About the Old Gods

[torment3d]

There is not much canonical lore about the Old Gods, but I have been learning everything I can for years and here is the most solid info I can provide you...

Y'Shaarj is the only actually DEAD Old God. His death caused the birth of the Sha and almost destroyed the planet alone. This is the reasoning behind the fact that the Titans had to imprison the Old Gods rather than kill them. The most likely situation is that when they realized what happened when Y'Shaarj was killed, they understood that they needed to lock them away. The problems we face are still due to the Old God's influencing key people from their prisons. Their whispers can be heard throughout the world and the closer you are to them, the more influence they start to gain over you. This is why Neltharion went insane. As the Earth Warder, he couldn't stand up to the constant torment of the whispers of N'Zoth and that is the ultimate cause of his corruption.

[Mormolyce]

The thing about the Old Gods is their ominous nature in the Warcraft storytelling. Doesn't seem too far-fetched that Blizzard would throw canon lore about them in something subtle like an archaeology item. I'm willing to accept the possibility that these objects and NPCs will exaggerate and lie in any of their statements, it'd be interesting to find out that the old gods are really not as powerful as they are told to be, but to dismiss them as a joke simply because it isn't in a quest, book, or, ugh, Warcraft 3, is more than a little ignorant.

I think it was thrown out as a joke, however they seem to like some of the ideas in it eg, the city of Nyalotha, so they're bringing them into actual canon.

At this point, it goes beyond a simple jokey reference and has become an element of Warcraft lore inspired by Lovecraft's work. So it's a huge stretch to say that anything mentioned about them in-game can't be canon.

By that logic if they make a joke item referencing Lord of the Rings it's canon just because Lord of the Rings was an inspiration for all of Warcraft.

I would take it seriously. Your point about them potentially lying or being mistaken is a fair one, though.

Ultimately I don't think it's something Blizzard will ever really clarify - like with most other characters, they'll find an excuse to bring them back or involve bits of them in the story again if they want to, and leave it all mysterious and ambiguous or something in the meanwhile.

I'd say, wait and see. Don't assume any of that stuff is canon unless it's later confirmed, eg if we eventually go to Nyalotha.

I really doubt the "black goat with seven eyes watches from outside" is anything other than a reference though.

Death means nothing in World of Warcraft. It only means that you have one less proxy which you can use to influence the world of the living.

You mean all Cthun and Yogg have to do is run back from the Spirit Healer?

[Tylaeus]

The thing is that while you shouldn't assume something from a flavour item as absolutely canon, you shouldn't dismiss it as a joke either. Pandaren were pretty much one of the writers' wet dreams(If I'm remembering the story correctly) until relatively recently when they decided they'd make an expansion about it. They obviously got a little creative and had some genuine canonical ideas, looking at the whole Ny'alotha repetition, so chances are there is at least one thing out of that little box that Blizzard wants to expand upon later. It's something valid to speculate about, even if not all of it was made with the intention of foreshadowing or being canon.

[Depakote]

I think they might be like Ragnaros a little... Have a physical presence in Azeroth that can be destroyed but their true form resides somewhere else... N'Zoth resides in the Emerald Dream and such... I dunno lol

[GennGreymane]

Old gods can "die" But their death is not permanent. They may be able to either reconstitute like a demon or elemental or simply just be able to be rezed like we are. We have no idea what the hell happened to yoggs carcass

as for c'thun yuuuuppppp he was revived temporarily and cho'gall absorbed the essence.


I wonder if Garrosh has permanent old god powers.....

[Felrane]

Old gods can "die" But their death is not permanent. They may be able to either reconstitute like a demon or elemental or simply just be able to be rezed like we are. We have no idea what the hell happened to yoggs carcass

as for c'thun yuuuuppppp he was revived temporarily and cho'gall absorbed the essence.


I wonder if Garrosh has permanent old god powers.....

Sadly he doesn't though id love the idea but blizz made it clear that all the sha power has dried up, so the titans were fools if all it took was to drain the heart of its power to stop the sha.

[Golden Yak]

By that logic if they make a joke item referencing Lord of the Rings it's canon just because Lord of the Rings was an inspiration for all of Warcraft.

No, if they make a joke item referencing Lord of the Rings and then never mention it or anything LotR related again, it's just a fun reference.

If they put in an item referencing LotR and then add hobbits and baelrogs and have you go to Mordor and fight ring wraiths and Sauron, and then tell you there's a magical ring that makes you invisible out there, it'd be a real stretch to say that last bit is probably just them joking. Also you're probably playing Lord of the Rings - Battle for Middle Earth 2: Rise of the Witch-King by accident instead of WoW, somehow.


I'm saying it strains credulity at this point to think that all the servants of the Old Gods who talk about their dark masters, who are major and integral elements of WoW's lore, are just kidding around.

[Deleted]

i pray daily for there return.

- - - Updated - - -

Old gods can "die" But their death is not permanent. They may be able to either reconstitute like a demon or elemental or simply just be able to be rezed like we are. We have no idea what the hell happened to yoggs carcass

as for c'thun yuuuuppppp he was revived temporarily and cho'gall absorbed the essence.


I wonder if Garrosh has permanent old god powers.....

we dont kill the actual old god, we kill manifestations of them, only a small piece of there overall power, we diminish them enough to restrict there emergence.

[Deleted]

You mean all Cthun and Yogg have to do is run back from the Spirit Healer?

Nope... all they have to do is wait for blizz's writing magic to make them state that what we fought was merely their fleshly surface manifestation. The true cores of those Old Gods is yet to be found. Sounds like dickish lazy writting? Well... old gods are dickish beings. It's not so outlandish when you think about it. We dont fully understand how Old Gods trully live or exist. With the exception of C'thun and Yogg-saron we heard numerous claims in which the Old Gods were supposedly "defeated" or "slain" or "killed" or "very much dead".

The very memorable example of C'thun: A battle between a titan and C'Thun and power raged in Silithus. A titan fell (but may not have died), and an Old God had also fallen - or so it was thought. - What makes you think C'thun has been killed by us for certain? He is dead - or so it is seems. For all we know, his precious Eye of C'thun could very well be a phony mass of flesh he threw us after he got bored of toying with us through out his encounter.

Or the very Y'shaarj, He is also claimed "very much dead". Well... that didnt stop his heart from whispering and turning Garrosh into an abomination that was capable of taking out both the Alliance and Horde according to one of Visions of Time. The case with his heart can very well be similiar to what C'thun pulled off way back then when he fought that titan.

What Im trying to say is that Old Gods are probably very evil tail dropping gecko-like creatures with tentacles.

[Yarathir]

They're really dead because nobody wants to keep fighting Cthun over and over.

You're mixing up the word 'death' with the loss of plot relevance. C'Thun and Yogg-Saron are not dead. They are in the background, resurrecting as they have always done since the Titans imprisoned them, but we'll not see that, because Blizzard doesn't want us to keep fighting them. Or maybe they do. In which case we'll see them again someday.

They appear to leave behind a taint of some kind, even Cho-Gall's resurrected Cthun appears at best semi-sentient.

Cho-gall did not just resurrect C'Thun. C'Thun would have resurrected on his own eventually. All Cho-Gall tried to do is speed up the resurrection. This failed due to 'the one who shall not be named', so instead he absorbed C'Thun's powers and malformed. Cho-Gall is now dead, so the cycle begins anew, and C'Thun is once again slowly resurrecting. But we probably won't see him again before WoW ends.


Same for Yogg-Saron.


I believe the same goes for Y'Shaarj. My belief is that Y'Shaarj was never fully destroyed. Rather, his flesh was whittled away until he was a (mostly) helpless heart. Then that heart was both isolated and preserved. Technically, that meant Y'Shaarj was still present on the mortal plane, so the resurrection/reincarnation cycle could not be triggered. This basically means that Y'Shaarj would never have ever done anything again if not for Garrosh, or anyone else digging up the heart.



Garrosh has also thrown the heart in the life-giving waters of the Vale and then absorbed the power. In the end, the heart was a withered husk. This, to me, symbolizes that Y'Shaarj has passed on and left the mortal plane, and allowed for the cycle of Old God reincarnation to begin again. This does not have to be true, but it seems logical. We might not ever witness it, but Garrosh and the rest of us may have brought an Old God back from isolation.

That outside the cycle thing is from the Puzzle Box, which is a Lovecraft reference from Archaeology. Ie, it's a joke. Ie, it's not canon. Any more than Rascal Bot is canon.

Just gonna quote Gyyn on this:

How do you know it's a joke? The entire subject of the Old Gods is a reference to Lovecraft. They aren't a joke.

[Zaedria]

I'm saying it strains credulity at this point to think that all the servants of the Old Gods who talk about their dark masters, who are major and integral elements of WoW's lore, are just kidding around.

Kidding around, no, but possibly mistaken. Don't most bosses in WoW make overconfident claims about their power? When General Vezax said "I AM UNSTOPPABLE!" he really wasn't. When a minion of an Old God essentially says "my master is outside of your limited mortal understanding of life and death," that could well be much of the same overconfidence.

[Drilnos]

That outside the cycle thing is from the Puzzle Box, which is a Lovecraft reference from Archaeology. Ie, it's a joke. Ie, it's not canon. Any more than Rascal Bot is canon.

I find it astounding that people can hold the view that products of archaeology, the lore profession, designed and purpose-built to expound upon and give flavor to the lore, are non-canon. Or that something being a "joke" - and if the puzzle box is one, it's one of the least funny jokes to ever exist - is an automatic disqualifier for canon status.

As well, there's no reason to believe the Rascal Bot is inconsistent with canon. It's a robot, made by engineers, who in canon make robots. It may be a reference to the Bad Robot logo, but no character in universe is ever going to be familiar with that and therefore get the reference, so there's nothing in universe to distinguish it from any other robot engineers can produce.

[Golden Yak]

Kidding around, no, but possibly mistaken. Don't most bosses in WoW make overconfident claims about their power? When General Vezax said "I AM UNSTOPPABLE!" he really wasn't. When a minion of an Old God essentially says "my master is outside of your limited mortal understanding of life and death," that could well be much of the same overconfidence.

It could be bluster, I'd grant that. But to imply its all just a pop culture reference the developers slipped in isn't realistic at this point.

[Depakote]

Keep remembering what that thing said during the Halls of Stone thing with Brann.. The Titans couldn't kill the old gods because it would kill everything else on the planet..

[Deleted]

It's not known wether or not they come from some kind of other dimension, in fact we don't know anything about old gods and that's intended.
Some pretends the old gods we fought are nothing more but avatars, but IMO that's unlikely the case, the Old Gods have been imprisoned, burried beneath the earth, it's known that their body is A LOT larger than the "models" of the old gods we fought. If it was just an avatar, couldn't they just get back to their true form and summon the said avatar otherwhere ? I have hard times to believe that such monsters are just avatars.
There's high chances for Yogg-Saron and C'Thun not to be dead, we only fought a part of their whole body.

The titans created things, including life, for no reason at all, well the old gods destroy everything on their path... for no reason at all aswell.

Maybe they are like Mass Effect's reapers, they follow the titans and destroy what they created, they participate to the universe's order by destroying what the titans have done so it doesn't get too evolved.

They also have many mind controlling abilities, they're deceivers, maybe they are here to test planets and find out if they're worthy enough to keep living. They're not doing that on purpose but they participate to the universe's order

But my best guess is that they're here for the sake of being evil creatures we can fight and that they're just doing this for the lulz as many villains.

[ChildeRoland]

That's a tough one. The Titan Ra fought and killed an Old God, who upon it's death breathed out the 7 Sha and Ra "fell". The Titans then decided that they couldn't kill the OGs, as it would cause irreparable damage to Azeroth and it's denizens. The Titan's believed that heroes would rise up among the races of Azeroth, and they would be able to destroy/kill/slay the OGs.

I think the Titan's viewed their method of OG removal as using a Bazooka, and the future heroes would be more like a scalpel. IMO, Cthun & Yogg-Saron are dead. Y'Shaarj is obviously dead. N'zoth is the only other one we know the name to, and it's not yet been destroyed. Supposedly, there are others.

Doesn't the existence of Algalon and everything we learned about the titans' creations and the Curse of Flesh kinda go against that the titans wanted the races to be champions?

[tss]

Doesn't the existence of Algalon and everything we learned about the titans' creations and the Curse of Flesh kinda go against that the titans wanted the races to be champions?

Think of it like this: your data is so trashed that an antivirus can't do a damn thing, and the best thing to do is wipe the drive.

[Mawnix]

Think of it like this: your data is so trashed that an antivirus can't do a damn thing, and the best thing to do is wipe the drive.

This is such an amazing comparison.

[Lastlivingsoul]

Difficult to say.

C'Thun's carcass was left rotting in Ahn'Qiraj, and still contained enough dark power to mutate Cho'Gall from a regular two-headed ogre to this monstrosity, as well as whisper insanity to anyone who got too close to it.

Y'Shaarj was said to have truly died, but his heart still oozed black blood and corrupted everything aound it, and when the heart was revived in the life-giving waters of Pandaria his consciousness appeared to revive somewhat as well, whispering to people and so forth. In the end though Y'Shaarj appears to have disappeared entirely after Garrosh drew all of his heart's power into himself and then was defeated.

There's references to them being outside the cycle of life and death, and destroying their body just seems to slow them down until they can rebuild it or find another one.

If that's the case, then who knows what C'Thun and Yogg-Saron are up to at the moment.

Are they dead yes, does their corpse still stink, yes, if you wipe your face with the Lich King's Jock Strap will you become a zombie? Yes. If Cho'gall smears Old God blood on him in the middle of an Old God revival will he have 20/200 visions most likely.

Ragnaros was able to retreat back to his own elemental plane of existence to escape death, C'thun and Yogg had a physical form and all of the limitations that came with it. Perhaps thats how the Titans were able to chain them up.

Y'shaarj on the other hand left Elemental-like Shadows along with a disembodied heart. It could be theorized that any old God that hasn't been killed/chained/possibly-materilized by the Titans may be floating around us in another dimension. However anything we can or have already put the boot to is just a massive infected grease spot on Azeroth.