And the most important part, about the legendary cloak and Wrathion’s… questionable, to put it lightly, plans on the faction war, would be hidden still. Interesting, but we can’t derail everyone’s trust in the black flight yet again, can we?
It’s fine, we can look at Kairoz instead.
And he Kairoz’d all over them
Lintian at that moment:
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I want to know who, in particular, had the Legendary Questlines removed from the game.
I don’t care about the rewards, though, sure, mogs Good.
I care about losing key cornerstones for the ongoing plot. Not just a little bit, entirely cut out, gone, dead, defunct.
I was so confused when I started Legion, for instance, and was like “Wait, Cordana, why does she sound so familiar- WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE TURNED EVIL, HOW AND WHY?!”
I want to know who it is, so I can call them Stupid. A big, Stupid, doo-doo head. Baby stupid baby, can’t even keep the gods damned story in line in the damn game that you make!!
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It is kind of strange that they’ve decided to remove this questline. It truly is one of the more defining moments in Wrathion’s character development - and even why he got punched in that one BfA cutscene. I imagine a lot of new players are like “Huh, what? What did this black dragon do to Anduin?”
I don’t think this is fair to say. Wrathion, Ebyssian and Sabellian all showed different scales (pardon the pun!) of the Black Dragonflight, so I think it’s less ‘black dragonflight ARE untrustworthy’ and more ‘lets make people play the game!’ or whatever Blizzard was thinking back in MoP.
Something something you’re missing out you’re missing out.
Wanna know the people who removed the whole questline with knife-waifu in BFA before we dropped her in Nazjatar somewhere.
Why does Nathanos have the dagger?
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The entire titanic pantheon takes after the aesthetic of Greek and Norse Gods. There’s plenty of inspiration for the writers to take on the titans not being all that great. After all, the concept isn’t new either. They’ve written the titans not being the best of people to anyone but their best interests before. (See: Curse of Flesh? Just carpet bomb the planet, Algalon.)
Another thing they could work with is that Sargeras’ worst traits weren’t really localized to him. After all, there are demons that were hounds for the Pantheon, and him breaking Argus into hatching early and being a death titan doesn’t sound like something particularly demonic.
It could be that the only difference between Sargeras and the rest of the Pantheon is the fact that while Sargeras failed to conquer the universe to attribute everything that’s good to himself and hide away or redirect all that’s bad to others, as the Pantheon could’ve done with Azeroth.
For example, was it really that the Old Gods couldn’t really be killed, or was it that they didn’t figure out how to do it, and thus ruled it out categorically and ended up just giving massive fortress complexes to these Old Gods, only to get mad at the Titanforged in these complexes they ordered to be built themselves to start getting afflicted by the Curse of Flesh?
It’s not just about character development, the cloak questline gives important background info on Pandaria, the unfolding war between the Horde and Alliance and the general message of the expansion itself. When Wrathion throws a temper tantrum at the very end about his plans being ruined it’s the innkeeper of all people who gives him a dressing down.
Tong the Fixer says: Enough!!
Wrathion says: Uhh… wha?
Tong the Fixer says: Talk! Talk! Talk!
Tong the Fixer says: Always you speak. Never do you listen! You ignore the lessons of Pandaria!
Tong the Fixer says: You see, there is balance in all things. Wisdom etched in our very fur: Black and white. Darkness and light.
[…]
Tong the Fixer says: So it is with your Alliance and your Horde. They are not strong despite one another; they are strong BECAUSE of one another.
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Once more I’m going to be a killjoy and say that objectively, factually speaking, a good 80% of this list is only an issue because the Void corrupted it and or began to interfere and meddle. Most of these things like the forges exist wholly for good, moral reasons, and have actually been used for such reasons before the Void corrupted them and their Keepers to twist the usages into far more malevolent, evil desires; the Tolvir used the Forges once to ensure that Lei-Shen didn’t conquer the entire world and to put an end to the Thunder King’s Reign need I remind everyone. We also know the land does heal after the usage of the Forge as well, its not permanent, nor is it an instant-fatality to everyone in range because we can see many, many Tolvir and other NPCs who survived the reorigination blasting.
Odyn was a bit of an unreasonable person 50,000 years ago sure, but the Halls of Valor now have Dragon symbolism everywhere and Odyn uplifted an entire Dragonflight in Legion who (in Legion lore) had a mutual respect and relationship, so much so that the Aegis of Aggramar, an artifact of the Titans themselves was kept in the care of the Thunder Dragons during the Trials. His actions towards a Void-corrupted Helya who had been broken by the whispers of Yogg-Sarron might have been a bit unreasonable, but by that time she was already completely claimed by Loken’s deception and Yogg-Sarron, so I’m not really going to shed tears over the obliteration of a Void-Corrupted monster.
Was completely fine until his total corruption by the Void.
Who was led astray by Zovaal and Denathrius (the powers of Death) and consumed by the Paranoia of the Void via the Nathrezim. The other Titans don’t share resemblance in thought, intent or will, they fought him and the Legion at Nihilium for [Unknown] amounts of time to stave him and his Legion off. They clearly care for the worlds they seed, otherwise they wouldn’t create living, thinking life and give it protectors and they go as far as calling us their Children on several occasions so they clearly don’t care that we have flabby skin now.
Was only called down by a corrupted and rearranged message from a Void-Corrupted Loken, the original message was lost with Archaedas, Tyr and Ironaya’s escape, alongside the truth of Loken’s corruption and deception. Even then we manage to get Algalon to agree to let us try, and he’s open to the idea having seen that we’re able to resist Yogg-Sarron’s corruption in Ulduar and best the Constellar, if another planet couldn’t do either of those things then I personally don’t see it as morally abhorrent that the planet itself was given a new life without Void corruption. The death of a single life is abhorrent and tragic, but to give a single life for trillions is an act of heroism. Soldiers are hailed for this same sacrifice.
See the start of this rant.
Were completely fine until they were lost to madness and the Curse of Flesh, the departure of Ra-Den (in truth his chaining by Lei-Shen) also sent the Mogu into a downwards spiral of madness and egoism in trying to reclaim their Titanic nature.
Yeah I don’t know why Uldir exists and the only reason I can concot is a funny Afrasiabi-Danuserism and or G’Huun corrupting the Keepers and Watchers. Uldir is a weird, unexplainable retroactive addition that can’t really be slotted into the lore in a coherent way without some crazy gymnastics.
Too many people are occupied trying to retroactively through Headcanons justify Blizzard’s bad storytelling that they’re too busy to realise that its simply bad storytelling and bad storywriting and that no amount of retroactive mental gymnastics is really going to change the problem at the heart of the issue.
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Too bad Blizz did their absolute best to deconstruct this idea since BFA instead of respecting it
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You absolutely cannot say “Uldir is a weird danuserism” and then turn around and blame Sargeras on the Jailer come on man!!!
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Sorry I meant
Shadowlands is a weird Danuserism*
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“We have heard the Council’s attempt to make this canon, but since it is a Stupid Aaaah decision, we have chosen to ignore it.”
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Most of Loken’s crimes were committed before his “total corruption.” Outside of the killing of Sif, which happened when his mind was muddled by Yogg-Saron, all of his misdeeds are a result of his uninfluenced decision-making, from his affair with Sif, to tricking Thorim into declaring war on Arngrim, to arranging the death of Mimiron, to subduing Freya and Hodir, to convincing Helya to turn on Odyn, to using his power as Yogg-Saron’s jailer to send faceless ones to pursue Tyr and Archaedas.
He was only directly controlled by Yogg-Saron close to the present day. The vast majority of his nebulous actions are not due to any sort of corruption.
Like Loken, this serves as evidence that these god-like entities are actually as fallible and open to corruption as mortals. Should anyone who is so vulnerable to the machinations of evil be given so much power? That in itself is an argument that could be used against the Titans and the power that they have over Azeroth.
From what I understand, Algalon was called down by the death of the Prime Designate, after Loken destroyed any method of otherwise contacting Algalon out of fear that he would be smote by the constellar for his corruption.
The message sent to Algalon, as far as I am aware, was not corrupted by anyone, nor was the analysis of Azeroth that he performed. According to his own parameters, the ecosphere of Azeroth was corrupted beyond saving and reorigination was required to annihilate all life on the planet’s surface and protect the worldsoul from corruption.
As for the Forge of Origination itself, the fact that is a tool that has been used for good does not change the fact that it was a tool originally designed to wipe out all life on Azeroth in order to ensure that the worldsoul within the planet continued to develop according to the will of the Titans, using parameters that have since been proven faulty. Even if you think that the existence of such a fail-safe is necessary, the erroneous parameters serves as evidence that the Titans are fallible.
The Curse of Flesh didn’t drive its victims mad. Ultimately, the mogu were responsible for their own misdeeds.
In the end, the almighty Titans and all of their creations have proven that they are fallible. They are capable of poor judgement, they can be corrupted, and they can make mistakes. For an ordinary mortal, that’s okay - no one is perfect. However, the Titans are god-like entities capable of deciding the fates of entire worlds. I can understand why someone wouldn’t want the fate of their planet to be determined by an imperfect being capable of screwing it up and making an oopsie.
And that’s another important factor: Primalists are imperfect people, not farseers who can look beyond the fourth wall and learn all of the lore from Wowpedia.
An unbalanced and bitter pandaren might see red and be convinced to take up arms against the Titans if he is told that they are responsible for the creation of the mogu, especially since he doesn’t know all of the details behind the history of the mogu.
A jingoistic troll might be convinced to fight for the Primalists if he is told that all of the elves and humans and dwarves and gnomes on Azeroth are the result of Titanic tampering, even if his own existence is likely only possible thanks to the Titans, but he may not know that.
A jaded draenei might be aware of the Titanic nature of Sargeras and decide that if they are vulnerable to such corruption, they do not deserve all of their cosmic power and should be denied the right to dictate the fate of Azeroth. The draenei probably doesn’t know the full extent of the Jailer’s machinations and how deep the corruption goes.
I could come up with more examples. It’s just a shame that Blizzard didn’t and left us to fill in the blanks, which they shouldn’t do. It’s not the place of fans to fill in their damn plot holes.
Glad I’m not one of those.
As someone who roleplays in this setting, of course I’m going to try and make some sense of the writing so I can keep on roleplaying in it with a decent sense of verisimilitude.
But I’m never going to try and cover Blizzard’s backside when they fail to provide the lore necessary to support the internal logic of the setting. That’s why I make remarks like these in a lot of my posts:
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“from his prison within Ulduar, muddled Loken’s thoughts and made him lash out at Sif, scared at the thought of losing her, and he killed her by accident.” By this point an Old God has already corrupted his thinking and his mind, the killing was an accident but the paranoia was already a corruption. This corrupted Psychosis sends Loken spiralling until " Horrified at what he had done but too scared to tell Thorim the truth, Loken tricked Thorim into believing that it had been the work of Arngrim, the king of the frost giants, turning Thorim against his allies." which then leads to Yogg-Sarron using the Corrupted Forge to make an army of corrupt iron Dwarves and Vrykul via Loken. Exploring Azeroth: Northrend covers this relatively in-depth as does Chronicles Volume 1.
Demonstratably false as seen above, he was already corrupt by the point of the Sif-situation but also as we know from the Saga of the Valarjar Part Five, at this same time the Helya affairs are going on and the Saga states thus:
“Keeper Loken had fallen under the sway of madness, but he was clever. He knew Odyn and his Valarjar would be formidable enemies, so he approached Helya with a proposition. He would break Odyn’s control over her; in exchange, she would trap Odyn and his champions within the Halls of Valor.”
Then, come the confrontation with Thorim and the war with the Giants Loken fell even deeper into Yogg-Sarrons sway and corruption
" Loken was desperate to cover his actions, even if it meant using Yogg-Saron’s power to do so, for if Algalon or the Pantheon ever found out his life would be forfeit. He arranged the death of Mimiron, making it look like a lab accident, though Mimiron’s mechagnome followers would create a new mechagnome body to house the Keeper’s soul. Loken subdued Hodir and Freya, corrupting them into complacency with Yogg-Saron." per Chronicles Volume 1
Correct but it was altered and the history was fabricated by Loken’s constructed Tribunal of Ages as well,
" Loken created the Tribunal of Ages and filled it with false information to cover his tracks. Almost all of the information contained within the Tribunal is false. Loken also altered the signal sent to Algalon so that no living being could contact him and he would only arrive upon Loken’s death." per Chronicles 1 and Exploring Northrend.
His analysis was entirely objectively true however and yeah he had no real, rational reason to believe we could ever out-do five Old Gods as nobody but the Pantheon themselves had ever managed such a feat before.
Is again, demonstratably false, we have several Tolvir in-game who were around at the time and survived their usage of it. Algalon waxes poetic about having to reoriginate planets and the cost of the life but like. . .he must just be stupid evidently because it doesn’t seem to be a complete fatality death-star beam if people can just. . .survive it.
But it wasn’t, it was a failsafe put in place deliberately because Azeroth is the strongest Titan in the Universe and if corrupted by the Void would have destroyed the entire Universe utterly. That’d make for a terrible fantasy setting I think, a universe that doesn’t exist. That the Forge can be corrupted by the will of other powers just highlights further how the original points about ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’ being the Titan’s fault is deliberately obtuse.
A good example would be our own world. Humans are fully capable of meddling with and interfering in God’s creations, but that is not a fallibility of God.
Just as God’s creation was pure and noble so too were the Mogu at first, it was the mortality that laid them low and drove them to those misdeeds, " When the Old Gods used the Curse of Flesh on the mogu, they became terrified as their stone forms transformed them into mortal beings. They soon began to breathe, to bleed and to die. But with the flesh came the other curses of mortality: pride and greed, fear and anger. No longer united in purpose, the mogu fought amongst themselves." Per “The Curse and the Silence”
I can concede that at least, an embittered individual could at the very least wonder why the protectors, the Keepers and Watchers, have been stuck doing nothing (its because Blizzard forgot they existed) but I imagine partly this is Blizzard’s own fault and I’m not really willing to let them off with it just because they can make some Primalists out of it, the Keepers, especially with Tyr back, have every right to be getting involved in the current affairs and plots, their powers are capable of shaping continents so it is baffling why they wouldn’t be around to just 1-shot Xal’atath, but alas we have to work with what little Blizzard ever offers.
Perhaps it is simply age, bitterness, jadedness or a combination of all 3 but even as I still RP in the setting I find myself almost weekly exhausted trying to grasp at any of the straws still left in this setting that haven’t been half-burnt or broken in half or revealed to be hollow. Thus, my desire to try and keep up an appearance of integration into how the world is has become utterly minimal because the effort of trying to keep up a sense of verisimilitude is an effort in futility in my eyes - at least until we get some sort of coherent, omniscient guidance as to how the World is currently.
This is why Blizz needs to bring back this questline because I FORGOT about this!! Thank you so much for reminding me 
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It’s less about Blizzard being this nebulous entity and more that the one guy who constantly had to remind people what the fundamentals of the setting were, left. The moment Metzen came back, he picked up exactly where he left off and restarted World of Warcraft: Chronicles.
Now, it’s not as if this guy is solely carrying the writing team, but he is the one who conceptualized the setting as we know it to begin with.
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To be fair, they used to have a plan.
More-or-less during Mists of Pandaria, we can see Blizzard was preparing their own long term story project; in the legendary questline, you hear Wrathion eat Lei Shen’s heart and say: “We have fallen, we must rebuild the final Titan”.
The story would later be fully revealed in chronicles, and it would be touched upon with Legion. Back then, it looked like the writers were establishing something, and the pay-off was there.
But with Legion and later BFA, it just became ridiculous.
Right now they don’t have any pay off, and when they do it feels somewhat random. They have likely vague ideas that aren’t well established and that they keep changing.
Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers keep changing between expansions. There is no way that MoP writers are the BFA writers, and BFA writers the DF writers.
How will all these new writers keep track of plot ideas someone else hatched more than 8 years ago?
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Your initial wording was “total corruption.” The point I was making was that this single instance of Old God influence doesn’t absolve him of all responsibility. Assuming that all following actions were due to Old God corruption and that he had zero agency as soon as he was influenced at all is a leap, if you ask me.
We know the way in which it was altered. It was altered to prevent anyone from contacting Algalon, meaning that he could only be summoned by the Prime Designate’s death, which is what I said. The contents of the message, as far as we know, were not altered.
Once again, a single instance of corruption or alteration doesn’t absolve the Titanic characters of all responsibility.
Some analysis of Azeroth’s history would have helped there, considering that its inhabitants were responsible for fighting off the full might of the Burning Legion.
All sources agree that this is the purpose that it was designed for, eradication of all life. Just because it fails at that purpose (another instance of Titanic fallibility or bad writing, your choice), that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the design intent.
I’ll repeat myself here: Even if you think that the existence of such a fail-safe is necessary, the erroneous parameters serve as evidence that the Titans are fallible.
Like you and your quote say, their vices are a consequence of their mortality, rather than a direct product of the Curse of Flesh. The “curses of mortality” aren’t all caused by the Curse of Flesh, they just something that comes with being a living, breathing, finite creature.
Though some Titanforged free from the Curse of Flesh do demonstrate instances of pride, greed, fear and anger. They definitely don’t seem to be universally rational.
But as I said, the mogu are responsible for their own deeds, even though some characters in the setting could theoretically think otherwise and curse the Titans for making them at all.
I’ll stop there. Don’t get me wrong, I accept that the Titans are mostly a force for good and certainly, Azeroth would be infinitely worse off if they didn’t exist. However, they and their creations are flawed. They have fallen and failed in multiple ways throughout the setting’s history, in ways that have directly led to some of the most catastrophic events on Azeroth.
And I can get why an inhabitant of Azeroth would be pissed off with the Titans, if they were informed of some of their past failings and misdeeds.
That’s why I posted that list of points that you took issue with, not as a statement of “this is why the Titans are objectively evil bad guys,” but as a statement of “these are things that might make people on Azeroth angry at the Titans, whether that anger is justified or otherwise.”
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