These spoiler-filled lore cutscenes show 7.3 may be the biggest story patch yet

The folks at Wowhead have once again datamined up some pretty huge spoilers for patch 7.3. Please, be warned, clicking on those links or reading this article will lead to spoilers for the patch, though one of the videos linked here is a flashback to stuff we already knew happened. It’s still cool to see it, though, but the other videos absolutely are packed with spoilers for brand new content in upcoming patch, the Antorus raid, and beyond.

So, with that spoiler warning out of the way, let’s look at some videos and talk about what we’re seeing in them.

The return of Aggramar

This one is pretty straightforward and pretty amazing. It’s part of a quest chain that helps open up more World Quests on Argus, and what you see here is simply the arrival of a Titan: Aggramar the Avenger. It seems that death and rebirth has diminished Aggramar as he’s now merely the size of a small mountain instead of the size of a planet, but he’s still plenty big enough to squash some pesky adventurer.

“But wait,” you may be asking. “Why is Aggramar trying to kill us?” That’s a good question, and it’s one that is answered in the next video.

That’s right — Aggramar is now working for Sargeras. If you read Chronicle you’ll remember that Aggramar and the other Titans were destroyed by Sargeras in an epic battle quite some time ago, and it seems that since then Sargeras somehow reconstituted his former friend and ally and pressed him into service as his servant. Quite a demotion for Aggramar. But still, the dialogue hints at even more — what is this circle that Sargeras speaks of and why doesn’t he want this ‘incursion of the Light’ to threaten it? What’s Aggramar’s purpose besides just squashing or almost squashing pesky adventurers? Well, for that, we need to watch the next video.

The rebirth of the Titans

It turns out that Aggramar is just one of the Titans that Sargeras has collected — indeed, like a very tenacious Pokemon trainer, he’s caught them all save for Eonar the Life-Binder. How did he do this, when it’s said in Chronicle that the souls of the Titans journeyed to Azeroth and hid within the Keepers? Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ve always wondered if all of the Titan’s souls did that — after all, it was said that the experience of being housed in such a small entity was disorienting for the Titan Souls and the Keepers had no idea what was happening. Also, we know that several of the Keepers were empowered by the same Titan: both Mimiron and Loken were empowered by Norgannon, for example. Did his soul reside in both of them?

Regardless, Sargeras has been hunting for the Titans souls for a very long time. The previous two invasions of Azeroth, as well as the Avatar of Sargeras’ incursion into Northrend, could all have been aimed not at destroying the world so much as in finding and reclaiming the Titan Souls, or as much of them as Sargeras could get. (Being unable to get all of Aggramar would explain why he was smaller than before, for example.) We’ll see how this shakes out. The next video sheds some light on the issue.

Eonar’s retreat

Clearly, Eonar’s sanctuary is tended by entities that look a lot like the Avatar of Freya we saw in Northrend. Her dialogue certainly seems to imply that she escaped Sargeras’ pursuit of her (perhaps by abandoning Freya when Yogg-Saron began capturing the Keepers)  and has been hiding in what certainly looks like a Titan facility of some kind, combining elements of other places we’ve seen before like Ulduar and Skywall.

Clearly whatever else is happening, we end up assisting Eonar in escaping the Legion, based on other datamined conversations we’ve seen. Sargeras’ definitely has been working this plan for a very long time, and at last he’s finally ready to get on with it. Eonar’s the last piece of the puzzle. It remains to be seen how much of the process will be clear to use once we witness all this.

Velen and the exodus

This one’s a flashback, and there’s nothing in it we didn’t actually know already, but it’s still cool to see Velen, Kil’Jaeden, and Archimonde in their younger days, with both Kil’Jaeden and Archimonde freshly corrupted and still looking much like they had before. This moment — the escape of the Draenei from Argus — was the beginning both of Kil’Jaeden’s hunt for his former friend. But there’s also the tiny kernel of hope that the Legion was, in fact, beatable — that Sargeras and his grand design for the cosmos could be thwarted. It’s pretty awesome to finally see all of that play out on Argus.

All in all these cutscenes indicated that patch 7.3 is a massive patch, potentially as big as the entire expansion so far, with a lot of story in it. I’m beyond interested to see it all play out. The patch cannot hit soon enough in my opinion.