The Titans’ 10 Biggest Fuck-ups
Hey readers! I’m so sorry for the month-long break-lots of crazy stuff going on irl with job hunt, holidays, and other shit. But you know what we are SO back. Happy New Year!
A few months back, I was on Live, Laugh, Lore with Gin and Ali. You can check out the episode here: https://x.com/live_laugh_lore/status/1859828753507254445 as we discussed Warcraft Direct and our excitement for Goblin patch. I won’t be doing a separate post about the Direct: most coverage has already ended, my opinions are covered in the podcast episode, and I’ll have plenty to say when it’s live.
Today, we’re covering a topic highly requested by my guildies: me ranking the Titans’ fuck ups. As we all know, literally since before Classic, Titans have been sketchy while also (maybe) caring about our survival. Sometimes. Or not? But we treat them as gods so surely they’re nice? Maybe?
Let’s rank the Titans’ worst dumbass moments as we prepare to inevitably witness them doing some more Fuck Shit. This post contains spoilers for the weekly memory log quests if you haven’t stayed up to date with those.
50 shades of slay
10. Yogg-saron
When facing planetary parasites and learning that outright yoinking them out of the world is a bad thing, what do you do? Lock one really deep underground of course! This is #10 because I have a little bit of sympathy: after learning that Old Gods are much harder to deal with than “just kill them,” it’s understandable that the Pantheon would want to think of a different solution. I just think they picked a bad solution. Yogg’s prison in Ulduar puts him in an incredible position to infect both the natural world and the creatures who live on it, as his blood creates saronite (it’s in the name) and helps spread his influence even further. This is honestly kinda smart by him: ore is a required resource in this world, what a great place to plant your insanity! So even though Yogg being imprisoned was an ok idea, he should’ve been a little more half-dead, like in phase 3 of his boss fight when we’ve killed his brain and it’s just his body.
WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR MEMORIES? OH.
9. Earthen Memory wipe
I think this is extremely silly. The Earthen memories are our first instance of the Titans attempting to rewrite history, in their vast hubris, pulling a classic propaganda maneuver of glorifying the folks who resisted. The Khaz Algar Earthen were different from other Earthen in that they were isolated from most of Azeroth and given very specific directives. Specific Earthen who contacted the energies of the Worldsoul became even feistier in the eyes of the Titans, dubbed Thraegar. When the memory consoles reveal that Thraegar were deemed ‘too free-willed’ to continue, the Titans decided to raise them up as heroes chosen by the Worldsoul. This works on paper, but falls apart pretty quickly when you realize their problem with Thraegar also extends to keepers, and Archaedas himself says he can also feel the Worldsoul telling him to make his own decisions. Thanks to our stone-faced friend, we have an entire memory log telling us about this nonsense. The lesson: if you’re gonna rewrite history, do it right, or your local keepers will leave an entire memory archive exposing you. Receipts!
alexstrasza girl…we gotta talk about this…..
8. Putting order magic in dragon eggs to soft mind control them
The Titans wouldn’t tell you this was a mistake (they wouldn’t tell you lots of their decisions were mistakes tbh), but I would! I think this was dumb. Not only does this move just suck morally, it creates Iridikron, who has already helped the Titans’ enemies gain some ground. By igniting the war between Ordered dragons and proto-dragons, the Pantheon kinda gave themselves a problem that didn’t need to exist. It’s just another one of those Titan moves done in the name of ‘ordering the chaos of life’ and raising up fallible creatures. Famously, Odyn did not think dragons had what it took to guard Azeroth, in his endless headassery, and fucked off, meaning this act also eventually alienated their prime designate. Now I hate Odyn, but alienating someone on your side isn’t a great idea (but we’ll get to more of that later). All in all, this isn’t necessary, as dragons were already walking with Titans before they got soft-order-controlled, and just serves to leave more proof of questionable decisions. And as I said, creating someone who hates you as much as Iridikron does is just never a good idea. That man will hang out with literally anyone who isn’t the Pantheon. He’s the meme of “I don’t care if the void wins, I just need the Pantheon to lose.”
i miss him
7. Algalon
Our beloved Constellar, he who let us live, is a bit of a goof by the Pantheon. I fervently disagree with the Pantheon’s reorigination machinery, as restarting the entire planet is totally deranged, but if you’re gonna have a failsafe in place to activate said machinery, you want it to be…safe from failing. And it fails! Algalon is competent enough to show up and activate the machinery, but the heroes of Azeroth are surprisingly powerful, inspirational, and good-looking, making the Constellar question his directive. This one is especially interesting given the recent revelations about how exposure to the Worldsoul can override the Titans’ directives: Algalon just arrived to Azeroth. Was there a conduit to direct Worldsoul exposure within Ulduar? Was our presence enough? Either way, I fault them for this because if reorigination was the goal, your mechanism to enact it should be foolproof.
this blog hates odyn btw
6. Rewriting history in an extremely discoverable universe
Propaganda and attempts at rewriting history are age old fascist tools (not that I’m calling the Titans fascists….yet…) but here’s the problem with doing that on a cosmic scale in World of Warcraft: everyone knows you lied. The only people who don’t know you lied are the folks on the planet you control (Azeroth) and even they eventually found out you lied because the dipthong Odyn left documentation of the rewrites! But regardless, every time we’ve traveled off of Azeroth, we immediately find indications of the Titans not being completely honest with us. The easiest example is of course from Shadowlands, where the Brokers show us an entirely different understanding of cosmology, but we have other examples from the Emerald Dream, Outland, Argus, and even alternate Draenor. Basically everywhere we go, little cracks start to form in the Pantheon’s narrative. I think this is obviously really good storytelling, but giganto hubris on their part. Side note, I’m obsessed with the folks who think this “the Titans might be questionable” angle is a recent development. Did y’all forget Un’Goro Crater back in vanilla? Or Uldaman? Or Sholazar Basin? Or Ulduar? Or all of Uldum? Or Pandaria? This has absolutely always been a thing lol like in the best-reviewed lore expansion (wrath) they tried to BLOW US UP!!!!! I take issue with many recent lore decisions, this is not one of them. They’re sketchy!
archaedas is my ally until proven otherwise
5. Isolating the worldsoul from all other cosmic forces
We still don’t know what the full ramifications of this decision are yet, but it has become abundantly clear through a combination of Brokers, Beledar, and general cosmic knowledge that Azeroth should not have been isolated from all of the cosmic forces. It’s looking more and more like the story will end with Azeroth waking up and coming into her own as “the Prime Worldsoul,” and we can easily infer from Beledar’s shifts that the Prime Worldsoul contains all of the forces. Where there is light there is void; where there is order there is disorder; where there is life there is death. To the credit of Shadowlands, they actually did a nice job carrying the through line of balance that we established back in Wrath. Anywho, the memory archives have illustrated the Pantheon’s plan to put the Worldsoul in a containment chamber called the Worldcore that “protects” it from all other influences. All of the Titan machinery we’ve seen around the planet is meant to pump Order juice and ONLY Order juice into the Worldsoul. Think the stuff from Halls of Infusion with the dragon eggs times 100. I anticipate that this will have some consequences on the development of the Worldsoul that we’ll need to deal with later on, but regardless, it’s dumb because obviously you can’t do this without expecting other forces to fight you on it.
halls of origination jumpscare
4. Reorigination systems
These are basically nukes but worse in the WoW universe. Much like real life nukes, the people who came up with them forgot one very important truth: your enemies can figure out how to use them too. Our first encounter with this was Deathwing trying to use the forge in Uldum. Later, the Amathet restored the Forge and were trying to use it again. We then used the forges to blow up N’Zoth.
So like…why do these exist?
I don’t think it sends a great message to the people you’re governing that you left a system in place to blow them up in case something ever happened to the integrity of your structures. But especially since the Pantheon came up with these and got killed by Sargeras shortly afterwards, it really doesn’t seem intelligent. The codes to activate the reorigination nukes aren’t that complicated, keepers can always fall to darkness, etc., and they just are still around for people to fuck around with. These are another massive instance of Pantheon hubris.
RIP GOAT
3. Mindfucking Ra-den
Speaking of keepers falling to darkness, meet Ra-den. When the Pantheon got cloven in half by Sargy, their essences returned to the keepers they bestowed powers upon. Since Ra-den was the keeper blessed by Aman’thul, he immediately saw everything the Highfather ever witnessed, the truths he knew, and realized that his gods were dead. Whereas Khadgar has a pretty ok reaction to this news in Legion, saying “our gods have been long dead and we gotta figure something out,” Ra-den gives up. He extracts the remaining essence of Aman’thul and then locks himself in Pandaria to be depressed (which like, same). I fault the Highfather for not anticipating the issues his gift would cause when he returned to his keeper, but I also fault the Pantheon in general for creating this situation. We’ll get to that though.
Anyway, the consequences of Ra locking himself away were many, as his decision not to do his duty gave rise to Lei Shen eventually. As you may notice, Pandaria sure has a lot of important shit on it for a continent that folks initially dubbed as “filler.” Lei Shen was not just a conqueror, he is one of the most knowledgeable wielders of Titanic power of the mortal races. He also had additional knowledge of the power of Y’shaarj that lingered on Pandaria, employing the Divine Bell against his enemies. He built a strong fortification against the Mantid, servants of the Old Gods on Pandaria. Surely this made him a successful servant of the Pantheon in their eyes?
brush ur teeth ur breath stinks
2. Ripping out Y’shaarj
The reason Pandaria is all fucked up in the first place: Aman’thul’s dumb ass (this is harsh but I don’t care). The titans, in their infinite wisdom, were very unhappy that forces of the Void had taken up residence on Azeroth (whether they fought the Void to protect Azeroth, to prevent the Void from claiming her, or just to preserve their Worldsoul remains to be seen) and had not found a strong solution to the Old God dilemma. Aman’thul got annoyed one day, said fuck it, reached through Azeroth’s atmosphere, and yoinked Y’shaarj out of the planet. Surprise: Azerite! As Azerite bubbled up to the surface, Y’shaarj’s terrible power left its mark on the world, literally creating the Sha in the first place. The reason I say it’s harsh of me to call Aman’thul dumb is that, in fairness, they didn’t know that pulling an Old God out directly would have these averse consequences. But if you ask me, I feel like that’s a safe assumption, and someone as “wise” as the Highfather should’ve known better than to take a risky, bullheaded approach.
The consequences of Y’shaarj’s last breaths were felt for millennia. This event also informed the Titans’ future approach to the remaining Old Gods, imprisoning them instead of killing them. We’ve all seen how well that went, as all 3 remaining Old Gods either fully broke out or subtly influenced entire continents for generations. It’s arguable that the Titans were screwed from the beginning with how they handled the Old Gods, but I think they had many opportunities to change course.
damn he’s taller than me
1. Unaccompanied Sargeras
By far the Pantheon’s biggest mistake, leaving Sargeras to roam the cosmos unsupervised. This man was just a one man universal police force, going around killing demons, until his new friend Aggramar showed up. And what did he do later? HE LEFT!
Sargeras was the first among the Pantheon to discover the existence of the Void Lords. When he reported his initial findings, he was dismissed and told to continue doing his duty. This was mistake number 1, as the Pantheon was so committed to their “purpose” that they were unable to hear out their brother’s concerns (being blindly committed to a purpose sound familiar?). When Sargeras eventually came across a planet fully eaten by the Void, he instantly killed it, cutting off the problem before it started. He returned to the Pantheon and was berated for his “rash” actions, his concerns were once again dismissed, and his siblings lost him quickly after that. The Pantheon’s arbitration department was sorely lacking.
Aman’thul’s sustained arrogance is a theme throughout most of his appearances, and it never came back to bite him harder than with Sargeras. The Pantheon’s misjudgment on the day Sargeras left doomed most of the Great Dark Beyond to meet their maker at the hands of the Burning Legion, including the Titans themselves. All of them were destroyed by Sargeras, their intact essences dispersing. Sargeras hunted them down to turn them to his side, as he did Aggramar, with only Eonar evading capture by the time of Legion. So yeah, their idiocy with Sargeras:
1. Created the fucking Burning Legion
2. Got them killed
3. Got Aggramar rezzed on Sargeras’ side
4. Didn’t do anything to support Azeroth
5. Got Sargeras massively buffed by Fel magic
The Pantheon has always been pretty questionable in WoW. I’m hoping that the writers don’t take a “fully evil” angle with the Titans: we have occasionally had similar interests, they’ve protected us and we them, and some of the Pantheon and their keepers have been shown to have a true interest in the well-being of Azeroth’s people. Eonar, Tyr, and Ra would all take issue with us being immediately vaporized. I do think depicting them as prideful, judgmental, ethically questionable, and single-minded is good, and that’s what we’ve gotten so far. The strongest virtue for the Pantheon is Order, following protocol without question, which aligns with their cosmic purpose. I’m looking forward to seeing where we go next with them, and eventually, I am hoping to beat up a few members of the Pantheon in 13.0. I hope you enjoyed this look at their biggest fuck ups!
-Ily
