The upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion will, in all likelihood, be our first real break from those tentacled monstrosities that live beneath the world since The Burning Crusade. BC did have tangential allusions to the Old Gods, such as the final boss of the Arcatraz, the mysterious history of the Arrakoa, and of course the presence of the Nether Dragonflight (who stand as one of my key examples of how nether energy can purify Old God corruption - the Nether Dragons were Black Dragons, but the explosion of Draenor seems to have purged them of Deathwing's corruption.)
And at least in the case of the Arrakoa, it stands to reason that we'll have a bit of Old God lore going on, but I seriously doubt we're going to have any raids centered around the Old Gods.
But this actually makes it a great time to take stock and see what's happening with those eldritch behemoths.
To date, we have fought two Old Gods directly. C'thun was the final boss of the Temple of Ahn Qiraj (to this day I can't figure out why this wasn't considered "tier 3.") We tracked it down to its center of power and destroyed its body from the inside. In Northrend, we faced Yogg-Saron, who had taken over his own prison within the Titan city of Ulduar. During the fight, we found our way into the God of Death's brain, destroying it.
It would seem, then, that C'thun and Yogg-Saron are dead. But how dead are they? In fact, we would face C'thun a second time, in a way. The Ogre Mage Cho'gall took on the essence of the dead god, sprouting eyes all over his body and a strange, cephalopodic beak on one of his heads. Had C'thun truly survived? That's difficult to answer. Since Cho'gall death in the Bastion of Twilight, we have not heard any more rumblings from the creator of the Qiraji.
Yet I'm hesitant to declare either of these monsters utterly dead. After all, we learned within the Halls of Stone in Ulduar that the Titans left the Old Gods alive for a reason - that their deaths would result in catastrophic chaos that could destroy the very world.
Oddly, despite Cataclysm being pretty much the most Old God-themed expansion, we did not actually directly face any of them. However, we did hear whispers of a being called N'zoth, who appears to be the source of the Emerald Nightmare, or is perhaps deep beneath the ocean (or both.) While Blizzard has all but ruled out a full Emerald Dream expansion, I expect that if we ever do make a journey into the Dream, we will deal with N'zoth.
But then, how do we define "deal with?" Well, we (and the Titans) long suspected that killing an Old God completely would lead to disaster. And in Mists of Pandaria, the reason behind that finally became clear.
The Titans created the Mogu as a warrior race with a specific purpose - to fight the Old God Y'shaarj and his forces. And the Titans were successful. The Mogu managed to truly kill Y'shaarj, but this brought about a bitter consequence. With its last dread breath, Y'shaarj unleashed the horrible Sha upon the land. In some ways, the Sha were worse. While they did not possess the cunning intelligence that Y'shaarj had, the Sha were not physical beings, and could not be bound the way that their creator had been. Thus, it appeared that the Sha could never truly be gotten rid of. Killing them would only cause them to dissipate like mist, ready to be called back the moment a mortal had a moment of emotional distress. The Pandaren created an entire way of life built around avoiding these negative emotions, but in the end, they could only hold the Sha off, and not rid themselves of them completely.
Or so they thought. Ironically, Garrosh's cruel act of barbarism - the destruction of the Titan-built Vale of Eternal Blossoms and the empowering of Y'shaarj's heart, ultimately allowed the Warchief to drain the last remaining power from this lost relic. The Titans had sought to contain the heart, just as they had sought to contain the other Old Gods, but in drawing the full remaining power from the Heart, Garrosh inadvertently allowed the last drop of Y'shaarj's essence to be expended. The Heart is now inert, and the Sha have no source from which to spring.
So of the Old Gods of Azeroth, we can firmly and confidently cross Y'shaarj's name off the list. We have also proven that, powerful as they may be, the Old Gods can be destroyed utterly.
The questions that remain are these:
What is left of C'thun? Did Cho'gall's death in the Bastion of Twilight kill off the last remnant of C'thun in the same manner as we killed off the last of Y'shaarj in Orgrimmar? C'thun's death did not seem to have the kind of immediate catastrophic effect that one might expect, which would almost seem to suggest that he isn't dead. But then, perhaps we were merely lucky, and C'thun simply did not have a chance to unleash a similar curse.
What is the state of Yogg-Saron? We attacked Yogg-Saron's brain directly. Perhaps the Old God of Death is effectively brain-dead? Might that circumvent the danger of a curse? When Deathwing attacked Wyrmrest Temple, who brought forth the faceless ones and the Maws from which they sprang?
When will we face N'zoth? N'zoth is the only Old God we know to be completely at large and undefeated. As the other Old Gods fall, does this one become more powerful?
Are we due for a catastrophe? I had wondered if the Cataclysm may have been triggered somewhat by the death of Yogg-Saron. The Titans seemed sure that killing the Old Gods would bring about devastation, but beyond the Sha, we don't know what form this will take. Are we sufficiently heroic heroes at this point that we've managed to take down two Old Gods and the last remnants of a third without destroying the world?
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