Was making old gods not the big bad a mistake?

[Vilendor]

Now they just seem like nasty parasites instead of mysterious lovecraftian beings.

From day one they were just nasty parasites. I mean since vanilla we know they can't be killed without hurting Azeroth and we know they were sent here by a higher force.

[TheFirstOnes]

They effectively remain the big bads, because they are physical extensions of the great Void Lords of beyond. They are also a grave danger to the universe, I would say this was laughably obvious in 8.3. At the climax of the Ny'alotha raid, N'Zoth the Old God attempted to merge Ny'alotha with the very World Soul of Azeroth. Had he succeeded, Azeroth would've been transformed into a Void Titan, and then the cosmos would've truly been doomed. That's why the fight to defeat N'Zoth, is the fight to defend the universe from obliteration, as was stated in the encounter journal.

"of beyond" You do realize the "beyond" probably just refers to the Great Dark, yeah? Cause the full name of it is "The Great Dark Beyond!" meaning space. Going "to the beyond" probably just means "going into deep deep space" in regards to the Void and what they think. Then again, that COULD be their realm, though that's a mere assumption.

Also, the Void Lords may NOT remain the big bad, if Blizzard continues to push this "First Ones made everything" narrative further.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I prefer mystery, without a doubt. N'Zoth was horribly realized.

[TheFirstOnes]

An old god would still obliterate basically any other being we ever encountered short of a pantheon titan, so not much has changed in that regard. The void lords might be the true nature behind the old gods, but the end result is the same. I am still convinced the void is the ultimate threat, they just have to play up whatever the current expansion bad guy is to make it seem important enough to care.

The Void, in terms of the cosmic chart, is the true threat, yes. But that's also because they literally see every truth, whereas other Cosmic Forces either see 1 truth (Like the Light, or Order), or play their cards too short (Like Death, with the Jailer, Denathrius, and the Dreadlords). Also, the Void Lords are literally Warcraft's Outer Gods. Kinda hard to top something that was inspired by the most powerful beings in fiction (And are practically copy-pastes of them).

[Shelly]

There are still Old Gods out there. If you go back to the fight with the atromancer in Suramar he basically shows how there's the dark around us, then the Legion, then finally the Old Gods and that the only thing really keeping the OGs from taking over pretty much the entire universe has been the Legion. We also know this from the Algalon fight in Ulduar - the Titans have without reservation destroyed entire planetary systems that were corrupt. Just because we've removed the immediate threat from Azeroth doesn't mean that the threat itself has truly ended.

The OGs themselves too seem to represent the entirety of "flesh" overcoming ego. To the original Titanic creations they were terrifying because of the Curse of Flesh. Suddenly things could breed, they could die, they lost the purposes they had been created for and for those purposes to only be retained in racial memory and for those truly lost to the curse to have lost even that. Earthen became dwarves that still had the drive to delve and build and create, but also became Troggs which knew only the hunger for the depths. The Forged turned into Vrykul and even from then became small and were forced to turn from their ancestral homes and many even lost their connection to the Titans. The Mogu seemed to have it worse of all because they started to turn into that which they'd been built to fight and their only recourse was to study forbidden magics to maintain their stone forms.

So in Nya'lotha we see the fruition of that. Tentacles, eyes, stomachs, all creatures basically made into organelles of the enormous planet beast that is N'Zoth. And our only solution to stop it is to literally drop in anchor points to target the reorigination array and literally erase that reality. It's actually a very good fight in how it mirrors the first fight in BfA against Ghuun.

I admit they could have told it better, but frankly WoW is better when they aren't explaining everything. The story really happens in the margins.

[Inoculate]

WoW is basically just DBZ now but with dragons and wizards.

Babidi and Shenron would like a word, sir.

[3DTyrant]

Lol same with the titans now too.

There's now some dudes that created the titans.

As the expansions go on they will probably have some mega super ultra instinct god being that created the creators of the titan creators.

WoW is basically just DBZ now but with dragons and wizards.

Who created the creators of the Titans? And who created them? And who... you can just go on forever here...

[GreenJesus]

Babidi and Shenron would like a word, sir.

Touche. /10chrs

[Golden Yak]

I kinda wish Old Gods had remained the ultimate expression of the danger of the Void.

Although, given that we've seen a couple of creatures called Void Lords and they weren't exactly that impressive, I kinda dig the idea that maybe the Void Lords are individually pretty minor and that only by working together in great numbers can they generate threats like the Old Gods and entities like Dimensius - perhaps it takes thousands of Void Lords combining their efforts to manifest a single Old God, for example.

While I think N'Zoth being freed was a concept that definitely could have used some time to breathe instead of being jumped on right away, I don't necessarily object to the idea that after untold millennia of plotting and conniving, after finally getting freed N'Zoth was ready to do away with subtlety and really flex his tentacles, and this resulted in him over-extending himself and leaving himself open.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Void return as a major threat and bring along the Old God aesthetic of fleshy monstrosities. They've been one of the most frequent recurring threats in the WoW setting, I'm fine with them being an ongoing concern. We need some reason to inevitably have Sargeras be set free but also be on our side.

[LuminaL]

Now they just seem like nasty parasites instead of mysterious lovecraftian beings.

you spelled over glorified zits wrong.

[MikeBogina]

When WoW launched, we had the Old Gods, Kil'Jaeden, Deathwing and the Lich King to deal with. There was no other greater threats to the known world(and to the players) and those 4 groups were not even really known by the inhabitants themselves.

But because WoW is an mmo and a long running one, it runs on content and so the Old Gods, Kil'Jaeden, Deathwing and the Lich King were all mostly dealt with by the end of Cataclysm. So what happens? Retcons and new threats.

MoP with all it's flaws, did I good job of setting up a story and content that was believable in the established WoW lore. An already dead Old God's remains tainted this land, there was bugs here who worshipped them and another Titan race who did some messed up stuff and then the war with Garrosh.

Then time travel happens so they can reuse the Old Horde, in this expansion, all our doubts of the competence of Blizzard's writing was confirmed as they will use any means to reuse dead characters, even going as far as timey-wimey stuff.

With Legion, fun expansion, one of my favorites, but that was basically when the former established baddies all started to get reduced to make way for newer big baddies. Sargeras is now back, making KJ less significant. We learn of the Void Lords who basically just picked their nose and tossed some boogers into the universe, the Naaru may not be so nice afterall(Light Nazi Expansion) and Sylvanas is working with new death god lady. And it just feels like we're going to have a huge Void in space expansion now.

BFA happens and even though we know we're fighting N'zoth in it, but just knowing that he's not even the highest up of the Void ladder, makes him feel so insignificant(I actually haven't done his raid as i haven't been subbed for over a year).

Now in SL, we learn of Death Being even more deathier than the Lich King who orchestrated the whole Lich King in the first place, which also Bolvar's evil stuff just gets washed away, making me think that either the Jailer or at least the connection was made up last minute, even moreso since they retconned Sylvanas to have always been working with him, despite the novel for BFA giving us her thoughts.

So we have Void Lords > Old Gods, Sargeras > KJ, Jailer > Lich King

and there's also like some powerful race that might even > Titans

The Aspects are another who used to feel big and important and they seem to have dropped down greatly.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Blizzard still has a chance to redeem themselves with the Old God story.


Brand new raid instance that takes place during the war between the Titanforged and the Black Empire; the assault on Y'Shaarj leading up to Aman'Thul reaching down and ripping him out of Azeroth.


THAT would be a fun raid.

[3DTyrant]

Blizzard still has a chance to redeem themselves with the Old God story.


Brand new raid instance that takes place during the war between the Titanforged and the Black Empire; the assault on Y'Shaarj leading up to Aman'Thul reaching down and ripping him out of Azeroth.


THAT would be a fun raid.

The Aqir & Troll Wars could be rather fun to see as a raid, too.

[Traveler Voltin]

Legion was always the big bad not old gods.

[shoc]

N'zoth was all talk and no game. Yeah he was responsible for Deathwing and Azshara but he can only get so much credit for others achievements. Azshara even says herself, "For all his bluster, N'Zoth was ever the weakest of his kin."

[Golden Yak]

Blizzard still has a chance to redeem themselves with the Old God story.


Brand new raid instance that takes place during the war between the Titanforged and the Black Empire; the assault on Y'Shaarj leading up to Aman'Thul reaching down and ripping him out of Azeroth.


THAT would be a fun raid.

Yes. I was imagining a Caverns of Time raid based on that since Cataclysm.
Make the stakes super high - have the Infinite Dragonflight be part of it and attempting to join the two time periods together, so that war is brought out of the past and into the present era. If they succeed, it'll rip Azeroth apart, past present and future.

I still feel like the Infinite flight has some more Old God related potential. All the Azerite wounds in Silithus should be used for something like super-charging C'thun's corpse and getting them back into the game.

[bullseyed]

They've always been nasty parasites that tricked us into thinking they're Gods to be feared and worshipped, thats the thing. They've always been exactly what they ended up being...us as players wanted them to be more, but they never were. That is the trick of the Old Gods.

... no? That isn't supported at all in the lore.

The old gods are as powerful as Sargeras and as the Titans. That is why the only option Sargeras had was to destroy entire planets to remove the old gods.

The old gods are responsible for the creation of life as we know it on Azeroth. Every player is the creation of the old gods. We are Frankenstein's monster, rising up to kill our creators.

And why? Because the Titans told us to? The same Titans that more than once wanted to exterminate us all. The same Titans who view us as corruption upon their creation. Because we are. We represent DISORDER and do not fit into the ORDER of the Titans. They will eventually turn on us, when we stop being useful to them. We are their tool, like the demons of the Legion are the tool of Sargeras.

- - - Updated - - -

There are still Old Gods out there. If you go back to the fight with the atromancer in Suramar he basically shows how there's the dark around us, then the Legion, then finally the Old Gods and that the only thing really keeping the OGs from taking over pretty much the entire universe has been the Legion. We also know this from the Algalon fight in Ulduar - the Titans have without reservation destroyed entire planetary systems that were corrupt. Just because we've removed the immediate threat from Azeroth doesn't mean that the threat itself has truly ended.

The Titans have not. Sargeras has destroyed planets for being corrupted, and that is why the Titans threw him out. Sargeras is the good guy in the WoW story. The Titans are just another bad guy, using us for their plans.

We are created by the old gods to oppose the Titans. But we should have sided with Sargeras to defeat the Void Lords.

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Exactly! N'zoth does not taste defeat every outcome for him is a victory, which would also go along with the void's being about to see thousands of outcomes and they are all the truth mentality.

Yeah. We already know the dagger can hold someone in it and it was empty when N'zoth was stabbed. The dagger likely has some bit of N'zoth in it.

The question is, who will wield that power and to what end?

- - - Updated - - -

An old god would still obliterate basically any other being we ever encountered short of a pantheon titan, so not much has changed in that regard. The void lords might be the true nature behind the old gods, but the end result is the same. I am still convinced the void is the ultimate threat, they just have to play up whatever the current expansion bad guy is to make it seem important enough to care.

The point is that every "magic type" is equally good and bad. None are threats and yet all are threats. The Light having too much power is just as bad as Void having too much power. Order and Chaos. Death and Life. All must be in balance, or the universe(s) will be destroyed.

We as the players have somehow become the arbiter of balance in the WoW universe, despite our relative lack of power. We are full of life and undeath. We are chaotic and orderful. We champion the light and the void.

The Titans send someone to destroy the planet. We kill him. The Void Lords send old gods to corrupt the planet's spirit. We kill them. The forces of death itself conspire against us and we tear the veil in two between the living and the dead to go restore balance. Sylvanas just had to kill herself and rise from the dead to see what was wrong.

[Shelly]

The Titans have not. Sargeras has destroyed planets for being corrupted, and that is why the Titans threw him out. Sargeras is the good guy in the WoW story. The Titans are just another bad guy, using us for their plans.

We are created by the old gods to oppose the Titans. But we should have sided with Sargeras to defeat the Void Lords.

Entire worlds bathed in the makers flames.

It's not just Sargeras cleansing OGs dude.

And no, only the Mogu were made to specifically fight the OGs and possibly the steel/thunderforged.

Trolls, Elves (read pretty trolls), Tauren and Pandaren are entirely native. As are other non-playable races such as the Quillboar, Jinyu, etc.

Not sure they ever cover whom the Goblin descend from.

Gnomes were worker drones to create and maintain the titanic engines.

Dwarves were Earthen, made to mostly maintain titanic creations and build them.

Steelforged/Stormforged appear to mostly be retainer class constructs made specifically for Odyn to do whatever job he saw fit for them.

Only the Mogu were made specifically to fight the OG's under the direct command of Raden.

So no. We weren't made to fight the OGs specifically by the Titans and beyond that too Sargeras is an ENEMY.

He gave himself over to the corruption of Fel magics and disorder. Which is a huge problem for creatures that have an entire pantheon built around the creation of order itself. Beyond that too he's just another death cult the same as the OGs, only he'd like to rewrite the entire universe itself. At least with the other Titans there's the implication they can rebuild from the ashes!

[AlmightyGerkin]

Blizzard still has a chance to redeem themselves with the Old God story.


Brand new raid instance that takes place during the war between the Titanforged and the Black Empire; the assault on Y'Shaarj leading up to Aman'Thul reaching down and ripping him out of Azeroth.


THAT would be a fun raid.

That would be neat if done correctly. Could be awesome fighting along side the titans and eventually seeing a cinematic of the titans creating the well of eternity

[Kathranis]

Legion was always the big bad not old gods.

Well, I'd say the Legion was intended to be the overarching antagonist group from Reign of Chaos through Warlords of Draenor. They were invented with the new WC3 backstory to be the force behind the orcish invasion of Azeroth and a greater threat that the Horde and Alliance would have to unite against.

According to Metzen, the Old God stuff was an idea they came up with during development of Warcraft III, and the Forgotten Ones and Faceless Ones appeared in Azjol-Nerub in The Frozen Throne. With WoW being an MMORPG they were able to expand on a lot of those "weird ideas" in order to build up and flesh out the world, which is what led to the Silithid and AQ.

At the time I don't think they envisioned the Old Gods as much beyond primordial Lovecraftian deities that ruled Azeroth before it was ordered by the Titans. They were built up gradually from expansion to expansion, eventually becoming the driving forces behind both Cataclysm and Mists, and were certainly painted as manipulators that orchestrated a lot of the conflicts on Azeroth, but they were still very much a recurring side enemy, sort of like the trolls.


It seems that it was while developing the Legion expansion in 2015-2016 that they decided to branch out into a more diverse assortment of big bads, with Chronicle outlining the six cosmic forced, introducing the void lords, and recontextualized Sargeras's crusade as a war against their minions. I think at that point they realized that demons and green fire were a well they couldn't keep returning to indefinitely.

At the time it seemed that they were setting up the void lords to be an even greater evil than the Legion, the "true big bads" as it were. However, it now seems that while developing the Shadowlands expansion, they've decided to instead elaborate on the six cosmic forces and put them against each other in a greater cosmic war.

In doing so, they're laying the foundation for many possible future storylines with a much more diverse assortment of possible enemies that we can fight, which should allow them to explore more themes and aesthetics than if WoW's villains just boiled down to green fire or purple miasma.

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That would be neat if done correctly. Could be awesome fighting along side the titans and eventually seeing a cinematic of the titans creating the well of eternity

https://www.deviantart.com/yeastsold...aarj-663068133

Like pulling up weeds.