A Ramble About Sylvanas Windrunner

I’m a World of Warcraft player. That should be no secret to whoever knows me. I really started playing Warcraft way back with Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, and have played in the world of Azeroth on and off ever since. I’m also something of a “Loremaster” for the World of Warcraft, both as a titled achievement in-game and as someone who actually has researched the story and lore behind the storylines and world it is set in. As such, I’m pretty familiar with the heroes and villains, and what made them that way within the stories which Warcraft has to tell.

As someone who knows the story behind the undead playable race and their queen, Sylvanas Windrunner, the more it crosses my mind, the more I think the game’s creators and story tellers at Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves, and should really have thought twice about the direction they have taken this character and the people she leads.

Sylvanas Windrunner started her life in the Warcraft world as a hero of the elven peoples of Quel’Thalas. She was a ranger-general of Silvermoon, and a protector of the elven nation. In the story of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, during the campaigns, she is brutally murdered by the Lich King while defending her people. As a further insult and violation of this woman, he held her ghost in thrall and forced her to serve him as a banshee, hiding her body from her. Yes, Sylvanas Windrunner was a victim of a brutal crime and a horrendous violation. In some ways, you could even compare her to a rape victim. In spite of this, she was eventually able to break free of the Lich King’s control, find her body and restore herself to it, though still a corpse, and then free a large number of her people from his control as well, establishing the Forsaken nation as the remnants of the former kingdom of Lordaeron. Instead of exercising control over those undead people as the Lich King did, forcing them to serve her, she gave them back their free will to live out the rest of their existences as they so pleased.

Something also which must be understood about the undead race within the lore of the game. These are essentially plague victims who themselves were murdered in mass and then forced to serve the Lich King until they were freed. They had no choice as to what they became. Many had families who did not rise from the graveyards with them. More still had human family members elsewhere in the world who turned their backs on them when it was learned what had happened to them. These undead people, through no fault of their own, were hunted by self-righteous fanatics in their own lands. All rights to their property had been stripped away from them by the remaining human legal authorities because of the plague of undeath which had infected them. Though retaining who they were prior to the crime which had been imposed upon them, they were treated as monsters before they even had a chance to prove they were still the people they had been.

So, this is the background for Blizzard’s choices in their new storyline for the expansion, Battle for Azeroth where Sylvanas Windrunner is now unquestionably evil, slaughtering her own people when they dare to defy her and murdering thousands of people just to watch the hope die from a single person’s eyes.

And here is what I find particularly offensive, the message that Blizzard is sending by stating that because she is undead, because her people are undead, they must be evil. Think about that for a second. Not because of who they are, but because they are a certain race they must be evil. Because they are different, they must be bad. And this against a woman who was brutally violated and against a people who suffered and were brutalized horribly to begin with! And it flies in the face of all the lore and story which came before which portrayed heroes and virtuous characters from either faction and from every race: Thrall, the heroic Orc warchief; Bishop Alonsus Faol, the heroic undead priest of the Light; King Varian Wrynn, the heroic human king of Stormwind; Varok Saurfang, the heroic Orc general, and many others.

The whole point of there being two playable factions in Warcraft is to see that it is not always as simple as good and evil. It’s to see that there are reasons behind people’s motivations, and that you are not “good” or “evil” just because you happen to have been lucky enough to be born into a certain race or gender.

The writers at Blizzard, I believe, have totally forgotten this simple principle. They have, in a way, further brutalized the character of this woman who suffered horribly and yet still managed to somehow survive and try and make things better for her people who suffered with her. In my opinion, that is abominable and the writers at Blizzard should be ashamed of themselves.