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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWatch Cataclysm's ending cinematic
by Mathew McCurley 
Dec 1st 2011 at 1:00AM
Again: spoiler alert! The video after the jump contains spoilers for the ending of Cataclysm.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's go over the biggest developments after the fall of Deathwing. Aggra is pregnant, the dragon aspects have lost all of their powers, and Azeroth has entered a new age where the outcome of the world will be tied to the history of mortals. What better way to bring the war back into Warcraft than to remove the huge neutral roadblock that are the dragon aspects?
I love the ending to Cataclysm because it cements what this has all been about -- wrapping up the dragon story in Warcraft. The aspects are now mortal, Deathwing has been destroyed, and the elements are at peace again. What great beings will stand between the Horde and the Alliance now?
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Filed under: Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 11 of 12)
ilyena Dec 3rd 2011 9:17AM
So while we were risking our lives Thrall and Agra had time to make a baby? Nice
Wishblade Dec 1st 2011 7:16AM
I really hope they didn't lose all their powers, otherwise we'll just have some large dragons with no powers which = normal dragons and that to me is boring in WoW. And do the Flights lose their powers too? If not then the Flights will have powers while the Aspects don't, which is just stupid in my opinion. Losing some powers and immortality is fine, but all of it? Hell no, I don't want just fire breath and tail swipe for when fighting dragons in the future.
byronius_prime Dec 1st 2011 9:11AM
They basically lost their immortality - not their powers i.e Nozzy's time travel, Ysera's powers over the Emerald Dream, etc. As I read this they'll age - and countless millenia later they'll die.
Pwnzoar Dec 1st 2011 7:16AM
Wait, if Nozdormu lost all his timey wimey powers, how are we supposed to put the Demon Soul back and not screw over our timeline?
Teresa Dec 1st 2011 7:42AM
And just think, since shes mortal now, she'll eventually grow old frail and well, ugly. Grandma Alextraza in that bikini armor anyone?
DCannon Dec 1st 2011 8:49AM
So Caverns of Time ceases to have portals in it after this right?
araquen Dec 1st 2011 9:06AM
I kind of felt this was where the story was going.
First, you have Neltharion's fall. Then Alexstrasza's captivity, then Ysera, then Malygos and finally Nozdormu - all have fallen in one form or another.
And let's not forget that the Watchers in Wrath have also fallen (Ulduar).
Or that the watchery-things in Uldum also needed to be taken down.
There is a pattern that everything the Titans themselves have put in place has been systematically destroyed or dismantled.
The Aspects have been described as "Guardians" of Azeroth and of the great forces that define Azeroth. It would make sense, now that this is the *second* time that mortal races have saved the Aspects themselves (or were otherwise responsible for attending to Aspecty mischief) AND it has been the mortal races ALONE which have destroyed the Old Gods (something that none of the Titans or the Aspects were capable of doing) that the guardianship of Azeroth would pass to mortals.
I *suspect* that Thrall will be the first of the Mortal Aspects, and that we should start seeing more "world leaders" assuming analogous roles (Malfurion, for instance taking Ysera's spot and possibly Jaina, Kalecgos'). I do not think that they will become immortal, but rather the paragon of each force (life, earth, magic, time and dream).
I also suspect that we will never again see beings being solely dedicated to one force - that path seems to lead to weakness. Rather, the power, and the guardianship, will spread to many - kind of like a living network. This would make it far more difficult for the Old Gods or Sargeras to destroy Azeroth, since there are no longer a few, clearly defined, targets to take down the planet. They would have to take down thousands of smaller targets - targets that alone may be crushable, but working in consort, can destroy gods.
Ultimately, it may have been the Titans' long-term goal to create the heroes, something that required hundreds of thousands of years. The Aspects may very well have been tasked with nurturing these new creations, and knew their time as Aspects would end once they received the signs that the heroes were ready to stand on their own.
In any event, now that dragons are not god-like beings, it is very likely that they could become playable races in future xpacs. Given that Blizzard can create class-specific looks and they now can have one race choose either faction, it would not be too hard for Blizzard to devise a dragon race, which would give you a dragon form, and tie your look to your class choice (probably all but DK and Monk). (And no, I don't RP "dragons" - I'm just thinking out loud that Dragons would make sense since they already have ties to class and Blizzard have the mechanics in place to make the race playable).
byronius_prime Dec 1st 2011 9:14AM
Good lord, YouTube sure gathers the dumber individuals of the community. I mean gee look at the comments - people REALLY don't get the ending.
fernando Dec 1st 2011 9:22AM
i like it... mortals age dawn, meaning that when you die in wow you don't resurrect anymore and must start a new toon
WoWie Zowie Dec 1st 2011 9:36AM
so we no longer have dragon aspects to watch over azeroth. fan flipin tastic.
a suiting end i suppose to an expansion lacking in excitement. i guess they just got bored with having to weave dragon plots along with the titans and the old gods and elementals and everything else.
Tili Dec 1st 2011 9:45AM
Wow, just wow. These are the chills I have been waiting for in a cinematic. So sad and hopeful at the same time. Gets me super excited for the next expansion and I was kind of "meh" before. Farewell dragon aspects! You were my favoritest of NPCs!
Terrant Dec 1st 2011 9:53AM
First Cataclysm, now Age of Mortals... any other Dragonlance fans feel like we've been through this already?
LordGav1n Dec 1st 2011 1:27PM
My thoughts exactly!
tabardsrock Dec 1st 2011 1:38PM
in MoP we'll find out that Azeroth was stolen away by Sargeras to a different part of the universe. Jaina will also become a servant/herald of the One True God.
Blayze Dec 1st 2011 1:42PM
No surprise considering who writes a lot of the books...
Michael Martine Dec 1st 2011 10:07AM
For once, I don't want to be spoiled.
Ullaana Dec 1st 2011 10:11AM
Okay, so Alex says that she and the others have lost their immortality then everyone's eyes stop glowing. And now it's the time of the mortals.
Why do I think some dragons want some "me" time and are planning a vacation? You can't tell me that a huge dragon that can assume a humanoid form isn't able to alter the glow of their eyes to fool some mortal.
icepyro Dec 1st 2011 11:16AM
So... I guess it's safe to assume that they became "mortal" because all of their power was expended by the Dragon Soul?
I mean, we've killed aspects before, so that's not why they lost their powers. We've saved the world before, so that's not why they lost their powers. I mean, come on. There's still Old Gods, a Lich King, each other, Horde, Alliance, and whatever else that is ready to destroy this world.
And was there even a point to appointing Kalecgos? Any point at all? Or is that so mages get a staff? I guess you can asspull the need for a Blue Aspect so that the Dragon Soul works correctly in the current timeline?
So wait, does this mean Blizz is tired of having a real story and is just going to wing it from now on? They invented all these things which sounded cool, but haven't really been pulled off cleanly, so let's just get rid of it. Now that the titans probably aren't coming back, thanks to us, now that the one rogue Aspect has been defeated and somehow all the other aspects lost their power despite having just raised one dragon to Aspect and taking the time and effort to steal an egg and raise it so that another dragon flight can have an uncorrupted leader.
Noz, really? You decided to sit on the sidelines again through half of this expansion without saying, "HEY, ALL this Aspect stuff may go away if we defeat DW, why are you doing this". And the others seem so okay with the whole thing as if they knew it was going to happen anyways.
No, I'm sorry. We spent an entire expansion literally for shinies now. We defeated Deathwing, but everything else the dragon flights and us heroes have done, is now moot. WTF, Blizz.
Oh, and to top it off, we didn't just get Thrall to be the Earth Aspect like we thought, now he's the Guardian of all Azeroth. They now treat him higher than themselves as Aspects. "No, he's not going to become an Aspect" may be true, but this is even worse. Especially in the face of the fact that he's going to wander off to some corner and not even hear about the rest of WoW. I fear their child is going to be more screwed up than Med'an. Whom we still haven't seen. So I guess we will never know what becomes of this unless the the war comes to Thrall's front lawn for him to come out and yell at them to get off said lawn. Darn kids and their silly war.
tl;dr - I am disappoint.
Pyromelter Dec 1st 2011 2:37PM
Your points are all dead-on. Blizzard mailed it in for this expansion, in my opinion, and it shows. There are plenty of other ways they went through the motions on Cataclysm (the preview and RP videos for example). It's kind of like they stopped trying.
Andrew Dec 1st 2011 7:17PM
The thing that gets to me is that if this is the reason the Aspects were empowered, to stave off the Hour of Twilight, then that means that the Titans KNEW that their prisons were going to fail. They KNEW their creations/agents were going to be corrupted and used to destroy the world. They KNEW that their handiwork on this planet was flawed and broken, but instead of fixing it, they created safeguards to make sure when their flaws reached a critical mass Azeroth wouldn't be destroyed. In fact, THEY MADE ONE OF THOSE SAFEGUARDS EXTRA-CORRUPTIBLE SO HE COULD CAUSE THE CATACLYSM THE OTHERS WOULD PREVENT.
Yet none of this would have been accomplished except for the corruption itself. Algalon didn't expect us to be so resilient from our free will; he expected us to be clockwork soldiers as our forefathers were created. So in fact, knowing that one of the Aspects would betray their grand design, the Titans made the other Aspects only so powerful as they would need a free-willed mortal *brought from another planet by their fallen brother* to succeed in protecting the world.
Either the Titans were completely brilliant, the Titans were completely insane, or the writers need to be doing some quadruple-agent shit for the CIA with how convoluted their thinking is.