I read a lot of books. fantasy. Science fiction. graphic novel. Nothing is off limits. This also includes titles inspired by games. I have a whole collection of Warhammer 40k novels, League of Legends books, and of course World of Warcraft stories. But of all the video game books I’ve read, Christy Golden’s 2022 Sylvanas is probably my favorite. In Sylvanas Windrunner, world of warcraft We find the most tormented souls, characters who tried to do right by people in all the wrong ways. Golden’s book brings that very story to life. I fell in love with her personality throughout the novel. But unfortunately, Shadowlands ruined that.
For a very determined character, Shadowlands took away Sylvanas’ agency. The idea that a big, scary guard was pulling all the strings, manipulating her to burn Teldrassil and commit genocide by proxy felt like a lame excuse to let her avoid responsibility. The Teldrassil sequence is divisive to this day, but everything would have been a lot better if she had done it. Owned it. Yes, they’re wrong, but at least she would have stuck up for her principal.
But instead, the story of Shadowlands has failed, with the characters having been trapped in the bowels of The Maw for the past few expansions to live out “penance.” It’s true that Blizzard doesn’t really seem to know what to do with her, and several people were surprised by her reappearance at the end of World of Warcraft’s “The War Within” cycle. Sure, Xal’atah has her eyes set on the Sunwell, and Windrunner Spire is set to become a dungeon by midnight, but her sudden reappearance was met with equal parts sighs and excitement.
In the Midnight prologue campaign, Arator seeks out Sylvanas in The Maw and convinces her to return to Azeroth and help stop Xal’atath’s march on the Sunwell. She simply tells Alator that their “paths will cross again”, heavily implying that we will see her in either Midnight or The Last Titan. We asked Design Director Maria Hamilton and Principal Artist Jay Huang about bringing back such conflicting characters while trying to reconcile what happened in Shadowlands.
“We’ve seen her work in The Maw, and we’re going to Eversong, and one of our dungeons is Windrunner Spire, so we’ll learn more about that,” says Hamilton. “I don’t want to make any promises about when we’ll see her next. We knew we would see her before Midnight came out, and we did. I don’t think you can leave out such an important character that people care about in World Soul Saga, but I can’t say much more than that.”
“We don’t want to change the character,” she emphasizes. “Characters have arcs. It’s important that characters have that arc and that it’s internally logical. But we want to hear players’ thoughts on it. (Referring to my question) You’re right, it’s a very divisive character. Some people probably don’t know her whole story, and some people don’t understand how she got here. Maybe they do, but they don’t believe it’s right.”
“People are really passionate about our characters, so we want to hear what they think,” she said, concluding, “We try to do justice to every character, and Sylvanas’ story is by no means over.”
As someone who truly loves this character, that’s music to my ears. Story-wise, WoW has improved a lot since Shadowlands (even if Dragonflight was a bit stale), so I hope the team can give her the bounty she deserves. Of course, I’m still a little unsure, but I’m also looking forward to it. Redemption always looks good when done well, especially in Banshee Queen.
