Azeroth and Zereth > The meaning

[Aprix-frostmane (Aprix)]

Hello ,

Check TLDR bellow , if you want short summary :

I was doing some quest and then suddenly remembered that npc researcher Firim and his notes .
Namely :
www wowhead com/achievement=15509/tales-of-the-exile
Number 7 and epilogue :
www wowhead com/item=189753/firim-in-exile-epilogue

In there he stalk about the cosmic forces :
"The six forces that pointed toward a seventh, and yet denied it. "
And
“It is clear to me now that there must be a Zereth for each force of the cosmos, and within them, an inner sanctum akin to the Sepulcher”

So the 6 forces point towards a seventh and there is a Zereth for Every force , than is Azeroth basically the center of the universe ?
Its basically the GRAND Zereth ?

Even the name hints it Zereth Morthis > Morth = death > Zereth of Death .
Azertoh >> Is it possible it is simply misspelled , by its denizens AK > should be Azereth

If you remember the lore somehow every cosmic force had a lot of trouble finding Azeroth , pretty much like we had a lot of trouble finding Zereth Mortis . Yet Azeroth has no problem opening portals to wherever they want .

In the same notes from Firim we can see the Jailor wanted to Cascade his “domination” to all realties . It makes sense if Azeroth is the Center of all >> connect to the center >> it channels to all .

So what exactly is Azeroth in the end ? It is definitely not a titan Egg .
If anything titans seem to also be just robots from one of the forces .
Heck it looks like every force tries basically the “jailor Plot” to remake the universe in it`s image .

To that end it looks like that the Old Gods , Demons , Jailor and the titans are pretty much just beings trying to infect Azeroth with their own sense of reality :
Void , Death , Order , Chaos .
The primalists seem to have gotten it right . We are misled and the titans are not benefactors .

TLDR:
1: Azroth > Azerteh > Grand Zereth > Center of the universe
2: Old Gods : Void , Demons : Chaos , Jailor : Death , Titans : Order > All the same trying to remake the universe in their own image , using Azeroth
3: We have been misled . Instead of protecting Azeroth , we have been leading to more and more danger towards it , by opening portals to all realties , providing them a way to infect the center of the universe .

Feels like we will end up killing the dragons after all at some point , if they are still titan pets .

[Wimbert-die-aldor]

So… Azeroth, which is the center of the gameplay, is the important center of the cosmos that is being developed around it. And all powerful things in the universe might be foes or friends at some point, depending on the circumstances, because they are competing against each other.

Sounds pretty much as everything is as usual to me, just with more layers of nonsense around it. If we are to care about any of the cosmic stuff, we have to care about it through the world we know, Azeroth. And since the same demons, undead, and lovecraftian monsters with the same single-minded motives might not keep it fresh for another 20 years, some more variation and villain politics were certainly necessary.

As to what Azeroth actually is… it kinda doesn’t matter. It’s the macguffin of the cosmic plot, and that’s that. What matters is only that everyone wants it for different reasons, creating conflict. We, the player characters, want to protect it, the others want to turn it to some other ends. And it can’t ever really grow beyond that, since that’s the whole premise of the game world now. Azeroth can’t wake up and walk away without ending our neverending game with it, and for the same reason no one will be able to permanently turn Azeroth towards their goals. Anything that the devs tease will never amount to more than teasing, even if they make Azeroth an actual character.

Which they kinda have to, at some point, because what all this cosmic cow poop is lacking is any character. You can’t build interesting pseudo-politics on the conflict of vague, disembodied concepts like order and void. Either it has to be a conflict between their harbringers (which kinda makes the association with the grand power unnecessary, since the conflict is reducible to the motivations of the harbringer), or we need some embodiment of the forces as actual characters (pretty much killing the idea of any nuance in their ‘faction’ of the cosmic war).

So yeah, as far as I’m concerened all that cosmic stuff that the devs have been so keen on since they spew out the chronicles is pretty much a narrative non-starter. Anything in the story that’s interesting would be just as interesting without bringing the “cosmic forces” into it, and things that are only there to explain the cosmic forces will be hard to relate to like most of Shadowlands.

[Aprix-frostmane (Aprix)]

I guess you are right in the sense that this leads to nowhere .
It’s the known power creep in stories and manga , where the character keeps getting stronger until he can challenge and defat even the gods of that world , and then … Then the story ends , because honestly , you have revealed everything and you have beaten everything .
That , or you have to add even more layers of super , super powers , in a never ending loop of repetition , where the character is so strong that his first foes look like bacteria vs concentrated bleach .
But isn`t this the sense for most long enough stories .
Even in classics like Lord of the Rings and Talkin , they have that kind of stuff where they go to “who created Sauron and he is the real bad guy” . After that it would have been someone even stronger etc etc .

The book is good , because it is contained within the borders of the character’s experience . Where gods are gods ,evil is evil . You know its there , but you can`t really do anything about it . You just cope with the world . With the next Sauron . With the next plot to destroy the world , but you simply don’t touch the realm of gods .
You shouldn’t , because then the mortal realm becomes useless .

Hence why in short .
I don’t mind the whole cosmic stuff . If anything , it is good to know there’s more there , but it should have been like a Bamboo hut standing vs a Tsunami feeling . Not us stopping it with wave of a finger .

To me Ulduar , Uldaman , Ahn Quirj felt great , because of that . You kind of felt small in there .

Also it feels bland when every “cosmic power” is basically the same gray color . They are all just like us . There’s no good . No evil . Just more morally confused beings . They somehow even managed to make death and necromancy look “good” which is wrong on so many levels , and beyond that -it makes everything bland and boning .

Why even battle them , when they are all the same like us . May as well let mr. Farmer’s wife and children turn into Zombies . They will be happy anyways .

[Wimbert-die-aldor]

Yeah, I generally agree. Setting up rules for the universe beyond the level that the protagonists can ever reach isn’t a bad thing, when based on the experiences of the characters in the world. Having the undefeatable Burning Legion that we could only ever hope to stop and which had the undefeatable titan Sargeras at its helm, who we could only ever stop by preventing him from arriving, was cool. Fighting the little pieces of the Old Gods that managed to reach out through their prisons, which was enough to put the world in serious peril, was cool. Facing a minor titan servant that was poised to destroy the whole fricking world, if not convinced of its usefullness, was cool.
Since then the devs decided to have us raid the Legion’s home base, fight Titans, imprison Sargeras, and free an Old God before raiding it on his home turf and shooting it dead with a laser beam. So yeah, we’re not talking about that any more, when we are talking about cosmic stuff. All of that is just common now.

Instead it is now the cosmic main plot that there are some vague forces out there, created by supertitans, and we are positioning ourselves deliberately between those forces and telling them that we’ll stop them, whatever they throw at us. And we learned about that… mostly by some lore books, that somehow just became common knowledge on Azeroth as soon as they were published on earth, or something…

[Aedrion-doomhammer]

I’m sorry bruv but it all means nothing.

This is like those Game of Thrones channels predicting some 3D chess moves for S8 after S7 was obviously written by a 1000 monkeys on a 1000 typewriters.

They expected a masterplan move and fitting of a massive puzzle, instead they got Starbucks and “Muh Kween”.