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In the simplest terms, the Lich King is a "super necromancer".
Necromancy (that is, magic users who can raise the dead) exist without the Lich King, but the Helm of Domination (the helmet Sylvanas broke) enabled the Lich King to essentially mind control his entire army, across the entire world, and he never had to leave his throne.
So, sending his army of goons after Sylvanas was actually him fighting the whole time – more or less.
The Lich King that Sylvanas defeats is Bolvar. He is the third Lich King and is generally considered to be a "good guy". There were two previous Lich Kings (one is in the cinematic where he raises an undead dragon) that were evil.
SylvANUS LMAOOOOO
well,ya remember what terenas said to tirion after the lich king was defeated? "without its master's command,the restless scourge will become an even greater threat to this world. control must be maintained. there must always be,a lich king"
The world and story is a lot more complicated than what you're seeing. Ultimately, Sylvanas is right. Every action the people in the game take is influenced and directed by gods and tyrants fighting a cosmic battle. The afterlife itself was just something created by a group of beings called the titans who are outright obsessed with ordering things. When you die, you go to the shadowlands and become a slave to the covenent you are assigned to. There is not rest for the dead, no free will to go where you please, you are assigned and do your job.
Sylvanas has always been about free will, because when she was turned by the lich king from a normal elf, defender of her people into a weapon of death and destruction…. she fought and regained her free will, she broke free from the control of another. Unfortunately the Jailer has now done the same to Sylvanas through domination magic, the same magic that uses those powerful chains. It is a primordal magic not meant to be wielded by anyone but the first ones – a group we know very little about that were there for the creation of the universe.
There's strill loads more to go into, the warcraft lore is immense and multi-facited. The only way to understand it is to watch more and more and the pieces will slowly fit together.
She took him out easily because he is not the proper lich king. He basically is using a power that is not his and Sylvanas is there under the mission of the true lord of necromancy if you could call it that.
So when they fight she taps into the same force that Bolvar (the red lich king) is tapping. The main difference being the death god actually gave her the power hence why in the fight he is weaker and she is stronger.
The former lich king Arthas (from the original cinematic wrath of the lich king) actually terrified Sylvanas and was easily able to destroy her in direct combat so her whole plan was to guerilla him and run from direct confrontations.
The true Lich king was mostly under the control of Zovaal (the death god) and his magnitude of power was WORLDS apart from the latter lich king (red one, Bolvaar).
Fun Fact. The chains are so powerful Because Zovaal (nicknamed; THE JAILER) was improsoned for milenia, and he MASTERED the prison magic to slowly release himself from the eternal prison.
you can react to serie of "After lives" its a good 4 cinematics of Wow Shadowlands explain a little bit of Covenant on Shadowlands
It's cool to see people that are new to WoW reacting to the cinematics, etc. That said, I'm not sure that this compilation was the right one. There is a lot of stuff in there that is just plain confusing to someone who hasn't played the game (cutscenes IN quest lines and that kind of thing). Then, you're missing ones that are generally easier to understand in the grand scheme of things. Someone already commented about watching the Afterlives cinematics. You really don't need to see most of the "in game questline end" stuff – again only b/c it can be confusing. But no biggie! The stuff between Sylvanas/the Jailer/Anduin is great tho so don't miss those for sure.
Ok, so the Maw is WoW's version of Hell, yes. An event took place that broke the Arbiter (the judge of souls) so then no one was getting judged properly and every soul was being diverted to the Maw, giving it and the Jailer (big guy, no shirt, chains) more power. He powered up Sylvanas (we didn't know this at first). She, btw, was never really a good person in undeath, she was always morally grey. Someone decided she should become the villain and that we would kill her. He was a creep who got fired from Blizzard and then the company had to backtrack to "fix" Sylvanas' character. So a lot of ppl don't like Shadowlands b/c of that (her character being trashed and flip flopping all over the place).
The "egg" isn't really a seed, more like a pod while certain souls are in the realm of death. The green dragon is Ysera. She got corrupted and we had to kill her, then the moon goddess, Elune, uncorrupted her and she went off to the Shadowlands. Since the Maw is taking all the souls/power from the other realms of death, the other realms are essentially "dying". The fae critters beg their leader, the Winter Queen, to save Ysera's soul. It's assumed that her sister is the goddess Elune since she calls Ysera her sister's pet.
I can't remember what else you asked about lol sorry. I just didn't want you getting super confused by all the extra in game stuff that prob isn't really needed to just get a general idea of Shadowlands. Definitely watch Afterlives because those 4 shorts are the intros to some of the realms of death.
Sorry for the wall of text 😛
The dragon is Ysera. Former dragon aspect (boss dragon) of the Emerald Dream. She was corrupted in Legion and we had to kill her. She features heavily in Dragonflight.
Sylvanas, in this expansion, was imbued with the powers of the Jailer. Who was suddenly (since that expansion) the secret master of the Lich King and essentially the power behind the throne. Bolvar, the Lich King in this cinematic, didn't give in to the powers of the Helm of Domination and resisted the Jailer's subtle control. So on one end Sylvanas got a big power boost from working with the Jailer and on the other end the Lich King (Bolvar in this case) resisted the Jailer and didn't fully accept the powers of the Helm and was weaker for it. Also, he didn't have Frostmourne (the Lich King's sword) so his powers were weakened a lot.
Shadowlands suffered from poor writing and ridiculous retcons. Hardly anyone liked that BS about the Jailer being the big bad all along. They ruined the characters of the LK and Sylvanas ever since Shadowlands.
Back in the day, Sylvanas was the iconic and badass rebel to the Lich King. Broke free from his grasp, and claimed the ruined homeland of Lordaeron for her and her fellow outcast undead. (Forsaken). She was always cold/calculated, but loyal to the Horde but even moreso, her People. Mostly because everyone else rejected them. She used to be the leader of the underdog race, but with the strategist/combat skills of an elite veteran. Basically – she used to be a RESPECTABLE powerful woman. And then they retconned some lore to twist it's original meaning to say ''Sylvanas wanted this'' (the deathgate cutscene where they poisoned the living, which was originally down to that specific undead by his own volition) and when Battle for Azeroth begun, she just begun caring about nothing, being merciless and the devs quoted she'd be ''morally grey'' – and wrote her as the blackest level of villainy possible. It was just like replacing gold with brass and calling it silver.
One more thing about the lich king.
The former lich king was far more powerful than this current one, but he was also evil. If Sylvanas fought him it would be more even.
What is also not known is Sylvanas is this powerful because she has help from the old gods and basically makes her way more strong.
That's how she summons those chains, and that's how she blew up Saurfang in the 1v1 duel from the cinematic.
She is fighting unfair and has incredible power.
As some others have said, Shadowlands is a really difficult place to start.
There are many storylines that only make sense if you have a strong understanding of the cosmic lore of the Warcraft universe – things barely explained in game (if at all) – a lot of the stories are unpopular.
Regarding Sylvanas, she did not "randomly" turn evil. She was a good normal person, was killed, was raised into undeath, and then sought revenge against the Lich King who raised her. Her journey for revenge put her in a sort-of morally gray situation that a lot of people liked. She was our ally but was also developing plagues to kill everything and authorized experimenting on the living to see how well the new plagues worked. She was always doing things to help us while also doing things that would come back to bite us later.
She then had a change of heart and started to do fewer good things and more evil things. The problem is that a lot of the reasoning wasn't explained in the game. You had to read books, and in some cases the reasoning wasn't published until years later. So, it seems random to the majority of people.
Warcraft has a good and enjoyable story. It's not a major groundbreaking masterpiece. It's just good and fun.
The story is good, but the storytelling has been abysmal. They're doing better, but there's 30 years of story (remember that Warcraft pre-dates World of Warcraft) that can be difficult to understand without reading books (or watching videos/reading the wiki).
Watching and reacting to cut scenes is fun – keep at it. But it's not a good way to consume the story and get an understanding.
31:00 The talk between Anduin and Sylvanas about free will relies on knowing Sylvanas' entire backstory.
yserta is one of the highest dragons ever!! i cried my eyes our when she died!! but she didnt
Blizzard have a few different styles of animation for World of Warcraft.
* One is the high-def super detailed cinematic that you've seen before, like the one with Sylvanas and the Lich king fighting and she rips apart the helmet.
* Another is a pre-rendered cinematic that use InGame assets. The Cinematics team use the same models that exist InGame but they have access to higher resolution textures and they can edit the models to move their arms and faces in a way that is not possible fully InGame (or maybe it is possible but they are not as clearly visible so they never bother). The lady that cut the throat of the archer guy is such a cinematic.
* Another is the fully InGame cinematic. This limits the cinematics team to the animations and movements available to the models while in the game. This is why when they talk they just do the generic "I'm talking"-animation over and over, when they turn they just glide around. They can move the camera around the same way a player could and zoom in, but that's as much detail as they can add. This mode is used to include the player character as there are too many variables (race, class, what kind of gear I'm using) to pre-render every possible combo.
* There is a fourth which is a kind of "2.5D", basically multiple 2D layers on top of each other to make it a bit more animated as these layers can move independently of each other. The Burdens of Shaohao that you watched is based on this 2.5D design, same with the Sea Shanty that you mentioned got blocked on another video.
They usually release a few of these 2.5D cinematics before new expansions as a way to introduce characters and locations that will be important to the story. If you want to do other "Full expansion cinematics" videos, check if there are any such 2.5D cinematics before. They have made them ever since Mists of Pandaria (with the Emperor of Shaohao).
the whole dimension is the shadowlands, and its the afterlife, the maw is like tartarus, the darkest and lowest part of hades
30:22 AH! And that's a very good point. However, let me give you a little more lore.
She was killed and instead of dying peacefully, raised as a banshee. She unwillingly served the one who raised her and did many horrible things on his behalf (including killing the people she gave her life for). After she broke free, she sought vengeance (one might say justice.. I would). After achieving that goal, she killed herself. She ended up in hell (or rather in the WoW version of hell) regardless of the fact she was a very respectable hero of her people and she gave her life (and the peace of death) for them.
Anyway, I fully support this phase of hers. She's absolutely right, life is a prison. You can't choose shit and the punchline is you're trying to convince yourself of your own freedom.
Bro you need much more context before going in like this, idk who told you to go in shadowlands before watching all previous ones in chronological order but whoever told you is a clown.
The guy that got owned by Tyrande was Nathanos Blightcaller. He's undead, and was entirely Sylvannas' simp. He played a big part in the BFA Horde war campaign.