There are some spoilers regarding the Emerald Dream raid below so be warned.
So the ending cinematic shows the dragons regaining their former status as aspects, glowing eyes and all that crap. But the Ice Lady says it’s not Titan magic, but Azeroth magic, so it’s not a titan? What is it then? I lost interest in following the WoW story, so what am I missing here?
Based on what Metzen said (There is some sort of betrayal of Titans and a reval of grand conspiracy), I think Azeroth is like a creater/destroyer, some sort of God and Titans imprisoned her.
I’m still at the “Azeroth is the ultimate MacGuffin of the cosmic conflict”-theory. Something with vague but unlimited potential to be formed by whatever dominant power we have at the time to be and do anything. For the Titans it would be the “Final Titan”, for other power something similar in scope. Azeroth is just what the plot is about, the details aren’t that important. And we’re just trying to keep other powers from imprinting too much on her, so that she can be a self-actualized god-woman-thingie!
Azeroth is still Titan as for now, there was nothing that said otherwise as far as I know.
It’s typical derp on the writing stuff as per usual.
Alex also said that they will use their powers to protect Azeroth- so exactly the task that Titans gave them.
There is a sayinng that “a lot have to happen so nothing changes at all.”
Actually, as of this week there is. The raid cinematic clearly implies, that Azeroth’s power is not Titan power.
But there is. And I specifically asked about that.
Implies but not outright specifies. Which is odd becuase the revelation that Azeroth is a Titan came in Legion, so it’s not ancient history, and Magni is still her speaker.
I just think that devs really ry hard to turn titans into enemies, and try to frame them as being bad. And they try to have cake and eat it with Azeroth, but it’s just not working for me.
Considering we had 2 changes of leadership in the story department since the development of Legion, it might as well be. And the claim that Azeroth was just some Titan and not something more important, has been dubious since the Chronicles were decanonized, and everyone and their mother was after her superpowers.
I have no clue anymore
Azeroth is something else every expansion 
It just proves that there is no point in getting invested. WoW Lore is as solid as sand castle.
That’s certainly true, but we’re here, so too late for that. 
Once we find the answer to that question the world building will be complete.
… and I don’t mean that in a positive way. A synonym would be “finished”. And a synonym to that would be “terminated”.
Storytelling in games as a service is doomed, it seems, to eventually cannibalize its own narrative. Maybe it’s because there’s a belief that conflicts must always escalate. That stakes must always rise, even though it should have, at this point, been proven time and time again … that it ends up being uninteresting. And in the process that which made the world interesting is diminished and often damaged.
Azeroth is a planet. It had some interesting fantasy traits, such as “magical ley lines”, and unnatural “old gods” being buried and corrupting nature. We don’t have those things on earth, but we can still make sense out of them. The ley lines may make one think of electrical power grids, and corruption could be, I don’t know… Chernobyl? That’s about it. Azeroth having a “soul”, or a conscience or, hell, sentience… I do not subscribe to that idea. Depending on what you’re smoking in real life, Earth is just a rock that’s hospitable to life. It doesn’t have a will. I don’t know what I would liken a “world soul” to in real life. Its reaching levels of fantasy that are simply too unrelatable – which breaks the immersion.
Going off Shadowlands lore, Azeroth may end up being some sort of infant First One. Maybe that’s why the Titans, Void Gods and near enough everyone else are so intrested in it.
All we know for now is that it’s definitely stronger than any existing Titan and somewhat sentient and aware of us.
Maybe once it’s born we get visited by the First Ones and it gets carted-off beyond the universe. Were probably just the entertainment for it whilst it’s incubating. Like a todlers toys, or ants in ant farm. Insignificant on a grander scale.
Yeah, I’m way out of the loop with this expansion story. Don’t get it. First one, second one, whatever. And the Aspects regaining their powers. What are their powers? I mean I did the quests and I noticed the yellow dragons still travel in time. The dragon queen uses her breath to bring everything to life, like in the cinematic, blue dragons still do magic and stuff.
I feel compelled to ask what I’m missing here because I can’t believe the writing has gotten so bad.
I guess aspect powers mostly raise the power level? But yes, the lore is incomplete enough that we don’t have any actual statements on it ingame. Maybe there are some in the two dragon-centric novel, the new one or the old one, I wouldn’t know, but I doubt it, since wowpedia doesn’t seem to know more, either. I guess they were shown to be weaker than the Incarnates would be something that the random powerup would change that? I don’t have any more than that.
Just as I have no idea why they made the “oathstones” to be the highlight of the zone questing, without explaining them to us… I guess they were meant to help the aspects get their powers, but now they don’t need them, because they got them another way? Or maybe Azeroth wouldn’t have empowered the dragons, if they didn’t empower them before? Who knows. It’s just the main plot, it isn’t that important, is it? I mean, DF is just going to be the next starter addon that every new player will level through, why would it have to make sense to someone who isn’t steeped in oscure sources and fan theories?
What did the main antagonists, the mortal primalists, want again and why? Erm, power. It’s power. Always because. And they hate dragons for some reason. If that’s not compelling, I don’t know what is.
At least they got the time travel story right, where Nozdormu was saved from being turned evil in this timeline by… travelling back to the past, and stopping the bad guys from… changing the timeline so he’d be bad in the new timeline?
So yeah, maybe it is that bad. Though not all of it, I guess. The blue dragon quests were (mostly) nice and irrelevant, the Black Dragon family drama was kinda nice, as long as it lasted, the Dracthyr had hints of a passable story and the ressurection of Tyr was fun, once it got some mortals in the quests. And I guess the Amirdrassil thing was a passable end to the Teldrassil story, which was long overdue. So… it’s not a total waste?
No, I agree, some very nice stories. I enjoyed that part where you grab the blue dragons. However I saw it a bit pointless to require the aid of the “hero” but okay, they want us to be a part of that. Still kind of left me with the notion that dragons are very needy creatures. I especially liked the conclusion to Syndragosa and Malygos story. It was a nice touch.
No doubt they still can do a decent job writing smaller things like these but when it comes to a general direction such as the overall story, they start sucking badly and this has been happening for some time.
The planet probably had a different name back when.
We are now today.
Throughout Dragonflight I never really, and still don’t properly understand the main driving motive of the Primalists.
To me its as if somewhere between legion and the end of the shadowlands a random bunch of mortals suddenly took issue with the Titans for no substantial reason and went full on rage against the system. It’s like they just popped out of nowhere overnight with no precursor hints or mentions in the lore whatsoever and decided peace was never an option against a foe that was practically inert due to their imprisoned for several millennia too.
At the least with the Twighlights Hammer cult you had some precedent in the game leading up before their main debut in Cataclysm. With an insidious presence here and there stretching far back to it’s root and branch origins in original orcish clan. Their build up in the wider game made sense at the time, and continues to.
Even with the need to inject new lore into the game, surely there had to of been a better way to display the Primalists underlying convictions and what turned them down this adversarial path. For parity and by contrast the the Drakonoid rebellion was integrated into the main story better in my opinion.
In Cata you had world-end prophets going around and active recruitment drives by Cho’Gall’s guys in the pre-event, and the questing showed that the cult had the active backing of powerful players like the Archbishop of Stormwind (as madly as the reveal may have been botsched…). Not to mention that they were literally being corrupted by the nihilistic power of insanity.
I’m not one to praise Cataclysm’s story-telling, but the Twilight Hammer stuff was words better than the Primalist nothing.
My guess is that the Void lords are actually the first ones and the titans did some revolt at some point, based on blizz’s trash writing style they will build the titans up to be the villains so we are all against the titans, then it will turn out, they did it all to save us from the void lords aka the first ones big plot twist that everyone will see a mile away by then and will be delivered with the most mediocre of lines.