What's so unnatural about Order anyways?

Lore Story Forum
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It isn’t blatant, but more subtle storytelling.

We’ve known for close to a decade that Azeroth was allegedly a titan, because Chronicles said so.

But then within two years, she’s not just a titan, but the most special titan.

Then she’s not just a special titan, but the only titan who could power First One mega-tech. And energies similar to her blood are all over first one creations, and the devs acknowledge it with “well isn’t that strange? I wonder if there’s a connection…” A statement which, from a dev, certainly means there probably is. Worth noting that Zozo, the “titan++” guy, is not powerful enough to work the mega-tech, but Azeroth’s special blood is.

And now we have the heavy implication that Azeroth only has order blood waters because the order guys order-ized her blood water.

At this point, revealing Azeroth is simply a titan and not some newborn first one or something is the actual retcon.

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We’ve always known that Azeroth was a special titan, even in Chronicles and Sargeras quest to destroy her before she gets corruped into some sort of dark titan stronger than him. Also Zooval is nowhere near Titan levels of power from what Ive seen, he might have been titan++ in threat levels given that he would have had the power to remake reality or something but we thwarted him right?

Also is it said that Azeroth is the only titan that can power first one tech or are you just inferring it?

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We are told by word of god (devs) that Zovaal is a “titan + +” in terms of power. That he is explicitly more powerful than any titan.

It’s inferred, due to the fact Zovaal’s plan hinged on Azeroth and began before Sargeras even considered going all fel. At that point, Zovaal had his pick of titans, had means to corrupt them (proven by the fact he did corrupt one), even knew of another unhatched titan and still said “Nah, only Azeroth will do”.

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Word of god has proven itself to be wrong several times, Zooval got his butt kicked mostly by the adventurers alone whereas we needed the most powerful artifacts ever made and the assistance of other titans to be able to beat down a drained and weakened baby titan.

The difference is there for all to see, id compare Zooval to something more akin to a keeper power wise tbh.

Sargeras was never corrupted though? He is perfectly sane and choose to go on his crusade to stop the void lords.

But interesting point you make.

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Primalists see Titans as a corruptive influence. I think they probably see anything not of Azeroth as corruption and probably hate/hated the Old Gods too. Them showing the war between the Elemental Lords and the Black Empire in the Bronze Questline is a hint at this. The last expansion, according to Danuser in recent interviews, was about showing Death as a force that seeks to exert itself on the universe like we’ve seen Order, Chaos, Void, and Light all do.

Well, if that’s true, then this expansion seems to be about how Life and by extension the elements have their own views on how the world should work and how their followers are exerting their influence.

I think the Emerald Dream Portal that the Primalists want is the hidden key to this. There’s a good deal of mystery to this expansion and Blizzard has done well to keep it secret so far.

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The Primalist dialog as well as that of the incarnates seems to vibe with the idea under all the comsic plane meddling there is something more elemental to a world soul.

My present feel on it is world souls are sort of infinite potential, they could become anything, or nothing and sleep forever. by default they are influenced by the elemental essences of the inner plane of the Great Dark so they are elemental in nature.

On Azeroth, the Black Empire came crashing in and tried to make her a member of Team Void. The Titans came and squashed them, but then imposed Order and left the planet festooned with a lot of titan tech that has been battling the Old God infection and directing Azeroth’s growth to be that of becoming a Titan.

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Unfortunately, lore written before the current writing team assumed the mantle is next to worthless. Chronicle went from a definitive lore tome (still being advertised this way) to a mostly true recounting from the Titans to deceitful propaganda in a few expansions.

Not that WoW hasn’t always had a problem with retconning, but it’s so bad now that it feels like there’s no point to even learning the lore.

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68

Well, a few corrections.

We beat Zovaal with Azeroth’s help, with the Eternal Ones’s help, and after having mastered and attuned our own selves to first ones’ technomagic (IE: the Zereth Mortis shenanigans).

We beat our first titan with just ourselves and our artifacts (Aggrimar). We only had the titanic empowerment when we beat Argus who was in turn being empowered by Sargeras.

Word of God still works here; we beat up two titans in a row (more like two and a half titans), versus a single “Titan ++” while he was distracted.

He chose that path because Zovaal’s schemes led him to that path, led him to his own corruption. Sargeras only started opposing the void after the dreadlords’ involvement. Until then, he was still doing the job he originally did; opposing the demons. Through the dreadlords’ manipulations, he changed his mission to opposing the void and this led him to the un-sane choice to kill his brethren.

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Honestly IRL I would argue order is unnatural.

Order is buildings, and cities, and everything else. It is building dams, and having laws.

But in game/ in lore? It’s strange. We have these six forces and those together create the known world. It’s hard to say its unnatural when it’s a primordial force.

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The Dreadlords did not so much corrupt Sargeras as exploit a fundamental flaw in Order itself. While Chaos, Life, and Void are all on the same spectrum of agents of change, of them Void is the most extreme and erratic. To look into the void for a being like a Titan is to look into your worst nightmare. Infinite, constant change. Everything is true and false at the exact same moment. Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

Attempting to understand it sort of… broke, Sargeras. It lead him to a nihilistic conclusion that the only logical path was to flatten the cosmos.

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Eternal ones like the blue one who almost died to DK Anduin? Again, these eternal ones didnt appear anywhere as strong as they should be if they were in the same realm as titans power wise.

We beat a shade of a tortured soul/Agrammar, not anywhere close to Agrammar in prime.

Azeroths help? Like when Azeroths essence was used to beat N’zoth? Again, not sure why you think that somehow elevates Zooval.

The artifacts you mention are literally mythical objects and the strongests things we ever had.

So no, word of god failed, we beat up a shade of a titan and a tortured/heavily weakened baby titan.( And that with a looooot of help and we canonically died and were rezzed by Eonar lol, we didnt die fighting nipples did we?)

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Anduin wasn’t a DK. He was a vessel for power used by Zovaal. That’s why Zovaal talks through him. Zovaal effectively struck her while possessing Anduin. You are mis-remembering this event.

And likewise, when we beat Argus, we beat a baby titan fully empowered by Sargeras, aided only by a group of weakened and recently released titans. So, if we can discount Aggramar, we’d have to discount the pantheon under those same grounds. We effectively beat Argus empowered by Sargeras with our artifacts and gumption.

Yes, like that. I think you forgot we both have accepted Azeroth is the most specialest world-soul. Being aided by Azeroth to just barely beat Zovaal is certainly a big power-up.

And First One technology can literally reshape the entire everything. We were empowered and attuned to that technology, and needed to be to defeat Zovaal.

We trounced a corrupted titan all on our own with our magic sticks, and did so with such ease we moved right on to the next one with only a quick bio break. It took Sargeras shoving power into Argus, plus the Dreadlords’ shoving necro-power into Argus, just to make Argus even worth facing. We only needed those same magic sticks and some spent, recently re-alived weakened titans to beat him down. Argus’s greatest feat was copying what Arthas already did a decade earlier, and Arthas didn’t even need dreadlord or Sargeras empowerment to do it. And then we killed Argus so hard it broke the machinery of death itself. We punked out Argus so hard that when he has time to rest up in the deadlands and dares to face us a second time, we 1v1 him until he’s double-dead. Argus was our chump that we stomped on twice.

By contrast, Zovaal fought us with just his own power, while he was distracted trying to reformat the multiverse. He was so strong, he CCed Azeroth and started tapping her Azerite directly, which nobody else even came close to doing. And it took us being directly empowered by the very stuff that made literally everything, and the power of the afformentioned mightiest world soul ever, literally the two strongest forces we know of in the cosmos bar none, to barely stop him.

I mean, I can utterly downplay and upsell too. We can play that game and have fun with it.

But end of the day?

Word of God says Zovaal was stronger, and the facts back that up. You can ignore the facts and downplay them, but they still remain factual.

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73

It’s mainly one-offs dropped in the last few expansions, that might hint to it.
In BFA N’zoth said “She is not the last, but the first”. Now, this is not specifically about anything, but Azeroth is described as female and has regularly been said is the last titan.

Then in the shadowlands the Jailer wanted “the secret the first ones sought to hide” and it was Azeroth, now there are many questions about why they would consider Azeroth so special and a secret.

In dragonflight the primalists say they want to return the wellspring to its natural state when it flowed with “Azeroth’s essence” before it was polluted by order, and they infuse it with elemental energies. In a dev interview, they said it was a font of uncontrolled change, which is not what the titans like since they like control and order.

We also learn that Tyr did put order magic into the wellspring, (at first to cure void influence, but then he lists other benefits as well) which implies that it was not order aligned before and he even explains that it will impact the philosophies of any dragons exposed to it, to be more like the titans.

Combine this with the whole that you can infuse something to make it align with that cosmic force, which is why the titans were so afraid of a potential void world soul, we’ve also seen Argus being attuned to death so he even went to the shadowlands when he perished.

Now the question you may ask is “Why are all the other titans arcane/order if it’s not their natural state?” that is a good question, however, we already in the old lore learned that Aman’thul was the very first world soul to awake and he nurtured all the others until they awoke and joined him on his journey. He had the potential to change their alignment to order if he wished to. So we only need to have the very first titan to have been aligned to the arcane by either an abundance of it on his planet or some other reason, and all the others could have been changed as well.

The titans then arrived and ordered Azeroth, including using their magic to tend to the wound created after ripping out an old god, creating the well of Eternity. This might explain why Azerite and the well were arcane in nature as well. The titans might have pulled a larger Tyr, purging some void corruption by injecting a ton of order/arcane magic into a well, changing its properties.

This could also in a way explain Eonar and her affinity for life, what if her planet was abundant with life energies before being turned to arcane? And this manifest as her being great with nature.

I’d honestly be surprised if she is just a titan.

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Not just that, he also had a few death entities totally subservient to him, all of them powerful in their own right.

Mueh’zala considered Zovaal’s power to be worth more than anything he could ever get from worship and sacrifices, Helya was subservient to him also, though i don’t know why Helya was convinced by Mueh’zala to serve Zovaal. Likely promises of power against Odyn.

Mueh’zala lacks any notable feats of strength as far as I am aware, but he was capable of elevating his followers into Loa themselves, and he also held the power to one-shot the party in De Other Side if they didn’t get to the death gates fast enough, a spell called “Shatter Reality.” Other than that that, he’s still the OG Troll
Loa of Death and should logically have the experience and power to boot.

Helya was a Titanforged sorceress that was forced by Odyn to ferry Vrykul souls from the Shadowlands to produce Val’kyr, in addition to turning any unwilling Vrykul souls into Val’kyr. Her power wielded by her followers was enough to where she could turn Odyn’s Stormforged into Kvaldir. She was strong enough to assist Highkeeper Ra in crafting the Elemental Planes, and she was strong enough to personally forge her own realm: Helheim. She was still completely loyal to Zovaal.

Sire Denathrius, an Eternal One just like Zovaal created Revendreth, the Venthyr, and the Nathrezim. Furthermore, with the power from the Medallion of Dominion, a fraction of Denathrius’s power, Kel’thuzad could raise up an unwilling army of Revendreth’s denizens, Renathal even theorizing that he could alter the very fabric of the Shadowlands with enough anima. Denathrius was still subservient to him, and was weaker. I’ll get to why.

The Eternal Ones had to team up in order to defeat him when Zovaal first revealed his betrayal. The Winter Queen, who had made the realm of Ardenweald by herself, and it was through the power of Ardenweald’s Heart of the Forest that the Maw was inescapable. The Primus had made Maldraxxus, the birthplace of necromancy and the Necrolord Covenant. He also made a rune language to empower the Maldraxxi even further, this same exact language being the one that the Death Knights utilize in runeforging. He was said to be a master tactician, strategist and overall was a S++++ tier commander. The Archon, Kyrestia (presumably) made Bastion and was the first of the winged Kyrian, she was also an Eternal One. Denathrius joined his fellow Eternal Ones, and it was only because they worked together that they defeated Zovaal.

When the Primus went to engage Zovaal by himself, he lost. Considering that he lost, it’d be more than likely if not guaranteed that the other Eternal Ones would lose in a one-on-one fight with the Jailer, simply because he holds more raw power than any of them individually. (Or well, two v one technically, as Remornia is Denathrius’s sentient weapon. )

I’d also generally apply this to the Mawsworn army too: The Shadowlands Covenants had to unify and invade the Maw as one, working together to breach Zovaal’s strongholds in the Maw alongside the Knights of the Ebon Blade and the Maw Walkers and disrupt his operations in Korthia. Individually, the Mawsworn’s army would be stronger than the other Covenants.

TL;DR: Zovaal’s Titan++ status was legit, and it was through sheer plot that we won.

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75

Raszageth is both—

A, the villain, you’re not supposed to agree with her, and
B, clearly insane, her word shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value.

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Order is not edgy. Methinks that is the problem the writers have with it.

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OMG, this.

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Who cares? With how malleable the lore is, “Word of God” means next to nothing.

You can rationalize it however you want, but the “Titan++” stuff was clearly marketing nonsense to hype up the Jailer. Now that he’s dead and gone, shamefully swept under the rug like the wannabe Lich King he was, Blizzard will pretend he never existed anyway. “Rule of Cool” is king in Warcraft, and Zovaal was about as cool as a fanny pack.

If we’re still taking this lore seriously, it’s silly that you wrote so many words trying to make Zovaal seem so powerful. Nothing he did was half as impressive - or more importantly, half so cool - as Sargeras chopping planets in half. He was a loser, and he died like a loser.

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The people who come here to discuss the lore.

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I’m sure “the people who come here to discuss the lore” care when it supports their argument. If the mighty Word of God didn’t, they might rightly say that Ion is only broadly involved with the story, and probably isn’t the most knowledgeable or reliable source. They might also point out that he contradicted himself by referring to the Jailer as a “Titan-level threat” on the same day as the infamous “Titan ++” quote.

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