Why Were Old Gods So Easily Defeated?

Giant, mystical, dark horrors that haunted the lands of Azeroth. Just their whisper or mere hint of a presence would chill you to the core. Rumours of Yogg-Saron had Brann Bronzebeard running and raising a panic within Dalaran causing a worldwide effort to stop him.

However, now we are just defeating Old Gods without too much effort and they really don't seem like that big of a deal. Why is that? The presence of the Old Gods was first seen all the way back in Warcraft 3 in the form of a forgotten one. A mysterious creature inside of a crypt in Northrend.

He was extremely powerful and now as we know not a God but just a servant of theirs. So we can see that Blizzard started toying with this idea almost 20 years ago, however, I believe that they really started developing Old God lore in Northrend with Ulduar.

Obviously there was C'Thun in Classic but that was a completely different experience it felt like we went to this forgotten land and fought this ancient foe, so he seemed like a unique villain. While cool and really revolutionary as an event from a game perspective really in all of gaming history, the lore itself was lacklustre.

It was only really with Yogg-Saron when we started realizing that damn these Old Gods are much more than just a big bad guy. The titans themselves couldn't defeat them, they corrupted the machines that were left to keep them in charge and their roots got so deep that they started messing with the world trees and causing the emerald nightmare.

It was said that Sargeras would be scared to confront an Old God and worst-case scenario if they somehow managed to break free that would be the end, there would be not a force in the universe that would be able to stop them. In my opinion, this was an amazing storyline as you really felt THAT threat and how we would do anything in order for that not to happen.

Well in 2016 the Chronicle happened and just completely changed that story from the core. In the new lore, it turned out that the Old Gods were actually nothing special. There were these Void Lords that we are yet to see that seem to be the big bad guys but the Old gods are actually just tools.

In fact, there are tons of them - their point is to search out world souls and to corrupt them in order to create the ultimate weapon for the void. So their masters literally just mass-produced these guys and sent them randomly hoping something sticks.

Now, of course, this doesn't make them completely powerless. In fact, old gods wrecked other planets, they conquered Azeroth and defeated the Elementals and established the Black Empire. It was only the titans that managed to put an end to them and they were quite a headache as they had to imprison them.

However, at the same time, they really weren't that powerful at least not what all of us had expected back in Wrath of the Lich King with Yogg-Saron and his presence. N'Zoth is the latest old god that we have actually defeated and originally he was said to be the weakest but he caused quite a lot of issues.

He corrupted Deathwing and essentially started the Shattering and as Cataclysm was in 2010 this was old lore when they were still a big deal. If you look at those visions of the future there was a desolate world where the hour of twilight had come and it was the worst case scenario.

While with the new lore he was essentially in the background of the previous expansions but I think most can agree that his defeat was completely underwhelming and he didn't really feel like that big of a threat. We got a few new zones, some visions and dramatic cutscenes but ultimately the entire fight wasn't really anything meaningful.

So why were the Old gods so easily defeated? Well first of the most obvious reason is the new lore as I mentioned. Chronicle completely changed the story and really weakened the Old gods turning them from main villains down to just tools of the main villains.

Second is that we didn't really defeat them that easily. We never really faced Y'Shaarj as he was defeated by the titans long ago but his presence was quite an issue for us and was the focus of Mists of Pandaria. Yogg-Saron was really a big deal and he never got free and despite being watered down he still created the Curse of Flesh and dealt with the titanforged essentially creating most of the races that we have today.

It was only C'Thun and N'Zoth that were dealt with in a much easier way. C'thun's defeat was a part of a large expedition but was definitely underwhelming which I can mostly attribute to Blizzard not fully fleshing out the Old Gods and their storyline.

However, for N'Zoth there aren't that many excuses and my own opinion is that they kind of rushed him in order for us to get into the Shadowlands. He was actually freed and our worst nightmare of having a fully released Old god came true yet it really wasn't that big of a deal.

I can't see that attributed to anything other than rushing the character so that we can focus on other threats. Now even though the Old gods were ultimately underwhelming and they ended up not as bad as we drummed them up to be my hope is that the Void Lords will be all that the Old gods weren't and that we will be seeing them soon either in the Shadowlands or the expansion after.