Do we REALLY need to demonize the Titans, Blizz?

Lore Story Forum
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Dragonflight seems to be trying to make the Titans look bad. Razageth’s statement “You forced the Titans’ edicts upon us all. You betrayed the world that gave us life and when we dared resist you cast us out.” is being treated like a smoking gun, even though we have little basis for it.

But… what if Razageth is LYING? Why should we trust this johnny-come-lately giant Proto-Drake? Because of those Titan books? Books written by the Keepers, not the Titans themselves. If Deathwing used the Void to defeat Razageth, shouldn’t she have seen that the Titans had a legitimate point whether or not she thinks they went too far?

Not to mention Blizzard devs use weasel words to try and convince fans that the Titans covertly forced the Dragon Aspects to serve them. Which raises another issue. Namely, why would Razageth be angry at the Dragon Aspects if the Titans tricked and forced the Dragon Aspects to serve them? These retcons raise more questions than answers. They provide more issues than solutions.

I’m fine with Titans having a tendency towards collateral damage (Reorigination, Algalon). I’m fine with Titan servants going on power trips (Odyn). I’m even fine with the Titans making mistakes. But I think trying to make the Titans bad for some writer’s pathological obsession of “MoRallY GrEY” is a bad idea.

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The writers didn’t have much work to do to try and convince us that the Titans have a tendency towards douchebaggery. We had guessed so already. I mean, Odyn of all persons was appointed Prime Designate, and Chronicles, even though it was specifically designed to make the Titans look good, really just showed that they were but the main agents of Order in the Great Dark Beyond and that they systematically feel the urge to completely reshape planets according to their standards so that MAYBE one of their own may awake in a few million years. Also reserving the right to reset the planet and annihilate all lifeforms on it if things don’t go the way they want.

Ultimately though. The reason why the Titans can’t be those all-benevolent, all-power creator deities is simple, and it falls to narrative balance : they’re primarily associated with the Alliance. That the very best beings in the cosmos as well as the ones whom we must thank for every single thing in existence on Azeroth also happen to be the progenitors of 75% of the Alliance cast would be problematic. WoW is a multi-perspective game at its core, and the factions can’t boil down to Good vs Evil or Strong vs Weak. A semblance of moral relativism is just necessary.

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Uff, ähm, hard disagree here.

The faction had nothing to do with it, from the titan pov is the alliance worse then the horde

Humans = cursed vyrkul = failure
Dwarfs = cursed earthen = failure
Gnom = cursed mechas = failure.

I mean, we should not drag titans in the faction nonsense bs

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:confused: … I wasn’t calling for the Titans to be all-benevolent or all-powerful. As I said;

In hindsight, Odyn was probably the first part of this plan to retcon the Titans into baddies. My wariness of this story beat has nothing to do with the majority of the Titan’s offspring going Alliance.

If the Titans were pro-Horde I’d still have the same objections… oh, wait. Remember the Orcs AND Ogres are Titan creations, being devolved Breakers, who were made by Aggramar. Plus, wasn’t the goblins’ intelligence caused by a Titan substance they used to make their “Kaja Cola”?

And more fool us if we just lap up every retcon Blizzard makes and bleat for more.

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Ulduar has Algalon attempt to Re-Originate Azeroth in the name of the Titans so this demonizing of the Titans has been going on since WotLK.

The irony is that the Titans’ plans are so inscrutable that not even their Prime Designate whom they’ve chosen knows what their grand design is what with him objecting to their uplifting of the Dragons and vacating his post.

With them knowing of Nozdormu’s fate to become Murozond it looks like they have a master plan they needed to keep from Odyn yet were blindsided by Sargeras siding with Disorder.

The Titans were retconned in WotLK with their personality(Order-Fanatics) not changing since then.

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Stuff like this really makes me wonder why people pretend like Dragonflight is “good storytelling”. It’s really not.

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Doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the Alliance races descend from the Titans. Which inevitably makes Titanhood mostly an Alliance thing, with the Titan-related narratives and the Alliance narratives being sometimes quite intertwined (the prime example being that of the Dwarves of course, but this is also true for the Gnomes and Mechagnomes for instance), the same way the Light is mostly an Alliance thing. The result being that I, as a Horde player (and I think many others would agree with this) don’t feel super involved when the narrative at had focuses on the Titans, and I don’t feel super attracted to Titan aesthetics - otherwise I would not have gone Horde.

Sure, but those facts are but lines taken from a book. They never matter or even get mentioned in game. Technically Orcs and Ogres and “Titanforged” in a somewhat similar fashion to the Azeroth races, but the Titans hold no place whatsoever in their culture and their mythology, because ultimately all Aggramar did was infuse a big rock with magic and leave.
Same with the Goblins. The Mimiron thing is really but a line in a somewhat unreliable book. No one really cares about it.

I’m not saying you’re pushing for Titan supremacy and I get why you don’t like that. I’m just saying that my perspective as a Horde player is that reducing the Titan’s overbearing greatness and influence established by prior lore feels right.

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Objective,the titans take creatures with cool designs and make them more boring.

They deserve to be demonised.

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The titans have been depicted as amoral since Wrath, which is also when they started being depicted at all, beyond “powerful being, has name”. We were never told, nor were we led to believe, that the Titans were a race of benevolent space gods; rather, we were told that they found planets in chaos and made them ordered. We were told they disliked the old gods and when they learned the oldies couldn’t be killed, locked them up with a planetary self-destruct put in place in the event their corruption expanded. Heck, we even learned there was an acceptible degree of corruption; the Curse of Flesh was fine enough.

Later revelations backed this; the Titans have always, consistently been depicted as amoral. When we learned why they Ordered worlds, it wasn’t because Order is better for living, sentient beings; it’s because they were creatures of Order. Their interest in Azeroth wasn’t because they were benevolent; it’s because a baby Titan lived inside the planet. When they opposed the old gods, it was never about protecting the living mortals on the planet, but protecting the baby Titan inside it.

When we found out the big moment that turned the Pantheon against Sargeras, it wasn’t because he was murdering life as we understood it; it’s because he killed a baby Titan that was on the verge of going Void.

The idea that the Titans had the Dragonflights force Order on to unwilling proto-drakes is perfectly aligned with what we already knew; the Titans forced Order on to the entire planet and all things living upon it that weren’t Old Gods and their direct servants. Presumably, forcing a whole planet to be Ordered, along with all beings living on it, would always have included the proto-dragons. This isn’t shocking, nor is it new.

All this new stuff has really revealed is that there were people who did not like being forcefully Ordered against their will, which… Really shouldn’t be shocking at all? Like, we already knew the titans didn’t do a strawpoll to see if the world’s inhabitants would be okay with being Ordered. We never had even hints that the Ordering had an opt out option.

All this new information tells us is that the titans are still as amoral as they have always been.

You cannot be morally grey if you never obeyed, followed or acknowledged mortal morality. The Titans are as morally grey as a hurricane.

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Showing a group to have legitimate flaws is not the same as demonizing.
2 cents

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I feel like it’s in the name, Titans.

They’ve always been Greco-Roman themed, albeit they make Egyptian and Norse constructs as well. Greek gods and Roman gods were never GOOD, they were just people with power.

Yes, they often took an interest in mortals but they would push their own champions forward or do what they wanted.

I’ve never seen the titans as good, just operating on their own system. Going back to early Warcraft books Deathwing hated his burden and I recall even Noz in one book buckling under the pressure of the timelines. Sargeras has always been a fallen Titan but we’ve also seen just how much of a failure they can be with their constant constructs that get turned.

That doesn’t make them EVIL, per say, but they are definitely not the big good either. They are basically a faction with their own goals.

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They are just putting everyone on the same playing field basically. Each cosmic force has a compulsion, a specific tick it cannot help but express. For Chaos it is to rampage and destroy, for Void is it so share the Thousand Truths and the erratic mutation that results in, for Light it is to enforce the Path of the Light even at the cost of free will, etc…

In the case of Order well… it cannot abide messy, or uncontrolled change. Balance and structure must be maintained. The titans also think big, for beings that can cut planets in half the denizens of most worlds are ants. You do not worry about how the ants are going to do when you do some landscaping that happens to wreck their nest.

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Are they really being demonized though?

Just seems like there’s a bit more going on here, which I’m appreciative of. What’s good or bad is usually a matter of perspective. The Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters onboard.

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Poor analogy. A hurricane can’t think or make choices. The Titans can.

The Titans were introduced in Warcraft 3, not Wrath. I will concede Algalon as the first retcon, but still a retcon. Considering what the Old Gods seek to do and have done, the Titans have good reason to dislike them, don’t you think?

The Titans were benign in Warcraft 3, it was Wrath where the retcons there began. The retcon of a baby Titan in Azeroth didn’t emerge until around Cata’s release.

The Pantheon tried to talk Sargeras down, he turned his back on them and their big confrontation didn’t come until after he’d started to form the Burning Legion AND told them he believed the solution to the Void Lords was to kill all life in the universe. Check your lore.

The creation of the Dragon Aspects was a voluntary uplifting until this retcon came calling it manipulated.

All this new stuff is unfortunately being lapped up by fans for some inane reason, to the point that they even deny it’s a retcon. If you like the new lore, you do you, but at least be honest and acknowledge it’s a series of retcons.

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Is it really a retcon if what we’re getting is new information about the titans? That, you know, they might not be the good guys some people thought they were?

I mean, these are the same dudes that wiped entire planets clean of life because said life deviated from their vision of a perfect order

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Putting everyone on the same playing field cheapens the conflict and the story. Why fight if every outcome is equally bad?

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I did not say they were introduced in Wrath. I said they were nothing more than names and beings with vaguely understood events attributed to them until Wrath.

Algalon is not a retcon. Algalon’s existence did not change or remove anything about previous Titan lore, because there was no previous Titan lore beyond “they exist and Ordered the world”.

This does not contradict anything I’ve said.

Where has it been called manipulation?

None of this new stuff actually goes against any pre-established lore, therefore it’s not a retcon. You have confused your personal image of what the Titans were with what we actually knew about the Titans.

We were never told the Titans were benign. We were never made to believe that they were champions of good. We were told they shaped and ordered the world, and that is still the canon.

You are misusing the word retcon. The correct term would be expansion. There is no retroactive change to the continuity going on; the previously established past events remain the same.

Check your lore, Thad.

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And that is wrong. And you’re back to the quote-mining by ignoring relevant swathes of my comments. To quote the relevant lore;

“The Titans, ruled by an elite sect known as the Pantheon, brought order to a hundred million worlds scattered throughout the Great Dark Beyond during the first ages of creation. The benevolent Pantheon, seeking to safeguard their structured worlds, was ever vigilant against the threat of attack from the vile, extra-dimensional entities of the Twisting Nether. The Nether, an ethereal dimension of chaotic magics that connected the myriad worlds of the universe together, was home to an infinite number of malefic, demonic beings, who sought only to destroy life and devour the energies of the living universe. The pure-hearted, altruistic Titans, unable to conceive of evil or wickedness in any form, struggled to find a way to end the demons’ constant threat.”

Warcraft III Manual, page 39.

Note the words “benevolent”, “pure-hearted”, “altruistic”.

Your words framed the Titans as only turning on Sargeras after he killed an unborn Titan. They also turned on him because he was trying to kill all life in the universe. Either your choice of words was taken out of context or you’re being disingenuous.

Look up Danuser’s interview where he refers to the dragons as being “influenced” by Titan waters.

Check your lore again, Alynsa. Starting with this; https://www.docdroid.net/jQycrnH/warcraft-iii-manual-pdf#page=39

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Actually Thad?

That’s you.

You have ignored the majority of my argument to fixate on a single part, and to fixate on a misconstrued version of said argument. You are quote-mining.

I’m addressing each part of your argument.

Stop quote-mining.

My words correctly highlight the specific moment they turned against Sargeras. You are the one framing that moment as the sole cause and blaming me for the argument you created.

This is another bad argument tactic you use. Stop doing that.

Influence is not manipulation.

Check your English, Thad.

Yeah, you do that frequently when you disagree with someone. Stop doing that too.

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That’s wrong and you know it. For one, as of this comment of mine, you haven’t even acknowledged the Warcraft 3 sourcebook I quoted and linked.

Trying to silence the dissenting voice for expressing wrongthink, eh? :smirk: Your attitude comes across as “Don’t question the new lore, just shut up, take the new lore and copium, then shut up some more”.