For those that dont know, Emet-selch is Final Fantasy 14s main antagonist for 4 expansions and plotting in the background for the base game (before the reboot). His story is dragged across story telling for almost 8 years and everything building up to him resulted in one of the most satisfying moments ever.
During shadowbringers he was in your face every 10th quest and rubbing it in your face that you couldnt kill him and if you did, it wouldnt matter any way as it was all played out already. While the premise for him is a multi dimensional force he is still a major villain arch in the final fantasy 14 story and basically dictated the game after his own death.
Nozdormu/Murozond are a link. They have time travel, they know the future, if not one then the other knows more… (i honestly think Nozdormu was ever a thing and murozond was the result of the titans change to proto drake form). We know his death, we have witnessed it, but we know its not the end of the story as we dont know what era Murozond we killed is.
Is Murozond going to be the face of the warcraft universe going forward villain wise?
I don’t think WoW can produce a villain of Emet Selch’s quality.
Preach and Ion apparently discussed Emet Selch during their interview at Blizz HQ. I think Ion would LOVE to do something like Selch, but how would that play out in WoW?
They really don’t have much luck with antagonists. The deepest one we ever had was Edwin Van-Cleef and that was 20 years ago and used as a throwaway set piece in a leveling dungeon only half the playerbase even had real access to.
i mean a simple change to a character, changes everything… Nozdormu was corrupted by the old gods soon after becoming a dragon from a proto drake. Suddenly everything he has been working for has been for the “murozond” aspect. Right? Wouldnt that make you question everything involving him and the bronze flight?
or
Nozdormu is Murozonds Prison… Murozond is the 5th old god. He is becoming increasingly unstable over the past 10years and he knows Murozond will get out, just not when. He cant see that future.
My personal take is that the following will happen.
1 - We know Kairoz is going to kill Soridormi. This has not happened yet.
2 - When Kairoz kills Soridormi, Nozdormu is going to do time things to try stopping it.
3 - Kairoz is almost certainly the source of the Infinite Dragonflight “I will create infinite armies” and this is probably all according to plan.
4 - Kairoz is based on Kairos from 40k, who also sees the past and future and hatches insanely overcomplicated plans.
5 - So Nozdormu does his time stuff, trying to save Soridormi, and turns infinite. Then that big place the Bronze dragons hang out that looks exactly like a raid entrance becomes a raid entrance… and we go in to try securing the timeline where Soridormi dies in a twisted reflection of the quest to make sure Taretha dies.
Well, if Blizzard does choose to Emet-Selch one of their characters, Murozond is probably one of the worst choices.
We know Murozond is corrupted by the Old Gods, who we know are bent on the destruction of all life and the universe, and are impossible to convince away from this path. This prevents him from having any sort of Endwalker Emet-Selch change of heart… because Emet-Selch wasn’t corrupted (well, he was, but in a different sense), nor was he a single-minded construct of a higher power.
We know Murozond is killed by us eventually, which we only did because he was, once again, threatening to tear apart all of time and space. This prevents any change of heart he might be shoehorned to have not meaningful, because we know he’s going to go back to being a one-note Chaotic Evil destroyer. With Emet-Selch, though we did time travel to interact with him, we time traveled to the past to witness his motivations, instead of to the end of his story. This allowed him to be freely developed as a character without worrying that it will all have to tie back in eventually.
We know Murozond’s motivation is, as said before, to just be a Chaotic Evil destroyer. The Infinite’s whole thing is to destroy the timeways as an affront to the efforts of the Titans, and we know that this would cause the complete destruction of life as we know it on Azeroth due to similar experiences we’ve had with Bronze dragon mishaps. Unlike the Ascians, who were eventually explained to be vengeful ancients wishing to reclaim their old world, we already know that that the only motivation the Old Gods and anything they corrupt has is to destroy and bring about the destruction of the universe. Unless, of course, every cosmological entity we’ve interacted with thusfar has lied to us about the nature of the Void and the Light.
To make a villain like Emet-Selch, they would need to have said antagonist be an active part of your leveling experience to the point where you empathize and understand them. And I mean actually empathize, not the cringe way WoW players tend to do where they just see a villain make 1 good point then declare them 100% justified in all their actions.
Because WoW tends to keep all their characters, but especially their villains, in a noticeable arms length away from the players I honestly don’t think it’s possible.
So Kairoz is super interesting to add to the situation. We know Murozond is an absolute, We know he exists. So there for we Know Kairoz killed Soridormi, Kairoz is dead in our timeline so he did it either before we met him or while we met him. The story shows he had done it while we were talking to him in pandaland, but did not in any way say when it was happening, or if it had happened.
So to throw that into the mix puts a few things onto the table. Soridormi is alive in our current time line, but is that our Soridormi? is it a past one? an alternate one?
The time travel quests in dragonflight main story show that Azmerloth (which was caused by us technically) had its own version of Galakron’d and its own version of Deathwing with Deathwingurlugull. So if deathwing and galakrond are there, all of the aspects are also Murlocs, Meaning Nozdormu murloc also has time travel and his own Sorindormi. Meaning its own Kairoz, and its own events leading up to its own Murozond.
Which in turn, if Kairoz had his own Murloc version ment they had their own old gods because he wouldnt exist if murozond didnt come to be, which he was corrupted by the old gods.
Id also like to point out that Cookie, Old Murk-eye, Murkdeep and Grrvrgul the conqueror all villains in our timeline but in Azmerloth are Heroes, showing that changes have happened somewhere within the story that they altered the reality.
So throwing that on the table it puts the soridormi thing into a weird situation where if Soridormi knows she is the key to Murozond not being a thing, did she time travel forward to avoid her own death to stop Murozond. Did all of these other Murloc ones do the same.
So what if one of the realities Soridormi isnt killed but Murozond is instead, she would be free to save another reality right? Maybe ours?
I honestly do not believe Blizzard writers are capable of writing a coherent story over the span of multiple expansions because their story is never completely in the game.
Sylvanas’ character is an example of this. In FFXIV, at the end of each patch or expansion, there is a conclusion in addition with a cliffhanger that wraps up X and leads us toward Y.
In WoW, you get A, D, F, Q and maybe W and later on they write a book that explains B, C, E, G… Then there are class/faction respective quests that explain H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O… so on…
Once we finally get to Y, Z is never presented and no one knows what is going on. Blizzard is abhorrent with large scale, multiexpansion story telling.