The New Archives Quest

Blizzard wrote the words and put them front and center for us. It is not subtle.

Eonar is infused with lots of life magic. And notably Argus was influenced, changed and made into what he was by a titan.

Not sure how you think that is remotely relevant. You are arguing that Blizzard literally saying Azeroth magic is not Titan magic is interpretation. Then you argue Magni hearing other powerful beings, titans, means Azeroth is also a titan. Just wow. FYI, nothing ever said Magni could only hear titans.

There must always be a Lich King!” Blizzard said, as they faded into the spirit realm, and so it always was because they said it directly to us and that means it has to be the case.

I WILL NEVER SERVE!” Blizzard said, staring down the Jailer that they definitely had not served the entire time.

I’ll spell it out very simply (again): Nozdormu saying “This is not the titan’s magic” =/= “Worldsouls aren’t Titans, confirmed fam.” That’s Nozdormu, who was infused by the Titans originally, saying “this magic is different than that.” Which isn’t new information. We know Azeroth is unique. We don’t know how/why. Maybe she’s a First One, a Proto-Titan, a Mommy Titan, not a Titan at all. That remains to be seen. If you want to stake everything on a single utterance by an NPC that can be interpreted in more than one way as Word of God, go for it. Maybe you’ll end up being correct, even! Maybe you won’t. We’ll see.

And if they don’t take the steps to convincingly explain away why Argus happened the way it/he did, or why someone capable of speaking to an (alleged) Not-Titan can magically speak to Titans in the same capacity, I’ll be in here mocking it relentlessly like every other dogturd development I’ve suffered through since Metzen left the building.

Metzen is in the building now, you can’t use that excuse anymore

It is a true statement whether the story improves or not.

Because it’s not about ideas, it’s about sources.
I would watch the video nonetheless, but you need to share a link.

I think this really says it all. You want everything you don’t like to be retconned/ignored/changed. So, you read into things, stretch things and ignore what you don’t like. That is why you view ‘Magni talked to someone else’ as definitive while you call them literally saying ‘this isn’t from titans’ as speculation.

I get you don’t like the narrative. And nobody says you have to. And you can hope they change it. But there is no evidence that is going to happen. And they seem to be doubling down on it. Your hope is not reality. I hope you can enjoy the arc Metzen and team lay out for the saga, though that hope is likely not going to be reality. But I am done trying to get you to accept what is happening. Good day.

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Metzen himself even said he’s going to let the writing team actually do their job and he isn’t going to have his hand in every single decision making process like he did before he left.

People are going to be disappointed when things don’t change as radically as they hoped when Metzen came back

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Yep. Especially since it seems all the people looking to have Metzen ‘save wow story telling’ have different ideas, some radically different, about what changes that means. It is like people have scripted out what they think Metzen is going to do. And everyone has a different script.

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wym ‘are going to be??’

Pyromancer YouTube I can’t post links I’m not smart enough. again lore speculation videos are not ones he’s playing the game. Not a fan of those style videos. Purely just discussing and going over everything. All sorts of rabbit holes. I’d never have thought I’d be team sargy but have been since at least legion now. Was sad to see him take a break during shadowlands after his meltdown lol.

Seems to be a group of people who have set themselves up for a dump truck worth of disappointment because they assumed, very very wrongly mind you, that WoW was suddenly going to get a massive rewrite because Metzen was back

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“You don’t agree with me, so you are [exaggerated caricature].”

It ain’t difficult—if they set up and pay off something, I’ll respond positively. If they rug pull and subvert expectations, I’ll respond negatively.

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The funny thing about this is that, in BfA, none of the Azerite essence abilities deal arcane or some kind of Titan/Order form of damage. Every damaging ability, except one, deals Fire damage. The one exception is a shadow damage ability. I don’t remember seeing anything arcane in connection with Azerite since it became a thing, which is odd if Azeroth’s blood is arcane. Again, just as an example, we’ve seen heavily arcane infused areas. Big purple crystals and the like, purple everywhere. Titan Order magic doesn’t resemble that, and anything involving Azeroth resembles neither.

It’s a major plot point right now, so of course they haven’t just come out and said anything directly. But there is way more out there than just one cut scene at the end of DF. In all honesty, I think they have created some contradictory things recently because the story’s narrative has changed since 8 years ago when Chronicles 1 came out. Heck, once we got the whole “It was written from the Titans’ perspective” stuff, and especially when they made a new cosmology chart from the Brokers in Shadowlands (I feel like people sometimes forget that one), you can’t take any of it as definitive. So I just go by the breadcrumbs they give us and try to piece it together.

Most of the contradictions I see I chalk more up to the narrative getting more complex as years go by, and the impossibility of making every detail square with later stuff a decade later. Your only choice there is to retcon stuff or just leave it contradictory I guess.

I don’t think they are evil per se. I think Blizzard has just hit everything with the morally grey bat. By morally grey, I mean they went down the road of “everything needs to be balanced.” Firim’s questline in Zereth Mortis was where I feel like they tried to dive to the heart of it. The cosmological forces need to be in balance, and it will be bad if the Titans gain influence over the Prime Worldsoul because the balance will be tipped in Order’s favor. Heck, if ANY force gets/uses Azeroth, it breaks the balance.

Firim’s writings didn’t suggest any of the cosmological forces necessarily know that. They are all just doing their thing. But, winning at doing there thing isn’t necessarily good.

Is that really true? Doesn’t the current lore kind of point to there being a Zereth for every force, and the First Ones created the beings there? The Eternal Ones of the Shadowlands were created in Zereth Mortis, so it isn’t a stretch to think there is a “Zereth Ordus” or something similar where Amun’thul came from.

It’s worth noting that, as far as I remember, the Eternal Ones didn’t know that they were created there. They had vague ideas of the First Ones, but they weren’t exactly aware of the true nature of them or Zereth Mortis.

It is also worth noting that it doesn’t look like their creation is exclusive to the Zereths. Pelagos took Zovaal’s spot as Arbiter outside of creation in a Zereth. Although the key part of the Arbiter still has its origin there (I forget if the thing in the Arbiter’s chest had a name).

Eh, Old God half-truths :wink: Those are all possibilities. I forgot about the arrow line, seems to me to line up pretty well with Alleria (arrow finds its mark) and the defeat of Xalatath (the last fetter will fall away). Old God riddles are the most fun.

Your statement reminds me of the fun theory from back in the day of Azeroth being influenced by Azathoth in Lovecraft’s works. Blizzard has obviously had a lot of Lovecraftian influence.

That’s an interesting observation, and one I’ve also wondered about. It’s indeed true that azerite, with its blue-golden appearance and properties, is quite different from arcane (they share some stuff with light/holy). And it’s described as crystallised blood or life essence of Azeroth itself. This surely contradicts the source’s claim that the ancient Well of Eternity was entirely arcane and fed from Azeroth… unless there was a shift at some point, as with Argus or the unnamed void corrupted titan in the making who was crushed by Sargeras.

The Well of Eternity has been destroyed with the war of the ancients. There are only two successors: Nordrassil and the Sunwell. Nordrassil’s purpose is to dampen the power of the Well below. The Sunwell, on the other hand, has been infused with light since BC.
It had an effect on the blood elves: Can it affect Azeroth as well? Is this perhaps the reason why azeroths ‘blood’ became azerite? Midnight takes place in Quel’Thalas, after all. If the Void ‘flips’ the Sunwell, it would have a huge impact.

Of course, this is only speculation.
And I’m not sure how the fire part fits in there either.

This may be true as well, though. This often happens when you have different writers with different visions. Too many cooks spoil the broth.
And it doesn’t help that Chronicles itself has changed a lot.

I feel like this is one of the biggest tells of the direction things are going. The art choices are very deliberate. It is similar to when we fought Argus, which is where I think we got the first new spell effects for “death magic” that we’d never seen before. A lot of times those seem more thought through, since so much of the game is visual.

That’s really likely the crux of it. There is a general narrative direction, and the writers then have the admittedly difficult task of squaring it with 20+ years of lore. I know people think the writing and narrative is trash, but I give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

When franchises get this big and this deep, it’s not uncommon to have consultants and “historians” whose sole job is to the know the lore inside and out to make sure new things are square with old thing. A good example is the Okudas and Star Trek, who do a lot of consulting to make sure all of the technology and stuff is consistent. But, even with Star Trek, Klingons suddenly had forehead ridges and you just have to figure out how to connect the dots “in universe” somehow. And even with that, it took until Enterprise to explain it thoroughly.

I don’t actually expect Azeroth to go Void and be an antagonist, just to be clear. I feel like she is being set up to be on our side, as we seem to be the only people actually trying to help her. My working theory is a soup consisting of Xal’atath being a naaru and Dimensius being summoned on Azeroth (Midnight).

Just to add to the above, Azerite wasn’t blue-gold until after Sargeras stabbed the planet. Azerite was likely blue-gold before the Titans meddled, too, but it was just gold until BFA. That could imply Sargeras’ goal was to break the Worldcore surrounding Azeroth’s Worldsoul.

Wasn’t azerite introduced with BFA?

In-game, yes, but goblins found Azerite before the events of BFA. It was liquid gold and hardened into red. After Sargeras stabbed the planet, it reverted to how Azerite looks now.

You’re right about the goblins. Gallywix had Azerite on top of his cane, which was red, but no one knew that it was Azerite yet. It changed color after Legion. As for why:

“To protect it, we had the earthen construct the Worldcore–a vast chamber at the heart of the world. There, the Worldsoul will slumber, with only the titans to influence it.”

I kind of thought the color change was more about it being inactive/active. The Titans actively tried to keep Azeroth in a sort of slumber with the Worldcore so they could do their influencing, but Azeroth has been fighting it. The Manifold got damaged in the Sundering, so I suppose her slumber hasn’t been constant. Sargeras woke her up though, for sure.