The Desolace theory : Old god unveiled

[Nyarly]

Hello everyone,
I know some of you will call pareidolia on this one, but I have yet another tingling feeling that something weird is going on here.

We all have a good reason to hate Desolace : it's empty, sad, ugly or boring. But what if our disdain for this area was in fact a plot designed to make us look away ?
So that something even more darker keeps staying hidden, waiting.

Looking at the minimap of desolace in 0.5.3 and 0.5.5, nothing really showed up. As always, Desolace didn't deliver, and I became hesitant to keep looking at it again.


But I still wanted to capture screenshots of the Shadowbreak Ravine, with the mushrooms that looked like zangarmarsh.
So in 0.6.0, I quickly glanced at desolace, didn't see the purple textures I wanted, and went on.

That's when something tingled at the corner of my eye. Hm what's that thing again ?


Oh well it's wait what ? Isn't this some lil cuty cephalopod lying over there ?
That oddly looks like something I saw before... Let's check this, but don't get too hyped, it's probably nothing.



Oh well f* me we definitely have a cthulhu here.
And according to google's first results :
Old Gods speculation | WoWWiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
"One or more may be found in Desolace."
Well I think I may have found one guys.

Ingame it's hard, but possible, to notice the face of the beast :


A small naga city laid there as well, as decoration for a flight path that used parts of this land.
It could very well have been another trick used by the old god to make us think everything looked normal there. Until I saw it from above.

In 0.10.0, the shadowbreak ravine was added north to it, sealing its access to the players.
WoW Map Archive

The area stayed like this until the cataclysm :


The basin got flooded, and the corpse of the creature cannot be noticed anymore.
This is almost exactly what would happen if something buried itself to hide : leveling terrains and releasing water from underground caverns.

Now Desolace still isn't loved, as nothing really happens there.
But what's left to wonder is, for how long, will Desolace have nothing to show ?

ME tag because I had to use a private server for ingame screenshots.
Full album : Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

[Zulch]

I really love your findings and theories Nyarly! They trully speak for your fascination and determination.

For that particular place: I never ever wouldve grasped the idea of it possibly covering an old god. However, the minimap view speaks for itself. You could be on to something ;-)

I remember seeing the ruins often via the flight path. And then some day I actually went and tried to reach it, which resulted in one of my first explorations (and walljumps!). It was a great day as it also offered a way to get below Dire Maul and ultimately inside that weird area behind it, which is also completely unused afaik. (We jokingly called it Feramulgolas)

Interesting that they filled it all up with water. Did you check it out on retail? Maybe the terrain still has the same shape underwater? Or maybe there are some other things hidden there...

[Smitten]

I love theories like this.

Some things to consider. There are four Old Gods on Azeroth -- C'Thun in Ahn'Qiraj, Yogg-Saron in Ulduar, Y'Shaarj who was already killed, though the heart was in Pandaria, and N'zoth -- the one we know exists, but hasn't explicitly been seen.

N'zoth was in the Eastern Kingdoms though. Now that said, take a look at N'zoth's picture from Hearthstone:



Look familiar?

Also, consider what Desolace originally was -- a Night Elf city. As pointed out, there is the Naga/Nelf building there (like most of Desolace). It is a popular theory that N'zoth was responsible for turning Azshara and the Highbourne into the Naga.

However it's revealed in the Chronicle book that N'zoth was buried between Zin-Azshari and Uldaman in an area that's now underwater due to the Sundering.

Twisted remnants of N'zoth surfacing? Perhaps. Pareidolia? Probably.

Still fun to think about none the less.

Cool find!