InquisitorAstelon: "How do you kill that thing?"

With the help of a legendary character, an ancient artifact, at least 9 friends, the other dragon aspects and many attempts to learn the fight.
Sgt_SealCluber: Timeline goes Original (2004), The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), and Dragonflight (2022).
Jadedkiwis: Deathwing is the Earth Aspect, meaning he is the literal embodiment of the earth, his slaves were welding plates onto him to keep his body together because the raw force of his power is ripping his own body apart, so when you fight him you gotta rip off those plates.
I highly recommend watching some of Platinum Wows videos when you are done with the trailers!
spudnick2010: “How the fuck do you kill that thing”

With a golden frisbee obviously…
Sgt_SealCluber: That first trailer's actual release date was not 14 years ago, WoW came out 20 years ago in 2004, but since TouYube didn't exist at the time I don't actually remember how the trailer was distributed. Though I seem to recall it being the opening cinematic for the game, and yes it was awesome!!
restech_r7163: "How do you kill THAT thing?"
10 content speedrunners: Ah, yes
jurare89: about the cataclysm trailer: this expansion in particular REALLY lives up to its name. Because there´s a bit more to it than just "new stuff". Do note, that i heavily simplify this aspect, and some inaccuracies may be part of it, but it´s easier to explain this way.

First of all, a bit of lore you need to know. In Azeroth, there exist multiple different "races" of dragons, with some of them inheriting an "aspect". They´re basically the leaders of the different dragon tribes, that inherited an "aspect" from the titans.
one of those aspects was Neltharion the earth-warder, who inherited the aspect of earth. However, he turned against the other aspects, abandoning his title in favor of becoming the aspect of death.
He was believed dead by many, but after the fall of the Lich King (which was from the previous expansion "Wrath of the Lich King", which trailer you already watched), he spectacularily emerged from the depths of Azeroth, leaving only devastation behind (as you can see in the trailer). As he has become the aspect of death, he changed his name to "Deathwing".

this also had massive consequences on the game's world. Former jungles turned into wastelands, the desert of "thousand needles" became flooded, and the entire area of the barrens got horizontally split in half. Ths also meant: basically all of the original maps got changed in at least some way (which Blizzard used to update them to a higher graphical standard at the time). So yeah, the emerging of deathwing literally resulted in a cataclyctic event that devastated basically the ENTIRE original map of Azeroth, and left almost no stone unturned.

About "how do you kill THAT thing": well, he is STILL a dragon aspect after all. Such a thing as "immortality" doesn´t exist. And we also already killed the Lich King, which is undead. But it took a LOT of effort for the players to kill him, including the former leader of the horde "Thrall", the "dragonsoul" (or rather, the demon soul, an artifact created by deathwing himself that can not only destroy, but also enslave dragons). our protagonists recovered it through the cavern of time, and used it to ultimately defeat deathwing in the final raid of the expansion.

But yeah, had the former shaman-leader of the horde, thrall, not recovered teh dragonsoul, it would have been game over for all of azeroth. fun-fact: Thrall used to be the the warlord (aka, the leader or "king" ) of the horde up until before cataclysm, but left the leadership to a successor in order to fulfill his duty as the "world shaman" (his profession is literally shaman even before he became the horde warlord). he gave leadership to garrosh hellscream, the son of one of his former allies grommash hellscream. So with the release of cataclysm, the horde players actually "lost" a beloved faction leader that never became warlord again. and grommash..... let´s say, he was not that likeable and peaceful as thrall has ever been.

about what happened in the cave: becoming the aspect of death, neltharion/deathwing suffered a big problem: his body was falling apart. the solution to this is what we see in the trailer: his body is LITERALLY kept together by his armor. remove the armor, he falls apart. and since he has become the aspect of death, well, he doesn´t care in the slightest about killing of anyone.

the tidal wave was one of the many consequences of deathwing literalyl breaking through the surface of azeroth. he has been underground for a long long time. imagine it as detonating a gigantic nuke, somewhere in the earth below the sea, and then a burning dragon emerges setting everythign on fire. it´s DEVASTATING.

It took all of the power of the 4 remaining dragon aspects (probably the most powerful entities in the world at the time) AND an entire raid-party (10/25 players) AND Thrall with the dragonsoul to take him down for good. that is lore-wise the most powerful beings you could imagine working together to take him down. and yet, the damage to the world was already done. the players were completely unable to prevent any damage, they could only stop him from completely destroying the entire world
Butane9000: Cataclysm is where I stopped playing WoW because it was the right point to "reboot" the game universe. It's largely gone downhill from there lore wise as well as issues with the expansions. That being said their animation team is ALWAYS on point.

Edit: TLDR breakdown of the lore is the Dragons of the Warcraft universe were created by the titans who built Azeroth up from nothing after fighting the elementals and the old gods. The black dragon is the embodiment of the world itself. The others being the domains of life, time, magic, and nature.
id_AZul: The first cinematic is 20 years old.. watching that in that time cannot be described in words, specially if you knew the Lore from previous games/books and they show you that you can be in that world of legends as yourself and not only seeing it through the stories of the main characters, you can grow stronger, talk to those main characters and even fight them... now imagine you're a kid/teenager watching that.
Spika94: The order:
1. World of Warcraft (I actually dunno the name of the first one "vanilla"?)
2. The Burning Crusade
3. Wrath of the Lichking
4. Cataclysm
5. Mists of Pandaria
6. Warlords of Draenor
7. Legion
8. Battle For Azeroth
9. Shadowlands
10. Dragonflight
11. The War Within

Jun 25 2024

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