The Battle for Dazar'alor is likely to be the biggest major battle of the current Alliance/Horde war, at least if the war does not continue into the next expansion.
Given expansion cycles, to get meta for a moment, we've had our intro raid with Uldir, we're getting a Trial-of-Valor-like Mini raid in Crucible of Storms, and that leaves the Azshara raid in 8.2 and then presumably some final raid at the end of the expansion (Ny'alotha is my bet, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)
It's been pretty clear from the start that there's something going on beneath the surface (no pun intended) in this war. There are a lot of factions and players involved outside of Big Red and Big Blue. In the Dazar'alor raid, we see Bwonsamdi's takeover of the Zandalari royal line fully actualized (the finger he points when he directs Talanji to pursue the Alliance is a fantastic moment of visual storytelling.)
We know Bwonsamdi has his own boss, and that thread remains shrouded in mystery (it seems like a next-expansion hook to me,) but what is also quite clear is that N'zoth has been active as well.
SPOILERS AHOY
In the run-up to the Crucible of Storms mini-raid, players recover Xal'atath, the Blade of the Black Empire. Shadow Priests during Legion were intimately familiar with this weapon, as it was their artifact weapon. But now everyone gets to interact with it, and the sentience that had been trapped within.
There are four major Old Gods in Warcraft canon, but it turns out that there was at least one more that appears to have never attained the levels of power that Y'Shaarj, Yogg-Saron, C'thun, or N'zoth did. Defeated by her "brothers," Xal'atath was trapped within the blade and forced to serve the other Old Gods through it. In the Crucible of Storms quests, we actually allow Xal'atath to manifest outside of the knife, taking the form of a female void elf.
It would seem that Xal'atath is the Warcraft equivalent of Nyarlathotep - manifesting in a human (or humanoid) form, and so we find ourselves walking alongside and aiding this eldritch abomination that looks like an elf woman as she offers to help us fight against the Naga forces in Stormsong Valley.
In truth, however, she uses us (not really a shocker) to help open the way for N'zoth - whatever that means. Despite the fact that they were clearly once rivals, they enact their bargain, and N'zoth actually "blesses" us with his gift in thanks, allowing us to see the thousand truths.
His only request is that she leave the dagger behind, which she does as she steps into the void.
So this confirms that the dagger and Xal'atath are not one and the same - it was her prison, not her body.
To my mind there are two clear possible final bosses for Battle for Azeroth - Sylvanas or N'zoth.
But we don't want a Garrosh 2.0 situation here, so I suspect that instead, Sylvanas will wind up doing something huge in our fight against N'zoth.
We know that in 7.2 Sylvanas wields the dagger - does she do so with N'zoth's permission, or does she steal it from him?
We know this dagger is capable of trapping an Old God within it. Yes, Xal'atath was probably never as strong as N'zoth, but what if?
What if Sylvanas uses the dagger to imprison N'zoth within it?
The implications are fascinating:
On one hand, it gives Sylvanas a world-saving move to take, which would force us to reevaluate her a bit. It doesn't erase the horrors that she has committed, but she proves herself valuable to Azeroth in a way that is hard to deny.
But also: the dagger was super-powerful when Xal'atath was trapped inside. What kind of absurd power might it hold if N'zoth were the one inside of it? (And could we get Darin dePaul's voice whispering to us for an expansion? Sidenote: I really wish that they'd use the creepily casual voice that he first uses to speak with Azshara more instead of the booming monster voice. C'thun's voice acting was always more compelling to me than that of Yogg-Saron. Let the Lich King have the lowest, scariest monster voice - it works for him.)
It's pretty clear to me that Xal'atath is being set up to be a major player in the future. If we go on another cosmic excusion - to K'aresh or some similar void-infested world - I could easily see Xal'atath returning to use us.
But I think we have a pretty strong "holy crap" moment that might occur at the end of the final raid of the expansion being set up quite nicely.
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