I feel like with Deathwing they just wanted a giant monster villain but had to fancy it up.
Gee wouldn’t that be fun? Just a big old monster that rampages around Azeroth and we have to collect the seven mcguffins to eventually beat him in a raid that’ll require dragonriding and the new and improved ground mount system to work.
And in the meanwhile you just have everywhere from Orgrimmar to Boralus occasionally assaulted with
al’akir. of the four elemental lords, having two who were temperamentally allied with us and two who were temperamentally adversarial to us i felt gave elementals a neat balance lore-wise and made for more interesting shaman class fantasy for weirdos like me who enjoy that sort of thing. but then there’s pretty much just one elemental lord we fight often, and the other hostile one just shows up for the same expansion he does in. pretty disappointing, i think.
incidentally, i also think therazane is hugely underutilized; she could pretty much entirely fit the bill of the shu’halo ‘earth mother’ and then there’s just absolutely no development on that possible connection. like none of the cows even thought of it. what gives?
Considering the Ethereals just stole the Dark Heart from Gallywix in Undermine and how Locus Walker seems to recognize Xal’atath who received the staff Voidsong from Dimensius according to the Transmog’s description I wouldn’t be surprised if Locus Walker is Dimensius in which case he will seem like a master of deception whose signs of deception were only hinted at during War Within when we hear Locus Walker telling Void Elves to accept everything the Void has to offer.
Dragonsoul might be the one stretch of WoW’s history that was worse than Shadowlands. Maybe.
It is odd that Deathwing was a big political schemer before, but after resurfacing is just like “I will randomly poop fire and yell about it across the world, oh no you found me, now I will end the world by channeling a spell I probably should have when none of you were chasing me!”
Alexstrasza, her left eye drifting slowly off camera, “Our grand purpose is fulfilled.”
Their grand purpose of saving Azeroth. From one of their own. Who wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t been given tremendous power. Which would have been excusable if Dragon Flight didn’t go out of it’s way to establish that he had pretty much always been a sweaty lunatic.
Age of Mortals wasn’t a mistake.
3/5 Aspects have taken a swing at destroying Azeroth. Odyn would be easier to hate if they’d stop proving him right.
The Spell is basically him shattering the World Pillar while wedged inside of it.
He basically was banking on 6 Failsafes:
In the end Deathwing as you mentioned left too much into the hands of his lackeys and creations(thanks to being tricked into wearing Shadowflame Elementium Armor recently made in Aberrus driving him insane) and passed up the opportunity to destroy the World Pillar himself ensuring the Hour of Twilight failed because of the combined efforts of the Players and the Nathrezim.
The Nathrezim’s involvement is confirmed by the Lords of Dread Encounter in the Sepulcher of the First Ones: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Lords_of_Dread#Trivia
The Players later went to Pandaria to aid in the Horde and Alliance War while Mal’Ganis focused on Water Reading in the guise of Wise Mari sending the Water Spirits into such Doubt they succumbed to the Sha forcing Mal’Ganis to fake his death at our hands in order to avoid drawing suspicion(and yet Wise Mari reappeared to do Pet Battles on Timeless Isle comedically defeating the whole point of faking his death) then initiated the Mogu uprising imitating Xiln the Mountain’s form taking on the name Xin the Weaponmaster.
Mal’Ganis was so good at cowing the Mogu as Xin the Weaponmaster that Xiln the Mountain didn’t dare show his face until BfA as a Rare.
At the same time Mal’Ganis was doing all this Kin’tessa decided to dredge up one of her old disguises from when bringing Archimonde into the Legion: Talixae Flamewreath. She used the guise when visiting Suramar when it was controlled by the Legion(the Legion had no idea that the Nathrezim weren’t native to the Nether so she a Nathrezim so untainted by the Fel that she still had Red Eyes couldn’t go as herself now could she?).
After she was banished back where she came from Mal’Ganis decided to delay us so that Sargeras could arrive on Azeroth ensuring the Prophecy of the Sword he espoused to Sylvanas came true.
You can see a pattern in Mal’Ganis’s methods: distract us long enough for the real threat to be in position so that the desired effect happens.
Kin’tessa later went to Tol Dagor to assist Ashvane whom she later informed Sylvanas was a likely tool in their plan for using N’Zoth to send as many Souls to the Maw. Sure enough Ashvane defected from the Horde and joined Azshara.
Mal’Ganis decided to aid a Draenei Monk in the guise of a Fire Mage during the Battle of Dazar’alor in order to maximize casualties in the War.
Mal’Ganis and Kin’tessa later initiated their Shadowlands schemes and were felled by our hands. Whether they are deader than dead or not is unknown though if alive they must be mortified by us knowing all their guises! Mal’Ganis better hope we don’t stumble upon his Wise Mari persona(which he seems to have had use for considering he used it after faking his death) again as this time we now know why he is alive despite supposedly killing himself and won’t let him walk away until we have reduced him to a suit of armor.
there is a rogue succubus demon in feralas questing that sees she will see you again or something then never does
Deathwing was a fantastic schemer villain in the books featuring him and I’ve always hated that he was absolutely nothing like that in the actual game.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. I have a feeling the entire point of that stupid cosmic chart was to have us fight cosmic threats representing every one of the forces.
(I sometimes think that cosmic chart was the worst thing to happen to WoW’s lore.)
I think this way more than just sometimes
Can we just fight like a bandit lord or something? What about a pirate king? I’ll even take a Lich. Just something that isn’t billions of years old and the size of the moon, please.
Nope, you’ll fight your cosmic giants and like it! Now, sit down and eat your porridge. If you’re good, maybe as a treat you can also fight a cosmic pirate king as a miniboss.
I feel like Aszhara was built up and then just quietly forgotten about. I don’t think anyone is even trying to find her.
I remember when the chart was all brand new and everyone else around me was all “this is so awesome” and my very first thought was “oh no…”
Because as soon as I saw it and saw the name Void Lords, I knew I wasn’t looking at a cool mythological cosmos. I knew I was looking at a kill list. And I knew that WoD would be the last expansion where my character would be fighting a semi-reasonable threat.
A titan. The last old god. A “titan++”. At least Dragonflight just gave me an apocalypse dragon, but it looks like that was just a break between god-like beings, cuz here we are again.
To add to this, drawing on Centaur lore of Kalimdor, there’s a whole area in Ohn’ahran Plains with Mountain Giants which are basically Earth Elementals in the shape of Therazane + her children.
It’s the same zone that has an Emerald Dream portal with Keepers and Dryads. We all know that the Kalimdor Centaur were born of Princess Theredras x Zaetar…so at the time, this seemed like a huge hint at why the Ohn’ahran Centaur existed but it just never went anywhere.
The Elemental Lords not being involved with the Primalists or the Incarnates was a massive blunder
Ahh Fyrak…you were taken from us too soon my son. Too soon.
We need more Fyraks as enemies. It’s something we can relate to at least.
Stick to the classic fantasy tropes blizz! They been working for generations now for a reason!
I’m actually hoping we don’t eventually fight and kill her. She’s too awesome to take out of the setting.
Blizzard told us that her and Mal’Ganis shifting was just a nod to the Nathrezim using disguises. The characters they turned into werent reconned as Nathrezim plants.
Sorry Z. My 100% accurate predicting predictor which is always sometimes usually correct has Azshara as the final boss of Sunwell Raid 2.0 in Midnight. We need some threat that unifies not just Azeroth, but specifically the elves. The void attacking Quel’Thelas works for most elves, but lacks a hook for reeling in the night elves. Making the leader of that assault Azshara, their former queen, provides that hook.
And The Isle of QD already had a naga problem, so… It could maybe work and might happen!!