Admittedly, a lot of the Aspects' shortcomings could stem from the Titans apparently deciding that it would be hilarious to not tell their creations about the very Old Gods they were expected to keep from screwing up the planet. From the Aspects to the Watchers, the Pantheon's appointed protectors come across as frighteningly ignorant concerning the enemies from which they're actually supposed to be protecting Azeroth. Consequently, at no time during our conflicts with the Old Gods has it ever seemed like the Titans' servants had any idea what they were doing. It's one rushed patch job after another once disaster strikes, with plenty of "That's right, isn't there an Old God down there? Plumb forgot all about that!" moments.

So really, on some level the Aspects could have spent a lot of time twiddling their thumbs through catastrophe after catastrophe because by all indications, that's what they were told to do. The Titans empowered them and then left them with only the vaguest of marching orders. Which could account for their delayed responses to things like the Burning Legion and the Qiraji swarming across southern Kalimdor; they probably just plain weren't sure if those threats fell into their already poorly defined jurisdiction or if they were something to be handled by mortals or some other Titanic defense measure. Atop that, in WotA the Old Gods are implied to be borderline mythological beings to even the Aspects. Just what's the purpose of appointing protectors when they're left so uninformed that they and their followers only halfway even believe in the existence of the threat they were empowered to fight and have to deliberate to figure out whether or not a given disaster falls under the same umbrella as the spooky enemy they aren't even completely sure exists?

The Titans really just seem to have dropped the ball when it came to educating their creations on just where to point all those fancy powers they were given, so we have entire armies of powerful beings who literally just hang out not doing a job that was never properly delineated to them in the first place.

Seriously, the whole theme of the Old Gods/Dragon Aspect story has boiled down to "the very guys we're supposed to keep locked up are trying to escape! Who'd have expected that?" Gee, how about every person ever put in charge of keeping someone from escaping from somewhere? Except apparently on Azeroth, where ancient wardens built expressly for that singular purpose are routinely blindsided by the very concept that their prisoners might actually be interested in trying to get out. I guess Loken figured he was empowered as a courtesy to keep Yogg-Saron from getting lonely or something by listening to the Old God's crazy stories about how cool it would be to escape and how Loken should totally go crazy and let him so they can hang out.