World of Warcraft: Shadowlands launches its epilogue chapter next week alongside the official release of the Sylvanas novel by Christie Golden. World of Warcraft released a few excerpts from the novel, but fans have not liked what they have read so far.
Sylvanas was originally supposed to release in November of last year but was pushed back to February and later March. Now, the novel’s release coincides with the launch of the Shadowlands “Judgment” chapter, where Sylvanas will face justice at the hand of Tyrande Whisperwind.
The most recent excerpt took place sometime early in Shadowlands, when Sylvanas was trying to talk Anduin over to her side. In the excerpt, the King of Stormwind takes a peculiar stance, comparing his own childhood to Sylvanas’. He uses the opportunity provided by Sylvanas sharing her backstory to claim he experienced more hardship than her–a strange stance to take against someone who has died several times.
This excerpt landed poorly–especially with fans of Anduin. They couldn’t believe the character they loved was trying to one-up the trauma of a genocide survivor simply because it started later in her life. To them, it didn’t seem like Anduin at all; patronizing and judgemental instead of compassionate. Additionally, details of his history didn’t match up with what most WoW fans knew of Anduin's past.
World of Warcraft released another excerpt a few weeks ago as well. In this one, Sylvanas spoke of her early life, when her brother Lirath was born. Sylvanas, her sisters, and her father rush off to meet her newborn brother after hearing her mother is in labor. After holding him for the first time, the young Sylvanas is deeply moved.
Many fans didn’t like that excerpt either, for several reasons. The “Babies Make Everything Better” trope, in which a character (usually a woman) holds a baby and opens their heart to love in a way nothing else does. This harmful trope is common in games like WoW, and can detract from female characters by boiling them down to vessels of maternal instinct–something fans neither expected nor want to see from Sylvanas.
Though the baby in question was her brother, this particular instance commits a different sin in the eyes of fans: setting Sylvanas up to imprint her dead relative on Anduin. World of Warcraft has done that to Anduin with a lot of characters, and fans would rather others see Anduin for who he is, not who he resembles.
These are, of course, excerpts from the full novel, and thus lacking full context. It is possible the full story will add detail that will fix some concerns fans have so far, but these pieces have not inspired confidence in many. WoW fans will have to wait until Sylvanas is available on March 29th to make a final judgment call.
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Source: Wowhead