this time?

If I had to guess how we're gonna get Anduin back. We're gonna use the locket that he dropped to find Varian somewhere in the Maw, and he'll give Anduin a big heroic peptalk and then he'll shatter the Jailer's control over him with the Light.

KZfaqrs like Captain Grimm and Platinum Wow make higher quality videos than the actual devs

By the cinematic's logic, Arthas should also get redeemed because he was a victim to "muh fate".

I remember spending hours watching wow cinematics thinking they were better than half the movies I’ve seen… how things have gone downhill.

Sylvanas overcame the mind control with a power of friendship and love

Sylvanas was one of my favorite characters in wow and I hate seeing what they've done with her. She was a tragic figure that was making the best of her dammed existence by literally liberating and caring for slaves. She lived for revenge and had to search for new purpose after getting it. She went too far at various points morally but was always smart and cared for those in similar circumstances to her. Fuck Blizzard man.

They're probably saving the reveal of Zovalls plan and why Sylvanas joined him for the book so they can paygate even understanding the basics of the entire story

Remember when WoW was about two opposing factions formed of loosely allied races and tribes fighting and arguing over power dynamics, battling over their right to exist and survive more or less, all while in addition to their allegiance to their over arching "team" each member race had their own goals and desires?

Sylvanas may have been "fractured" but the banshee retains part of the ranger. The two have never been entirely separated. Sylvanas remembers her former self. She could not remain so vengeful against Arthas if she did not remember her prior existence and mourn the loss. She even retained her emotional attachment to Nathanos, enough to hunt down his zombie and reclaim his sense of self. The portion of Sylvanas that the Jailer restored is unaware of what happened after her death. The Sylvanas we know remembers everything.

“Inaction damns us all!” That’s a pretty ironic line considering everything going on at ACTIVISION Blizzard…

The chat spamming "read the book" while Asmon rants on the story of the jailer.. c'mon. You're not supposed to have to read the book too. That should be optional. The story should be in the game FFS. Imagine if you went to a movie, and there were a bunch of plot holes or characters without clear motivations, and when you criticized it, people went: "You gotta read the book that came out with the movie" *facepalm*

Blizzard is basically saying "We kinda ruined her by making her act out of character and made her story arc over-the-top and we dunno how to end it. So yeah we take it all back, she's also dead now bye."

Maybe getting killed by frostmourn doesn't make you a pawn of the jailer, just that one of the uthers chose to serve him like sylvanas did

Man they are really going to try and redeem her aren't they?

I truly love how literally every morally dark gray and villainous character in modern blizzard games is "corrupted" Nobody just decides to become bad or is born bad (outside of MAYBE the Old Gods)

The music at 6:47 is the same music that played when they were removing Vol'jin's corpse and she was standing over him. It's almost a re-creation, only now she's the "corpse"

the most beautifull cinematics in a game I have seen so far were the cinematics in Homeworld. The Warbringers series for BFA promotion were similar. If they could use that sort of cinematics and produce more of them, to really tell the story, would be the best imo.

So during the final fight, sylvannas will absorb the last first one and become a giant godess of fire, and then will fire a beam to kill zoovall and sacrifice herself.

Watching this after just finishing Endwalker really puts into perspective how ham-fisted WoW's storytelling is.

so you spend this much time building sylvanas into a villain and then by the end of it make her go "eyyy, wasn't me!" I swear the noggerfogger questline had better wrinting than this character ark

Slyvanis must've hit avoidance cap the way shes dodging all the accountability for her actions.

Since the beginning of this expansion, I was hoping to see Arthas again. As the "story" went on, I thought perhaps it was better he doesn't show up less he gets ripped apart by the writing team.

Questions: If Sylvanas was The Jailer's pawn since Arthas stab her in Warcraft3, why did she says "I will not serve" and fire an arrow at the Jailer BEFORE he gets her soul back? If Frostmourne split souls and gives the Jailer control of the stabed, why Uther was not controled? If only the bad Sylvanas, the butcher, the murderer, was in control of the body and the good one was emprisoned in that body, unable to do anything but watch atrocities made by her dark side, then why did she sing a beautiful, heartbreaking, sorrow song to the character who gives back to her a necklace that reminds her of her life before she was bansheed? Answer: Same raison to anything in the WoW stories since... since a while. Because it gives a cool cinematic. They doesn't care about consistencies, only about having a cool scene. They don't know what they will write for their next cinemetic.

For fucks sake, never has their been a more protected fucking character. Jumps to her death after Arthas' defeat: Survive. Slaughters the Night Elves: Not her fault. Takes a blow to her eye vs. Saurfang: only recieves a scratch rather than become disfigured. Serves the Jailer explicitly: States she doesn't serve anyone. Fuck. Whoever. Wrote. Sylvanas.

I'm getting this really weird "uncanny valley" feeling from this cinematic... is anyone else? To clarify, I don't mean the kind you get from animation vs reality, but rather the animation stuff from this video in comparison to the animation style from previous Blizzard animations. Something's different about it... it almost feels like I'm watching a 60fps claymation rather than an animation.

It has to be impossible to get immersed when the whole community can watch the entire story before it even launches.

Blizzard are so in touch with their community they even decided to write just like fanfic writers do, incredible dedication, bravo.

By "I woke up haunted by someone with my face" she ment, that her soulpart (ranger general sylv) was basicly struck by arthas and then stuck in time and when zovaal returned her, she was stuck with the banshee that moved on, they are not one yet, it's like... the same person from two different timelines at this point fighting in her head and ranger general sylv got to face everything that banshee sylv had done to this point, there is no good and bad in this in the classic sense they were just split at one point and the whole character development that banshee sylv went through is not part of ranger general yet...they are both sylvanas but with a different backstory and character if that makes any sense. And I think zovaal is not really controlling sylvanas or uther, I think the word pawn is kinda wrong, the jailer is controlling anduin, that's what control looks like, domination magic to force anduin to follow him, but is that really what he did to good old sylvie and uther? no...they acted the way they did, because they thought it's the right thing to do, behind all that was the jailers greater plan, that's most likely why he is called "cunning" in the first place, he didn't need to control them, his plans were running in the back and people played into his hands without recognizing until he revealed himself and they still followed him

I think it’s pretty clear the Jailer could only ever influence decisions not mind control. That’s why Uther was able to make a different choice and so was Sylvanas. I think it’s just like a buff to your worst instincts not complete control. The fragment of Sylvanas that is good has been separated and distilled out but she was probably never near as powerful as the “bad” side. So I think she had lots of agency just less moral inhibitions Also the Jailer may have thought he was sentencing Sylvanas to unending psychological torment and would not wake up

What they need is to get the Warrior of Light to sort out the Jailer, that'll do it.

It’s like her helping the jailer was part of her plan the whole time, but part of her plan was forgetting that she had a plan until she needed to remember she had a plan.

Sylvanas was (please note the past tense) the one of the great characters in heroic fantasy fiction. Her brutal pragmatism in defense of the Forsaken, her ruthlessness in advancing her faction’s cause through the Horde seemed almost the definition of the anti-hero. To see her destroyed in a failed expansion is beyond sad. When I see a bad movie, I rarely attach blame to the actors, I blame the writers and the producers. It really is all about the characters and the story we accompany them on. To paraphrase the late, great, Roger Ebert ‘Your Expansion Sucks!”

Blizzard: Sooo Sylvanas didn't do what she did because she was traumatized over being murdered, resurrected into an abomination, controlled to slaughter her own people, gained self awareness, was abandoned by her sister, was abandoned by her allies, betrayed several times, and sought for a world where those like her wouldn't be tormented at any cost....No no no, her soul was split and the good girl part was kept prisoner

blizzard: so how will we bring Sylvannas back? the fans hate her Ion: We'll blame it on her evil side and bring out her good side blizzard: but that's inconsistence, we have never give her good side any cover time Ion: YOU FINALLY CARE ABOUT LORE NOW?

"condemned her to endlessly relive her atrocities" Good, leave her there. *Fin*

Acceptable Ending - The Jailer made Sylvannas shoot him to trick people into thinking it was her choice. He's given her big,scary stories to go and tell her new friends to rush them along. Reason? He needed willing mortals to enter the SotFOs because reasons. Also that song that sylvannas sings with her banshees when she gets her sisters locket or whatever it was? That was just Zovall doing drag.

What I thought was going on here wasn’t that Sylvanas was a pawn of the Jailer the moment she died, but rather this was the part of her soul that was torn away when she died struggling to come to terms with who she was in the present. Especially since Sylvanas at the point of her death wouldn’t even conceive of doing what the Sylvanas of the present has, not at that point in her life. She hadn't gone through all the character development that present Sylvanas has. I mean, if you were suddenly confronted with yourself, say, twenty years in the future wouldn’t it be really jarring? A lot can happen to a person between now and then As for Uther, I thought he was showing her that he did in fact know what it was like to have to struggle with both being torn in half and having to come to terms with the things his other half did, things HE did, because both halves are him. These were things he chose to do, and he had to accept that. He couldn’t put the blame on it being the ‘evil half of his soul’ and thus not him, because it was him. Just like with her Goes to show what I know -_-

Man,I really miss the old lore days about the first and second wars.The Horde enslaving dragons and using them to fight the alliance,Zul’jin’s hatred for the elves and hunting them,Anduin Lothar vs Orgrim Doomhammer.That era was far more interesting that this shit show we have now.

The past 8 years have literally been a Sylvanas Fan-Fiction we've been forced to endure

honestly the only thing in any of this that could make any sense as a "victory" over the jailer is if our accidentally bringing devourers with us into Zerith Mortis produces some sort of super powerful devourer that shows up and eats Zovaal and the only reason it works is because it was something he hadn't planned, we just were brash enough in our use of the arcane to allow for it to happen, and then the combined "freed" forces of the jailer, together with all of us from the shadowlands and azeroth, work together to bring down the big bad devourer, and the day is saved, and my level 130 Paladin can rest knowing he is just a level 60, and his life has been reduced to sitting in bars drinking himself into a stupor and saying "I was there, Khadgar! I was there 20 years ago...at the battle that canonically never happened..."

It’s still contrived and loaded with flaws, but I don’t think the “soul split” thing was necessarily mind control, just missing a piece of their “humanity” which is restored when their soul is whole again. Not a purely black and white “good” half and “evil” half. Uther’s flawed half of his soul wasn’t purely evil either. The only point in time where Sylvanas was actually being controlled was between her death and Arthas’s loss of power during the frozen throne wc3 expac via proxy of jailer controlling Arthas and Arthas controlling Sylvanas

Me: "What do you mean Zovaal has not voice lines?" Also Me: *Flash back to one of many Captain Grim videos* Ohhh right, that was not cannon.

“Deceptively cunning” like Azmodan is a “master strategist”?

Jailor: "Kneel" Everyone: "Yes King"

12:20 she possessed her own dead body basically. its important to note that she still tried to help her people even after death, asking for help from the alliance of lordaeron. she needed to be “herself” to dk that. she has a connection to her high elf side, even without the other soul, anduin confronted her about the mortality. she loves her people, she loves the forsaken. its the only family she had left.

The slight shift in art style for this cutscene is very off-putting. It doesn't look like the WoW art style they've used for the past few expansions, now it just looks like a shitty cheap mobile game ad.

Blizzard even forgot the High Elves's eyes glow... Is there anything Blizzard actually remembers!?!

The way I see it is this. Arthas takes Sylvanas soul and it becomes trapped in frostmourne as well as Uthers, at the end of wrath when Arthas falls frostmourne is shattered sending all the souls trapped inside to the shadowlands. With Bolvar now sitting on the frozen throne he is using all his will power to fight Zovaals control, but Zovaal has another gateway into Azeroth the Banshee! Using Sylvanas soul he can talk to her in Azeroth just like he did with Arthas and like a chess master he waits for the right time, planning his moves ahead of time. The Banshee sees how Azeroth is becoming a prison for her and the forsaken the alliance wouldn't accept them, Garrosh wanted to use them as meat shields. Zovaal says he wants to brake free from his bonds in the shadowlands and the Banshee wants to be free from Azeroth so she makes the deal with Zovaal, he grants her new power that she grows and controls through the fight with the legion and the alliance in bfa. Then the time comes for her to shatter the crown and open the path to the shadowlands. I don't think she will know the true plans of Zovaal cause this is a god who has been planning for a very long time.

The explanation of how the jailer is doing things around 22 minutes sounds like it came straight out of The Princess Bride, lol

“Leave it to blizzard to take agency away from another female” nice 👌

Those wow cinematics are so sad compared to ff14's

So what does this mean about Frost Death Knights, and the fact that they are reusing the shards of Frostmourne reforged into their artifact weapon?

I think Sylvanas started working for the Jailer after she threw herself off of Icecrown. "Her path began when yours ended," means when Arthas killed her and Frostmourne took part of her soul. When she became the Banshee Queen, which I don't necessarily think is the same time she started serving the Jailer.

Apparently they forgot Sylvanas was High Elf and needed the blue arcane eyes

Her whole point was that her will was strong enough to fight against the domination... but she was being dominated the entire time! Domination inception!

I like that his chat went. "Her crimes?! Bitch that was you!"

i thought the thumbnail was the wrong version of the sylvanas cutscene but then i remembered this is youtube.