World of Warcraft finally wrapped up Sylvanas’ story — and it still doesn’t work

polygon.com:

It’s finally over. The years-long, twisting, turning story of Sylvanas Windrunner that has dominated World of Warcraft’s narrative has come to an end. The storyline, which began in 2018, is full of the most controversial decisions in Warcraft’s history — all centered around one of the franchise’s most popular characters.

Sylvanas Windrunner has become a kind of narrative black hole. Many of the good aspects of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have been overshadowed by her increasingly convoluted and incoherent story. Up until the tale’s conclusion, Blizzard has told fans to “wait and see.” Now, with the release of the Sylvanas novel on March 29 and World of Warcraft’s Patch 9.2, Eternity’s End, we know the whole story start to finish – kind of – and we can finally do a post-mortem on how Sylvanas and her accumulated plans have pulled the Warcraft franchise so far off the beaten path.

In 2018, with the launch of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, Horde Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner did something that has forever changed the Warcraft franchise: she committed genocide by burning down the Night Elf capital of Teldrassil, which is full of civilians that the Alliance cannot evacuate.

The game’s narrative said that she did it because of the war between the Alliance and Horde; she was attempting to defend her people with a pre-emptive strike. This kicked off the war, and Sylvanas escalated by doing cartoonishly evil war crimes at every step. Many players on the Horde hated this; why were they suddenly made to be complicit in murdering civilians, torching homes, and raising people into undeath as Manchurian Candidates?

We wouldn’t find out for a while; in 2019, the Horde descended into Civil War and Sylvanas bounced. The most