wow Datamined Shadowlands Epilogue Audio Reveal the Fate of Sylvanas Windrunner in Shadowlands

[Staff 944]

The epilogue of the Shadowlands story was datamined through sound files changed in the first Patch 9.2.5 client on the PTR. They reveal what happens to the Banshee Queen at the end of the expansion. This post contains major spoilers, so proceed at your own risk!

As you probably know, Pelagos is the new Arbiter and the epilogue is named "Judgment". Sylvanas is judged by the Arbiter for everything she has done. Sylvanas says she acted on her own volition rather than under the Jailer's influence. Pelagos sends her to the Maw to repent for everything she's done, entrusting justice to Tyrande. Her owl Dori'thur will see to it that Sylvanas sends lost souls directly to the Arbiter.

 We aren't exactly sure how the sound files play after another so we tried to reconstruct the datamined sound files. Here's a transcript:

Tyrande Whisperwind: Bring her! Tyrande Whisperwind: The prisoner is in my charge now.  Pelagos (The Arbiter): Sylvanas Windrunner. Pelagos (The Arbiter): The time of your judgment is at hand. Pelagos (The Arbiter): There can be no true justice without compassion. Pelagos (The Arbiter): And I can see your deeds bear the mark of the Jailer's influence. Pelagos (The Arbiter): An influence we failed to contain. Sylvanas Windrunner: The Jailer did not control me. Sylvanas Windrunner: My actions were mine alone. Sylvanas Windrunner: And i accept their consequences. Sylvanas Windrunner: And I do not expect your mercy. Pelagos (The Arbiter): Then you know in your heart to whom you must answer. Pelagos (The Arbiter): Entrusting justice to your most fervent adversary.  Tyrande Whisperwind: What game do you play now, banshee? Tyrande Whisperwind: The Sylvanas I hunted would never submit to the blade of her enemy. Tyrande Whisperwind: Your newfound remorse might be genuine. Sylvanas Windrunner: Death would be a merciful end, Tyrande.  Tyrande Whisperwind: There will be no peace for you, Windrunner. Tyrande Whisperwind: Below lies the Maw. Tyrande Whisperwind: And it will be there where your penance begins. Tyrande Whisperwind: An unjust fate to which you doomed so many. Tyrande Whisperwind: Every soul lost in its depths, betrayed or condemned, you shall find and send forth to the Arbiter.  Tyrande Whisperwind: To be judged with the compassion all souls deserve. Tyrande Whisperwind: You will toil there under Dori'thur's watchful eye. Tyrande Whisperwind: Scouring every darkened reach. Tyrande Whisperwind: Until the final soul is free and you are all that remains. Tyrande Whisperwind: Until there is peace for the souls of your victims. Tyrande Whisperwind: This is how you shall bring renewal to your victims and my people. Tyrande Whisperwind: But it can never erase all you have done. Tyrande Whisperwind: <Talking to her eagle in Darnassian>, old friend. Watch her well. Sylvanas Windrunner: However long it takes. Sylvanas Windrunner: It shall be done. Pelagos (The Arbiter): Are there any gathered here who object to this fate? Pelagos (The Arbiter): So be it.

Blizzard plans to release the epilogue next week on live servers. There will be an in-game cinematic. Patch 9.2 contains cinematic models for both Tyrande and Sylvanas.

[Dejo93 898]

After reading about the original plot of the Shadowlands and seeing the end result, I am honestly baffled how badly the team was lead.

 

I genuinely hope Daddy Phil gets them in order

[MeMy10 18]

6 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

After reading about the original plot of the Shadowlands and seeing the end result, I am honestly baffled how badly the team was lead.

 

I genuinely hope Daddy Phil gets them in order

Hopefully with Microsoft soon to be running the ship, they can turn things around.. Because reading that transcript, one has to wonder what the heck the writing team are doing..

[PepperAmmy 34]

im honestly annoyed with how they wrote arthas out, his "fate" should have been to watch over the maw in the sense of there much always be a jailer or some random bull it almost feels like sylvanas was put where Arthas should have been i know shes not watching over the maw but its basically sit here till the plot needs you again

[Krimzin 53]

No matter how it ends all the whiners won't be happy. You guys are seriously way to wrapped up in this. Its a game and a story within a game. Quit whining about how you could have done it better and all the writers are *filtered*. If you aren't happy, then dont play and quit trolling fan sites.

[Q 75]

14 minutes ago, Krimzin said:

No matter how it ends all the whiners won't be happy. You guys are seriously way to wrapped up in this. Its a game and a story within a game. Quit whining about how you could have done it better and all the writers are *filtered*. If you aren't happy, then dont play and quit trolling fan sites.

So, what you're saying is that people shouldn't get invested in the story of something they've been involved with for potentially 20+ years. Yeah, tell that to the game of thrones fans who were pissed with the final season when it ruined any consistency the series had prior.

Also, wasn't aware that expressing opinions online was trolling. Guess we better not say anything ever or we're just trolls.

[Piromysl 2]

I was honestly afraid that they'll just give her a pathetic slap on the wrist.

[Krimzin 53]

59 minutes ago, Q said:

So, what you're saying is that people shouldn't get invested in the story of something they've been involved with for potentially 20+ years. Yeah, tell that to the game of thrones fans who were pissed with the final season when it ruined any consistency the series had prior.

Also, wasn't aware that expressing opinions online was trolling. Guess we better not say anything ever or we're just trolls.

Opinions are great. Whining about how the authors chose to write it is another story. You have zero idea how it will all play out in the end and to bastardize them and how they wrote it because you dont happen to like it is silly. 

[Teufel 325]

3 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

After reading about the original plot of the Shadowlands and seeing the end result, I am honestly baffled how badly the team was lead.

 

I genuinely hope Daddy Phil gets them in order

Which one is the "original plot"?

[Migol 407]

...So are they just going to ignore the way a lot (most?) of the souls she sent to the maw were converted into power and no longer exist as individual consciousnesses?     We saw it happening all throughout Torghast and that power was used to expand the maw around oribos, create weapons, mawsworns etc.          

Still, this ending is at least somewhat tolerable, as it should put Sylvannas on the shelf and out of the story for a while.    I'd like to say permanently as there were a TON of souls to track down but I'm sure they'll have a reveal of her finishing the task in a few years.

[Nakzul 37]

1 hour ago, Krimzin said:

Opinions are great. Whining about how the authors chose to write it is another story. You have zero idea how it will all play out in the end and to bastardize them and how they wrote it because you dont happen to like it is silly. 

It's funny you should say that considering how much retconning has had to happen over the years. It's almost as though the current writing team also has no idea how it's going to play out.

[Dejo93 898]

4 hours ago, Teufel said:

Which one is the "original plot"?

it's 4chan, so take it with a grain of salt. Though, considering how badly the expansion has been managed, I'm willing to believe some of it

 

(edited the link out so comment could be shown - Starym)

[Arcling 764]

1 hour ago, Krimzin said:

Opinions are great. Whining about how the authors chose to write it is another story. You have zero idea how it will all play out in the end and to bastardize them and how they wrote it because you dont happen to like it is silly. 

So criticism is bad? Because most of it is valid, it is a pretty poor writing, haven't seen any "whining" here. I don't think even Danuser has any idea how this is going to play out, since he is making stuff up as it goes. Lore from 20+ years retconned just for Jailer character with uninteresting and abrupt ending, all he did was spouting some cliche villain lines and this was supposed great mastermind fulfilling his plans from behind the scenes. It's funny how he talked about this as if this was "a conclusion to a story from Warcraft 3", as if they planned it all along, while this whole plot and characters didn't even exist back then (and writing team was different back then, Danuser wasn't there).

Edited March 23, 2022 by Arcling

[Elfomal 54]

Oh crap, this is serious.

 

So Sylvanas was condemned to doing the maw dailies forever, basically.

 

Crap, thats the worst punishment anyone can have!

[Devylknyght 83]

42 minutes ago, Elfomal said:

Oh crap, this is serious.

 

So Sylvanas was condemned to doing the maw dailies forever, basically.

 

Crap, thats the worst punishment anyone can have!

At least they didn't make her play BFA. Them turtles gotta make it to the water!

[Starym 3,600]

5 hours ago, Krimzin said:

No matter how it ends all the whiners won't be happy. You guys are seriously way to wrapped up in this. Its a game and a story within a game. Quit whining about how you could have done it better and all the writers are *filtered*. If you aren't happy, then dont play and quit trolling fan sites.

They are not trolling fan sites. Negative comments are just as valid as positive ones. You don't agree and that's fine, but stop pretending everything said in criticism of the game is "toxic". The story is objectively a mess right now, especially the Sylvanas part and everyone has a right to talk about it, if they like it or not. It's how Blizzard can learn and maybe put someone in charge that cares about more than just their pet characters. And if that happens and the story changes, you can then come and be negative about it and you will be welcomed, or positive, it's all the same opinion and you and everyone else should share it. Learn to deal with opinions you don't like, they're not attacking you if you like it (this goes for literally every and any media people start identifying with).

[SpilledStars 32]

SO what we've gotten is
 

• Years and years of iterative (design / mayhem / plugging quests in wherever)
• A few less years of "oh hey, let's merge those quest nuggets into some stories"
• Some recent years worth of Muck Muckity mucks mucking with it

and now that anyone gets a chance to fix it, a lot of folk will have different opinions what "fix" even means.

Look, we have distinctions between hotfixing or tuning the heroics.  Obviously hotfixing years worth of Muck Muckity is not going to get solved in 2 weeks give or take a Jailer.

[Starym 3,600]

5 hours ago, Krimzin said:

Opinions are great. Whining about how the authors chose to write it is another story. You have zero idea how it will all play out in the end and to bastardize them and how they wrote it because you dont happen to like it is silly. 

Commenting on how authors chose to write is literally an opinion, what are you talking about? And we HAVE seen how it's played out. It doesn't matter if they manage to save this and make a great story LATER, I'll be the first to compliment them on how great is is, but right NOW it's terrible for those of us commenting and disrespectful to the lore of the game that was written by OTHER authors. If you want to talk about bastardizing, take a look at what these new writers have done to the old story, how they appropriated it with 0 respect and tried to make THEIR characters the real powers in the universe. And you're complaining about players commenting on all this, but are totally cool with the writers not respecting other writers that came before at all?

[Starym 3,600]

4 hours ago, Migol said:

...So are they just going to ignore the way a lot (most?) of the souls she sent to the maw were converted into power and no longer exist as individual consciousnesses?     We saw it happening all throughout Torghast and that power was used to expand the maw around oribos, create weapons, mawsworns etc.          

Still, this ending is at least somewhat tolerable, as it should put Sylvannas on the shelf and out of the story for a while.    I'd like to say permanently as there were a TON of souls to track down but I'm sure they'll have a reveal of her finishing the task in a few years.

They just Illidaned her. After they removed Arthas for good there was no way they'd actually remove her (and I'm kind of OK with that).

[kacerz 12]

Well, that's still better than what I expected from writers. I'm glad this terrible 6 years plot is finished(since Legion).  They could always do some kind of "forgivness and move on" crap. At least they removed her from a lore for a while. 

 

[GBeast 33]

I still think it's funny that there were those who unironically thought sylvanas was referring to the sunwell at the end of SoD

[Devylknyght 83]

18 hours ago, Starym said:

They just Illidaned her. After they removed Arthas for good there was no way they'd actually remove her (and I'm kind of OK with that).

She kind of is the the female version of Illidan though. They have just always been on different continents or planets and just never really come in contact. Would actually be pretty cool to see them interact some day. See them both talk about the times they almost killed Arthas lol. Maybe even team up. Or dare I say the forbidden words..... form a 3rd playable faction? 

Edited March 24, 2022 by Devylknyght

[Starym 3,600]

12 hours ago, GBeast said:

I still think it's funny that there were those who unironically thought sylvanas was referring to the sunwell at the end of SoD

I mean I don't think anyone REALLY thought that, they just hoped and thought it would be cool/not idiotic and basic as hell with the Sepulcher thingy. I hoped it was Sunwell, but was pretty sure it wasn't, for example.

[GBeast 33]

On 3/24/2022 at 1:34 PM, Starym said:

I mean I don't think anyone REALLY thought that, they just hoped and thought it would be cool/not idiotic and basic as hell with the Sepulcher thingy. I hoped it was Sunwell, but was pretty sure it wasn't, for example.

I was unironically arguing with someone in an article about the SoD ending cinematic who really thought he was talking about the sunwell, I wish they were trolling but I do not think they were