Void lords and Old gods

[Destinas]

The prisons were actually good. The problem was that Yogg managed to corrupt and disrupt the Keepers.

Well, one of the only prisons that we saw that nearly fully contained an Old God was N'Zoth's. Yogg's prison has a cracked ceiling, and saronite is corrupting the walls outside the actual prison. G'huun's corruption spreads across the entire complex, and even far under the ground and other areas of Nazmir. Not counting the Sha, Y'Shaarj's prison wasn't air-tight, with Goblins getting corrupted near the heart. Not to mention that all of the Old Gods have been able to whisper, corrupt, transform, and command people outside their prisons.

If the point of a prison was to contain the Old Gods and/or their powers, they failed.

[Aucald]

Well, one of the only prisons that we saw that nearly fully contained an Old God was N'Zoth's. Yogg's prison has a cracked ceiling, and saronite is corrupting the walls outside the actual prison. G'huun's corruption spreads across the entire complex, and even far under the ground and other areas of Nazmir. Not counting the Sha, Y'Shaarj's prison wasn't air-tight, with Goblins getting corrupted near the heart. Not to mention that all of the Old Gods have been able to whisper, corrupt, transform, and command people outside their prisons.

If the point of a prison was to contain the Old Gods and/or their powers, they failed.

I don't think the prison installations of the Old Gods were meant to serve as long as they did - it was likely always the Pantheon's goal to return to Azeroth and fully deal with the infection once they'd gained more knowledge of it. Never came to pass due to Sargeras destroying them, though; and over the eons the installations began to fail as intricate constructs often do as entropy takes its inevitable course. As they did, the Old Gods used the cracks to influence the world once more and break them further and faster.

[Varodoc]

Well, one of the only prisons that we saw that nearly fully contained an Old God was N'Zoth's. Yogg's prison has a cracked ceiling, and saronite is corrupting the walls outside the actual prison. G'huun's corruption spreads across the entire complex, and even far under the ground and other areas of Nazmir. Not counting the Sha, Y'Shaarj's prison wasn't air-tight, with Goblins getting corrupted near the heart. Not to mention that all of the Old Gods have been able to whisper, corrupt, transform, and command people outside their prisons.

If the point of a prison was to contain the Old Gods and/or their powers, they failed.

N'Zoth wasn't even cointained that much. He could physically manifest in places like the Chamber of the Heart.

[Aucald]

N'Zoth wasn't even cointained that much. He could physically manifest in places like the Chamber of the Heart.

That might have been a C'Thraxxi in his service and not actually N'Zoth, though. Though N'Zoth could manifest in an ephemeral form despite his imprisonment, such as he does with Azshara in the intro to the Nazjatar raid.

[Varodoc]

That might have been a C'Thraxxi in his service and not actually N'Zoth, though. Though N'Zoth could manifest in an ephemeral form despite his imprisonment, such as he does with Azshara in the intro to the Nazjatar raid.

Didn't he like send his tentacles to break into the Chamber at the beginning of BfA? I guess it could've been just one of his servants, yeah.

[TheFirstOnes]

People do realize that N'Zoth was the most powerful Old God when we fought him, yeah? The guy was the last remaining Old God left, and had full control of Ny'alotha. That's insane.

[therealbowser]

did we kill them though? or just beat them into submission. we killed G'huun but he wasn't really anything close to any of the other 4

C'thun and Yogg'Saron may have survived, though I am skeptical about the former since Silithis was basically obliterated in addition to everything else.

G'huun, Y'shaarj, and N'zoth are 100% dead. And apparently N'zoth was the 'weakest old god'.

[Timester]

Well, one of the only prisons that we saw that nearly fully contained an Old God was N'Zoth's. Yogg's prison has a cracked ceiling, and saronite is corrupting the walls outside the actual prison. G'huun's corruption spreads across the entire complex, and even far under the ground and other areas of Nazmir. Not counting the Sha, Y'Shaarj's prison wasn't air-tight, with Goblins getting corrupted near the heart. Not to mention that all of the Old Gods have been able to whisper, corrupt, transform, and command people outside their prisons.

If the point of a prison was to contain the Old Gods and/or their powers, they failed.

Well, the death of the Titans did gave Yogg the oportunity to weaken everything, by creating the Curse of Flesh and corrupting the Keepers. If the Keepers were fully focused, I doubt that the cracks would even happen.

[Destinas]

Didn't he like send his tentacles to break into the Chamber at the beginning of BfA? I guess it could've been just one of his servants, yeah.

It was That Which Hungers, which uses a C'Thraxx model. It mentions "the master" (N'Zoth) as a separate entity. But, to your point, N'Zoth was able to do quite a bit in the Emerald Nightmare (along with Yogg, who started it) despite being imprisoned and such.

[Varodoc]

It was That Which Hungers, which uses a C'Thraxx model. It mentions "the master" (N'Zoth) as a separate entity. But, to your point, N'Zoth was able to do quite a bit in the Emerald Nightmare (along with Yogg, who started it) despite being imprisoned and such.

Doesn't really change that much though, does it? What's the point of prisons if Old Gods can still invade the literal chamber of the World Soul with their black armies?

[Kyphael]

People do realize that N'Zoth was the most powerful Old God when we fought him, yeah? The guy was the last remaining Old God left, and had full control of Ny'alotha. That's insane.

Most powerful in the sense he was fully unbound. He's the weakest of the three remaining ones if all were free of their bonds.

[Aucald]

Doesn't really change that much though, does it? What's the point of prisons if Old Gods can still invade the literal chamber of the World Soul with their black armies?

The prisons were probably much more effective when they were first made and the Old Gods first imprisoned. Their armies went dormant bereft of the Old Gods' direct will upon them - just like Mindflayer Kaahrj lapsed into quiescence when Yogg-Saron was defeated, but then reactivated when in proximity to N'Zoth's influence. By the time we contend with them, almost all the Old God prisons were intensely compromised, meaning their minions are active and going about things relatively normally.

[Dimad]

Answer: We killed C'Thun and Yogg'Saron while they were still in their prisons, so it was okay. We also killed N'zoth in Ny'alotha, so that didn't blow the Planet up.

I thought i had read somewhere from a past blizzcon that we actually did not kill yogg and cthun. Just beat a small portion of them. I could be wrong though. Unfortantly i dont remember which blizzcon (or blue post) i heard that from so if anyone else is able to chime in.)

[Piamonte]

did we kill them though? or just beat them into submission. we killed G'huun but he wasn't really anything close to any of the other 4

yes, they are dead, ,this has been confirmed multiple times.

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They certainly tried, but Y'Shaarj was too powerful for the Titan-forged and was "poisoning the minds" of their soldiers, so Aman'Thul ripped it out.

Maybe because of how deeply buried the Old Gods were, they feared killing them, or just knew that the Titan-forged couldn't last long enough in direct contact with an Old God that they instead decided to lock them away.

they still had the reorigination device, whatever way you look at it, it doesnt make sense.

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There could be more eyeball-tentacles flying toward Azeroth as we speak. The first "batch" of Old Gods were sent out Lord-knows-how-long ago (it wasn't given a date in Chronicle, just a time in prehistory), long before any mortal races now existed. Others wound up on random planets. The reason the Void Lords flung out Old Gods randomly was because they didn't know which worlds had World-Souls.

It's unknown if they can actually accurately send a new Old God through space directly to Azeroth now. They certainly didn't get every planet anyway, since we never heard of/saw any Old Gods on Argus, and Outland's only Old God was summoned by Arakkoa in Burning Crusade.

The problem with killing an Old God was that the they had burrowed deep into Azeroth, so she would be damaged if the Titans pulled them out - that's how the Well of Eternity was created. On top of that, "killing" them doesn't really do much good. Y'Shaarj was still kicking in the form of his heart, and his heads turned into the seven Sha, with tons of lesser Sha also coming from him. They also studied the Old Gods in order to figure out how to take care of them for good, and accidentally created G'huun. The Old Gods are said to be "outside the cycle" and we've seen "dead" Old Gods whisper to their victims and summon minions, so destroying their bodies may not do much of anything in the end, if they simply go back to the Void, or they exist in Ny'alotha.

Not to mention, the titans built a device to reoriginate the entire planet while leaving the World-Soul unharmed, so it's not like the Titans didn't want to kill the Old Gods themselves, they simply didn't want to kill everything else with them while hurting the planet.

the reorigination device can be used to attack a single spot instead of destroying the entire planet, this has been done twice, once when the thunder king died for the first time and now with nzoth.

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C'thun and Yogg'Saron may have survived, though I am skeptical about the former since Silithis was basically obliterated in addition to everything else.

G'huun, Y'shaarj, and N'zoth are 100% dead. And apparently N'zoth was the 'weakest old god'.

cthun and yoggsaron are also dead. Confirmed multiple times by devs.

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I thought i had read somewhere from a past blizzcon that we actually did not kill yogg and cthun. Just beat a small portion of them. I could be wrong though. Unfortantly i dont remember which blizzcon (or blue post) i heard that from so if anyone else is able to chime in.)

they are dead.

[Rafoel]

This is an important problem. However, we know that Titans initially killed an Old God - Yshaarj. In result Sha took control over the land. Sha were kept in check only by the unique Pandaren culture of being chill and not caring. Of course, then mortals (players) came and instantly solved the problem for good. The question is, why didn't Titans do it earlier?

We may need to accept there were significant flaws in Titans' though processes. Titans seem(ed) to be unable to comprehend sentient living beings on fundamental level. They installed their views and attitude in their minions - it is visible in Mimiron, and is especially clear in Algalon. The latter straight up admits he was completely wrong about mortals for millions of years. Similarly, Keeper Ra fell into depression because with all his "cosmic knowledge" he couldn't imagine any solution to the impending assault of the Void. He also, after being defeated in ToT, tells the players that he was wrong, and mortals actually MIGHT have a chance.

So, in fact, if you consider mortals purely as useless animals, then corruptions like that of Sha pose a significant danger. Even more so after discovery of Curse of Flesh, that essentially turned "titans' perfect creations" into these useless animals. Imprisoning Old Gods certainly looked like an obvious solution. The risk was actually also nonexistent - Algalon's signal would purge Azeroth from the Old Gods, if not for the mortals' intervention. Titans of course couldn't expect the betrayal of Sargeras, and complications it brought with it.

In the end, we end up killing N'zoth in the exact same way Titans intended to do so.

[TheFirstOnes]

I thought i had read somewhere from a past blizzcon that we actually did not kill yogg and cthun. Just beat a small portion of them. I could be wrong though. Unfortantly i dont remember which blizzcon (or blue post) i heard that from so if anyone else is able to chime in.)

Retconned. What we faced were their heads.

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Most powerful in the sense he was fully unbound. He's the weakest of the three remaining ones if all were free of their bonds.

He has control of ALL of Ny'alotha. He's the most powerful, considering the whole reason a power imbalance existed between them in the first place because the Old Gods were fighting for control.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't really think the Void Lords lose "energy" when throwing massive abberations of flesh to possible world soul planets. Its just their only way of trying to corrupt a world soul. If they send multiple Old Gods across the galaxy. In theory the amount of Old Gods could be limit less. There's always the possibility of an expansion/ new era where an Old God slams into Azeroth(Somewhere else not in the known Azeroth) and since we're very aware of Old God shennigans we decide to be ahead of the game(Like more then 10k) years.

There's also the fact the devs or at least Ion was vague and "Hint hint" that the Old Gods aren't done theme wise.

[Kyphael]

He has control of ALL of Ny'alotha. He's the most powerful, considering the whole reason a power imbalance existed between them in the first place because the Old Gods were fighting for control.

Funny thing is, Ny'alotha in 8.3 is just an imaginary place (something players are poking fun of.) So his territory is in all our imaginations, where is it? C'thun if allowed to return would have had control over all of Silithus and continued to expand over Kalimdor unchecked. Yogg-saron is entrenched deep within Storm Peaks and could in theory spread over all of Northrend if we had been unable to contain and kill him in Ulduar. Y'shaarj in his heyday was likely all over Pandaria. Where is Ny'alotha? Was it meant to be a part of Eastern Kingdoms? We're not clear since they turned Ny'alotha into an instanced zone with no geographical reference point. By rule of elimination, I'd say it was meant to be in Eastern Kingdoms, but Blizzard went to lazy route.

By that logic, a fully unbound N'zoth proved little more powerful than the partially shackled and weakened Yogg-saron and C'thun. We put him down in fairly anti-climatic fashion in a whimper of an encounter with The Black Empire, or Ny'alotha in particular, a shadow of its former glory.

[Aucald]

Funny thing is, Ny'alotha in 8.3 is just an imaginary place (something players are poking fun of.) So his territory is in all our imaginations, where is it? C'thun if allowed to return would have had control over all of Silithus and continued to expand over Kalimdor unchecked. Yogg-saron is entrenched deep within Storm Peaks and could in theory spread over all of Northrend if we had been unable to contain and kill him in Ulduar. Y'shaarj in his heyday was likely all over Pandaria. Where is Ny'alotha? Was it meant to be a part of Eastern Kingdoms? We're not clear since they turned Ny'alotha into an instanced zone with no geographical reference point. By rule of elimination, I'd say it was meant to be in Eastern Kingdoms, but Blizzard went to lazy route.

By that logic, a fully unbound N'zoth proved little more powerful than the partially shackled and weakened Yogg-saron and C'thun. We put him down in fairly anti-climatic fashion in a whimper of an encounter with The Black Empire, or Ny'alotha in particular, a shadow of its former glory.

Ny'alotha isn't really "imaginary," per se; it's a congruent reality that N'Zoth and his minions are trying to superimpose onto Azeroth. You can see it in the Assault zones in 8.3, and it's quite real insofar as that goes - just not completely manifest. If N'Zoth went undefeated he'd essentially stamp Ny'alotha into being and overwrite everything about Azeroth. It's a parasitic reality, and it nearly wins. All of this isn't related very well in-game, though; and it's a complicated concept to begin with.

[Kyphael]

Ny'alotha isn't really "imaginary," per se; it's a congruent reality that N'Zoth and his minions are trying to superimpose onto Azeroth. You can see it in the Assault zones in 8.3, and it's quite real insofar as that goes - just not completely manifest. If N'Zoth went undefeated he'd essentially stamp Ny'alotha into being and overwrite everything about Azeroth. It's a parasitic reality, and it nearly wins. All of this isn't related very well in-game, though; and it's a complicated concept to begin with.

If that's the case, I think they should have, and could have, represented it better in-game with phasing technology for max level characters. I know how they tried to manifest Ny'alotha in 8.3 in concept. The thing is, when I log into my 120 and look around, Elwynn Forest looks the exact same. I have to go into specific instanced content to see what might come to pass if the bad guy wins. That's equivalent to End Time if Deathwing wins and impales himself over Wyrmrest. It's all in our heads until N'zoth wins, which he won't. It's a possible apocalyptic future, but it's not real in the present.