Like 60% of the playthroughs of that last mission of WC3 reign of chaos on max difficulty, lets say Archimonde makes it to Nordrassil too fast, Malfurion cant summon the wisps in time, and Archimonde burns the tree/pushes it over (If you look at the way its roots are, it doesnt look very secure).
Then he absorbs the entire well of eternity. What now? The WC3 manual states Archimonde wanted to be a god like his master Sargeras. The well would make him stronger than Kil’jaeden for sure, but probably still not in the league of Sargeras. What does he do then? Let the power go to his head and betray Sargeras? Or attempt to conquer the rest of Azeroth, i’m pretty sure at this point the Dragon Aspects would notice whats going on and show up to confront him, Alexstrasza and Ysera and Nozdormu for sure, I wonder who’d win that fight.
Finally I wonder what this would do to Ner’zhul/Lich Kings plans. Does Archimonde’s frightening new power cause Ner’zhul to kowtow to the Legion again? Or does he send Arthas and Kel’Thuzad to help in the fight vs Mega Archimonde?
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Sargeras comes for him and slices him in half. No half breed mutant freak is going to usurp his command. He’s the strongest Titan, the aforementioned half breed freak wouldn’t be able to defeat him.
Probably, it would just take Sargeras a very long time to actually get here and dispense that vengeance.
Archimonde will be going directly for the World Soul once he has the Well’s power one would think. Sargeras’s plan was to go for the World Soul so Archimonde should have an idea of what to look for.
Archimonde eats World Soul, Archimonde shapes Azeroth into new body and tears a rift in the Twisting Nether directly in front of Argus and fights Sargeras with his Hammer while merged with the Titan Azeroth!
Archimonde has Azeroth’s power so Sargeras dies quickly.
Chronicle kinda retconned his purpose in seeking the Well under Nordrassil. WC3’s manual documentation made it seem like going after the tree might be some unilateral goal of Archimonde’s in the middle of Scourging everything, but as of the most recent lore it was a specific goal in the Legion’s overall strategic plan from the start with a very particular purpose behind it.
Specifically, Archimonde’s goal wasn’t actually to absorb the Well himself. Per Kil’jaeden’s plan in engineering the Third War, he intended to unseal the Well’s power and use it the way the Highborne used to the original Well of Eternity to open a massive portal that could accommodate a full-scale Legion invasion and Sargeras himself.
Honestly Archimonde potentially being at odds with Kil’jaeden or plotting to betray and replace Sargeras was a hinted-at WC3 idea that never really got any further solid traction. Nothing thereafter really built upon or even suggested that he wasn’t committed to the Legion’s crusade and just carrying out the plan as put forth by Kil’jaeden during the Third War.
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To be fair, while Kil’jaeden always seemed like the Zealous, ideologically driven type, Archimonde seemed more like the self serving type. For example, when Kil’jaeden wanted to hunt down the draenei for their “betrayal” Archimonde expressed that he cared little for Kil’jaeden’s vendetta and he only wanted to continue his own plans.
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Well, not really “his own plans.” He had his role and purpose as leader of the Legion’s armies, and believed that obsessing over the draenei was a waste of time because they’d inevitable die along with everything else anyway by the time the Legion’s crusade was finished.
At the end of the day the instigation, overall plan and ultimate goal for every attempted military invasion of Azeroth post-WotA was done according to Kil’jaeden’s designs because he was the Legion’s strategist, while Archimonde was its field tactician. So Gul’dan reaching the Tomb and Archimonde reaching the Well were both the intended strategic culminations of the Horde and Scourge invasions respectively, and for the same reason: to open the way for the Legion to invade again. The purpose of the events at the Sunwell was that as well. Even the invasions of Outland and Draenor in WoD were geared toward this same goal, as claiming either world could allow the reconstruction of a sustainable Dark Portal to Azeroth through which the Legion could amass and launch a new invasion.
Remember, if Archimonde were after such power for himself, he had a far better opportunity to grab it 10,000 years ago with him on Azeroth, the original Well of Eternity right there, and Sargeras and Kil’jaeden still stuck on the far side of the Legion’s massive portal (presumably on Argus, though it’s not 100% certain if the Tomb of Sargeras portal and the one in Zin-Azshari were anchored to the same Legion planet.)
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I think this was retconned?
Well Raselle beat me to it.
As for the topic at hand, I assume we would get another Well of Eternity (Original) with demons trying to use it as a portal much like how they used the Tomb.
Wouldn’t be the first time he betrayed someone for his own gain. Remember, he betrayed Thal’kiel (whose skull later became the Demo Warlock’s artifact, The Skull of the Man’ari) in order to gain a spot on the Triumvirate of Argus.
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I think if given the option to gain godlike powers, Archimonde wouldn’t refuse. He sold his peoples soul for power after all.
Even Kil’jaeden wanted to usurp Sargeras the leader of the burning legion in TBC. He even directly says so when you enter phase 2 of his encounter.
" Now I shall succeed where Sargeras could not! I will bleed this wretched world and secure my place as the true master of the Burning Legion." - https://wow.gamepedia.com/Kil%27jaeden_(tactics)
But it seems just like Archimonde, that little plot thread was lost to time.
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He wanted to usurp Sargeras due to Sargeras’s plans failing constantly. He even angrily cuts Sargeras off during communication during Legion during the Tomb of Sargeras Patch when Sargeras questions Kil’jaeden’s resolve.
None of the Legion leaders are loyal to Sargeras. Kil’jaeden and Archimonde both wanted the World Soul for themselves.
Kil’jaeden was only siding with the Legion out of fear so the World Soul once dangled in front of him by Sargeras(whose desire for it was well enough known among Legion agents that it was able to be transcribed in the Tome of the Blighted Implements) would be the only means he could possibly use to beat Sargeras.
That was seemingly retconned as well.
Something to remember is that as far back as WC3, Vanilla and TBC, Blizz was still leaning into the idea that Sargeras had been MIA ever since being in Medivh’s body when the Guardian was killed. Hence the WC3 implications of Archimonde and Kil’jaeden indirectly jockeying for control of the Legion in his absence; at that time the lore was suggesting that nobody knew if Sargeras even existed any more, so the two demon lords had already nominally taken over in his stead.
Hints (and some sound file names) from Varimathras’ betrayal in WotLK and then events in Legion made it seem fairly evident that the Dark Titan’s remained at the helm of the Burning Legion all along, effectively running his Avatar and then Medivh by “remote” with only a tiny fragment of his soul possessing them rather than the whole thing and staying poised near Argus in order to cross over to Azeroth as soon as the Legion managed to finally open the way sufficiently to accommodate him. That being the case, it’s unlikely at this point that Archimonde and Kil’jaeden would have been orchestrating their own plans to take over the Legion with the Dark Titan himself still actively in command and looking over their shoulders. It made sense for them to do so if they thought Sargeras was lost to them at the end of WC2, which was made out to be the case when WC3 was still current and into the beginning of WoW, but more modern lore suggests he was never actually gone and thus they remained his loyal subordinates as he continued to orchestrate the Burning Crusade himself.
Moreover Kil’jaeden’s final words kinda put the kibosh on the idea that he’d been plotting against Sargeras as well. It’s made pretty clear in the finale of the Tomb of Sargeras raid that part of his acceptance of Sargeras’ offer came from the sincere belief that as powerful as the Dark Titan was, he and his Burning Crusade were inevitable and impossible to stop. Coupled with the personal betrayal, it’s the other part of why Velen’s rejection of the offer was so maddening to him. Ever calculating, realistic and pragmatic, Kil’jaeden had reasoned that there was no denying something as powerful as Sargeras. His choice was as much from a desire for the promises being made as from the belief that there wasn’t really any other choice to be made. Yet his closest and most trusted friend had repeatedly and successfully denied that very thing because faith told Velen otherwise, and it drove Kil’jaeden crazy all those millennia because the continued survival of the draenei was a constant reminder that maybe Sargeras could be defied and maybe Kil’jaeden was wrong in his reasoning and his choice.