Sylvanas was always a war criminal girlboss, but her character used to be at least coherent. She was cold and ruthless, but cunning. She wanted to preserve the Undead and even went so far as to raise the dead herself, which itself was considered extremely unethical. She was totally fine with committing atrocities against any other race.

She was a fan favorite, I really liked her too, not because I think using chemical weapons of mass destruction is epic but she was just a really cool villain.

Until Blizzard decided to abandon everything and turn her into uhh… whatever she became. Her becoming war chief made 0 sense because she barely ever pretended to have real loyalty towards the horde. Then she burned down the tree because she forgot that she was a cold and calculating character, then they wanted to infamously portray her as moRAlLy GrAy (evil but looking sad about it sometimes, which doesn’t fit her character either) and then uhhh… guys, she was just mind-controlled the whole time!

Good lord, I hate how they butchered Sylvanas. I just want my edgy undead war criminal girl boss waifu back.

Sylvanas was apparently being mind controlled for the past several expansions which took all of her agency in being a war crime enjoyer but she still took responsibility for what she had done while mind controlled. She goes into self imposed exile to the spirit realm as penance and has to save a bunch of lost souls or some shit before she can return to the physical plane.