It's funny to consider that the first Warcraft game had, basically, Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains, the Burning Steppes, the Swamp of Sorrow, the Blasted Lands and... maybe Duskwood? There were only Orcs and Humans, and the Orcs were fighting in the name of "Hell" and the humans in the name of "Heaven" and "God."
Retcons happened. And beyond that, expansion of the lore happened.
Warcraft II gave us the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms and Outland. Warcraft III gave us Kalimdor and Northrend. And World of Warcraft has, for the last decade and a half, not only reshaped Warcraft to be more of an MMORPG franchise than an RTS one (both in terms of time existing and content put out) but also vastly expanded the universe. While the Old Gods were hinted at in The Frozen Throne, the entire Old God/Titan mythos that is now at the center (or at least has been at the center) of the lore came about entirely in WoW.
Up until this point, while there have been new players and new developments, we've still been paying off those stories. N'zoth was first mentioned in Cataclysm, and only now are we finally facing him. I don't consider Sargeras to be totally handled yet (once we have an expansion-ending raid boss fight against him, I'll allow for that) but Warcraft's story has all been about resolving the consequences basically of the Legion and the Old Gods' machinations. Given that the Horde was founded initially as a blunt instrument of the Legion, you could really tie everything back to the Legion and Old Gods, and given that the Legion was created in response to the Old Gods, you could even argue that they're truly the root cause of it all.
Which makes Shadowlands simultaneously very exciting and very risky.
As far as we know, the powers-that-be in the Shadowlands are entirely separate from the Titans, Old Gods, Demons, and Naaru. We know of two major players - the Arbiter and the Jailor (I'll spell it Jailer when I see it in quest text.) But what are they?
Prior to the expansion's announcement, I had assumed the Shadowlands would be more of a reflection of Azeroth in the vein of the Emerald Dream - an important world, but not necessarily one that was all that separate from what we know.
Comparing it with D&D's cosmology (which, to be fair, does change with each edition a little) I had assumed the Shadowlands were akin to the Shadowfell, which is essentially the spooky, bleak alternate universe version of the prime material plane, and is sort of the opposite of the heightened feywild.
Instead, the Shadowlands seem more akin to the Outer Planes. In D&D, these include places like the Nine Hells (the Lawful Evil plane,) or the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia (the Lawful Good plane.) These places serve as both the ultimate afterlives for mortals, but also as the homes of the gods. Essentially, if you take the Christian idea of Heaven and Hell, but you add fourteen other places you could wind up (or fifteen if you include the Outlands, which are the True Neutral plane,) and of course have a broad pantheon of polytheistic deities instead of one god and one entity who tried to be a god, you get D&D's outer planes.
That makes me wonder, then, about the Shadowlands.
From a mortal perspective, the Shadowlands are a place of death, and even the bright, heavenly realm of Bastion seems to run on what Blizzard folks refer to as "death magic." But is that dichotomy really quite so symmetrical? Or, like the Outer Planes, are the Shadowlands really the true metaphysical divine realms that are the source of supernatural power?
And so, with that, we come to the following question: What is up with gods in Warcraft lore?
There is only one entity in the lore that is described simply as "a god." That's Elune.
That being said, there are a number of entities that seem like you could call them gods. When speaking with the Klaaxi after hitting exalted, one of them warns you that "our gods are not your gods" and that when the time comes, their loyalty will be to their own. They are referring, of course, to the Titans as "your gods" and the Old Gods as "our gods."
And obviously, it's right there in the name - the Old Gods are called gods.
That being said, are they? The Old Gods are profoundly powerful, of course, but they are also, ultimately, globs of void-turned-flesh hucked into our universe by the Void Lords. N'zoth and his peers have worshippers and can imbue followers with power, and wield a degree of power that seems godlike from a mortal perspective.
But the Titans seem like a whole order of magnitude greater than they are. Aman'thul plucked Y'Shaarj from Azeroth like he was popping a zit (with similarly nasty consequences.) The Titans, who literally comprise a group called "The Pantheon" (meaning "all gods" in Greek) seem pretty darn god-like, wouldn't you say? They certainly seem to be similar to the Greek gods, except perhaps they sleep around less (as far as we know.)
Then you've got the "Wild Gods." This appears to be a blanket term for the Ancients worshipped by the Night Elves, the August Celestials of Pandaria, and most of the Loa revered by the Trolls.
As far as we know, though, none of these entities are tied to the Shadowlands. The Old Gods are in the material plane and tied to the Void. The Wild Gods do seem to be connected to the Emerald Dream (and thus might also be connected to Ardenweald, so keep an eye on them.) The Titans, it seems, are thoroughly of the physical world.
But Elune, the only entity who has been referred to only as a Goddess, is also a big enigma. We know she's real, as we've seen her do things like take Ysera's spirit up into the stars and bestow the vague blessing of the Night Warrior on the Kaldorei. We also know that she has some connection to the Titans, given that the Tear of Elune is one of the Pillars of Creation and Eonar was hiding out on a world called Elun'ara.
So what is she?
A bit of speculation: We've heard that Tyrande's story is going to be prominent in Ardenweald. Let's imagine that the Arbiter and the Jailor are gods, full stop, and are thus of the same fundamental nature as Elune. Could it be that we might encounter Elune herself? Or at least that we might discover something else about her nature?
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