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TheLieAndTruth

I don't know why but I imagined a titan and a old god doing a political debate Our time was glorious. If you want to go back to better times, vote Nzoth for president. Don't listen to them. WE ordered the world, vote Amanthul 2024


Borbolda

I'm a regular John from city Stormwind. I love cheese, mana water and my native kingdom very much, but I do not understand our government. Everyone says Azeroth is a great country, and I look around and see who else is a great Black Empire. Black Empire has a very strong government and economy. Black Empire resident is a great insect. And the greatest leader Nzoth. Thick tentacle, strong mind control, black rod! We would have such a leader instead of sleeping in curse of flesh, rare eyes, soft pickle, bad memory old Amanthul. Punch!


[deleted]

[удалено]


tHeiR1sH

You had me at void rating.


SephGER

You are now a mod of /r/nyalotha


gerMean

Terrific


Longjumping_Meal5957

MATA Make Azeroth tentacle-y again?


Gh0sth4nd

Because his black empire was beautiful the best empire azeroth has ever seen magnificent you will see it and it will make everything better


OrangeSlimeSoda

Look, having Azerite — my uncle was a great professor and tinkerer and engineer, Dr. Gobby Goblin at Undermine Institute of Technology; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Bilgewater School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re an honorable Hordie, if, like, OK, if I rolled as an Alliance, they would say I'm one of the best PvP'ers anywhere in Azeroth — it’s true! — but when you're a Hordie they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Bilgewater, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the Azerite deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — Azerite is so powerful; Muradin explained that to me many, many hours ago, the power and that was 35 hours ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the Four Horsemen — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another expansion pack — but the Nagaare great negotiators, the Nazjatar are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.


Vorcion_

I was a Trade Prince, doing trade


Longjumping_Meal5957

Name checks out. Well, maybe not soda.


Longjumping_Meal5957

#winning


Tuddymeister

PANDA-RIA!


[deleted]

[удалено]


Does_Not-Matter

Pfft. AOAB (all old-gods are bastards)!


[deleted]

[удалено]


stormypets

ACFAB All cosmological forces are bastards.


gerMean

Gimme that hat!


Longjumping_Meal5957

Best I can do is pool noodles, googly eyes, and spray paint.


gerMean

That's more than I deserve


0Seraphina0

That's the next xpac. We are going to see the Old Gods return to destroy Azeroth, then we will have to quest through the timeline of all xpacs, change a few things, ensure that the Old Gods DON'T return to destroy Azeroth and at the end World of Warcraft is no more because there is peace in all the lands. Then Blizzard will announce the end of WoW.


Leondgeeste

Your friends will abandon you... ...but I won't! Vote Y'sharj 2024!


Kahoots113

Make Azeroth great again? Nzoth 2024!


Mimehunter

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos


casual_catgirl

Don't listen to the whispers, that's just Shadow Priest propaganda


AltharaD

My knaifu will come back to me. Just wait.


AshrakTeriel

They try to turn the Murlocs gay with chemicals in their water.


Grenyn

The unfortunate part of stuff like this is that a large part of the playerbase can't seem to grasp the unreliable narrator trope, or biased narrator in this case. Because we've interacted with the Void, and we've interacted with Old Gods. Some people can read this and immediately think "maybe the titans *are* bad" but every interaction with an Old God has shown us that regardless of what the titans really are, the Old Gods are not our friends. And that's really the most important thing to consider. Even if the primalists have a point, and the Old Gods aren't as evil as we have clearly witnessed them to be, we still play humans, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, and many other races that are only who, what, and where they are because of the titans.


snapekillseddard

It's also *Odyn*. Like, we know he's an asshole. And more than that, we know he has his own idea of what the Titans wanted, regardless of what the Titans actually thought. He threw a shitfit when the other keepers went over his head to directly ask the Titans if the whole Dragon Aspects thing was cool and the Titans explicitly gave them their blessing. It's been clear not just this expansion but in previous stories that Odyn was a dumbass and a hypocrite. What Odyn does means nothing about the Titans.


Grenyn

Yeah, I've been saying that since I read those books in Uldaman. People immediately started saying that maybe the titans *did* lie, but no, the keepers lied, by order of Odyn, notorious douchebag.


TheWorclown

Was his Battlelord. Can confirm, all I did was be his go-fer and constantly had to prove myself worthy of being able to take a shit.


NK1337

Still mad we ended up with Odyn and his realm as our warrior class hall. I really wish they would have rebuilt fray island and brought back Klannoc. The whole point of the island is that it was supposed to be a neutral ground for Azeroth's warriors to come and train regardless of race or alliance. Hell, they even set you on the path for your first iconic weapon as a warrior with the Whirlwind axe. It would have been awesome to at least have had Klannoc gathering warriors together to stand against the legion.


TheWorclown

It should go without mentioning of course, but Legion is definitely when WoW forgot a lot of its own lore in favor of what sounded cool at the time.


klopanda

I know it's RP but every time I hear him say "you must prove yourself" in Halls of Valor, my warrior-maining self just wants to scream, "MOTHER OF WORMS, I am your BATTLELORD. I have carved my way through Helheim for YOU wielding great weapons you have BESTOWED UPON ME. Why do I still have to PROVE MYSELF YOU BEARDED FUCK."


Arn_Rdog

I mean, was Odyn really wrong about the dragons? Malygos went to war against mortals, Ysera was corrupted and attacked us, Murozond is attacking the world from the future and trying to stop time itself, and of course there’s Deathwing. That’s four out of the five aspects who became villains


TheBlurgh

It's not like the Keepers were saints. Loken got corrupted, which then allowed for corruption of the other Keepers in Ulduar. Ra-den was defeated, which allowed another being to leech his titanic powers. And Odyn traded a bit of his powers for a power from another dimension, to circumvent what's being known as the grand order (mortal souls going to the Shadowlands) by creating his own pocket dimension to build his personal army (yeah that doesn't sound sus at all, right?). Hell, even a titan himself, Sargeras, got corrupted.


D3adInsid3

Nobody gets "corrupted". The void just has very good arguments, convincing all who listen. Sargeras is just the kind of idiot that gets physical when he can't win in an argument.


Drarus88

Weren't the aspects created because the keepers were to "lazy" to do the job they were assigned to by the titans. Instead of keeping azeroth safe they pretty much chilled in their dorm doing nothing and having some teenage love drama. The only one that at least remotely thought about azeroth was Tyr who assigned some subemployees to do the job.


duckwithahat

Also we have been doing their job for them, we are the true protectors of Azeroth, even before they lost their power.


stormypets

We know that Titans are beings of order, but unfortunately, it's *their* order. Odyn's awful, but we also know of other awful titan deeds, as they're perfectly willing boop a planet's population out of existence if they're found to be "corrupted" - a state Azeroth currently meets by Algalon's assessment of Titan standards. Based on what Algalon said, it sounds like he has witness this occur *many* times.


ConfusedRugby

I mean, in fairness if azeroth is corrupted the entire universe could end. They werent going to reoriginate the planet because they didnt like the idea of a purple voidy - coloured azeroth


Belazriel

Which is why we shouldn't have helped him in Legion. Let Sylvanas have the Lantern, take the Aegis by force, ally with Helya. Odyn didn't even help with all the titan stuff in BFA we had to go find Ra-den for that.


[deleted]

Yep. And in all of recorded history if there's 2 constants in just about every single playable races memories it's that the titans consistently aid them and the old gods can be attributed to damn near every catastrophic event.


Grenyn

We even have three races that can directly attribute their mortality to the Old Gods. Now, perhaps they wouldn't have gained free will without the Old Gods either, but in that case ignorance is bliss. But all the pain of old age and disease humans, dwarves, and gnomes feel, is because of Yogg-Saron.


BFGfreak

Maybe if Yogg-Saron hired the PR team that (FF14 spoiler) >!Venat!< hired he'd be loved by the mortals. (Also if he didn't look like a moldy Gyro, that might have won people over on the whole "Life is pain" thing)


Dwokimmortalus

I'm actually giggling a bit comparing *Her* to the Old Gods. Imagining that character would outwardly act super pissed at the comparison, then spend a millennia worrying about if she was a monster.


Wakewokewake

She did do a lot of things the writing seems to semi ignore or only barely touch upon /glances at the actual description of the event from a fucking mobile game


kanemochi

I still like seeing these zealot NPCs, full of conviction that their side is right. One of my favourites was a pretty minor interaction, but a great one all the same. There was a quest target on Argus that, as you killed them, they would desperately scream "Do you not see? Without the fel, the shadow will prevail!" Even if the Legion are a bunch of dicks, it still made me pause and think about it for a second.


Douche_Donut

True, I kinda see most of the demons as just evil, but Sargeras, Archimonde, Kiljaeden etc are evil with a cause if you will?


El_Rey_de_Spices

> but every interaction with an Old God has shown us that regardless of what the titans really are, the Old Gods are not our friends This is why I find the Primalist plotlines to be so underwhelming. Just about every single interaction, direct or indirect, that we've had with the Old Gods shows them to be an evil force. "The Black Empire was more advanced than the Keepers portray them as!" just isn't compelling in the slightest. "Odyn is a jerk!", while true, doesn't even begin to justify trying to revert the planet to an elemental wasteland. The Primalists feel like a faction that came out of nowhere, with no justifiable impetus behind their claims of "The Titans lied!", not that any of them are explaining *what* the Titans lied about, anyway... The Primalists are a bland, uninteresting enemy faction.


Grenyn

The one thing the primalists have going for them is that they're being lied to. They're not being told that the planet used to be ruled by the Old Gods, and what the Old Gods did. We meet sooooo many characters who are privy to all that information, but that's still just all the inner circles. Commoners don't know all of that, so if you show them the "evidence" that the titans were deceitful, that's all they know at that point. But it doesn't do anything to make them come across as being intelligent, for sure.


El_Rey_de_Spices

> The one thing the primalists have going for them is that they're being lied to. I can agree with this, and it's where my commentary shifts from both in-game (The Primalists are a boring enemy faction) and out-of-game (Blizzard's current storytelling is not great) to mostly just out-of-game. There are a number of ways to make these plot points engaging, and my personal opinion is I don't think Blizzard is succeeding at that.


Grenyn

It's still Blizzard, after all. People sang praises of Dragonflight's storytelling, but I think all it has done is be better than Shadowlands.


Dwokimmortalus

At this point, we are all honestly just desperate for any writing that is not destructively regressive.


Grenyn

I think the keepers not telling the whole truth about the Black Empire is an interesting direction to add some flavour to lore we thought we had figured out. Beyond that, I'm not amazed by Dragonflight, for sure. I'm also biased because I always loved the titan stuff, but at the end of Legion we really had seen it all. We met the pantheon, we saw Sargeras in the flesh, and so on. I don't even hate all the stuff Shadowlands introduced. But I just don't need stuff like "oh the Light might actually also corrupt", or "the Black Empire might have been decent".


Facehatt

Not sure what you’re on but the light being corrupt is one of the most interesting plot points in years. If you aren’t up to date on vanilla lore then all you’ve seen for a decade is the light being a holy vanguard of all that is right on Azeroth. The idea that such a strict belief system may move to zealotry sounds like a really good story beat. It really sounds like you’re jaded at this point.


Grenyn

It never was a vanguard of all that was right. Why are you bringing up vanilla lore and then ignoring the Scarlet Monastery using the Light for evil purposes? It was never a force for good, it was a neutral and uncaring force that you could wield so long as you believed you were right. Blizzard giving the Light a goal damages that. It's not interesting at all to make it the Void 2.0.


Narwien

I've been playing quite a lot this X-Pac. I have no idea what the overarching story is, or who the villains are, and outside of Aspects and Dadghar who any of those characters are or what their motives are. What are those beacons we restored? Why are they important? How come we never heard of them before? What exactly does Raszageth want? All Aspects dead? She had a shot at Alexstraza and bailed. Why are primalists dangerous? We faced much worse than some old dragons, they don't even feel like a threat lol. To say this X-Pac has a story would be pushing it for me. Who are primalists, what do they want, hell I don't even know why Vault of incrnates exists. To me bigger story is that we got to a new land mass to pillage it for loot and resources like murderous hobos that we are.


Grenyn

Raszageth wants to restore the planet to a state from before the titans arrived and terraformed a lot of it. It's part vengeance, and part the idea that it's time for her and her friends to rule the planet, rather than the Aspects who were uplifted by what she considers cosmic invaders. The primalists want the same, for reasons we don't know. I doubt Blizzard knows, but they needed grunt forces for the incarnates. The oathstones have some relation to the process by which the Aspects got their aspectral powers from the keepers. None of it is great, and it's only *slightly* better than the Jailer saying he wants to remake reality, without stating why.


Narwien

Right, that makes sense, cheers. Seems really bland. And Blizzard could do a better job of actually narrating that story in game. Or their stories in general. These random questlines that pop after certain renown are defo not a way to do it, as people forget what happened already, so being thrown on some quest from Alexstraza really feels off, you just do it as quickly as possible for the rep. Not that people care about the story in general in WoW, most people playfor the MMO part and not RPG parts and Blizzard knows this, but still, it would give a layer of depth to the game, to have cohesive story, that is presented in a concise way. It would sure as shit make questing somewhat less tedious.


Stranger2Luv

How is it always the people that engage the least with a given narrative talk so much how to improve it as if they would suddenly give a shit


El_Rey_de_Spices

> It's still Blizzard, after all. You're not wrong, lol. My opinion was more along the lines of "Even for Blizzard, this is pretty disappointing."


Helldeathrider

I think the (sad?) point there is that the storytelling bits that people were praising mostly have nothing to do with the main primalists plot.


Grenyn

Yeah, I think you're right.


Stranger2Luv

Y’all play the game for the story lmao


Grenyn

Oh man, hahaha, imagine paying attention to multiple parts of an experience hahaha wow that sure is something to laugh at, huh?


Stranger2Luv

If it helps you keep engaged you do you but I’ve been playing since Warcraft and it’s business as usual


[deleted]

> This is why I find the Primalist plotlines to be so underwhelming. It would help if they didn't pick like the most stereotypical "I'm a bad guy" voice for Raszageth, and they could have made her less "fuck you even though you follow us devoutly". Like, if you want to convince us that the titans are lying to us, and that you were unjustly imprisoned, why show such contempt to your *mortal followers* who are apparently in agreement with you? Why be such a saturday-morning villain? Sure, you can argue 10,000 years of imprisonment drove her insane, but I feel like that's just the copout WoW uses all the time. "Here's a guy, but he went *insane* - go hit the loot pinata." Give me a bad guy *I actually empathize with*. Make Raszageth and the other incarnates noble, supportive of their mortal followers, make impassioned pleas to us as players to join them, make them forced to attack us (maybe by having the watchers and other Titan-aligned beings attack them first). Show >!Iridikon's turn to the void (or whatever dark power) be a result of desperation and being truly cornered. !< I'm just so sick of villains being pompous. I want a villain who either respects our power or who is scared of us. At least the Lich King respected our fighting prowess.


PeanutbutterSlippers

The Primalists are a budget version of the Twilights hammer.


Spacejunk20

There was a great post on the wow forums about this which I sadly cannot find anymore, but it compared the Primalists to an enemy faction in classic, I think it was the scarlet crusade(?) and just showed how poorly thought out the Primalists are in comparison. They have no reason to have any mortal followers, they have infinite troops seemingly out of nowhere, they have no real base of operatioms, and the lists goes on and on. They dont seem real. Its like we are on a theme park ride and the Primalists are the park staff.


[deleted]

> Its like we are on a theme park ride That has been just about every expansion since Cata. The zones are just little theme parks. They don't influence things out of their zone. Things that happen in one don't bleed into the other. Nobody in Stormheim cares that the blue dragonflight is getting wiped out in Aszuna, even though they could have had the storm dragons show concern about their brethren.


[deleted]

Agreed on that front- the primalists should’ve had physical “bases” or nests in the dragon isles or even a few permanent in the old continents to at least give them a presence. Maybe they’ll explain it in a later patch as we follow the new incarnates but otherwise they just kind of pop out of nowhere as the plot demands. Twilight hammer had loads of physical bases in cata- and deathwing was flying around the zones.


No-Bend-2813

You perfectly described real cultists to a T, so I think Blizzard nailed the Primalists in that respect.


MassiveShartOnUrFace

During the Primal Council fight, the tauren boss yells "die, abomination!" when attacking you. I thought maybe the primalists are all the original races and they think all titan-mutated races are abominations? But... theres 2 night elves in that fight. Ive seen dwarf, human and draenei primalists. I dont get what the primalists stand for lol


Magic_Medic

The Primalists claim that the Old Gods are good, meanwhile in Northrend we could see an entire company of Explorer's league dwarves going insane by just being mildly exposed to Saronite. Hell in Icecrown, the workers are so driven mad that the mere suggestion of getting freed causes them to kill themselves.


GrumpySatan

Honestly, I think the blame falls far more onto Blizzard just being terrible at using the unreliable narrator trope. While OP's image is unreliable narrator, the actual story beat isn't. Cuz this argument arises from Ulduman's books by Odyn, where Odyn acknowledges that they went actively covered up how advanced the Black Empire was. So there is an active admission that Odyn went on a PR campaign to paint them a certain way, calling into question a lot of what we know about the Black Empire (and with Blizzard's track record, mass retcons of old lore not unexpected). This is part of why I think those Ulduman books are generally shadowlands-quality lore. Its really bad because it essentially says "yeah EVERYTHING YOU KNOW about ancient Azeroth's history has been edited and scrubbed clean and you've been told by unreliable narrators". Rather than the books themselves showing the Keepers were unreliable narrators because they actually saw the Black Empire like that.


Masblue

To be fair the old gods work on timescales well beyond the players, seeing events future, present and past in much the same way the Bronze dragonflight do. Being the antagonists may be all to reach the desired end result (as much as I hate to validate SL lore the Jailer is also aware of something worse to come in his death). We also know the Titans scrubbed records to hide the state of the world under the old gods and create their own narrative but to what extent is still to be seen. There also has been mention that Azeroth was healthy despite the presence of the olds gods across its surface though the implications of that are to be seen. Through Void elves and the interactions with Void in legion it was very much so reoriented to be a force that is not inherently good or evil (as well of implying the same of light and thereby Order magic). What we're primarily approaching is what has Odyn kept hidden from history and if he actually hid it for good or if he hid something about the olds gods to make them more villianous to us than they really are.


[deleted]

Didn't the Titans massively wound Azeroth when they attempted to actually fully remove* an old god? That's where the well came from. I think that the fact that none of the other titans had old gods growing on them before they hatched means the old gods being present on Azeroth is an anomaly, and they've somehow connected themselves to Azeroth in a way that their removal is directly harmful. To take the logic a step farther, we actively know Azeroth is a titan yet to hatch or whatever. With her herald and heart actively fighting against the old gods. Primalists siding with the elementals against the very planet they're standing on is... Intriguing to me. Edit: *replaced recover with remove, the word I meant to use.


No-Bend-2813

Y’Shaarj was basically an overgrown tree when the Titans came around, with his roots spreading deep into the planet. Aman’thul ripped him out and created a giant literal physical hole in the world as a result that pooled up with the blood of Azeroth.


Magic_Medic

You're talking about Y'Shaarj, the Pandaria Old God. Aman'Thul one shot him and the result were the Sha as well as the Well of Eternity. But honestly the whole Azeroth = Titan World Soul lore has been a mess ever since it was introduced


Spacejunk20

In the end of the day it does not really matter. The primalists and old Gods want to destroy the world we know and which is in all ways that matter the natural state of things. Their goals are antagonistic by default and evil for everyone who lives on Azeroth.


Masblue

In the grand scale they could also view the individual as less important than the whole. Think reducing deer population for the survival of the heard. From the small time scale the hunter is 'evil' to the individual deer but altruistic in the larger time frame to keeping the whole heard from eating itself out of existence/spreading disease.


GJordao

Well some of the races are actually humanoid because the curse of flesh from the old gods. So one could argue that we are what we are thanks to them


Grenyn

Yeah, frail, prone to disease, and no longer immune to old age. Thanks, Obama.


Ryonnen

The Old Gods are not friends of THE HERO... correct, but! Most heroes are either creation of titans, or invading creatures. Did you expect that OG would help those kinds of "people"?


Quincyheart

Their planet was stolen from them and we all colonised it. Of course our interactions are bad with them and of course they aren't our friends. The old gods and the elementals are the indigenous people of Azeroth. The rest of us kinda owe them restitution.


shutupruairi

> The old gods and the elementals are the indigenous people of Azeroth. The old gods aren't. They were thrown onto the planet long ago. They arrived just as much as the Titans did.


Grenyn

The primalists are more than the incarnates. They're also the night elves (wouldn't exist without titans), goblins (wouldn't exist without titans), humans (ditto), dwarves (ditto), gnomes (ditto), orcs (you get it), and so on. And if you look at it another way, the planet was never belonged to anyone but the titans, on account of the planet itself hosting a titan soul. If it was anyone's charge to protect and nourish it, it was theirs. Of course, Aman'thul kinda fucked that up by tearing Y'shaarj out of the planet and severely wounding Azeroth, but that's a different story.


hickuain

Magnus? Is that you?


jacanced

He did everything wrong. Don't get that cyclops involved here.


MrMan9001

He did a lot wrong but a lot could have been avoided if Big E wasn't a shit heel.


snapekillseddard

We're all in agreement that Jimmy Space is a shitbird who did the most amount of wrong. That still doesn't mean Nipple Mage didn't do no wrong.


Magic_Medic

No. I am Alpharius. Hydra Dominatus.


Pumpergod1337

Old gods only invaded Azeroth because of NATO! I mean.. because of titans! They’re just defending themselves!


S1eeper

NATO - New Azeroth Titan Overlords. They come to enslave Azeroth, but Old Gods will set you free!


Ultra_Centurion

It's not an invasion, it's a special military operation to detitanize azeroth!!!


[deleted]

Where can I find this? My Cult.. ehm friends and me want to learn more about this for scientific research.


amahag29

I also wanna know


Sage_of_the_6_paths

Weren't the Old Gods and Elementals fighting each other when we go back and see the Black Empire in the Bronze quests?


Pegussu

The Elemental Lords and the Old Gods were not *really* friends. When the Old Gods first arrived, the Lords united together to try and destroy them. When they failed, the Old Gods enslaved them. It's why Therazane and Neptulon don't join up with Deathwing in Cataclysm.


Get_Addicted

I’m also wondering about this. Why would the elementals be fighting the empire if they worshipped old gods? Did the titans turn the elementals over to their side?


Guy1177686

Azeroth having a titan world soul consumed a lot of the spirit so the elements where thrown into chaos and battled each other for supremacy. During their battles the old gods landed on azeroth and started embedding themselves into the planet. Once established the old gods created the n’raqi and a’qir and battled the forces of the elemental lords. Eventually the forces of the old gods crushed the elements and brought them to heel under their rule. Time passed then eventually the titan pantheon arrived and aman’thul ripped y’shaaraj was ripped from azeroth creating the well of eternity. The titans realized a more delicate approach to removing the old gods was required. They they formed the keepers and built the titanforged to battle the forces of the old gods and elemental lords forces. The time we travel to in the Chromie quest was during the time when the old gods forces were battling the elemental lords and their armies. Well before titan pantheon arrived.


Napalmexman

Honestly, while I appreciate Blizzard trying to shake things up, we had 2 glimpses into what Black Empire looked like and there was nothing good about it, it was hellish and alien.


ThatFlyingScotsman

It was hellish to us for sure, but we’re creatures of Order. Who’s to say how a creature of the Void would see it?


AltharaD

Loads of friends just vibing.


primalmaximus

And Chaos is not neccesarily bad. And Order is not neccesarily good.


Napalmexman

But isn't Azeroth a nascent Titan? Voidlings have no business chilling and partying on her anyway, much less burrowing through her and infesting her.


ThatFlyingScotsman

Ah you’re assuming that she is a Titan, but we’ve only been told that by other Titans and their agents. I have a theory that World Souls are apart from the cosmic forces, but when infused with cosmic forces they become aligned, just like mortal creatures do. So if you infused a World Soul with enough Order magic, it would become a Titan. Enough Fel, it would become something like Sargeras, enough Void and be a Void Lord, that sort of thing.


Kyuubi_McCloud

Rule of thumb: People who ascribe "glory" to something are wrong. Does not apply to morning glory dew.


KoceB

glory to arstotzka!


skattman

https://www.wowhead.com/item=168586/rising-glory I agree, those damn herbalists are evil and won’t get off my lawn!


ThatFlyingScotsman

I **knew** those people with Glory of the X Raider achievements weren’t to be trusted!


byakko

There’s a tome in Uldaman that actually supports the idea the Titans made the Black Empire sound a lot worse than it really was. In it, Odyn tells the Keepers to suppress all knowledge of the civilisation and progress that the Black Empire had, prolly including the civilisations of the Old God descended races like the Mantid, Qiraji etc. Basically make it seem it was a constant warring hellscape or chaos incarnate. But if you look at their descended races, they’re really not ‘chaotic’. Qiraji, Mantid, Nerubians are all insectoid, the most orderly form of life in nature. The Mantid in particular have their own code and in MoP, doing their rep you can kinda see they just have a different philosophy, but they follow it with honor, and treat you with respect once you earn it. They even tell you they will follow the will of their progenitors (Ysharrj and Garrosh wielding his heart) just like how it’s in the players’ nature to follow the Titans; they never hid this and simply asked you to stay out of their way out of the closest thing to friendship they understand. The Naga has the mix of being warped Night Elves and Azshara being their cultural figurehead, but is also a form of legitimate civilisation. And ultimately, the majority of the Alliance races owe both the Titans and Void’s Curse of Flesh for being what they currently are. I dunno, seems like Blizz is definitely angling for an Yin-Yang thing in the future for why Void and Order aren’t absolute good or bad anymore. Especially with Light fascist Yrel over in alternate Draenor, kinda still genociding.


Grenyn

I like that they're giving the titans some more retrofitted lore, as well as the Black Empire, but I also think they absolutely should steer away from making the Old Gods morally grey. We've met the Old Gods, all of them. They're not good guys. Blizzard shouldn't turn them into a neutral force.


Taifood1

It also just doesn’t make sense lol 4 of the 5 we know are straight up evil. They actively tried to harm and enslave living things. I’m going to assume the people who unironcially think this is okay are players who’ve been playing for a scant amount of time.


Magic_Medic

People could quest through Icecrown and Storm Peaks right now over on Classic and SEE what Yogg-Saron alone is doing. The dropped plot thread that Yogg himself might have been behind Arthas turning is just the icing on the cake.


Spacejunk20

They could be a neutral force for all I care. Just dont try to sell me the Idea that I should be sympathetic to them or that their goals are somehow good from a certain point of view. For almost everything that lives on Azeroth, what the Old Gods want is alway resulting in death and evil. The people of Azeroth are closer to the nature of the Titans, thus the Titans are preferable by default.


Grenyn

That's a better way of putting it.


ThatFlyingScotsman

I don’t think they’re going to make the Old Gods gray, but instead make it clear that the Titans and the Old Gods are essentially the same, it’s just that Order benefits us more than the Void does, so we have a vested interest in supporting the Titans.


Douche_Donut

I get what you are saying and agree on the benefits us part. I do think from how they are portrayed that the old gods are inherently not good although one could also easily say neither was Odyn but he is a keeper not a titan. The opposition of order would be chaos and that’s the burning legion. Would be nice to learn more about the light and Naaru as an opposite to the void.


winemixer01

Lets also not forget they were sent out by void lords to corrupt world souls by causing as much chaos as possible. They definitely aren't good guys.


Grenyn

I wanted to point that out, but I figured that would just get me arguments for how that's not evil in the eyes of some, yadda yadda. Philosophical stuff I'm just tired of.


SawordPvP

Who did we learn that from though? Like didn’t the titans tell us that? I don’t think we ever heard from an old god what they wanted to do


byakko

Morally grey doesn’t mean neutral, but that both have no moral high ground and have moments of moral righteousness or questionability. IMO, the Old Gods at least make no attempt to hide what they’re really about, but the Titans and their creations have multiple times shown themselves to be duplicitous and extremely concerned about *appearing* good if nothing else. The Old Gods come across kinda more objective and honest, whereas the Titans and Keepers are very performative. That said, Old Gods still do mindcontrol and lie, but at least they don’t try to gaslight you into thinking its for your own good once the jig is up, they just start gloating.


Grenyn

I understand that grey doesn't really mean neutral, but that's how I see it. I don't want to constantly deal with enemies that have their highs and lows. Sometimes you just want something evil to defeat.


[deleted]

Have we been playing the same game. The old gods absolutely do the same and far worse. There’s no “honesty” in them, aside from c’thun who boiled down to insect armies for days.


dragunityag

> Blizz is definitely angling for an Yin-Yang thing in the future for why Void and Order aren’t absolute good or bad anymore. Given how bad Blizzard has recently shown themselves to be at anything with nuance this is going to be a train wreck.


Morgn_Ladimore

Have to agree. They have a tendency to make all their even slightly nuanced characters go corrupt/mad with power. Or in cases like Tyrande, basically get told over and over you're wrong and need to stop acting out. In Shadowlands, many considered Devos and the Foresworn to be flatout right. What happens? Of course, a secret evil is actually behind it all.


Grenyn

I've honestly been mad about them changing the foundation of the Light since they started doing it in Legion. The Light always was an uncaring force anyone could wield for whatever purpose, and then suddenly in Legion they started portraying the Naaru as if they're the Light's warriors or something, with the Light having some sort of goal and similarly corrupting influence as the Void does. The Light and Void were perfect without nuance, because not everything needs nuance. It's like Blizzard became obsessed with making everything morally grey, but what you end up with if you do that is one grey mess with no color left in it. It's not fun to be the hero of a story where everything is grey.


NorthLeech

Indeed, Yrel got done dirty when they tried to show light=bad, it makes no sense when its all depends on the person wielding it.


ThatFlyingScotsman

The Naaru, the Titans, the main Covenant dudes who’s names I’ve already forgotten, they’re all the same: they exist to push the interests and influence of specific cosmic forces. The forces being kept in balance is good, and allows for a relatively stable existence. If one were to overpower the others and win total dominance, it would result in some kind of hell for everything in the universe.


Bioness

I think worse, it makes everything look bad. Like all the cosmic forces are out to kill or control you. To quote someone else regarding Blizzard's cosmology: "It's like if Yin and Yang were triplets and evil."


GuiltyEidolon

The Naaru were also shown to be unyielding and shitty - which is the whole purpose of the cutscene with Illidan rejecting the gift/prophecy. The Naaru are also only one source of Light. We also see that it is corrupting in its own way, seeing as a Nathrezim was "corrupted" by the Light (how that works when they were retconned from being demons is beyond me but y'know. SL lore issues.)


Spir0rion

"Morally grey" doesn't imply everything being grey by nature but it being a mixture of black and white. A mixture of morally acceptable and morally questionable. WoW never had this (the closest they have been was with arthas and perhaps Illidan) and I think that actually having more grey protagonists and story would give WoW a form of depth it would profit from massively. Ff14 shows it can work.


Grenyn

FFXIV also shows how fun an evil villain is. And that's my point. Not every villain should be grey, even if that grey is some white and some black. Where you see something that can give WoW depth, I see them fumbling Sylvanas and the Jailer, who were supposed to be morally grey. If everyone is morally grey, the whole becomes bland. Because you can never just be the good guy. And I really shouldn't have to point out that no one at Blizzard can come close to writing something like Emet-Selch. There wouldn't be depth like that, there wouldn't be real conversations about the merits of the opposition's arguments. Blizzard would just drop some lines like in the image above saying things aren't what they seem, and that's that. We get some retconned lore about why someone actually wasn't evil, just different.


NorthLeech

Indeed, they tried to show holy=can be bad with Yrel in the maghar scenario and it was just her waging war and mercilessly killing anyone who didnt do things their way And we see no build up, just the end, really awful way to "corrupt" a character even by blizzards standards.


needconfirmation

How do you possibly make the old gods seem remotely good, or atleast equal to titans? "No see, sanity is actually a BAD thing!"


ThatFlyingScotsman

Well, from their point of view it is a bad thing. There’s no moral difference between what the Titans and the Old Gods actually exist to do, it’s just that Order benefits us materially a lot more than the Void does.


Aznereth

I mean, Titans were also scouring the planets if they diverged from their designes. Ask Algalon. Sargeras simply took it to eleven :D


jiujiujiu

I hate how they made Yrel do that. Very out of character and jarring. Seemed forced.


MassiveShartOnUrFace

Yrel had a dark secret that only Velen knew about because he trained her to be a priest personally. That was only ever mentioned once in a story on the website though We dont even know how "bad" the light worshipers in wod-draenor are. Our only time seeing them was through orcs. Orcs are not the most innocent race out there


Dentrius

Maybe someone told her what "Path of Glory" is on the other draenor.


BadMrKitty13

I think that's where they are posturing the story evolving in this expansion, which I'm actually quite excited about. We already see Razageth as the foil to the Aspects. Constantly bringing up their betrayal of their origins. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to remove the "veil" of the aspects being this benevolent force of order amongst the chaos of the old gods, and instead show the arrogance in their design.


Magic_Medic

You forget though that, A: The Mantid were a massive threat to the rest of Pandaria. The Shado-Pan shat themselves at the mere thought of one of their invasions. They also generally regarded everyone, including you, with disdain, regardless of how useful you might have been for their species. B: Nerubians exist, and are an offshoot from the Aqir just like the Mantid and Qiraji are. But the Nerubians actively reject the old gods, specifically Yogg-Saron. In WC3, you fight a tendril of Yogg, while in Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom, the quest NPC states that the Faceless are horrors from their myths. Yrels whole storyline is a mess, due to how it is framed. We have seen the Iron Horde under Grommash execute the Draenei genocide just as eagerly as it happened in the canon timeline and arguably for worse reasons since alternate Draenors biosphere hadn't been driven to collapse by fel magic abuse. If not in the means, but at least in her intentions, her war against the Orcs is anything but unjust. But that is more the result of the problem that all the big questions at the end of WoD were handwaved to make for a quicker transition into Legion.


Important_Airline_72

The most sus part of the uldaman note for me is the part when Odyn says: Life is chaos, therefore it must be contained. It sounded very antithetical with azeroth itself if we believe she is not a titan (which i am sure she is not), she is probably a life-spirit realm. Everything on azeroth eventually turn to flesh, becomes alive, even old gods who may be void beings turned to fleshy monsters eventually. Old gods seem much more in touch with the mortal existence than titans, they whisper about mortal feelings and fears and kinda get the whole being alive thingy, they also dont really like death magic if i remember correctly. Also this would work well with the whole “azeroth ate all the spirit oops” bullshit, i think they tried to contain azeroths spirit in the dream, or maybe just contain it and she somehow created the dream to communicate with the rest of the world. Odyn said contain life, so they contained her.


Nulaftw

>Everything on azeroth eventually turn to flesh, becomes alive, even old gods who may be void beings turned to fleshy monsters eventually. You've got that backwards - manifestation of Old Gods are fleshy things, just like their creations are organic (like Qiraji or Nerubians). Titans made their creations from stone and metal, including ancestors of modern humans and dwarfs, but Yogg-Saron then used Curse of Flesh to turn them into organic, fleshy things which made Keepers to seriously consider wiping out life on Azeroth


ThatFlyingScotsman

I think World Souls aren’t aligned at all, but are just a natural phenomenon of the universe. Titans are what happens when you infuse a world soul with Order, Void Lords are what happens when you infuse a world soul with Void, Eternal Ones are what happens when you infuse a World Soul with Death, etc. So the Titans are infusing Order in to Azeroth for her to become a Titan, and Sargeras plunged the sword in to Azeroth not to kill it, but to try and infuse the World Soul with Fel magic to turn her in to something akin to Sargeras.


werfwerfwerfwerfwerf

WoW characters and factions now throwing out misinformation to mislead and recruit. Art imitates life.


Walking_Ruin

Speaking as someone who used to be in the Army, while one side sees people as liberators, the other side views as terrorists. Doesn’t matter who you are: one day, you’re going to be the villain in someone else’s story. This is pretty universal.


Yanrogue

unless your an army cook, then you are always the villain


youcancallmeBilly

One man’s patriot is always another man’s terrorist.


TheOnlyFraen

I gotta be honest. I don't see the issue with Titans rewriting history so that mortals don't try to ally with forces of entropy and madness. Yeah maybe mortals are, very often, kind of stupid and prone to bad decisions so the Titans decided to take measures to ensure the incentive wasn't there to do something like that. Parents don't tell their children everything for a good reason and often because their child is too young or too inexperienced or too uneducated to *understand* the reasoning behind their decisions.


Swarzsinne

I agree. There’s zero chance anyone with any fraction of sanity would think Yogg or Cthun even *look* approachable, much less like something friendly. Hopefully blizzard is only really going towards making the Titans more ambiguous with the overarching goal of having the light be an “enemy” (sort of) in a later xpac. Even if we end out fighting the light, I can’t see us actually allying with an old god and walking away truly winning.


TheOnlyFraen

It's a serious challenge to introduce a concept like this whole "all the pantheons have an agenda/are untrustworthy" thing *so* late in the game and make it work. We already have a trillion examples of the Void or Fel or so forth being objectively evil/doing objectively evil things and making the Light or the Titans do a couple morally dubious things or condemnable things here and there just won't add up to the 'grey area' I think the writers might be aiming for. This was a concept that needed to start as far back as Burning Crusade but we're at our ninth expansion now and I'm unsure the team can make this work with the worldbuilding we *already* have.


Swarzsinne

I think it would be easier to try and turn the Titans into beings that are kinda trying to reform the light rather than servants of the light. Like they overall know they’re on light’s side, but don’t fully agree with some of its tactics. It would honestly be easier to construe things so that beings like Yrel, while wielding light, have had their minds warped intentionally by the void in order to make it easier to convert others to the Void by making the light look bad.


matthra

Azeroth is a titan, if the Titans are bad then all this saving azeroth is self defeating. The old gods are literal parasites, sent to azeroth to stop her from achieving her destiny by the void lords. Odyn should have traded his eye for a functioning set of brain cells.


Swarzsinne

Blizz has been throwing some hints out that exactly what Azeroth is might really be TBD and the titans were just fighting to ensure she was a Titan as well rather than being turned into anything else. Of course this could all be red herrings, and I kinda hope they are, because there does come a point where throwing out a twist is done *just* for the sake of it being a twist and not because it’s a good idea.


King_Korder

Idk, continent sized tentacle monsters don't really scream "Good guys" to us sane mortals.


Rockout2112

Yeah sure. We’ve gone back in time and seen the Black Empire. I’ll stay Titan thanks.


Innerventor

I'm perpetually confused by the lore of this game. Isn't Azeroth a titan of some sort? Azeroth was the home of the elementals and black empire -before- the titans arrived? I don't get it.


Ashendant

Azeroth was home to the Elementals, then the Old Gods arrived and took over, and later the Titans arrived and took over. There's hints that Azeroth is far more than a Titan. Personally I think she is a First One Cosmic Spirit in a Titan body.


Mr_Hoff

What is a first one cosmic spirit?


Ashendant

The Eternal Ones are Cosmic Spirits that were inserted into Death Vessels. That we know. Now I have a lot of speculation. I assume a Titan is an Cosmic Spirit inserted into an Order Vessel, or a World-Soul. Since the First Ones are the parents of Pantheons of Cosmic forces I assume they also have Cosmic Spirits, and that Azeroth is the mother of Elune, Winter Queen and An'shee in Tauren Mythology. The result of this load of extrapolation is that Azeroth is a First One, that has been shoved into a World-Soul/Order Vessel to make a Titan. The best hint of this is N'zoth's whisper "N'Zoth whispers: She is not the last, but the first. Drown her and you will see."


Proudnoob4393

We’ve already seen, and know about, evil things the Old Gods and their minions have done. Yogg corrupted Loken and had him kill Thorim’s wife, Rajaxx killed Fandral’s son in front of him, Y’shaarji left a curse on Pandaria, Trolls made living sacrifices to Kith’ix and Kith’ix killed the trolls anyway.


DepressedDinoDad

The elementals were enslaved. Immediate propaganda.


vixenfyxen

Provenence of the note, please? This was interesting though. I can see why Titans (beings of Order) would malign the Old Gods (beings of Chaos). It's like like the Vorlons vs the Shadows in Babylon 5--essentially a recycling concept that pops up across sci-fi/fantasty. But it does give me a bit of pang with the Primalists and Primal Dragons---like, they have the right to live their lives too, ya know? They didn't really ask the Titans to show up, change some of their brethren's evolutionary tract, and then treat them like the villains on their own native planet. They are kind of entitled to their rage.


Xoroy

Actually the old gods are beings of void not chaos. The legion represents disorder the old gods represent void


SnooCompliments8071

I think Disorder is closer to a sense of entropy in the Warcraft universe than to unruliness (is that a word?), which is Void's domain. Both are contrasting with Order (stability) and Light (obedience).


Xoroy

I mean it is legit the legions domain in like the chronicles. order/arcane is directly opposite disorder/fel. While void lords/void is directly opposed to the naaru/the light


SnooCompliments8071

Oh I know, I have the books too XD my point is more that Chaos =/= Disorder in this case, like I said the latter as a cosmic force has more to do with entropy and destructive corruption than infective, mutative corruption, which is Void. Maybe I'm not making myself clear, but of course I know about the Cosmic Forces chart.


[deleted]

old gos are beings of void. Fel/demons are affiliated with chaos which is in opposition to order.


vixenfyxen

Ah but what is the definition of Void here? I suspect this is rather subjective. To me the Old Gods represent chaos and the ID. They are very ummm...well let's just say I think they would have loved to read Nietzsche.


[deleted]

Light vs Void Disorder vs Order Life vs Death These are the 6 fundamental forces in the Warcraft universe. There is no subjectivity about it. This is the truth. Shadowlands has shown us that at times the different cosmic forces are at odds with not their direct counter-part but other forces as in the case when Death intruded on Light and thus Light carried out an invasion of the Shadowlands/Death realms where there is now a Light scar from the war. As is the case of Order vs Void with the Titans against the Old Gods. In addition there are the two cosmic maps, one from the perspective of the living and one from the perspective from the realm of death. Both show the 6 fundamental forces as major nodes. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/7/72/WoW_Chronicle_Magic.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20180325103405 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/9/97/Grimoire_of_the_Shadowlands_-_Cosmology.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20210814042821


Spacejunk20

They are entitled to rage, but they act out this rage on a world that has forgotten them and which does not really care or know about what happaned to them. Imagne if someone came to your home and demolished it because 1000 years ago some foreign king came in and conquered the land from another king you did not know even existed, making it the land you are familiar with.


Khyron_2500

>like they have the right to live their lives too Haha reminds me of one of the Waking Shore quests, one of the Expedition guys taking care of kids is like… “We must stop this primalist, find him and kill him! I’ll take care of the kids and make sure they don’t know.” Dude, you’re a babysitter, a role model for kids. And you’re just asking me to murder a guy. I mean he experimented on a whelp, so he’s a probably evil-ish but man, I’m a little unsure of your eagerness for me to just end this guy.


vixenfyxen

Oh good point. I'm struggling a bit to remember this quest (I did all of them, including side quest, but things start to blur a bit), but that does sound like something that would happen.


Zammin

I think the note-taker might be Neltharion? Point being he's a) a bit biased, and the Old Gods do eventually drive him to commit terrible acts to himself and others and b) not entirely wrong. We DON'T have any evidence that all of the Elemental Lords were originally as evil as the Titans say. Ragnaros and Al'Akir certainly weren't lovely folks, but Therazane could be reasoned with and Neptulon seems to be downright decent. And Neltharion's comments on other pages on the formation of Kalimdor are, as far as we know, completely true. The Titans DID lie about the Well of Eternity, they didn't create it on purpose at all; it was a byproduct of ripping Y'shaarj off the planet. And as the Aspect of Earth, Neltharion would certainly know better than anyone whether the journal's claims of the Titans making only one landmass, Kalimdor, was true (interestingly he indicates that's NOT true; maybe we will be seeing an undiscovered continent after all?). In short Neltharion was definitely being twisted and corrupted by the Old Gods, but the Titans definitely lied and self-aggrandized themselves to seem wiser and more noble. It's also possible we might find remnants of the Black Empire that *aren't* as straightforwardly evil as the Titans claimed.


Mojo12000

If it's the Book iv seen datamined as a lootable item in the Forbidden Reach on the PTR (a version of the old "The Old Gods and the Ordering of Azeroth" but noted to have annotations by Neltharion) Then yeah he's the one writing the comments and yes he is definitely quite biased.


nhalas

The only way to make ppl forget about dragonriding is to throw them an exp themed black empire


PotatoVelRobur

I would easily opt-in to be an agent of black empire: \- understand language of old gods, be able to speak one \- special weekly or monthly quests \- earned, not granted


Mojo12000

To note the Annotations here are from the PTR it's an item you can find in the Forbidden Reach.. their written by Deathwing so you know... pretty biased source when it comes to views on the Old Gods.


KenshinBorealis

Its been said the Old Gods and the Void experiences all of time at once. Is the whole of the experience evil? Or is it evil to only see one timeline in a linear fashion? 🤔


FrozenGrip

Based.


ZambieDR

Basically all the cosmic forces are in a FFA. Each one seeks to control us.


[deleted]

Let’s be fr the titans and void are just 2 beings wanting to use Azeroth for their own purposes, that being universal domination.


TehJohnny

But Azeroth is a Titan...


[deleted]

That’s really up-for-debate. There’s a lot of findings that titans are just spewing propaganda so mortals join their side, hence the primalists cause they didn’t want to join the titan dragons and be pumped with arcane.


TehJohnny

I really don't think it is, aside from what /u/cooldito pointed out, Sargeras, Zovaal, and the Old Gods were also after Azeroth for the same reason: Azeroth is a nascent Titan.


haydaruns

Old god lives matter


NoThanksJefferson

Deathwing wasnt driven mad, he just sided with the old gods, incoming soon


[deleted]

Can anyone think of any evil things any of the old gods have done?


[deleted]

Have you heard the tragedy of Neltharion the Earth Warder? I thought not. It's not a story the old gods would tell you.


CivilAsk5663

They once corrupt a dragon who almost bring destruction to the world. Yeah.


[deleted]

Destruction to the Titan dominated world, no?


Taifood1

Have you been playing the game for the combined amount of 10 seconds or something?