{"id":943945,"date":"2025-12-31T05:50:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T05:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=442697"},"modified":"2025-12-31T05:50:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T05:50:18","slug":"world-of-warcrafts-cosmic-war-comes-home-in-the-worldsoul-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/world-of-warcrafts-cosmic-war-comes-home-in-the-worldsoul-saga\/","title":{"rendered":"World of Warcraft\u2019s cosmic war comes home in the Worldsoul Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"
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World of Warcraft<\/em> has always dabbled in the space beyond Azeroth. The Orcs came through the Dark Portal to serve as the antagonists of the original Warcraft real-time strategy games, a spaceship crashes into the islands north of Kalimdor in The Burning Crusade<\/em>, and Warlords of Draenor<\/em> introduced a whole other alternate timeline.<\/p>\n

But The War Within<\/em> \u2014 the newest World of Warcraft<\/em> expansion and the first stage of the three-expansion Worldsoul Saga arc (which includes Midnight <\/em>and The Last Titan<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 does a deft job of weaving these extraplanar elements in with the Azeroth players have come to know and love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In The War Within<\/em>, heroes chase an ancient, unknown threat into the deep and mysterious parts of Azeroth. The big cosmic war foreshadowed by previous expansions \u2014 between unknowable foundational forces of reality \u2014 looms over the players, and these factions\u2019 schemes have filtered down into the very bones of our world.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA huge part of the excitement going on with the beginning of this initial Saga is there\u2019s a lot of familiar faces, right? There\u2019s characters we\u2019ve had experience with in the past, like Anduin and Alleria,\u201d said Morgan Day, associate game director of World of Warcraft<\/em>, in a call with Polygon. \u201cIf there was a main character of The War Within<\/em>, I\u2019d have to say it\u2019s Alleria. We\u2019re also revisiting villains of the past, like Xal\u2019atath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Void stepping out of the shadows,\u201d added Day. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen them pulling strings in the past. We\u2019ve seen Old Gods, which are a creation of the Void. This is our opportunity to come face-to-face with the Void as an entity more holistically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blizzard published a cosmic map charting the universe\u2019s six foundational forces<\/a> nearly a decade ago, and players are still puzzled over these forces and how they\u2019re represented in-game. The War Within<\/em> sets up a conflict between two of those great forces: Shadow and Light. In Shadowlands<\/em>, we visited the realms of Death, a very close-up experience with an abstract concept. Dragonflight<\/em> reversed course, taking those abstract cosmic concepts and injecting them into life on Azeroth instead of having them in a separate realm. <\/p>\n

This trend of bringing cosmic elements to the homefront continues in The War Within<\/em>. For instance, the new player race is the Earthen. The Earthen are dwarven predecessors, and servants of the godlike beings of Order, the Titans.. The Titans left infrastructure behind, but it has slowly fallen apart, leaving their subordinates behind to figure things out.<\/p>\n

These golem-like beings have been running on autopilot, doing the bidding of beings who have long since abandoned them. They\u2019re only now starting to ask what these routines are for, and this line of inquiry grants them independence \u2014 and the drive to join either the Horde or the Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Worldsoul Saga, so what Morgan shared is the entry of it, the first part of this trilogy, where we\u2019re diving deep into Azeroth,\u201d said Tina Wang, art director at Blizzard. \u201cWe\u2019re starting to delve into those mysteries of the nature of Azeroth and the Titans, right up until we go into [the final Worldsoul Saga] expansion The Last Titan<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knife wife takes the spotlight<\/h2>\n

At first glance, Xal\u2019atath looks quite a lot like previous antagonist Sylvanas Windrunner \u2014 they\u2019re both sassy and smug, they\u2019re both female elves, and they\u2019re both extremely talented at manipulation and murder.<\/p>\n

Wang noted that Sylvanas\u2019 roots are \u201cwithin the humanity of World of Warcraft<\/em>\u201d due to her mortal upbringing and connection with other key members of the cast, while Day said that \u201cSylvanas is straightforward; she would take the fight to you. Xal\u2019atath is more scheming. That\u2019s one of the fun things we get to see as we progress throughout The War Within<\/em> and the Worldsoul Saga. What are these schemes she\u2019s working through, and how are we going to foil her plans?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really wanted to create a unique villain, someone who felt extremely intimidating. If you look at her design, she\u2019s light, right?\u201d said Wang. \u201cShe floats, she doesn\u2019t walk, and even then her armor and her cloak, it\u2019s like stars. There\u2019s something cosmic about her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the fun things to explore with the Void is \u2014 as a society, as a culture \u2014 one of the major themes we talk about is that they\u2019re about who is the strongest, who is the alpha predator,\u201d said Day. Some of Xal\u2019atath\u2019s manic glee shows through in the Threads of Destiny animation, showing wide, unblinking eyes, a shark-like grin, and even weird frame-skip effects.<\/p>\n

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