Up next in 10
This week's episode was inspired by a question from a listener, about where the story is going from here as we make our way toward the next expansion of World of Warcraft, Midnight. We veer right into Tinfoil Hat territory pretty quickly. After all, it's tough when a lot of the sources we have are either written by unreliable narrators, or were written well before any of current events were even thought of -- which is part of the question itself. The Titans, the First Ones, and how they interact with the Void is a topic with a lot of intricacies and ground to cover, so Matt and Joe will do their best to navigate all this treacherous ground.
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0:00
[Music]
0:09
hello and welcome to lore watch a round table free form discussion about lore in your favorite media i'm your host joe
0:15
pres one of several lore focused folks from blizzard watch and i've got my marvelous co-host with me today matt rossley how you doing matt i am not a
0:22
scroll that's exactly what a scroll would say no it's not a scroll would tell you straight to your face that
0:27
they're a scroll and then they would laugh at how you didn't know they were a scroll until they told you i've read those comics man
0:34
oh well hopefully matt won't be a scroll by the end of this episode although or they a cow that's a whole thing in
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marvel someday we will talk about this about the the scrolls the scroll cows
0:47
the scroll kill crew and other things related to scrolls and cows yeah scrolls were a weird thing and if you guys want
0:53
to hear about it or want us to go and do an episode about you know what scrolls are in terms of the marvel universe let
1:00
us know maybe we can do a whole episode about it uh but that said if we do have
1:05
something that you want us to talk about whether it be a question or a show or anything along those lines be sure to
1:10
send us in uh you know your questions or requests to uh
1:16
podcastardwatch.com specify the show that it's for and any special pronunciation for your name uh if you
1:21
want to hit us up on discord we have two discord channels set aside specifically for this purpose the first one is the q
1:28
and podcast questions channel which is open to everybody then we have the patron q and podcast questions channel
1:33
uh which is for our patreon supporters as a way of saying thank you for supporting us we give you first billing
1:39
essentially uh and as a matter of fact our first question that we're going to be talking about today will have been
1:44
from that discord uh so i guess without further ado uh we're just going to get
1:50
into it this is a long one uh so hang with us while we go through it and then we'll we'll we'll crack into tinfoil hat
1:57
territory on this one uh so it's greetings fellow travelers through the icy winds lorac here and i've been
2:03
catching up on my lower watch in the dornagall archives that both suggest that wow history has been skewed or at
2:09
least has gaps we've been uh presented all along the story that the void uh is
2:15
outside and trying to break in everything we've learned from the titans is that they're trying to keep it out what if the goal of our universe and
2:21
especially azeroth is to bring all the forces back into balance by reintegrating with the void you've
2:26
talked about how us as azeroth's children can use all the cosmic forces and how that sometimes scares the heck
2:32
out of the titan i've been wondering about the first ones and why they set up the system they did at the beginning of our universe what if the void was all
2:38
consuming and would have completely subsumed the others cosmic forces at the start is it possible that the first ones
2:44
locked the void away while the rest of the universe evolved to be able to hold and sustain the balance they couldn't
2:49
predict when and how the balance could be achieved but set up the shadowlands to recycle with runic objects getting
2:56
stronger with every reforge is it possible that the animal recycling works the same way it strengthens the life of
3:02
our universe to help sustain the balance and they set up everything else to hold the void at bay zal and the other titan
3:08
level beings fear some great disaster reintegrating with the void runs that risk that it's all consuming and these
3:15
beings are all programmed by the first ones to keep the void at bay it could be that the time has come to an end and the
3:20
archive and the change in the earn is another of those signs that may mean that we end up allying with zalot to
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open the door it explains the not quite ally not quite enemy we have with queen azara if any immortal could see a
3:33
glimpse of that planet would be her she certainly think our heroes so far beneath her that she wouldn't that we
3:39
wouldn't get the big picture midnight could be the story of how we help each other help them open the door then the final fight of midnight or the first
3:45
fight of the last titan could be zalot in order to prevent all consuming the rest of the story in the last titan is then helping prepare azeroth to maintain
3:52
the balance that provides a path for the last titan to not be the end of wow after all azeroth will be maintaining
3:57
balance at the universal level that leaves plenty of pockets for everything else for us heroes to help with even as
4:02
the last titan there could still be threats to maintaining the balance after all there's an entire universe that has
4:07
been brought that has bought into holding the void at bay and they may have come directly from the heroes that let them back in uh in this tinfoil hat
4:15
story i can also see aloon as the guardian at the gate between the void and our universe hence her inability to
4:20
see very well into the shadowlands and that link to the naru if they are at the border patrol and why the naru have void
4:26
and light forms one for patrolling or at least watching each side could also mean that our history of making things worse
4:32
at the end of the very expansion is actually part of bringing azeroth to maturity and reintegrating the void it's
4:38
only worse because we've bought into the story to keep the void at bay there's a lot going on here and uh i guess we'll
4:45
just pick out yes everything you said is possible that it could be what it is it's also possible that it's not um i
4:52
guess where do we want to start like let's start with the void i don't think that the void has ever been really
4:58
portrayed as outside breaking in no it hasn't it's been part of the system
5:03
there's that whole thing you know they do not live they do not die they are outside the cycle uh that's not void
5:09
that's entities from you know outside of our existence the devourers yeah well not just the devourers the the they do
5:16
not live they do not die thing wasn't necessarily about the it was people thought it was about the old gods uh but
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the old gods are the ones saying this prophecy mhm they they you know they don't have to
5:30
say we they're the old gods if they want to mess around with with you know grammar and syntax they can do that but
5:37
i want to i want to point out that even though the part of the problem we have is that all of our sources for
5:43
information uh are either in-game stuff or outofgame stuff and with the
5:50
chronicle books we've we've definitely had the presentation of those those books are written from a certain
5:55
perspective so they're not intended to be unbiased they're not intended to be this is the one true factual history
6:02
it's more like this is what the titans say this is what the shadowlands beings say they're less they're less an actual
6:08
chronicle and more an editorial it's more like a book you might find if you were actually in world of warcraft mhm
6:14
you might pick up a book and it would be this volume was chronicle you know that's that's where they're going with
6:20
it however even with that said two things to keep in mind one is that anytime we come upon something in the
6:26
game that contradicts stuff we've heard previously it's not necessarily a contradiction because we're looking at
6:33
tens of thousands of years of time where things are happening that we haven't heard about yet because those things
6:40
happened somewhere else or we're not you know nobody survived to tell anyone
6:45
about them and then later on we find out about them so we've had over the course of world of warcraft going back and i'm
6:51
going to say this just so joe and i can both take a moment to feel incredibly crumblingly old over the 20 years 21
6:59
this november of world of warcraft the story has literally changed because they
7:05
didn't know 20 years ago what they were going to say 10 years ago mhm and one of
7:12
the results of that is like if you go play wow classic or just you know wow classic on a classic era server go
7:18
around and just go to places like darkshore and you go to the master's glaive or you go to silathus and or you
7:25
go to aldon and there's stuff in there that is like what but that's not what
7:30
they said in cataclysm or that's not what they're saying now and part of that is because they didn't know what they
7:36
were going to say but also the the metafictional explanation for that is quite simple we didn't have access to
7:44
fully we didn't have access to oldir we didn't have access to old deer we didn't have access to you know all the other
7:51
places that we have been and gone since and a lot of this stuff was all
7:57
happening over the course of exceptionally long stretches of time mhm
8:02
where all sorts of things happened that we were never going to hear about because they just it's just stuff we
8:08
don't know happened and so as a result of that we have to keep in mind that stuff we've we may be looking at it from
8:14
a perspective that is skewed both temporally and by perspective but
8:20
there's also another thing to consider the void has never been depicted as this
8:25
force that is overwhelmingly powerful and was always there the void was created by the light in at least one
8:33
story mhm the void is the result of the light spreading through all existence
8:38
and shadows being cast by things as the light edi and and whirled it would be
8:43
like waves when a wave crests and forms a depression the depression would be
8:48
where the void came from as a result if that story kept being true if they if
8:54
they don't end up saying later on that it's just a titan propaganda or whatever the void could never do what you're
9:00
saying because the void isn't actually a thing the void is the lack of a thing
9:06
and that's the difference between the void and fell in some versions of wow's cosmology fell is chaos fell is wild
9:15
destructive you know change void isn't void is lack it's lack of understanding
9:23
lack of knowledge lack of something that's why the void is often telling you about the thousand truths and all that
9:29
stuff because the void is literally the thing that obscures knowledge we have no idea what's true because the void is
9:35
keeping us from knowing that whereas fell doesn't keep us from knowing it it constantly changes it it's like one
9:42
second you have you have two arms now you've got one arm and a bunch of tentacles oh wait now you've got three
9:48
arms and a bunch of tentacles okay bunch of eyes now you know so there's there's
9:53
a lot to be considered in terms of the you know we are trying to tease out
9:59
understanding from lack of understanding and in a way it's a kind of a metaphor for the void here because the void is
10:06
inherently obstructionist it obscures it wants you not to know what really
10:11
happened it it doesn't want there to even be a really happened you know it's sort of like the embodiment of the
10:17
forces that are behind the problem in the first place a lot of things happen we don't know about and because we don't
10:24
know about them we don't know what they are we don't we don't know what we don't
10:29
know to to quote a famous american uh defense minister it it's just it's a
10:35
it's a lot to think about in terms of all the stuff the stuff you're saying there's nothing wrong with anything you're saying and i like the idea that
10:41
it's a it's kind of like cosmic level rune forging like when you know we have a rune forge item make it broken we reforged it now it's even stronger the
10:48
the idea that the first ones are kind of trying to do that with the universe that's a cool idea there's a lot you
10:54
could do with it but there's no real way to know about it and i do think it it this this view tends to be very void
11:01
ccentric yeah and and i think that's really and again there's nothing really wrong with it because again we're in a
11:07
fairly void ccentric expansion and the next one will be very void ccentric as
11:13
well as far as being a chief antagonist uh as far as our uh forces are concerned
11:20
uh and it's safe to assume that there will be a presence of it in the last titan because again we have a certain
11:26
rock dragon uh man thing uh that you know decided to suck up a whole bunch of
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uh void energy from gacron and then disappear so
11:38
is making us wait yeah i would not be surprised if we see ariticron in the end of next expansion and moving into the
11:44
last titan uh but yeah all that chiefly is just comes down to when i'm looking
11:50
at this the void isn't outside it's not if everything is a circle and everything
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inside of the circle is the universe then the void is inside of that we see
12:02
it it we exist with it we've touched it we we depending on what character class you're playing you wield it uh it is not
12:09
an outside force and as matt pointed out it's something that was created by the light because the light exists and
12:16
therefore shadow must exist when there is light um there's a whole bunch of that that that you know does not place
12:23
void outside some of the other on that matter too i don't want to interrupt you i just wanted to like really briefly say
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one of the things to really look at is when you are being told something who is
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it that's telling you yes yeah and and that's really the the big the big other point of most wow history and it's not
12:41
just chronicle but in game as well and literally that was a key component of last expansion story and this expansion
12:49
as well it's a theme that's carried over is that when you are being told something by somebody you feel is above
12:57
you in station it's not necessarily the only truth it's not necessarily 100%
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true it might also be 100% false we saw it with uh odin and everything that he
13:10
was trying to keep away from the other uh keepers and watchers uh we saw it
13:15
with loen and his deceit uh we saw it with everything that happened with tier
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and literally our whole point of reconstructing things with tier even tier wasn't 100% honest with the people
13:28
that he trusted the most and that trusted him the aspects had no idea half
13:33
of the things that tier had going on he didn't confide in them yet they believed
13:38
him and took him at his word and now that he is back uh you know they have
13:44
some reconciling to do with that and now that they're empowered by azeroth and have a different perspective instead of
13:51
the other titans uh there's a whole other layer of you know them coming to terms with what they weren't told again
13:58
coming back to the you don't know what you don't know thing again it's the same thing you don't know what you don't know when there's a lot of faith uh in in
14:05
taking what you're told at face value and the other side of it which matt brought up is everybody who's telling
14:11
you something in world of warcraft they may not know either and or it may be
14:18
part of an agenda and you always have to take that into consideration and how much do you trust what they're telling
14:23
you to be face value how much do you do you sort of take that as yes there's an alternative eterior agenda right like if
14:30
queen ajara comes up to you and tells you this is what's going on we've had so many run-ins with her are you going to
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trust her at her face value she could be telling you a 100% of the truth she could be telling you everything she
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knows would you trust her most people are going to say no right some people will say yes but the vast majority of
14:48
people because of how we've interacted with her are going to say no and go ahead i was just agreeing with you
14:55
but i also want to say it's also uh one of the things to keep in mind with void beings and with entities that deal with
15:01
them like for instance you mentioned ashara ashara could tell you the whole truth nothing but the truth and it's all
15:07
the stuff she isn't telling you mhm it doesn't everything she said was true and
15:12
it was completely true and nothing in it was twisted to be misleading and she didn't even omit anything mhm but why is
15:20
she telling you does is she telling you because she hopes you go out and save the day maybe but in the meantime while
15:28
you're out there saving the day what aren't you doing anything else yeah you
15:34
know and that's the thing when you deal with these beings ashara is just a really good example because ashara is so
15:40
good at this kind of thing that in the middle of cataclysm she basically
15:46
diverted everyone away from what she was up to and they just ran off to deal with
15:51
the the bigger threat from deathwing leaving her completely unobserved mhm
15:57
and she's done this trick a few times now and she's zelat is another one where we keep finding out things that she's
16:03
been doing while we have not been watching her yeah and go ahead i was gonna say zelat is one of those things
16:08
where you make a point in here that i think is is pertinent we don't know what zelatas's end goal really is yet we're
16:16
we have inklings we have ideas but it's another one of how can we possibly know
16:22
right why does she why does she need the the heart of the void or the dark heart
16:27
right why does she need that what is it that she's trying to do with it why is it so important why is it something that
16:33
she could only bring to giwix to fix uh you know we don't have that all we know
16:39
is that giwix said he would fix it in exchange for essentially what we think is old god blood or the black blood um
16:47
we know that other people are out for it like in this case the dark etherealss uh
16:53
they are they have it why did they want it what did they know about it there are pieces to that story that we don't know
17:00
and also the assumption that zalat is purely tied up with just the void or
17:06
just the old gods may be an outdated concept or outdated viewpoint of what
17:11
her actual position is and again it's one of those things where it's like we
17:16
don't know what we don't know but again if zalot came up to you and told you 100% of the truth told you everything
17:23
told you what her reasoning was why she was you know doing what she was doing what her endgame was and if it turned
17:29
out to be save the universe would you believe her after everything that happened no i don't think anybody would
17:36
especially not uh especially not khadgar khadgar would be like i was in your bubble i don't trust you lady and for
17:42
that matter too there's also another thing to consider about all this um joe mentioned this a long time ago and we've
17:48
brought it up every so often but the void does seem to be one of the forces that is fundamentally balanced and part
17:53
of the cosmos and all that but there is a thing that is outside and it's not a
17:59
void it's devouring there's a force that wants yeah there's a force that wants to
18:05
eat everything and when it's done there will be nothing mhm and not nothing the
18:11
way the void is is where the void is like you know in the void we don't have you know there's no understanding
18:16
there's no certainty there's nothing but certainty about this force it's going to destroy everything and there will be
18:23
nothing left and there will be no chance for anything and that seems to be what the the outside force that the first
18:30
ones were contending with um to a degree the thing with the void is you can see
18:35
how it would be very useful in fighting such a thing because if it can't find you it can't eat you mhm if the cosmos
18:44
is shrouded in some way if the true potential and true abilities of the cosmos is hidden and there's always a
18:51
possib a a constant series of possibly contradictory things to know it it it
18:58
it's basically what they used to call the fog of war you know the disinformation campaign and
19:03
that means that the void you could still have a saying where we're going to be i don't think reintegrating is the right
19:08
word but there could be a whole thing about bringing the void fully into alignment with the rest of reality where
19:14
you basically i can imagine an expansion where we have to go into the void and
19:20
get the void to to on board with us on this i so and here's here's my wild take
19:25
on that whole thing and this is something that i was going to bring up here as well we might already be there
19:30
right like it it it's one of those things where the void may have realized through the fact that zaldath has taken
19:36
a mortal form uh and has i don't even know if it's immortal at this point but a a a mortal shell uh and has taken on a
19:45
new evolution and has been present for some pretty eye opening events that have happened around azeroth we're not just
19:51
talking about uh the battle for azeroth although that's part of it and that also i think may have been an interesting eye
19:57
openener for her as well knowing that new old gods could be created by not the
20:03
void uh and then everything that she went with with learning through the timeways and then linking up with the
20:08
riticron and everything else she's seen a lot it's entirely possible that she
20:13
understands because during shadowlands and everything else that yes there is a
20:18
possibility that all existence will come to an end and again when we first
20:23
started learning about the void way back you know 30 years ago the we were told that it wanted nothing to exist and
20:31
that's not true the void wants everything to exist the void wants everything to be real and true and valid
20:38
because the void sees everything as real it doesn't what's the old saying
20:44
nothing if nothing is true everything is permissible yes and that's exactly what they want and seeing the devourers the
20:51
void gets consumed as well when you meet the devourers in shadowlands when you see them they're indiscriminately
20:58
consuming they're indiscriminately consuming pretty much everything else uh and i believe and i'm not a thousand%
21:06
sure of this cuz i have to go back and replay it but when you're doing the bastion stuff where the void invades
21:11
bastion there are devourers that come through as well i'm 99% sure and i believe that they're eating whatever
21:17
scraps are left over they're smaller and weaker then but you know void bits die to the hand of bastion bits and then
21:24
devourers eat it and consume it and become bigger and stronger bastion forces die they get consumed by
21:29
devourers because the void rent a tear into that reality that they're able to get through it you don't know what their
21:36
endgame is now but it is very likely the fact of i don't want everything in
21:42
existence to go away because that's where i keep my stuff and i would bank on that at least and then going back to
21:48
the whole idea of balance my argument is not that we need to become into balance
21:53
with the void i think we're already kind of there when you look at player characters and you look at the folks on
21:59
azeroth how many shadow priests are able to wield the void and not be completely consumed by it you look at the void
22:05
elves look at the whole story with yria go through all of that that's all what
22:10
that's about it's about becoming into balance with the concept of everything is possible fighting the voices back
22:16
fighting back the the the uh corruption and i'm air quoting that here learning how to wield it learning how to become
22:22
powerful that's the entire purpose and story of what locust walker is trying to teach them what locust walker did it
22:28
understands that the void is just a natural part of this universe and can be
22:34
wielded and can be lived in a sort of balance with you just have to figure out how to do it without going crazy we kind
22:40
of already are so many classes so many characters are already starting to do it
22:46
and it's not like it used to be and i want to point this out too back in the original early days of wow wheelie and
22:52
void was a death sentence eventually it would corrupt you it would consume you
22:58
you watched shadow priests they were they were the fringes of society they weren't to be trusted uh and ironically
23:05
um the the the big exemplar of this story was the grim batal story
23:12
and that's zalat which we only find out later so yeah but
23:17
we find out you find out later but i'm just pointing out like but now fast forward to today and they're not the
23:24
paras that they used to be wielding void isn't looked upon as this you know
23:29
one-way ticket this death sentence people are able to have a balance between the two forces calia menl is a
23:37
living example of balance between or an unliving i don't know somewhere in
23:42
between uh example of perfect balance in all of those states she's dead but
23:47
moving yeah so i mean we might actually already be there and well another way to look at it it too is that there's a
23:53
difference between cosmological balance and political balance yes because
23:58
cosmologically these forces might all be working together just fine to maintain universe it's the fact that us mortal
24:06
and even like semi- divine beings with their own minds impose their own will on
24:12
them we've seen this in reverse we've seen an undead who not only could
24:17
control the light he could get it to do what he wanted is his will over the
24:22
light uh similarly we're seeing that with the void we see that with pretty much every force it's getting the beings
24:28
that tap into these forces to stop assuming that theirs way is is the only
24:34
way this force can work um i think it's a whole bit about natalie seline if you're a shadow priest or doing the
24:39
shadow priest uh legion quests the ones where you actually get salatath uh you you see that natalie seline basically is
24:47
the first one who goes into this and isn't just using the you know the power to be a cackling mad genius you know
24:54
like there's all these people like there's the orc necrolytes that brought through the crystal that was infused
25:00
with void and they just cackled and used it for evil and it wasn't until a bunch
25:05
of paladins tried to like destroy the thing with with light that they created the the the piece that would become the
25:12
heart of the ashbrer and similarly natalie seline was the first you know person who when coming ac across
25:20
zalatath studied it didn't just immediately run around using it for whatever evil thing they could think of
25:25
sat down and looked into it studied it literally looked into it and yeah she was murdered by one of her own followers
25:32
who wanted to steal the knife and just go back to yes the power is here is mine ah but nevertheless when she started
25:40
looking into it she created what became the body or the corpus of modern shadow
25:46
priests where they're not just tapping into evil and cackling wildly they're
25:51
sitting down and going "okay this is a force it's a force like any other force
25:56
as long as i understand that i am the one guiding this i'm okay i can be okay
26:03
it's when i know that i'm the one directing this and i feel like that's a
26:08
big part of why the first ones set up the things the way they did because you mentioned here i've been wondering what
26:13
the first ones and why they set up the system they did i think a lot of it is to create beings that can use these
26:21
forces rather than be used by them yeah so one of the other things that i did also want to go into a little bit that
26:27
kind of feeds off of that and goes to another part of your question uh is the idea of these beings being programmed
26:33
these great cosmic entities to serve a very specific role and i've argued that
26:39
there is a likeness to that across the board but i think we've moved beyond
26:44
basic programming a long time ago um looking at zilval as probably a primary
26:50
example of that there if he was programmed he very clearly has operated
26:55
outside of his programming pretty heavily uh you can say the same thing about odin and tier and loen and some
27:02
people can say well yeah outside forces influence them odin didn't have an outsized force that influenced him to be
27:08
a jerk he just decided that on his own to wake up and choose violence one day um like tell me i'm wrong i'm not
27:15
telling you you're wrong but i like the turn of phrase man i am going to laugh but i also think you you're making a
27:21
really interesting case for something go ahead and i want to let you keep talking about it but it it's just fascinating to
27:26
me to think about what if it's like we use programming a lot to talk about like
27:32
this stuff but what if it isn't programming because programming is like you can it's something you write and
27:37
then it it can break because you wrote it poorly or you you didn't understand what you know you were writing a
27:43
contradiction to it what if it's more like physical laws this isn't stuff they're programmed with it's stuff
27:49
that's inherent to the universe and they have to obey it because it's impossible
27:55
not to uh you know gravity it does gravity things that's just what it does
28:00
if these forces are looked at in this way everything that these other being like the titans and the pantheon of
28:07
death and the void lords and the naru they all have to behave the way they do
28:13
because that's the only way that's just like a rock has to be a rock and water
28:18
has to be water yeah you know and that's why the elements work the way they do yeah and i think i think there's there's
28:24
a level of that too but i also think that if anything was ever programmed to operate a specific way then that
28:31
programming is gone or evolved and i think that your analogy is more akin to what it is where it's like yes there are
28:37
fundamental rules of nature of the universe that sort of are just inherently there and it's not
28:42
necessarily programming but they may gravitate towards something very specific yeah and and the way they react
28:48
to those seems to be pretty self-directed at this point mhm like alan thul's weird hostility towards life
28:56
magic it's it's confusing and and icky like you know dude that's that's a bias
29:02
yeah that's an emotional response that is not you've developed a bias my little friend
29:08
little friend he's the size of a planet but you know you in a weird sort of way it's almost i i don't want to say
29:13
humanizing but i can't come up with a word for it it's just it's you have an you have a bias and you're letting
29:20
yourself let's let's look at the fall into it let's look at the biggest example of that you cannot tell me that
29:25
you can't look at sargeras and see that you can't see that sargeras was yes
29:30
there were outside influences but not in so much of like they were pushing on him more that he saw things and made his own
29:37
opinion and then followed through with it yeah he rejected the reality and
29:42
substituted his own yeah and and to a level i think i think that there's there's not necessarily a level of
29:49
programming and i think that's by intent i think that the first ones tried hard
29:54
coding and programming everything because you see evidence of that in the sele of the first ones and it fails it
30:02
has absolutely failed multiple times which is why they went on to other
30:08
variations or other um permutations of what they were doing became less about
30:14
the programming and more about no we can give some maybe some base inclinations
30:19
or lean into the cosmic order of the universe for uh you know what we want
30:24
but these have to be living evolving things or it will not work and to their
30:29
effect that was part of their downfall especially with zval zval is another great example of something that may at
30:36
one time had a purpose that was hard-coded and then when it was redone because we know that there were uh we
30:43
literally see that there were uh prototypes and backups and a whole workshop where these things were being
30:49
created in multitudes uh that his version saw or learned something made
30:56
his own conclusions we still don't know what great level threat he saw made his own conclusions and took steps to
31:03
prevent that what he thought was going to be the correct thing you can't tell me that the helm of domination uh that
31:10
the lich king that any of that was what the first ones programs of all to do yet
31:16
that's the decisions that he made in the power that he had same thing with pretty much all of the titans and maybe at one
31:23
point they thought that their purpose was hard-coded to be one thing but it's almost like you know those sci-fi movies
31:29
where the clone or or somebody wakes up from cryosleep they don't have any memory of who they are they don't have
31:35
anything any really concept of self but they get a directive line that says you know do this thing and that's all it
31:43
says is just do this thing and they go and they try to do that thing to the best of their ability as they go and do
31:48
that their perceptions shift from just that one line to a broader scope they
31:53
learn human emotion or they learn about a greater threat you see it you want to go back to robocop robocop is him
32:00
remembering that he was once a human and not just being here are your prime directives and you follow that the
32:06
titans can have been something very similar to that and you may be able to see some themes of that already with uh
32:12
azeroth as azeroth is sort of growing up as this cosmic entity but it might even
32:17
to tie things back though to and to use what you're talking about one of the issues might be simply this the the
32:23
light basically finds one way and and goes that way mhm like you know but by
32:29
introducing the void what you've done is create um for lack of a better word you've you've created a blackbox system
32:36
where decisions are made and you can't tell if they were the right decisions um we have to make a choice but we don't
32:43
know what went into making the choice because it's literally there's no
32:48
information given to you and i think that's important to think about when we think about why the introduction of
32:53
chaos versus void has the effects it has um if you look at algolon's whole deal
33:00
when algolon comes to aldoir and he's like you know you can't possibly stop me we've calculated all the odds uh i know
33:08
everything that's going to happen here that you've got no chance to do nothing and then we we whoop him we just
33:13
straight up whoop him and he's like "how did you whoop me i i that this isn't possible we've accounted for
33:20
everything if we accounted for everything how can i be whooped right now i got to go here go somewhere high
33:27
and send a signal back saying they whooped me and and you can do what you want i'm out i'm gonna go make my bunny
33:34
play in you know hearthstone for a while or something pet battles i'm sorry but in i'm trying to be funny a little bit
33:41
but seriously though i think it's the inclusion of these oppositional forces that allows decisions to be made that
33:50
can't be made by beings that aren't integrated in this way um the reason
33:55
that mortal beings can win these fights isn't power because we're significantly
34:02
outpowered most of the time mhm um fighting the one fight that really comes to mind for this too is the argus fight
34:08
where we get murdered twice like he he is handily winning on power the whole
34:14
time he is stronger than us it gets to the point where when you finish it and you bring that piece back to to khadgar
34:19
it even says in the quest text this isn't possible and i think that that is the engine here in order to have like
34:27
the i don't think the first ones could come up with a way around what's happening like they they sat down and
34:32
they tried to make write programs and and and have a nice predictable system and it broke like you just mentioned it
34:39
failed so they tried again and then they tried again but at some point they were
34:44
like wait a minute we can't find a way through this mhm there's there's no path
34:51
that we can find what we need is the ability to take a path that isn't obvious to anyone or to adapt as paths
34:59
become available right like yeah exactly so you you that's exa go ahead if you had more to say cuz that's that's that's
35:05
where i was going yeah i mean that's kind of like what i was thinking about the whole relationship between the void and the light over the course of years i
35:10
don't know why and and maybe you'll understand why my brain does this i
35:15
certainly don't whenever we start talking about the light in the void and how one sees one path and one sees
35:22
multiple paths it's the only thing that comes to mind is like a map and where
35:27
the light is like this big like single color like sheet of paper that has
35:33
literally nothing on it because it has only one direction and that the void
35:38
when laid on top of it you know when it's in these these patches these eddies
35:44
uh which is how the void and shadow works in the face of light that branching paths start to become visible
35:51
and that by truly accepting both of them is the only time that you can see the
35:56
real truth of the map and start making decisions right i don't know if that
36:03
makes any amount of sense but like visually that's how my brain interprets the relationship between the light and the the the void and yeah i think to a
36:10
certain degree another another metaphor that be useful in this is to think of the old schroinger's cat you know idea
36:17
uh as long as the box is closed which is to say something is in the you the void has kept something shrouded the cat's
36:23
dead and alive at the same time because you you don't know you you have no ability to discern it the light
36:29
collapses the waveform the light comes into an area it collapses the waveform and now it sees this path but it's
36:36
seeing that path at the at the cost of not seeing any of the other ones because
36:42
you as you mentioned it's it's like thinking about this sheet of paper and then you put the light on it the light
36:48
another way to look at it be that the light is can only shine on some part of the map at once like it's it's a it's a
36:54
unidirectional beam and if you're pointing it here you're not seeing any of this other stuff you can track around
37:01
and try to get an idea but it it's never going to be capable of revealing
37:06
everything to you at once not because it can't see it you can't see it mortal
37:12
beings can't see everything at once and because we can't see everything at once
37:18
we often have to make decisions based on instinct or impulse because we don't
37:24
know and that is something omnipotent cosmic beings can't get their heads wrapped around the idea of making a
37:31
decision based on imperfect knowledge to steal a line from cyberpunk 2077 um i
37:37
think that's a real big part of all this is that simultaneously you have all these sim all these forces being you
37:43
know interplayed into one place but on the other hand you have in finite mortal
37:48
beings that have to make decisions based not on perfect knowledge but rather on
37:54
you know okay i got to grab a branch is there a branch around i'll go for that one you know and it is like a flowchart
38:00
in a lot of ways a cosmic flowchart and so i do think that that's a big part of it the idea that you can only know so
38:08
much the universe doesn't have this problem but you do yeah and i think but ironically go ahead go ahead no i was
38:15
going to say i apologize i don't mean to cut you off there but that's kind of what i'm getting at was like you you create entities that are able to not
38:22
necessarily have all the you know knowledge programmed in them at first because you can't account for anything
38:29
you make that realization that you can't account for everything and so instead you look for the evolution of things
38:34
that are able to see when new paths emerge and i think that's what we are i
38:41
think that's what azeroth is a constantly evolving uh entity mhm and i
38:47
think that's really where everything i think that's where it all comes together more or less yeah i mean another way to
38:52
look at it too is that the ability to to spot new paths as they arise is also the ability to understand that everything
39:00
you know is no longer useful mhm and that's a problem odin can't let go of
39:06
what he believes to be true he can't let go of the fact that you know we're perfect we were put here to do this we
39:13
can't have these mortal beings mucking it up whereas reality is you guys have done your purpose has been served you
39:19
you are not suitable to the expectations of the current situation and odin will
39:25
never admit that and because odin will never admit that odin will always try to use like what worked once on a problem
39:34
that isn't the same problem whereas mortal beings don't have time to a certain degree our very ephemeral
39:41
transients is a strength because we don't have time to think about everything that ever happened in the
39:47
past and apply all those poss possible solutions we have to come up with a solution right now and it has to do it
39:53
has to deal with this problem this problem is not that problem even if it looks kind of similar it's it's
39:58
different so yeah i think you're definitely on something with that yeah and and i think we're going to see some
40:04
elements of that as we go along through stories and especially as we get to to midnight and into the last titan i think
40:09
we're going to see more at least that's my prediction that we're going to see us lean more towards that um and some of
40:15
the other concepts you have here where azeroth is going to be maintaining the balance of the universe level i think
40:20
azeroth kind of already did and i've said this before and and this is kind of a heel i will always die on is azeroth
40:29
was the entire intention of what the first ones were trying to do which is create a perfect balance between all of
40:37
the cosmic forces that are in equilibrium with each other and produce
40:42
entities or or a life force that is capable of harnessing everything at the
40:49
disposal of the universe in order to push back against the all devouring
40:54
all-consuming entity that wishes to destroy us and we already see that right
41:00
like going back to what i said earlier how many classes are wielding uh the light and the void at the same time or
41:07
have the capability of doing so how many how many of us are defying what was
41:13
already put in place in programming and this is again a theme that has carried over over multiple expansions at this
41:19
point where like now you see with the earthn the earthn were content or i shouldn't even say content they were
41:26
living a very cyclical existence of we do the thing we break down our memory
41:31
core is shoved back into the the machine we get purged another one takes our
41:37
place the life cycle continues uh we only do our role there's not we follow our oath that's all we do that's all we
41:43
can do and and then you have the oath breakers and then they show up and they're like i don't want to do this anymore this doesn't make sense to me
41:50
look at this beautiful land look at everything we do what is the purpose the titans haven't been here in forever the
41:55
stories of our ancestors have been coming being lost we don't know anything about our origin anymore uh and now what
42:04
are we doing why are we doing this let's start start questioning life they started to evolve uh they wind up
42:10
breaking their programming we literally fight against a titanic warden uh to
42:16
save them after they decide to break their oaths not just spiritually but physically break the thing that was the
42:23
the basically the writing of their oaths to the titans uh that life evolved and
42:29
all of life on azeroth has evolved in some capacity we could go back to the iraqi empire and we could talk about
42:35
them as well and how they've evolved because they've definitely are not the original settlers that left uh to go to
42:42
war or they're not just elves they're not just humans they're something completely different they wield the
42:49
light in a completely different manner than anything else we see and we have
42:56
ones that wield light to war we have had paladins we've had knights that learned to wield the light uh and wield it in a
43:03
marshall way you can look at talion you can look at uh tyrion you can look at
43:10
all of the the the paladins that came beforehand and they wield the light in a very weaponized way nothing like the
43:18
arathi it's a whole new level of of evolution in dealing with that
43:23
particular primal force and that might be a tie-in here as well where the light
43:28
is something that maybe we didn't evolve into ourselves but somebody else did and
43:34
that's why they were summoned here where they are now that that belelladar
43:39
whatever that signal was whatever belladar is which i still think we're going to find out probably in the next uh update brought it here because we
43:46
needed it because we needed to see what they were capable of doing not just leave them isolated but pull them into
43:52
the greater war because again evolution everything is evolution everything is
43:57
growing everything is changing everything is learning and maybe that belladar is something that azeroth
44:02
tapped into and knew about maybe it's something that's a completely separate portion of it we don't know and going
44:08
back to your other points like the last things you talked about which were uh aloon and the naru and their particular
44:14
forms we still have no idea what aloon is we don't know what aloon's purpose is we have more information about aloon
44:20
than we ever have especially after shadowlands but aloon's kind of not the
44:26
focus right this second we haven't really seen anaru right now and one
44:31
would assume that in dealing with the void in such a manner that it would summon anaru or that naru would have
44:37
been sent to investigate yet we haven't seen any down underground yet uh we haven't seen any sort of inkling of
44:44
aloon yet where are they what are they doing what are they working on what are they what are they what's their purpose
44:50
as far as everything that's happening right now and you mentioned that the naru have a light and a void cycle and
44:56
maybe part of it is for patrolling and part of it is for patrolling on each side of the border maybe but also maybe
45:02
it's because they were the first ones to be templated for that balance we still do not know the origin of the naru we
45:08
don't know what first gave them birth we know that they are crystallin in nature and capable of adapting to either energy
45:16
what if they were the first experiment of finding balance and that's their entire origin we see crystalline
45:22
structures used in the sephilore right we see the that that all throughout
45:27
shadowlands at least the idea of crystals and harnessing the everything else like that what if these were some
45:33
of the first to ever do that again no idea we don't know yet we're probably going to find out i don't think in
45:39
midnight i think they'll show up in midnight i think we're not going to really find out until the the the last titan and i've talked a lot so i'm going
45:45
to let matt kind of go if he has anything he wants to add to this no i have a lot of things i'm thinking about but nothing i really have to say right
45:52
now well what do you think i think it'll probably come on another episode no i mean seriously it's stuff that's like
45:57
bouncing off of itself and it's it's in that before you can talk about it phase it's kind of like gelatinous sorry i i
46:04
i'm just i will talk about it later but i'm it's not this episode you're good it's it's one of those things where
46:10
we're kind of in a weird place with with the story of the void in general i'm waiting for like patches like you know
46:16
you just got done with a patch and there's another patch coming and then there's you know it's stuff happens in those patches and right now we're kind
46:23
of not really sure what they're going to be and and and i think that's by design and i think the storytelling is very
46:30
it's interesting everything we're doing touches that greater story but isn't
46:36
necessarily 100% beholden to it like doing the the stuff in dornagal freeing
46:41
the earthn isn't necessarily about the void but the void is involved in that
46:46
story and the void is involved in the scardan promise and clearing out the rrookery and going through the depths
46:54
and you know taking care of the uh making engine that's making the new
46:59
earthn and making sure that it doesn't fall under the power sway of the void and then the whole thing with magny and
47:06
forcing the new generation ation of earn to be an evolved form of earn that whole
47:12
again trend and uh thematic of evolution and growing up and becoming more than
47:17
what you are that we've seen for four expansions now we we see it with our
47:24
dealings with the narubians even we go and we free them from the the corruption
47:29
of the void and i'm air quoting corruption here but the narubians were always a force that was associated with
47:35
the void they're always associated with the old gods in some capacity going back throughout azro's history yet we help
47:41
them become more than what they were we're helping them break free of the curse of the black blood slowly but
47:48
surely uh we have our wonderful little wolf troll night elf uh faction there
47:55
that we're still learning about uh and even their story is one about evolving past what they're currently at the i can
48:01
never remember her name i know it begins with an o uh but the one we deal with when we meet her she's the one breaking
48:08
free of tradition to work with us to help us one that she's the one receiving
48:13
visions from azeroth she's tuned into this and she's the one that's going "yeah i'm going to go help them even
48:19
though you're telling me not to even though our tribes are saying "don't talk to the surface dwellers i'm going to go
48:24
ahead and break free of this i need to help this is where i'm needed i'm i'm forcing us into the light from the
48:30
shadows." and then you see it again with the goblins the goblin story is all
48:36
about freedom and evolving and becoming more than what you are becoming greater than what you were like if you go into
48:42
undermine undermine is not a perfect place before giwix during giwix it is
48:49
even further from perfect but the whole story line is freeing them from that
48:54
imperfection or from that the shackles that tie them down to it and letting them choose their own path and the story
49:00
of reszi if you go through it and actually look at it i highly encourage you and and mild spoilers here we're at
49:07
the end of the episode so you're not going to miss too much but listen to the conversation with shaw about reszi
49:14
listen to their conversation about who he was what he loved what his mentality
49:20
was and you realize that he wasn't just a goblin you learned that he was so much more than just a goblin we were asked
49:27
before in a previous episode why is reszi working with si7 is it just
49:32
because of the money and you learn the answer is no it's not because of the money there is a purpose for it there is
49:38
something with his character that made him do this voluntarily that he didn't want to be just a goblin working for the
49:46
cartels and then going to the cartels the whole end story with that is them
49:51
becoming more than they were not necessarily 100% going with just trade princes that goblin society isn't just
49:58
going to look at who has the most money and the most power but maybe they start looking at how do they fix things for
50:04
the better after being exposed to all the other races of azeroth for so long and
50:09
yeah there was always going to be a transactional relationship there but you're starting to see them evolve past
50:15
it especially with the cartels the cartels are trying to figure out how to take care of their people now and you
50:20
see that with marin ngenfoger who was always sort of in that ment that mentality of not being quite the
50:27
traditional goblin but not being quite fully evolved uh and then you have glo who very much is evolved but playing the
50:34
game up to this point of pretending he's just the goblin trying to just you know
50:40
play the game and get people free and get people taken care of and now that he has sort of opened the rest of their
50:47
eyes to it he can now take care of the people let's take care of the safety stuff let's actually not make stuff to
50:52
blow up let's make things have longevity let's actually invest in the well-being of our people as opposed to viewing them
50:59
as expendable uh let's not just lean into the explosive nature that kashmite gives us let's be a little more uh
51:08
sensitive i guess to those around us and you see it with the rest of the cartels too where they're stepping up now and
51:15
saying "okay yeah what we had before isn't tenable anymore we can still be
51:20
goblins but we don't have to be goblins." everything is about evolving
51:25
everything is about sort of becoming more than what you were and you can argue that going back to the earliest
51:31
stories of wow the earliest storylines the earliest content that's always been the case that's that's basically all the
51:39
stories have been the very first time we fight algolon what strange curious things you are to defy the nature of
51:45
fate yet here we are we evolved past what was expected of us and i think that's the whole thing so going back to
51:52
the whole root of this and i'm sorry we kind of meandered a little bit here hopefully it answered a bunch of your questions i don't know that
51:58
reintegrating with the void will ever be a thing because we kind of already did
52:03
in my opinion we've already hit that goal we've already learned how to wield
52:08
it without being consumed by it we see the evidence all around us and i think we've hit what our necessity is for it
52:16
the only thing left like matt pointed out earlier is maybe we get them to be
52:21
you know on board with what we're doing a little bit more maybe they become pathfinders for us they take the
52:29
strength and cleansing power of the the light and say "here are all the paths you can go down." and then have us to
52:36
say "we're going to navigate this come with us." we don't know but it's going to be real interesting to find out
52:42
because we have one raid tier left which means that the story is going to be done in a few releases before we start
52:50
getting into midnight and then who knows where the story is going to go from there we have assumptions but i think
52:57
it's going to be interesting to find out do you have anything else you want to add matt no i think we're good well then
53:02
friends i hope that has been entertaining for you all uh blizzardwatch is made possible due to
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53:39
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53:45
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53:50
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53:57
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54:04
think we're going to call it a day we'll see you next week [Music]
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