Thank you for watching! If you haven't already, take the time to check out the rest of the Ancient Lore series at the playlist below, as well as subscribing to The Dan Nation for the regular updates I put out. www.youtube.com/@TheDanNation/subscribe ua-cam.com/play/PLz3HFn9IbUgkjnDezofH-cz0_0I6urUOe.html
When was Curse of flesh first mentioned? Because as I recall in vanilla the lorekeeper states titans created life forms from "standard biomass" with the exception of the earthen, and dwarves merely reversed to being identical to standard biomass creations. And wowpedia curse of flesh page only refers to the Chronicle and other post Wrath sources. Great series btw, classic lore should be preserved, and retcons documented
So by name, I think "Curse of Flesh" wasn't introduced until early Wrath. HOWEVER the whole matrix instability discussion and how earthen were essentially devolved into flesh-like creatures comes directly from the end of Uldaman in late 2004 and I believe gives the Curse of Flesh a solid foundational start.
Yeah, I feel the same way of Blizz ruining the immersion with the Titan lore, for me Vrykul/Valkyr and the Norse gods knockoffs ruined the immersion as it didn't feel something from Warcraft universe but borrowed, also I think WotLK shouldve been better if we had explored an underground Nerubian zone like Zaralek Caverns instead of what we got Howling Fjords and Grizzly hills (not that I hate those zones but they kinda don't belong in Warcraft especially in Northrend post Scourge).
I totally understand a lot of the Wrath stuff taking people out of the world with all the Norse references. Wrath could have been so much better if the Nerubian underempire had been included. Check out my video on unused content when you have time!
The established conflict between the Old Gods and Titans was always meant to be something beyond mortals. It was a conflict between two higher powers, with both sides possessing unimaginable powers. Both can create infinitely wast armies, command powers that literally shape the world. And we can see this from all the things that remained from their conflict. In WoW, both of these sides have become underplayed, the mortals just became too powerful, even though the world would be much more interesting if we had limitations like these. I also miss the world building the Observer brought to the table. From its speech, we learn just how small mortals truly are in this cosmic machine, and how vulnerable are we. Things like these bring tension to the world, without them it will eventually become quite boring :/ Mystery is a useful tool for writers, but over time they forgot how to take advantage of it
Sometimes I think we forget how fun it is to not know something. Posing a question that can't be easily answered, or a mystery that may not have a conclusion opens us up to speculation and thought. We need more of that.
Thank you for stating the glaring shortcomings of the lore, I've always felt like the lore on Uldum could've been so much more, so many hooks of lore and world building made into mostly Indiana Jones references and random elementals. In my opinion not understanding the purpose of certain Titan facilities and mechanisms is half of the fantasy for them, being higher beings one would expect greater purpose and logic, not a mcguffin laser cannon covered in sand.
I think that really leans into my overall point here. We are tiny little mortal creatures, we shouldn't understand a vast majority of what's going on here with the Titans and their creations. With Uldum, we suddenly became the strongest and most integral force to happen to the area. We didn't even get that with Ulduar and we had to go in and punch an Old God in the face.
@@TheDanNation Never liked the idea of trading immersion for hype when it comes to the player character, especially in later expansions. In my opinion even Ulduar should've had a few points where the player is reminded that we're nothing more than ants in a sandbox compared to the Titans and with Uldum, a theme of mystical journey only as far as our mortal minds can go, I bet lots of orders and cults could be born just by the mere existence of places like "The Master's glaive" because of the powerful yet unknown element. Keep up the great videos :)
@@szzsolt42 Thank you so much, I'd like to do a video at some point on the immense downfalls of "PLAYER CHARACTER, HERO OF THE *insert faction/class/race* HERE. It started in Wrath and only got worse and worse.
I don't believe we shouldn't be able to comprehend the machines of the Titans, we just shouldn't be able to know what they do. Like, how would we possibly get that information? The Titan's creations being weak in WoW compared to the factions also doesn't help a lot :(
Thank you so much for such an insightful video on the original Titan lore. As you say, sometimes keeping information on something as grand and otherworldly as the Titan/Old God lore at arm’s length works better. It was very much cartoony after WOTLK. I was wondering if, perhaps in a future episode, you could cover the old lore of the high elves and blood elves Pre-TBC. How they changed from Warcraft II, throughout Warcraft III and their incorporation into Wow Vanilla. I find, especially, the retcon of the appearance of Quel’thalas in TBC fascinating. Before the expansion, the homeland of the elves was a lush, green forested area. Even in Vanilla, the trees surrounding the Quel’thalas zone were green and more akin to their Warcraft II and III appearances.
Once more into the breach eh? Your lore videos are fantasticly well made and very informative, plus the fact you call out the new dumb stuff is just *french kiss* Keep up the good work my man and looking forward to the next one!
Finally, someone calling Uldum weird and unfitting. I was so excited when I saw that Uldum was going to be accessible in Cata, and don't get me wrong, I was an archeology kid - I loved Ancient Egypt. But this was some thrown-together abomination of whatever Blizzard deemed cool and funny. Yeah, I enjoyed their nod to Indiana Jones, but.. don't take Uldum from me T^T
It was so excessively disappointing in so many ways. I was hoping for antediluvian, not anti-brain cell. It could have been an epic delve into a truly ancient immense Titan facility bent on finding a solution to the Old God infestations, gone horribly wrong. Why couldn't we have had something like that??
i'm really glad someone is doing more videos on the old lore ever since gavrinrad quit. My only wish is you included the lore from the rpgs just as a way to look into what they might have thought for them at one point. I thought it was intersting that they were known as crafters and that each holds some measure of dominance of some force of creation that's their sphere of influence. Seeing it as they less made everything from scratch but instead took what was there and made it into what it is now. I like it because one of the things that always was odd was eonar being so focused on life when they have a seperate cosmology for life that she's not in so it feels weird. Versus this older idea that they were all just very powerful god like beings that crafted the worlds to be what they wanted so eonar did the life for all the creatures, khazgoroth shaped the world, golganneth did the sea and skies, norgannon added magic, aggramar and sargaeras gave them fighting/survival instinct and they wanted to protect the worlds, while aman thul basically made sure everything fell into place right. But having that they're really high up there in the order cosmological power and don't really give a lot of differences for how they're very different is just a mess. it's why there's so much overlap with death, void and fel, because they were just the evils while life, order and holy was the good
I think that gate model isn't unique though, I'm certain I've seen its downscaled version somewhere else. So unfortunately it probably is just a placeholder and isn't worth too much thought
@TheDanNation, if we are to consider that Titan uses the material from Azeroth to build their construct then yes it would be easy for them to get corrupted due to the fact that the Old Gods have been in Azeroth longer and their Corruption would have been everywhere. The Titan lore should have been left in the background for as to keep guessing. it's more like our world really. we have so many civilizations and rich cultures one could hardly believe they all happened in this world. two races in the game that talks about the titan a lot were the night elve and the dwarf which was fine and should have kept the other races of Azeroth talking more too with the exception of the orc. In their pursuit to add more Pantheon to the game lore ruins the titan lore which shouldn't have if only they did it right. Like
@Wbrowncole Have you ever considered that there could have been another kind of corruption in the physical materials of the planet besides old god..... all of which before the Titans arrived? Afterall, the old gods were not native to the planet either (neither in the terrible replacement danuser writing, nor the original Metzen vanilla old god lore) and there were living things before those Old Gods arrived. That includes protodrakes, trolls, shu'halo, furbolg, hydras, and various other animals or monsters. Yes, the Old Gods were active for a long time and tried corrupting all of the above to varying levels of success once they arrived; but could not have been the original creators of any of the above. My suspicion and hunch.... while playing vanilla....... was that maybe Metzen named Eonar with a title of "Life-Binder" because there was already life magic on the surface and below the surface all throughout the materials of Azeroth.....and she was binding that life magic to the constructs that they made from raw azeroth materials. Including the earthen, vrykul, giants, titan watchers, and even the titan keepers. All of them were fashioned by Titans.... "not" because they were immune to old god whispers, but because they seemed resistant to such whispers more than any of the existing lifeforms. As such, the Old Gods never 'created' flesh, they simply would have spread it and amplified it in their captors until there was enough of a fleshy mind to corrupt more easily. And if Elune has anything to do with Life magic, then that could also explain why she was active and messing around with trolls and shu'halo and protodrakes in all those ancient times.
I wouldn't call the Titans a 'macguffin', rather they are the order faction in the Azeroth creation myth. Besides the aesthetic, much of Titan lore is a homage to tropes in IRL myth. Its an 'Ordering of the World/3 Ages' type story that generally follows as such... 1.A primeval age, the world was ruled by chaos monsters, unfit for life and unimaginably different. Then, a council of human-like divinities/ancestors defeats the monsters, creating the world as we know it - habitable by humans. - Each council member tends to represent an aspect of the present world. - Sometimes they are aided in this conflict by follower beings. 2.A heroic age follows the ordering of the world. Magic, heroes and monsters are commonplace, everything is larger than life. - Certain landmarks were created by the actions of beings in said ages. 3.A mortal age follows after a vast but uncertain time. The world is familiar and works as how we understand it. In Warcraft terms... 1. In the beginning, Titans wrest control of the world from the Old Gods... 2. For eons after, lingering titan and old god servants clash - leaving their mark of the land... Aszhara's empire spans the world, unimaginably greater and more magical than any since, it's people live immortal ageless lives... 3. The Horde marches through the Dark Portal. The modern age corresponds with the stretch of history that appears in-game.
Well, the definition of a macguffin is a weird one. From what I could find, a mcguffin is: "Something that a story builds around, but has no other purpose other than driving the plot forward". So for example, the One Ring in LotR isn't a macguffin, because it has other, important uses in the story, rather than just being there. In contrast, the Philosopher's stone in Harry Potter is one, because in the film/book, its not actually used for anything in the specific story, its just the focus of it. Azeroth as a Titan for example, perfectly fits this definiton, because the story builds around her, but she doesn't do anything. Azerite on the other hand wouldn't be a macguffin, because it does so much more than being a plot device. Artifacts like the Frostmourne, Dragonsoul, or the skull of Gul'dan are also different. I hope it was understandable, its a pretty vile definition if you ask me. Whether Titans are mcguffins or not is a rough question though. Since they aren't directly present in the story, and we only meet their past creations, I don't think they would fall into the category. But then again, the story does build around them, its just that they are long gone from Azeroth. And this is true for both the earlier and later Titan lore. I mean, how can we say they are mcguffins, when they aren't even directly present in the story? :D
I am almost 100% certain that Azeroth being a Titan goes back much farther than any of us realize. It fits the naming pattern of naming old gods after HPlovecraft creations.
@phil6844 No, no, no, no, no. That is absolutely wrong. The word 'azeroth' was a small fiefdom in the frankish area of europe during the dark ages, which became a popular word to use in more modern sword and sorcery fiction. Then one of those fiction novels that used the word to describe both a kingdom and a world was the novel "Fires of Azeroth" by author C.J. Cherryh published in around 1979. The plot synopsis reveals this was a "DIRECT" inspiration for young Chris Metzen to borrow that mood and make it about orcs and humans. It has absolutely nothing to do with the word azathoth, at all, none, zilch, zip, nada.
Thank you for watching! If you haven't already, take the time to check out the rest of the Ancient Lore series at the playlist below, as well as subscribing to The Dan Nation for the regular updates I put out.
www.youtube.com/@TheDanNation/subscribe
ua-cam.com/play/PLz3HFn9IbUgkjnDezofH-cz0_0I6urUOe.html
Thank you for chronicling the old warcraft lore and calling out the dumb new stuff :) Loved the paladin and silver hand video.
Thank you so much!
When was Curse of flesh first mentioned? Because as I recall in vanilla the lorekeeper states titans created life forms from "standard biomass" with the exception of the earthen, and dwarves merely reversed to being identical to standard biomass creations. And wowpedia curse of flesh page only refers to the Chronicle and other post Wrath sources.
Great series btw, classic lore should be preserved, and retcons documented
So by name, I think "Curse of Flesh" wasn't introduced until early Wrath. HOWEVER the whole matrix instability discussion and how earthen were essentially devolved into flesh-like creatures comes directly from the end of Uldaman in late 2004 and I believe gives the Curse of Flesh a solid foundational start.
I love this kind of old lore. Thank you :)
You're welcome!
Yeah, I feel the same way of Blizz ruining the immersion with the Titan lore, for me Vrykul/Valkyr and the Norse gods knockoffs ruined the immersion as it didn't feel something from Warcraft universe but borrowed, also I think WotLK shouldve been better if we had explored an underground Nerubian zone like Zaralek Caverns instead of what we got Howling Fjords and Grizzly hills (not that I hate those zones but they kinda don't belong in Warcraft especially in Northrend post Scourge).
I totally understand a lot of the Wrath stuff taking people out of the world with all the Norse references. Wrath could have been so much better if the Nerubian underempire had been included. Check out my video on unused content when you have time!
your channel goes hard btw. I hope you grow fast!
Much appreciated!
The established conflict between the Old Gods and Titans was always meant to be something beyond mortals. It was a conflict between two higher powers, with both sides possessing unimaginable powers. Both can create infinitely wast armies, command powers that literally shape the world. And we can see this from all the things that remained from their conflict.
In WoW, both of these sides have become underplayed, the mortals just became too powerful, even though the world would be much more interesting if we had limitations like these.
I also miss the world building the Observer brought to the table. From its speech, we learn just how small mortals truly are in this cosmic machine, and how vulnerable are we. Things like these bring tension to the world, without them it will eventually become quite boring :/
Mystery is a useful tool for writers, but over time they forgot how to take advantage of it
Sometimes I think we forget how fun it is to not know something. Posing a question that can't be easily answered, or a mystery that may not have a conclusion opens us up to speculation and thought. We need more of that.
@@TheDanNation Its a useful tool for a reason!
Thank you for stating the glaring shortcomings of the lore, I've always felt like the lore on Uldum could've been so much more, so many hooks of lore and world building made into mostly Indiana Jones references and random elementals. In my opinion not understanding the purpose of certain Titan facilities and mechanisms is half of the fantasy for them, being higher beings one would expect greater purpose and logic, not a mcguffin laser cannon covered in sand.
I think that really leans into my overall point here. We are tiny little mortal creatures, we shouldn't understand a vast majority of what's going on here with the Titans and their creations. With Uldum, we suddenly became the strongest and most integral force to happen to the area. We didn't even get that with Ulduar and we had to go in and punch an Old God in the face.
@@TheDanNation Never liked the idea of trading immersion for hype when it comes to the player character, especially in later expansions. In my opinion even Ulduar should've had a few points where the player is reminded that we're nothing more than ants in a sandbox compared to the Titans and with Uldum, a theme of mystical journey only as far as our mortal minds can go, I bet lots of orders and cults could be born just by the mere existence of places like "The Master's glaive" because of the powerful yet unknown element. Keep up the great videos :)
@@szzsolt42 Thank you so much, I'd like to do a video at some point on the immense downfalls of "PLAYER CHARACTER, HERO OF THE *insert faction/class/race* HERE. It started in Wrath and only got worse and worse.
@@TheDanNation Now I'm looking forward to it very much! Let's gooooo!
I don't believe we shouldn't be able to comprehend the machines of the Titans, we just shouldn't be able to know what they do. Like, how would we possibly get that information? The Titan's creations being weak in WoW compared to the factions also doesn't help a lot :(
Thank you so much for such an insightful video on the original Titan lore. As you say, sometimes keeping information on something as grand and otherworldly as the Titan/Old God lore at arm’s length works better. It was very much cartoony after WOTLK.
I was wondering if, perhaps in a future episode, you could cover the old lore of the high elves and blood elves Pre-TBC. How they changed from Warcraft II, throughout Warcraft III and their incorporation into Wow Vanilla.
I find, especially, the retcon of the appearance of Quel’thalas in TBC fascinating. Before the expansion, the homeland of the elves was a lush, green forested area. Even in Vanilla, the trees surrounding the Quel’thalas zone were green and more akin to their Warcraft II and III appearances.
I'd like to do an episode highlighting the 'Dorei of all kinds at some point, sure. Thank you for watching and enjoying!
@@TheDanNation Looking forward to it. 🙂 have been enjoying this series very much
God, your channel is so good.
Whatever this series is, keep it up.
Thank you so much!
'MacGuffiny Fluff' sounds like a delicious sandwich
Hello yes, I'd like the Macguffiny with extra fluff and a side of truffle fries.
Once more into the breach eh? Your lore videos are fantasticly well made and very informative, plus the fact you call out the new dumb stuff is just *french kiss* Keep up the good work my man and looking forward to the next one!
Thank you so much!
Yeeehboi, made my workday better
Ey good to hear!
Finally, someone calling Uldum weird and unfitting. I was so excited when I saw that Uldum was going to be accessible in Cata, and don't get me wrong, I was an archeology kid - I loved Ancient Egypt. But this was some thrown-together abomination of whatever Blizzard deemed cool and funny. Yeah, I enjoyed their nod to Indiana Jones, but.. don't take Uldum from me T^T
It was so excessively disappointing in so many ways. I was hoping for antediluvian, not anti-brain cell. It could have been an epic delve into a truly ancient immense Titan facility bent on finding a solution to the Old God infestations, gone horribly wrong. Why couldn't we have had something like that??
i'm really glad someone is doing more videos on the old lore ever since gavrinrad quit. My only wish is you included the lore from the rpgs just as a way to look into what they might have thought for them at one point. I thought it was intersting that they were known as crafters and that each holds some measure of dominance of some force of creation that's their sphere of influence. Seeing it as they less made everything from scratch but instead took what was there and made it into what it is now. I like it because one of the things that always was odd was eonar being so focused on life when they have a seperate cosmology for life that she's not in so it feels weird. Versus this older idea that they were all just very powerful god like beings that crafted the worlds to be what they wanted so eonar did the life for all the creatures, khazgoroth shaped the world, golganneth did the sea and skies, norgannon added magic, aggramar and sargaeras gave them fighting/survival instinct and they wanted to protect the worlds, while aman thul basically made sure everything fell into place right. But having that they're really high up there in the order cosmological power and don't really give a lot of differences for how they're very different is just a mess. it's why there's so much overlap with death, void and fel, because they were just the evils while life, order and holy was the good
On the rare occasion I'll include information from the RPG, if I ever do a more detailed geography deep dive I'll reference it for sure.
I think that gate model isn't unique though, I'm certain I've seen its downscaled version somewhere else. So unfortunately it probably is just a placeholder and isn't worth too much thought
@TheDanNation, if we are to consider that Titan uses the material from Azeroth to build their construct then yes it would be easy for them to get corrupted due to the fact that the Old Gods have been in Azeroth longer and their Corruption would have been everywhere.
The Titan lore should have been left in the background for as to keep guessing. it's more like our world really. we have so many civilizations and rich cultures one could hardly believe they all happened in this world. two races in the game that talks about the titan a lot were the night elve and the dwarf which was fine and should have kept the other races of Azeroth talking more too with the exception of the orc. In their pursuit to add more Pantheon to the game lore ruins the titan lore which shouldn't have if only they did it right. Like
@Wbrowncole Have you ever considered that there could have been another kind of corruption in the physical materials of the planet besides old god..... all of which before the Titans arrived? Afterall, the old gods were not native to the planet either (neither in the terrible replacement danuser writing, nor the original Metzen vanilla old god lore) and there were living things before those Old Gods arrived. That includes protodrakes, trolls, shu'halo, furbolg, hydras, and various other animals or monsters. Yes, the Old Gods were active for a long time and tried corrupting all of the above to varying levels of success once they arrived; but could not have been the original creators of any of the above.
My suspicion and hunch.... while playing vanilla....... was that maybe Metzen named Eonar with a title of "Life-Binder" because there was already life magic on the surface and below the surface all throughout the materials of Azeroth.....and she was binding that life magic to the constructs that they made from raw azeroth materials. Including the earthen, vrykul, giants, titan watchers, and even the titan keepers. All of them were fashioned by Titans.... "not" because they were immune to old god whispers, but because they seemed resistant to such whispers more than any of the existing lifeforms. As such, the Old Gods never 'created' flesh, they simply would have spread it and amplified it in their captors until there was enough of a fleshy mind to corrupt more easily.
And if Elune has anything to do with Life magic, then that could also explain why she was active and messing around with trolls and shu'halo and protodrakes in all those ancient times.
What's the name of the first BGM please?
All music used is from the Turtle WoW Soundtrack! turtle-wow.org/#/home
I wouldn't call the Titans a 'macguffin', rather they are the order faction in the Azeroth creation myth.
Besides the aesthetic, much of Titan lore is a homage to tropes in IRL myth.
Its an 'Ordering of the World/3 Ages' type story that generally follows as such...
1.A primeval age, the world was ruled by chaos monsters, unfit for life and unimaginably different. Then, a council of human-like divinities/ancestors defeats the monsters, creating the world as we know it - habitable by humans.
- Each council member tends to represent an aspect of the present world.
- Sometimes they are aided in this conflict by follower beings.
2.A heroic age follows the ordering of the world. Magic, heroes and monsters are commonplace, everything is larger than life.
- Certain landmarks were created by the actions of beings in said ages.
3.A mortal age follows after a vast but uncertain time. The world is familiar and works as how we understand it.
In Warcraft terms...
1. In the beginning, Titans wrest control of the world from the Old Gods...
2. For eons after, lingering titan and old god servants clash - leaving their mark of the land... Aszhara's empire spans the world, unimaginably greater and more magical than any since, it's people live immortal ageless lives...
3. The Horde marches through the Dark Portal. The modern age corresponds with the stretch of history that appears in-game.
I mean, sure, yeah?
They're still a macguffin.
Well, the definition of a macguffin is a weird one. From what I could find, a mcguffin is: "Something that a story builds around, but has no other purpose other than driving the plot forward".
So for example, the One Ring in LotR isn't a macguffin, because it has other, important uses in the story, rather than just being there. In contrast, the Philosopher's stone in Harry Potter is one, because in the film/book, its not actually used for anything in the specific story, its just the focus of it.
Azeroth as a Titan for example, perfectly fits this definiton, because the story builds around her, but she doesn't do anything. Azerite on the other hand wouldn't be a macguffin, because it does so much more than being a plot device. Artifacts like the Frostmourne, Dragonsoul, or the skull of Gul'dan are also different. I hope it was understandable, its a pretty vile definition if you ask me.
Whether Titans are mcguffins or not is a rough question though. Since they aren't directly present in the story, and we only meet their past creations, I don't think they would fall into the category. But then again, the story does build around them, its just that they are long gone from Azeroth. And this is true for both the earlier and later Titan lore.
I mean, how can we say they are mcguffins, when they aren't even directly present in the story? :D
I am almost 100% certain that Azeroth being a Titan goes back much farther than any of us realize. It fits the naming pattern of naming old gods after HPlovecraft creations.
If you can cite a source from the in game Warcraft universe, I'd be happy to issue a correction.
@phil6844 No, no, no, no, no. That is absolutely wrong. The word 'azeroth' was a small fiefdom in the frankish area of europe during the dark ages, which became a popular word to use in more modern sword and sorcery fiction. Then one of those fiction novels that used the word to describe both a kingdom and a world was the novel "Fires of Azeroth" by author C.J. Cherryh published in around 1979. The plot synopsis reveals this was a "DIRECT" inspiration for young Chris Metzen to borrow that mood and make it about orcs and humans. It has absolutely nothing to do with the word azathoth, at all, none, zilch, zip, nada.
@@laertesindeed This has been super informative, thank you!