Tag Archives: writing

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sylvanas?

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Sylvanas Windrunner has to be the most ridiculously controversial character in Warcraft lore. Tirion, Thrall, and Garrosh are all contentious figures, but none of them hold a candle to Sylvanas.

Art of Sylvanas WindrunnerSeriously, if you ever feel like trolling, just go to the official lore forum and mention Sylvanas. It doesn’t even matter what you say about her; there will be blood.

Half the fanbase worships Sylvanas, and the other half hates her guts, but everyone has a strong opinion. Myself, I’m of two minds. I do find her absolutely despicable, but she’s also one of the most compelling characters in Warcraft lore, and World of Warcraft would be a much duller place without her.

But Sylvanas presents a problem. No queen can rule forever, and no plot can go on indefinitely. A resolution must be found for her arc, but because she is such a contentious figure, it will be very difficult to find a satisfactory solution.

The problem:

It is my firm belief that all villains have a shelf life. And yes, all apologies to Forsaken fans, but I do consider Sylvanas a villain. She’s more complex and sympathetic than, say, Arthas, but she’s still someone whose ultimate plan is world conquest over the bodies of all who oppose her.

Villains need to die sooner or later. Otherwise, they eventually lose their intimidation factor and become ridiculous. When a villain can never defeat the heroes nor be defeated by them, it makes both sides seem weak and uninspiring. See: the Borg in Star Trek.

Art of Sylvanas WindrunnerThe only other potential solution is redemption, but I don’t see that as an option in Sylvanas’s case. Every piece of story surrounding her so far has been about her becoming more vicious and more corrupt, and at this point, there’s a huge portion of the fan base who would absolutely lose their minds if they were asked to accept a redeemed Sylvanas.

So Sylvanas needs to die. Sooner or later, she’ll be a raid boss. Or maybe a villain in Warcraft IV, but I’m sure that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

But Sylvanas will leave a gaping hole in the lore. She means so much to so many people — even those who hate her, in a way — that finding a suitable replacement as leader of the Forsaken is an excruciatingly difficult task.

Solutions:

Whoever replaces Sylvanas has a number of needs they need to fulfill. They need to be edgy and ruthless enough to fit the Forsaken’s theme, but they need to not be so blatantly evil as Sylvanas, or else there’s really no point in replacing the Dark Lady.

It’s going to be an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk. If the new leader is entirely honourable, the Forsaken have lost their identity, but if they’re not as least somewhat decent in their goals, we’re back to half the players howling for their blood, and nothing is accomplished.

Sylvanas sings the Lament of the HighborneSylvanas is also very meaningful to female players — and male players who appreciate strong female characters. Not only is Sylvanas one of only two female faction leaders, but she’s arguably the only major female character from Warcraft III to not be reduced to a complete non-entity in WoW.

Losing Sylvanas would be an incredible blow to those who care about how women are portrayed in Warcraft, and it would need to be compensated somehow.

The choice needs to make sense in the lore, too. It needs to be plausible that the Forsaken would accept their new leader. Considering most Forsaken revere Sylvanas with a fervor that borders on the religious, that won’t be easy. They would likely view any new leader as a usurper unless they had very good reason to respect them.

So with all that being said, let’s examine the potential candidates to replace Sylvanas.

WARNING: If you have not read my finalist story from Blizzard’s writing contest, “The Future of Lordaeron,” the rest of this post will contain spoilers for it.

Koltira Deathweaver:

Art of Koltira DeathweaverKoltira is one of the more oft-mentioned candidates for new leader of the Forsaken. He’s got a lot going for him. As a Knight of the Ebon Blade, he’s ruthless, but he also knows there are some lines that must not be crossed. He’s established as a Horde-sympathetic character, and he clearly has no love for Sylvanas.

I don’t think he’s ultimately a very good choice, though. For one thing, what reason would the Forsaken have to follow him? He’s an outsider.

Perhaps more importantly, he has a penis, and I really think the new leader of the Forsaken must be female.

Lilian Voss:

Now here’s a stronger contender. Lilian is a fan favourite, and a strong and respectable female character. She’s a ruthless killer that will show no mercy to her enemies, but she is also principled — almost fanatically so — and it’s hard to imagine her going to the extremes Sylvanas has.

All in all, Lilian is an excellent anti-hero, and she fits the themes of the Forsaken perfectly. But as much as I love Lilian, there are some glaring problems with her as a new potential faction leader.

One is that she is almost certainly meant as an homage to a character from Magic: The Gathering. Blizzard doesn’t shy away their pop culture references, but I’m not sure they’d go so far as to make one a major faction leader.

The other is that Lilian’s entire personality is defined by utter rejection of undeath and the Forsaken culture. It’s hard to imagine the Forsaken choosing to follow her, and it’s even harder to imagine that she would choose to lead them.

Calder Gray:

I don’t think Calder Gray is in any way a viable candidate. I just want to take a moment to imagine how awesome it would be if he did take over the Forsaken.

Everyone on Azeroth would be dead within a week, but it would be an entertaining week.

Nathanos Blightcaller:

Nathanos is a reasonably viable candidate. As one of Sylvanas’s most trusted lieutenants, he commands the respect of the Forsaken people.

Art of Nathanos Blightcaller, the first undead hunterThe main problem with Nathanos is that he doesn’t really have a lot of history or personality to draw on. I mean, I’m a lore nut, and even I barely know who he is.

Plus, again, male.

Undead Calia Menethil:

If you’ve read “The Future of Lordaeron,” it should come as no surprise to you that I view Calia Menethil as the best candidate for replacing Sylvanas.

If you haven’t heard of Calia, I don’t blame you. She’s appeared in only a handful of scenes in a few of the novels. Basically, all we know about her is that she is Arthas’s older sister and that she was briefly engaged to Deathwing (in human guise).

It’s presumed that she was killed by her brother during the fall of Lordaeron, but we really don’t know. There’s a long-standing theory that an NPC in Theramore, Calia Hastings, is actually Calia Menethil in disguise, but there’s no evidence to back this up. And we don’t know if she survived the mana bomb.

This puts Calia in a unique position. As the elder child of King Terenas and the sister of Prince Arthas, she is a very important figure in lore, but she’s also something of a blank slate. She can become whatever kind of character the plot requires.

Cover art for my fan fiction "The Future of Lordaeron"She also has the best chance of winning over the support of the Forsaken people. Lately, Sylvanas has done much harping on the idea of the Forsaken being the rightful owners of Lordaeron — and to be fair, it was their home in life. I’m in the camp that says they gave up their rights when they started plaguing things, but the Forsaken themselves seem to believe in it.

If that’s really the case, then Calia would be their rightful ruler. Assuming she’s still walking around in some form, she is the last scion of the Menethil line and thus the queen of Lordaeron.

Assuming that Calia was murdered and raised into undeath, she would likely be a much harder woman than she was in life. So she could fit the ruthless image of the Forsaken. I’m just getting into pure fan fic at this point, but I also imagine she would want to avoid anything like the evil perpetrated by her brother.

This puts her into the sweet spot of anti-hero the Forsaken need.

There are very flaws with Calia as a replacement to Sylvanas, in my view. The main one would be that she is relatively unknown, and so she could appear to come out of left field to some people.

There are some fans who are quite offended by the idea of “another” Alliance character going Horde, but anyone who gets so offended by a plot twist in a game is taking things too seriously, and considering the near total lack of factual basis for any Horde favouritism on Blizzard’s part — historically, the Alliance has been shown much more favouritism — it’s hard to give much weight to such concerns.

Plus, if they put Calia in charge, I can brag and take credit for it.

* * *

What do you think? How should Sylvanas’s story arc come to an end, and who should replace her in the event she becomes a loot pinata?

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My latest article on WhatMMO is Top 6 MMOs for Housing, in case any of you are looking to get into the virtual real estate market.

Top 5 Wings of Liberty Moments + A Writing Rant

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I originally planned this post to be a massive rant on some recent writing-related frustrations, but I don’t think anyone wants to read a thousand words of my bitterness, so I’ve cut it down to a smaller rant at the bottom of the post. In the meantime, let’s talk about something happier.

Top five Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty moments:

Heart of the Swarm is just around the corner, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to look back at some of the better moments from Wings of Liberty. I’ll focus on the campaign, since multiplayer experiences vary from person to person.

5: Ghosts of the Past trailer:

Under normal circumstances, saying that I like the trailer for a game more than the game itself would not reflect kindly on the game. But when it comes to Ghosts of the Past, it’s because the trailer is just that good.

I love a good trailer, and Ghosts of the Past is one of the best I’ve ever seen, easily the equal of anything Hollywood has put out. Ghosts of the Past is everything a good trailer should be: it’s epic, it’s intriguing, it’s emotional, it looks pretty, and it has a great score.

Dear God, I wish they’d do a Starcraft movie.

4: A Card to Play:

I love Blizzard’s style of story-telling, but I will admit that — barring a few notable exceptions — their stories generally don’t have a lot of depth or originality.

The cinematic “A Card to Play” from near the end of Wings of Liberty is a quintessential piece of Blizzard story-telling. Is it cliche? Yes. Is it borderline mindless? Yes. Is it cheesy? Yes.

Does any of that stop it from being ridiculously awesome?

Not for a second.

3: Outbreak:

Outbreak is a simple idea for a mission, but it’s incredibly fun. Each night, you are assaulted by thousands upon thousands of Zerg zombies and can only huddle behind your defenses and pray you see the dawn. During the day, you have a brief window to strike back at the Zerg while the zombies are in hiding.

This was the first mission in the campaign that I found significantly challenging. I was hovering between normal and hard at the time and had been mostly facerolling my way through the campaign, but Outbreak had me on the edge of my seat. I barely survived each night, and the days were a panicked frenzy of trying to hunt down the Zerg while I could.

Needless to say, there was much punching of the air when the victory message popped up. It’s one of my fondest memories from my first play through of WoL.

2: Bar Fight:

Although I have traditionally been a bigger fan of Warcraft than Starcraft, I will say that Jim Raynor is my favourite Blizzard character. In fact, he’s my favourite video game character period.

At first, I’ll admit I wasn’t feeling the same love for Raynor in WoL. He just didn’t seem to have quite the same charm or heroic spirit. But this was entirely intentional on Blizzard’s part, a crucial part of his character arc that only made it all the more spectacular when the old Jim we know and love came roaring back.

Behold the glory that is… Raynor.

“Now that’s the commander I been waitin’ on.”

1: In Utter Darkness:

I’ve already written at some length about the mission In Utter Darkness. I consider it a masterpiece of the art of game design. It’s an incredibly fun mission, and it’s also a powerful and emotional story, and those two factors feed off each other to create an experience that is far more than the sum of its parts.

I’ve replayed In Utter Darkness more than any other mission from WoL, and it just doesn’t get old. No matter how many times I play it, it always seems to end too soon. There’s always that moment of heartbreak as you realize you can’t hold off the Hybrids anymore, and there’s nothing left to do but stand back and watch as all you’ve fought tooth and nail to defend is torn apart before your eyes.

I don’t doubt there will be some awesome moments in Heart of the Swarm, but I really don’t see Blizzard doing anything to equal In Utter Darkness.

Of course, it would be nice to be proven wrong.

Rant:

The life of a freelance writer is fraught with hardship. The Internet is essentially the Wild West, and there are legions of people out there trying to rip us off. Nearly every day, I am faced with obvious scams or jobs that pay so low as to be analogous to slave labor. Many employers won’t pay at all, listing only “exposure” as their compensation.

I do my best to prevent being ripped off. I avoid anything that looks suspicious, and I take all reasonable precautions to avoid being cheated. But still, bad guys slip through. In the two years I’ve been freelancing, I’ve been cheated out of hundreds of dollars.

A recent incident was perhaps the worst to date.

A new client hired me to do some editing. I did so. They then decided they wanted me to give up on fixing the old content and just write some new stuff. I agreed, but asked that I be paid for the work I had already done.

They refused, and they fired me for asking.

I sent them a series of polite but firm emails insisting that they pay for the work completed. They responded with several increasingly irate and belligerent messages stating that new content was what they’d wanted all along — despite my quoting their own statements to the contrary — and went on to question my ethics, my professionalism, and my intelligence.

It gets worse. This was a World of Warcraft writing gig, and they required me to reactivate my sub, which I’d cancelled in anticipation of Heart of the Swarm. (As an aside, I have no idea why, in retrospect. They didn’t end up asking me to do anything in-game.) They originally said they would reimburse me the cost, but they refused to do so once they fired me.

This makes this the first job in history I’ve actually lost money on.

I don’t have a point to make here. I’m just really angry. I’m angry that it’s so easy for people to scam writers and so hard for us to get any justice. I’m angry that I can’t warn the next poor writer these scum are going to cheat.

I see no difference between these people and a mugger on the street, other than that only one is likely to go to jail. They have stolen from me by refusing to pay what I am rightfully owed. They’re common criminals, nothing more.

I’m also angry at myself for falling for this. They seemed legitimate and professional at first glance, but I guess I should have been more careful.

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On a more positive note, my latest article on WhatMMO is More Great MMO Players of History. The last one was so much fun I couldn’t resist doing another.

I really do think George Custer and Leeroy Jenkins are kindred spirits.