This post is purely speculation for the sake of fun. Reading into things what might not actually be there. A tin foil hat theory that maybe we have been looking at things the wrong way. The main idea of it is that we have been deceived and the true enemies are the Titans.
For as long as I have been looking into warcraft lore it has always been said that the real big bad of the entire series is Sargeras. That the battle against him would be the last battle, the end of warcraft as we know it. He is the largest threat we can and will ever face.
For a long time now I have been entertaining the idea that what we know is wrong. That the life we lead is not really our own, but we are being groomed as an army, and army for the Titans. Every step of the way, every thing we have done, was us being built into the ultimate army in service of our makers, the Titans.
It reminds me of the story from Wrath of the Lich King some. We never thought anything of it when Arthas came taunting us while we leveled up. We never even considered that he had a greater plan when we fought him, or more accurately, his subordinates along the way. In truth, to anyone that does not follow the lore they might not have noticed the underlining story in wrath and that was that we were not "fighting" our way to the Lich King, we were being groomed by him to become his next, and greatest, lieutenants. Battle tested by the best he could send our way.
He taunted us, he challenged us, he sent waves of enemies after us, but he never engaged us. He could have beaten any of us one on one at any given point, that is beyond contention, but he did not want us dead, he wanted us stronger. In those early days when we were weaker when we first stepped foot into Northrend, we would have been a push over. But did he kill us? No, he let us live to face another challenge.
When all was said and done and we met him face to face, when he allowed us to do so, we lost. He toyed with us the entire fight. We kept thinking we were getting the best of him but we were not. He was just pressing us harder and harder, pushing us to our limits as fighters, warriors, all so he could see if we were indeed worthy.
When he decides that he has had enough playing around and that we had proved ourselves worthy, he kills us. No long drawn out channeled spell. No big effort on his part. He just wishes us dead and we died, instantly, without him ever breaking a sweat.
The idea was that he was now going to revive us and we would be under his servitude. We would be the leaders of his greater, and now unbeatable, army. If the greatest Azeroth had to offer could be killed in an instant with no effort at all by him, what would it look like for the rest of the denizens of Azeroth if those heroes were raised on the side of the Lich King. Not good at all.
We ended up winning the battle with a little bit of luck, or make that a lot of luck. We were dead, we did lose, the Lich King was the most powerful enemy we had ever faced and remains so even up to this day. Even Deathwing, the unmaker of worlds needed a long, very long, cast time to destroy the world whereas Arthas simply wished us dead and we died. We were lucky, never doubt that.
It is that story, and in my opinion the best writing we have ever seen in the warcraft MMO, that made me think that perhaps Sargeras is the good guy. Because not everything always is as it appears. Is blizzard the type to develop such a great bait and switch like that? Keep us thinking that Sargeras is the bad guy only to find out that he is our one and only true savior. I doubt it. Most blizzard writing is not that deep or involved, at least not since the days of the Lich King. But that is where I let my imagination run away with me.
We thought we had the Lich King on the run, but he was playing with us. We never held the upper hand, we never had him running from us, we never had a prayer of beating him, even when he let us just waltz into his throne room. He has control the entire way. He manipulated every step we took, all in an effort to make us stronger. To make us better fighters. All so we would be more of a force to be reckoned with when he revived us as his lieutenants.
This is how I see what the Titans are doing. The Titans might not be these benevolent beings that gave us life, that shaped the world as we know it, that set things in motion so we could live our own lives.
What if the Titans, and everything we have experienced, are all planned out to make us stronger so we would be a more formidable army at their service. Just because we do not know of the great "Army of the Titans" doesn't mean that there is not one. There is very little we know of the Titans and most of what we know is speculation at least and tainted at best.
We believe that they could not kill the old gods so they imprisoned them beneath the crust of the ground. What proof do we have of that? None. What if they were completely capable of killing them, but they didn't for a reason. They wanted them under the ground, they wanted them whispering the murmurs into the minds of man, driving them insane. What if they wanted them there trying to corrupt us so it would weed out those weak of mind. That those whispers in our ears were a test to see who was weak of mind, to see who could resist the madness, to make sure the strong get stronger being able to resist such pressure from the old golds and the weak get eliminated.
The old gods could be a tool, just like we are to the Titans. Who is the say the old gods were not placed on Azeroth by the titans for this exact reason. None of us were there at the beginning. All we have is speculation. Perhaps the old gods whispers of madness in our ears is no different than Arthas sending enemies our way to strengthen our fighting skills, except it is a design of the Titans to strengthen our mental skills.
The Titans are all about "order", or at least that is what we are lead to believe. Perhaps it is an order like the military. We are being trained to fight for them. That is why there is such a strict adherence to order demanded by the land and the watchers. If we are not developing as they want us to, we will be eliminated.
Perhaps we misunderstood what Algalon was on about when we ran into him in Ulduar. We believed that we accidentally set it off by killing Loken and he, after seeing us and what we could do, decided not to start the reorganization of Azeroth. Perhaps the reason killing Loken set off Algalon was because the Titans believed that their army was revolting and when Alaglon saw that we were not actually revolting and we were still following the path of the titans, he let us live and did not reorganize Azeroth.
He was a safeguard so if the Titans army, namely us, were to revolt, he would reset the world so a new army can be raised from the beginning, one that would not turn on their masters and makers. Once Algalon noticed we were in fact no threat to the masters plan he let us continue on.
The Titans, to our belief, have placed life on countless planets never to return. We believe they are benevolent being offering life, free will, our own being. But perhaps it is not as it seems. They are placing life all over the universe trying to find the perfect situation where they can develop their army. An obedient, powerful army.
Maybe Sargeras noticed this. He noticed that the Titans were trying to develop an army of slaves basically. Strengthened by design to be powerful of both mind and body and obedient to their makers, the Titans. Sargeras needed to do whatever he could to fight for the right of free will. He enlisted whichever being he could get to work with him in whatever way he could woo them to do so. He, and his new followers, went and started to destroy all the worlds the Titans had made with designs of being a soldier factory of sorts.
With whom Sargeras works with it is easy to think of him as the bad guy. Working with demons does not usually give off the feeling that this is a good guy we are looking at, but perhaps it is just a means to an end for him. Not everything is always as it appears. The humanoids, as we know them, the people most similar to us, are all children of the Titans. We are all subjects of the Titans, we are organized to be as the Titans wanted us to be.
We are wild cards, we are the army of the Titans whether we notice it or not. Sargeras could not ask us to help him, could not woo us to help him, could not persuade us to help him, because if he did, the watchers that the Titans left in place, for just such a reason, if we deviated from the path the Titans set for us, would just reorganized Azeroth, wiping us from existence for the sole offense of drifting from the makers plans and having free will.
The day could come where it finally dawns on us, that we are nothing more than pawns in a much greater plan. That it is the Titans in fact that are the true evil in the universe. Twisting the old gods to their service and using them to make us stronger. Sargeras knew what the Titans were doing, he was once one of them, he knew that creating a perfect order to the universe meant that every living being would have to bend to the Titans will and that there would be no individuality left in the universe. Every being alive would have to walk lock step in tune with the will of the Titans or be wiped out.
Sargeras is fighting for our right to feel will. He sides with those we perceive as evil because those were the only beings he could get to work with him, the only ones not pressed under the thumb of the Titans, the only ones that have the free will to join him. They work with him because they want to do so, not because they were designed to do so, which is how we walk with the Titans, by design.
In the future, when we develop more free will, us, the beings that the Titans were developing to be their perfect warriors of mind and body, will fight against our makers and they will rain down upon us with a vengeance we never even imagined could come from them, because we are not listening to their plan, we are not following their rule, and we must be wiped out and Azeroth will need to be reorganized, so they can start over and make a better race, a stronger race, a more obedient race that understands their place, as soldiers of the Titans.
To defeat the Titans we will need to save Sargeras from the Twisting Nether and work with him because for as evil as he might seem, he is the good guy. Always had been, always will be. He was fighting for our right to free will, for our right to not just be servants of the Titans.
Far fetched? Sure. Possible? Absolutely.
We only know what we are told. Do you believe everything you are told? If so, perhaps you are exactly what the Titans want. But if you do not believe everything you have been told, the Titans will remove you from the equation. There is no free will allowed in the Titans universe. Only order. Complete order that follows the Titan design. Sounds pretty evil to me and I guess that means the guy fighting against it, Sargeras, is the good guy then.
Christmas Is Coming!
4 hours ago
Fascinating. The tinfoil hat posts on the now-known-as-Blizzardwatch column Know Your Lore were always my favourite ones, and yours is a worthy addition. I especially love the reinterpretation of the Omega signal and Algalon.
ReplyDeleteOne question, though: how do the Draenei, and more specifically, the Naaru, fit into this? I find it hard to think of the Naaru as agents of the Titans, intent on establishing perfect order even at the cost of planetary annihilation.
Glad you liked it. And there was always something to what Algalon said. As much as I love it, I was never fully sure that we were "done" with him.
DeleteThere is nothing to say that the Draenei and Naaru are not just completely different "groups" all together. I am sure with a little thought I could work something out that would, hopefully, seem plausible.
Just as a quick, off the top of my head idea.
The Draenei and the desire to wipe them out has nothing to do with Sargeras. It is simply his underlings desire to go after them, as they felt slighted that not all their people joined with Sargeras. Sargeras lets them have their own side missions, as he does support free will and they are not slaves to do only what he tells them to do.
The fact that the stories connected is pure coincidence. Nothing more.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
ReplyDeleteWhile a nice alternative storyline, it is not something that Blizzard is capable of pulling off. The things you mentioned with Arthas, eh, maybe but I don't personally buy it. Arthas was the greatest villain Blizzard has yet put into play, on that we certainly agree, but to be honest, the whole undead threat is something to me that is always overplayed as dangerous, whether it be the Walkers of The Walking Dead, or World War Z's mindless hordes or the undead in a game such as WoW. Yea the undead are a bit disgusting at best and downright horrific at normal on to sickening in some cases, but as a real threat, no not really. That is just my personal feelings about undead as foes in a game. I grant you the more intelligent liches and vampires can be alarmingly powerful and dangerous individually but the mindless hordes that make up the undead armies are just more targets in a target rich environment to me. Arthas to me was nothing more than a jumped up lich, extremely lethal but ultimately not able to carry through on his grandiose ideas of world domination.
Which brings me back to Sargeras as Blizzard's ultimate hero theory. Can't buy it simply because I know from tracking the story of Azeroth and related lands that Blizzard has never been that devious to develop that good a storyline for any character. Never has and I doubt seriously ever will. The Medivh storyline is probably the closest to such a fake out that we have seen. I suspect strongly from the other important story lines that Medivh is about as complex as Blizzard can go, using a combination of media (games, books, background notes) to provide the overall all story.
Also I am becoming more and more convinced, that fight is one we will never see in Warcraft. Which fight...oh, yea, the one end boss fight of all time in the Warcraft Multi-verse, the (any name) guild versus Sargeras for the world first Sargeras kill. I no longer think it is on the plate to be developed. Why? Because it would be seen as the last boss of the World of Warcraft and they could not expect to sell as many copies of the expansion after and would likely see a real end to a cash cow (one old cash cow, but one that still is giving milk even if not in the volume as before).
With such an expansion for Sargeras, I think the servers would be eventually shutdown, with more server merges coming down the road as the player base contracts due to a multitude of factors (old game engine, raid or die, no flight, no decent WPvP that engages interest, crafting gutted, etc. etc.) Eventually the game will be down to a handful of legacy servers with no new expansions likely (there will be talk of one but never no action) and the game will effectively be dead. So no. I never expect to see the Sargeras fight in the game.
But an unending army that keeps replenishing its loses with the fallen foe is endless and will eventually overrun the living. That is the real threat of the undead. And with powerful knowledgeable and capable people, such as ourselves, leading the charge, we could wipe out cities in minutes and revive all the fallen to add to our troops.
DeleteI believe if we had fallen and were revived, the end of life on azeroth would have been a foregone conclusion, which of course would have lead to a reorganization anyway.
The dead was a real threat. Even more so with appropriate leadership, which we would have been.
Just because blizzard has never done so, doesn't mean they can't. Put the story in the hands of someone with a vivid imagination and you can easily spin it to something like I mentioned or similar.
Development of character is not beyond salvation. It can still be done. The question is more so will they? I agree, I do not think they will. But it doesn't mean that we can not fumble around with the idea of "what if".
I agree that they will strong it out as long as they can. But I do not think that even if we fought him it would be the end. He is just another name on the list of people to kill. He is not a threat now and never will be. We, the players, need to suffer some losses. We, or at least me, feel as if there is no such a thing as a loss.
As such, I do not think he is the end of the game boss any longer. He is just the end of the previously discussed history. It does not mean more could not be made. It would all just be a matter of if they want to.
Also, I believe if they ever were going to end the game and it did not happen suddenly and was planned they would add him as the last boss. It only makes sense.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
DeleteYou see, that is where we do differ on the idea of the endless waves of mindless undead. Perhaps in a WW Z situation that develops in a few short days from outbreak to overwhelm, it might be true but in a game world where an actual undead nation exists? Please, don't think for a second that mindless undead could overwhelm anyone with the conquest by death and revival method. Remember the mindless part? Brains beats brawn far more often than not. Even a low tech group such as the trolls could construct rollers made of logs like an oversize tinker toy and with the size of some of the mounts of Azeroth, power them over any mindless undead army. End results that mindless undead are beaten by not getting killed and not getting killed is not all that hard when brains are used in any sort of reasonable manner. There are so many vulnerabilities to any mindless army that it makes it very hard to make me take them serious as a civilizational threat.
Now the sentient undead, whether ghouls or what ever the forsaken are, or banshees, or liches (not to mention some undead types not in WoW), those are much more dangerous but they are also not nearly as likely to be as cooperative as others. That is what made the Lich King dangerous, and not his own overwhelming power great as that individual power was. He commanded sentient undead who in turn controlled to some extent the mindless masses that made up his armies. It is what makes the new Lich King such a potential problem.
None the less, I really cannot see any undead having enough advantages over the living to ever be able to prevail. The closest that has come to be is the Forsaken of Sylvanas, with a Banshee Queen over a large number of ghoul type undead that are also free willed intelligent creatures.
Actually I will have to retract at least a part of my statement about not seeing the undead as a real threat. Sylvanas and the Forsaken could be taken as a real threat, but then again that is an entire nation of intelligent undead. Far different from the Arthas / Lich King where a limited number of intelligent undead commanded legions of mindless or nearly so undead. Kill the controllers and the mindless undead are basically useless as a military formation.
You know I played through Wrath and all its undead. While large in numbers, most of his troops fell into the mindless or so close as to be mindless category. The number of intelligent undead supporting Arthas, while very numerous, were not endless. Also as Sylvanas showed, not any of them could be truly trusted by Arthas.
Now if the Dark Lady ever decides to move on the rest of Azeroth, that might well be a real threat, but we all know that would take re-arranging the factions to have the Undead as their own faction opposed to all the others and Blizzard will never go for that. :)
The undead have one major advantage. Numbers. Well, two advantages. They keep going until they can't go. Once we stub our toe we are out of action. ;)
DeleteRemember the spread of disease that warcraft had many years ago. One so bad that actually scientists looked at it for what they could learn about a pandemic.
Yeah, it has happened in game before, by accident of course, so it sure as hell could happen in game again. There is no "revive". Once you are dead you are dead, if you revive you revive as the undead horde. They can keep coming back, we have one life only. They can and would overwhelm us.
Us, as the characters in game, are not intelligent and organized. We are brutes with weapons and magic. We would not make a strong hold and slowly pick them off which would absolutely assure we win. (which always annoyed me they do not do in the walking dead, you could win easily like that).
We would go out, as the adventures we are, and fight them. We would eventually die and come back as one of them. Every single adventurer would die. Every adventurer would become one of them.
To use it in game terms. Think of how many people in game never died. Now think that they are the only one alive, the rest of us, that ever died, are all zombies.
How do you think those, what, 1 or 2 level 100s that never died, plan to hold off against the 100 million people that have played this game over 10 years and died at least once? Sorry to disagree, but it is not happening. That is just a fact. Zombies win.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
DeleteI was there for that plague. We beat it back. The thing was curable with the spells we had available back then. For a while it looked like the whole of Ironforge was going to succumb, but the random at first and then later organized on the fly healing effort eventually defeated it. Of course what actually killed the plague from Zul Gurab was a hot fix and a server restart, but that doesn't really count as far as the player reaction goes.
To be honest, that was the best bug (all puns intended) to ever plague us in the game's history. What made it a problem was the fact that once discovered, lots of hunters intentionally got their pets infected to bring it back to town. That kept ensuring the healers who happened to be in Ironforge were constantly being stressed to keep up. In that sense, it was griefers among the hunter community that ensured the continuing outbreaks. In today's real world parlance, they wanted to see the world burn and tried their hardest to make it happen; i.e., they were in game equivalents to terrorists.
Again, in regards to the undead, I must stress the difference between the mindless undead and the intelligent types. No, I will never believe the mindless are a real threat beyond what ever individual threat to a single person or small group of persons they might represent. As military formations, they are pretty much worthless other than continuous wave assaults. There are lots of ways to destroy masses of mindless undead once you know and understand what they are.
As far as the way the game is set up, military tactics are not well represented by the game mechanics. Never have you ever seen 500 hunters lined up delivering an Agincourt type mass assault via arrows. See that is the weakness of the combat system in WoW, it is strictly based on us adventurers as special forces units. There are no ways to emulate via game methods real tactical prowess, no line of pikes to hold off mounted enemies, no lines of archers who can create a kill zone of thousands of arrows saturating an area. For mass combat, the game is one big brawl and with the technical means available, no other results are possible.
So I suppose in game terms, no, the adventurers might as well be brutes with weapons and magic as far as being effective in the scenario you describe. What I am describing is the fact that folks with any knowledge of military history are not present in the gaming industry or can't get that knowledge implemented in game terms if they are present. Same difference either way. Same difference for the movies to by the way. Reality would bite the end product in the arse in so far as the scripts would go. See the latest Game of Thrones for an example of this where no military knowledge (as opposed to martial knowledge) was present.
I think blizzard would do good for themselves to do things like that on occasion on purpose just for the fun of it.
DeleteFrustrating as it might be in the same breath if you are trying to get things done, it does offer some good memories from the people that were there. Either giving in to it or fight it, all I hear are great stories from it. Even if those same stories say they would not want it to happen all the time.
I am not thinking of "mindless". I am thinking of organized with us leading them. Well versed tactical war leaders. There would be no way to oppose a force like that. Not our characters at least. We are, at base, a rag tag group of people who often adventure alone which all but ensures death.
If you want to see 500 hunters doing just that, check out some of the warcraft hunters union videos. They had 100s of hunters, level 1s mind you, take down one of the dragons of nightmare. That was an awesome video.
Using real life terms the whole undead thing is not even worth talking about. It could never happen and would never happen. The undead have too much going against them to ever win. Weather, both cold and hot will ravage their bodies, natural enemies, like dogs going after a walking meat rack, would rip them apart. Not to mention the bacteria that exists in all of us. While alive our body fights it off, in death it would ravage the body. Then there is the fact they feel no pain, they would break their legs and not even notice it. Their coordination is slim to none, so any obstacle will stop them. I could go on and on. In real life we would not even need a military. Just stay in your house and in 24 hours they would all be rotted, broken and beaten all by themselves, we would not even need to fight them.
My most treasured forum of WoW lore and story was on Elitest Jerks, at over 10k posts it is a behemoth of lore and speculation. Much of what you've hypothesized in this post was also speculated there during wrath. Like Anon the whole idea ended when Blizzard started putting out books and comics to tell the Lore and essentially retroactively disenfranchising players, everyone realized that this idea was simply too subtle for Blizzard. It might be in a book, in some form, but like so many elements of lore nowadays, absent from the game.
ReplyDeleteIt would be really sad for it to be played out in a book. Many, I might even guess most, players have no desire to get any lore from any place other than the game and maybe a forum post or two at most.
DeleteBlizzard needs to keep the story telling in the game because that is what the game is for. Otherwise you get what we have had for the last three expansions, just generic bad guys.
I know there was a lot more to deathwing but in game he comes of as godzilla, nothing more. Mists could have been any collection of random people we never heard about and a faction leader turned raid boss, again nothing special. And now they place us against orcs with no special powers what so ever, no better than the same orcs alliance have been killing in battle grounds for 10 years.
It is all just boring with no in game story to back it up.
I never saw that thread, I am going to see if it is still around. Would love to see some other "what if" scenarios people came up with.
I do believe that the titans are the true bad guys of the game however. I just do not see blizzard as being capable of pulling it off. Their in game writers are lackluster at best.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
DeleteWell regarding the Titans being the true bad guys, I don't know as I can say they are the true baddies but I sure as heck don't think of them as the good guys. Whatever reason given out as their mission statement about seeding the universe with life, they are more than capable of ending life where and when they see fit...and from what all I can tell likely have done so in the past.
Sargeras is a Lucifer figure, broken away from the heavenly host of the Titans. Just is in the case of Blizzard's mythology, the Titans are not really a whole lot better than he is. Remember Azeroth is an experiment gone wrong, and while we may (as characters) be thrilled with the way things turned out (more or less, sorta, kinda at the bare minimum least), the Titans would NOT BE PLEASED according to their blue print of how things were supposed to go. When gods are not pleased, usually bad things happen to those doing the displeasing.
Yea, we got off lucky in Ulduar. I mean as bad as a visit from the Burning Legion has been for Azeroth, think how much less you want to be having the Titans pop in for a bit of reeducation and reconstruction.
As it stands right now there are at least 4 and maybe 5 separate god pantheons in WoW's multi-verse: the Naaru, the Titans, Sargeras' Burning Legion, the Old Gods, and the Gods of Nature (or the Night Elf pantheon). Three of those are strictly NPC status, while the Naaru and the Gods of Nature are adhered to by both horde and alliance, although generally referred to as the Light instead of more specific names associated with the Draenie and the Nelfs. Of the three NPC pantheons, I think the Titans are easily argued as the most dangerous of the three. Sargeras, the most powerful of the Titans at one time is still vastly outnumbered by the other Titans. As for the Old Gods, the Titans whipped them already and I see no reason that such a rerun would not end more or less the same way.
But having the Titans as bad guys as you postulated, why no, that is no stretch at all but it is one that Blizzard won't go to, no more than I think they will ever touch actually facing Sargeras.
We are lead to believe they would not be happy with how things turned out. That doesn't mean that is the truth of the matter. Perhaps we turned out exactly as they wanted. They could wipe us out in the blink of an eye and have not done so. That fact alone suggests that we either did not turn "horribly wrong" from what they wanted or we are exactly as they intended us to be.
DeleteYou know what we are told. But do we know that we are being told the truth? Just because Sargeras seems like the luicfer figure doesn't mean he really is. Red herring anyone?
I think most people are really look deep into it will realize the Titans are not the good guys, even if we keep being told they are.
I have no clue, but saw this in my rss feeds today.
ReplyDeleteBlizzardWatch - Know Your Lore: Sargeras (Part 1)
--
regards,
regardsanon
I saw that yesterday, it is what reminded me of this idea. I posted something like it a long time back and figured I would revisit it.
Deleteyou been reading too many science fiction stories.
ReplyDeleteBut more importantly have you seen the following when someone gave you a pet or you bought one from the AH that is already level 25 and you try to add it - "Can't add companion to your account"???
Yes, this happen to me today.
-roo
You need to level one to 25 yourself before you can learn one of that level.
DeleteIn your garrison at level three go to the pet menagerie and do the quest to get the stone near your mine. Completing it gives you an item that can level 1 pet to 25. Once you do that, you can now learn 25 pets because you leveled one to 25 yourself.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
ReplyDeleteRoo, open your collections tab to the pet page, scroll down to the pet type you bought (listed alphabetically) and count them. If you have three or more, that is why you can't add the companion. You can right click on them and have some options that make it possible for you to remove some pets (put them in cages). The caged pets no longer count against your total and when you are under three of that type listed, you can add the new pet. Plus you will have some AH material in the form of the pets you caged from your list.
Hope that helps.
I think it had more to do with the fact he did not have a level 25 already. You can not learn a level 25 pet until you have actually leveled a 25. But your right, if you already have 3 it won't let you either, so that is another possibility.
Deletelol, sorry, in my latest rant, I asked the same question (Friday June 5th). I totally forgot I asked it here. Forgive me.
DeleteNo, I don't have 3 of that - Anubisath idol. My sister was kind enough to take it from whatever level to 25. Little did she or I know, that I have to have a lvl 25. LOL, here is another area Blizzard fails - if you can't use a pet, it should be red out (like the way they do Alliance mounts and Horde mounts). It should be red out even in the AH. But thank you Anon and GE! I always like hearing your answers or more precisely reading your answers. :) I have forgotten so much of the game.
-roo
Nah. The "free will concept" is very much alike satanism. Its mentors never talk of "kill it with fire". The luring points are exactly "free will" ("don't be a sheep") and "more power" which we see within Legion.
ReplyDeleteThe major good in Warcraft universe is
1. Life
2. Peaceful life.
While Sargeras' hounds of Legion try and eradicate everything they come across - we must fight them, whatever the "Free will".
While Titans at some point want to eradicate our world - we fight them whatever the Order.
While undead and demons and iron orcs come to action to pillage and destroy - we must fight them.
I'm not saying Titans may not go bad (we saw those flip flops before - orc villains became playable heroes, undead hordes became playable heroes). If they want to eradicate Azeroth - we go and kick their asses. Maybe even wih Sargeras' help. But not until he rejects the evils of Burning Legion and does a flip back to "good". Legion is just too carnivorous to side with them.
Don't forget that the Lich King was created to cull resistance so that the Burning Legion could steam roll through. Don't forget about the Lick King being subservient to Kil'Jaeden and ultimately Sargeras.
DeleteThe Titans want Order and the Old Gods represent Chaos. Even though balance is the way to go, Blizzard swings it towards the Titans being the "good guys".
So far there have only been two organizations that followed the Old Gods, the Twilight's Hammer and the Klaxxi. The Twilight's Hammer wants to eradicate everything but they really don't go into why. The Klaxxi were set up as a check and balance to the Empress.
One thing that Matt Rossi brought up about Sargeras was that he saw the futility of constantly killing off demons and chaos spawn. But he also mentioned that Sargeras wants to wipe out the universe to start over because it is impure. That part was never mentioned before. Total destruction was brought up in the past but I have never seen mention of starting over until Rossi wrote it.
This explains a lot of what Sargeras is doing. Recruiting Demons and chaos spawn makes sense because they like to kill things. Orcs were a tribal primitive race until Kil'Jaeden recruited them. I don't remember reading anywhere that Sargeras fought with other Titans.
I wouldn't say that Sargeras is truly evil when he has a goal in mind, starting over. Rebuilding. It's really no different than what Algalon was doing in Ulduar.
If you really look into it though, the Titans were probably modeled after Marvel Comic's Celestials. They evolve life on different planets and then return to "judge".
In Marvel Comic's Earth X, they made the Celestials out to be creating and evolving life to be the "white blood cells" of a planet while a Celestial was growing through birth within the core of the planet. Their only opponent in the Universe was Galactus who was intentionally "eating" the planets with Celestials growing inside. The Celestials had made slaves of the Watchers for allowing Galactus to be born (the story goes that Galan of Taa was sent by his race in the previous universe to see if they could stop the end. If you believe in the Big Bang theory then you know that the universe is supposed to start contracting at a certain maximum expansion point and then go through the process again. Galan of Taa is the only survivor of the previous universe being born in our Universe as Galactus.)
DeleteReally changes the view on things (remember that Earth X was just a alternate Universe Marvel Comics story. Awesome read, I highly recommend it). But if you look at WoW lore, you will notice some common themes here.
Titans create, populate and evolve life on planets. According to Lore, Azeroth had 5 life forms at the beginning:
Tauren
Trolls
Earthen
Storm Giants
Sea Giants
The Titans created the clockwork gnomes, human prototypes, Uldum cat dudes, and the Mogu. The "Curse of Flesh" turned them all into what we know them as now (although the Humans were weaker versions that their Mom's felt pity on and sent away at birth. It's not clear if this was a further extension of the Curse of Flesh".
If the Titans had their way, humans and gnomes wouldn't exist as we know it (dwarves too but we are talking about Titan inventions). They were happy with their automatons doing their chores (because orderly things don't complain about the mundane, redundant routine things).
What's never fleshed out is who or what created the Spring that evolved Trolls into Night Elves. It obviously wasn't the Titans or Sargeras wouldn't have craved it so much. Was it an Old God deal? It makes perfect sense when you thing about it.
And to finalize (I went off on all kinds of tangents), the Titans knew they could beat the Old Gods one on one, but they also saw how futile it was to do so because the Old Gods can't die. They are the polar opposites of the Titans. It's never mentioned which Titan "killed" Ya'sharj (excuse my misspelling on all the referenced folks". Could it be Tyr?
Evil is in the eye of the beholder. If we fight anyone, be is Deathwing, Lich King, Sargeras, we are evil to them. So evil is not black and white. We only see it how we were "trained" to see it. Who is to say he is actually evil? What we learned in life? Maybe he is right.
Delete@Savvy
Without chaos there can be no order. Both need to exist. It is the chaos of the old gods that allows the order of the titans to be.
Remember what Rossi wrote is "opinion" or a tin foil hat theory, like mine. There is no fact, that I know of, to that statement he made. Just as you never heard it neither did I.
The principle of life is balance and harmony. Whoever seeks to destroy kingdoms and worlds, not to survive but out of some idea of domination, is the enemy.
DeleteTitans create life? That's good. Titans want to eradicate what they made? NOT tolerated, so they become enemies. Legion is Master Enemy because they eradicate only and create nothing.
When Orcish Horde lays waste to peaceful Azeroth - they're villains. When Orcish Horde tries to find their place in Kalimdor and create, not demolish - they're suddenly a playable hero race. Easy as that.
And so, you become villain when you don't want to build, create, communicate and negotiate.
DeleteYou assign yourself a right that you decide who's worth living and who's not. You assign yourself a right to shape the world as you see it and don't consider those races and beings who come in your way.
Sylvanas as an undead leader is both good and bad. She's making bonds with Horde and builds (it's good - learning how to live with the others). But she attacks the living in Northern Eastern Kingdoms and destroys cities - that's villain behaviour.
Lich King is bad, no exception.
Legion is bad, no exception.
Both either consume or destroy.
Titas to Old Gods? Definitely villains. Came to the world that was not theirs and shaped it like they wanted, eradicating all the resistance.
And the Titans can and will continue to wipe out all life that they do not see fit. They, more than anyone else you mentioned, are more evil.
DeleteAll the others, misguided as they might be, have an agenda. Titans have order. It is be as they want you to be or you won't be. At least with all the others you mentioned there are options. You could join them. Not saying you would, but you could. They are not ultimate destruction, the titans are.
So do you see a parallel between the aTitans and Blizzard telling us what's good for us and how we should be playing "their" game?
DeleteHow about Grumpy (and outspoken blog sites and loud gorum posts) and the Old Gods?
That is a very good analogy actually. They are telling us what is good for us, like it or not. And I am an old god whispering the madness into your ear.
DeleteHave you started growing tentacles all over your body yet or do I need to keep whispering?