We’re diving back underground, and that means Azerite, and Nerubians, and Old Gods. We know we’re dealing with Blade Bae and her machinations (can we even call Xal’atath a ‘her’ given she’s a cosmic entity of Void energy puppeting a dead High Elf’s corpse?), her actively manipulating either an off-shoot of the Northrend Nerubian Empire or an entirely separate group into forcing their own evolution to accelerate her own agenda.
And we know Azerite exists, and was shoved up through the crust of the planet in hundreds, if not thousands, of locations by Sargeras delivering the most violent Thousand Years of Death technique to the World Soul we’ve ever seen. Now, WoW EveryVoice himself, Chris Metzen, stated that we’re taking WoW back from the edge that Kottick/Danuser/Those Guys took WoW to trying to out-edge each other, but removing Azerite from the equation entirely seems to be too great of a retcon at this point, we spent 2 Expansions dealing with the fallout of this stuff coming into play, and given its potency and power, we’re unlikely to see it suddenly swept off the table.
Azerite is, narratively at least, likely here to stay, albeit becoming rarer and rarer, and thus more valuable, as the World Soul heals and Magni’s agents scour the world and work to return every fragment and shard to the Heart Chamber to be re-infused back into the World soul. And we saw hundreds of different individuals using Azerite during the Battle for Azerite expansion, either to empower themselves, to collect and use for their factions and masters, to sell to the highest bidders.
But if we’ve been collecting Azerite all over Kalimdor, Northrend, the Eastern Kingdoms, Pandaria, Kul’tiras, Zandalar and the Thousand Isles … what about the Azerite on the other side of the planet, the one we can’t get to because of oceans and storms that destroy almost all vessels, both above and on the waves, that attempt to cross over. What have those nations, peoples and factions on the other side of the planet being doing with all of this miracle material, having no idea what has actually happened, what caused this, why the planet was going mad beneath their feet and what the true nature of this magical substance.
We know there’s Titanic ‘Heretics’ over there. We can safely assume they know what Azerite is, and the danger of this stuff bleeding out onto the planet’s surface. But what about the other races? Would they see the end of this substance as a great disaster? Will they come searching for more, only to find us ‘wasting’ it and putting it back into the planet’s core? Would they see us as devils and monsters to be destroyed, heretics and dangerous lunatics worshipping what, to them, are entities no less malevolent and dangerous as the Black Empire? We, the Children of the Titans, aliens from other worlds, mutated mockeries of the native children of the World Soul, are claiming we’re the champions of this world? Their world?