Strictly speaking, all of the old gods are “alive” it’s just that we’ve bludgeoned them into unconsciousness.
In N’zoths case, it’s possible that some vestige of him could be active but it really depends on whether or not his consciousness exists within his power… and that someone somewhere is able to locate the dagger.
It makes me wonder if he’s just chilling in there for later or him still being in the dagger has something to do with the plot of Midnight
And if that’s the case, I wonder how the Dark Heart/Xal’atath play into that since they seem to be working in conjunction with each other for this grand scheme
He stabs N’Zoth and then the dagger immediately disappears and we immediately go into fighting the Carapace of N’Zoth and the dagger is never shown again
I mean, in a practical sense sure, but per the lore killing them would have caused azeroth the die; Like… that’s the whole point of the titan watchers and the containment efforts.
Question: Can you confirm or deny whether the old gods are dead? We’ve got a lot of people who think that we’ve only fought manifestations, and their true forms lie dormant somewhere. Are we maybe going to see more of that?
Answering: Steve Danuser
Confirms that we've killed their forms, in the cases of Yogg'Saron and C'thun despite echoes of them still seeming to permeate the world.
"If you think about our cosmology and the way that creatures of magic work as opposed to mortals, mortals die they go to the Shadowlands. If you fought the Legion, you fought demons. If you kill them on Azeroth, where do they go? Back to the Twisting Nether, which is the place where they come from."
"So if you think about other magical creatures and think what happens when you kill them on Azeroth, where do they go? There's the potential for things like that to kind of happen. We try to have this cosmology of the way things work, and that's something that you can apply to other things. And I think the old gods are an interesting case where, you know, we've defeated one version of them and who knows if another manifestation will eventually take place."
Q: Third Chronicles have information about Old Gods. Every Old God, except N’Zoth, have been beaten, but not “killed”. It is true? Are Old Gods like C’Thun or Yogg-Saron still alive?
AA: I would say we should consider them dead. However as with all things in World of Warcraft and the Warcraft’s universe dead isn’t always dead. If there was a coming of forth of the Old Gods or herald of the Old Gods come down from the great dark-- I can see that easily happening. Not saying that happening, I’m just saying death isn’t the end of the line in World of Warcraft, and it really never has been. I think that’s kind of been from your character to the world around you. There is a cycle.
So nothing in-game or even in books that would be harmed by deleting that notion and changing the tune back to, ‘what does it mean for an old god to “die” in the first place?’ Wouldn’t even be a retcon.
This was speculated all the way back in BFA, and N’zoth speaking to us during the Chromie quest has gotta be 100% intentional.
Thank you =)
Yeah he leaves the door open in case they want to make up a way to revive them but they are currently dead dead.
I believe it’s implied /explained that the keepers weren’t strong enough to kill them but just beat and imprison them, and the titans were too large to be able to kill them without damaging Azeroth. It’s like if you have an infection, you can’t just stab the infection with a knife. You have to use a more surgical strike (us, essentially functioning as an immune system) to kill the infection.
I remember there was a panel at one Blizzcon before a patch in BfA IIRC and they were like “what is that dagger Sylvanas is holding?” and were clearly trying to point it out to us.
This dagger plotline and N’Zoth has gotta be a thing lol
Thinking about it more just makes me see Danuser as more and more of a lame hack writer.
What kind of an idiot writes “he’s dead lol end of story” in an ongoing story where you need future hooks to work from? OGs being permadead shuts off so many avenues to explore them in interesting ways later.
There’s no way N’Zoth planned this grand conspiracy and is solely relying on some creepy lil guy to accidentally stumble upon him and unleash him on the world again lol
The most obvious answer to who has the dagger is Azshara.
Why, or what’s being held over her head to keep complying with N’zoth, or what she means to do with his remnant… well that’s a juicy story for later. IF she still has it by the time we meet her next.
