WoW Insider has been talking a bit about Uldaman recently, and I think there's a lot of merit to further exploration of the site. Uldaman was the first area in World of Warcraft where we got to explore the Titans. However, the state of Uldaman, or at least the parts of Uldaman that we have seen so far, are mostly ruined and crumbling. Clearly, there was once a very impressive complex there, but it has been buried beneath the earth, swallowed up by the sands of time.
Since we explored Uldaman's depths, we've seen far more in the way of Titan installations. Ulduar, for example, is a massive complex that, despite the outbreak of Yogg-Saron's corruption, was the first example we saw of Titan technology fully functional. In fact, the Titan facilities in Northrend seemed to span the continent, from Sholazar Basin to Wyrmrest Temple, and if you also take into consideration the ancient Vrykul settlements that may well have pre-dated the Curse of Flesh, or the Iron Dwarf buildings going down the eastern coast, or even the Blue Dragonflight headquarters in the Coldarra, we were exposed to a huge amount of Titan things in Northrend.
And it didn't end there either: Cataclysm took us not only to the four Elemental Planes (which were created by the Titans to serves as prisons/suitable habitats for the Elementals) but also to Uldum, whose primary purpose appeared to be to house the re-origination device.
And now, even in a distant land that at first seemed wholly unconnected to the rest of Azeroth, we have now discovered that the Titans left their mark here as well, creating the Mogu and filling the continent with facilities like Mogu'shan Vaults.
We have gained a generally better sense of what the Titans' game plan was, even if we don't know what their ultimate goal was. As Mogu'shan Vaults seemed to be where the Titans created the Mogu, and Ulduar's Forge of Wills was capable of pumping out Iron Vrykul, Earthen, and Mechagnomes, it would seem possible that Uldaman could have held another production facility, creating the Earthen that would later transform into the Bronzebeard, Wildhammer, and Dark Iron dwarves. Yet neither Ulduar nor Pandaria's Titan facility had people-production as its main purpose. Ulduar served as both the prison for Yogg-Saron and the seat on which the Prime Designate watched over the planet. Uldum was the home of the re-origination device, which the Tol'vir were created to protect. Pandaria's Facility (whose "Uld" name has not been revealed) was likely pulling double duty as a prison for Y'shaarj and some kind of experimentation facility with the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.
So while it's fine that Uldaman is the birthplace of the playable dwarves (and likely gnomes) it stands to reason that there ought to be some other purpose behind the place.
The one thing we do see happen in or around Uldaman that we haven't seen anywhere else is the purification of Wrathion's egg. Out in the Badlands, a Red Dragon, aided by an adventurer, steals a black dragon egg and brings it to a Gnome scientist. After exposing the egg as well as several other black dragon samples to a strange Titan device, the egg is purified - totally cleansed of the Old God Corruption. This is how Wrathion came to be.
The story goes that the Titans could not destroy the Old Gods without destroying Azeroth itself. For years, we did not know exactly why, but when we traveled to Pandaria, the answer became clear - when Y'shaarj was killed, the problem became more insidious, as his essence seeped into everything, called forward whenever someone merely had a negative emotion. If the continent-spanning threat of the Sha is the result of one Old God's death, what might occur if all of them were to be destroyed? At least a living Old God can theoretically be contained.
The Titans imprisoned the Old Gods eons ago. But would the Titans have simply given up? Would they simply lock the doors and hope that the Old Gods never figured out how to get out?
No. They would have started a massive campaign to research some way to extract the Old Gods. To purify Azeroth without having to destroy it. And the place where that research was conducted? Uldaman.
Uldaman may have been the most important facility on Azeroth - the one that held the strongest hope for a lasting victory agains the eldritch beings that poisoned the land. Within the space of a few seconds, the Eye of the Watchers was able to purify a black dragon - whose entire line had been corrupted for ten thousand years. Perhaps Wrathion is just the first example of what Uldaman means for Azeroth.
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