The Elements come from other dimensions. I guess they serve the Old Gods out of fear. The Old Gods are horrifically powerful, bet the Elemental lords sense that, and have no choice, other than to serve.

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Elementals could just be some kind of perfectly natural physical phenomena in the Warcraft universe. Like how our physics will naturally generate black holes and stars, so maybe elementals are just normal manifestations of science in their universe.

Now I just have this image of Dawkins as the Elemental Lord of Science.

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"The true horrors of the universe lie within humanity itself" - Satoshi Kon

http://cargocollective.com/deadletter
My dark designs

Seems to me that they are a bi product of creation, raw forces of the sprawling chaos of the light at the dawn of the universe. They occur naturally, life from prime magical influences. We know that arcane, a force of magic in the universe and of raw material largely becomes or mimics elemental forces, so this sort of arcane division likely occurs naturally over thousands of years. That said, chaos is an inherent structure in their separate states. This likely makes them easily swayed by Oldgods, it also makes them directly the target of the Titans. Interestingly the Legion seems, like the Arcane/Fel relationship to employ fel corrupted elemental forces regularly. Thus, they are pure to begin with.

"In the beginning was shadow eternal.
Hate blazed forth, and FIRE was born.
Wounds scabbed, and so begat EARTH.
Cries of anguish birthed howling WIND.
Wherein the skies wept seas of TEARS.
We live in the shadow,
The world we know
Built of rage, hurt, anguish and sorrow."

"Long ago, in a dimension of the cosmos unfathomable to mortal minds, there was born - if such a term can be used for it - a being of such unbelievable power that its very entrance into existence shattered all reality around it. "

It's likely that Elementals are permanent regular parts of all worlds spanning the universe and thus part of the Titan's ordering of said worlds. Titan's seem to imprison these Elementals and use their raw forces in their own ordering. They remove and separate these beings rather than outright killing them as they must draw on their powers of creation in order to manipulate the physical properties of a world. I wound not be surprised if this were true for all planets that have had some sort of Ordering, thus I find Draenor suspect. These 4 prime elemental forces likely manifest differently on worlds but certainly are a permanent force of the universe. Magical forces seem to be able to across all forms of reality manifest life naturally without an external hand in their propagation. Life persists, from the dawn of time across the cosmos, it to, an elemental force of nature.

This is my interpretation of it anyway.

Nooo they're not. If anything they're a manifestation of this, physical universe.

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Omacron is correct, the other dimensions are crafted by the Titans to contain the elemental forces from reality. It's been stated that the world was once a rolling warzone between the Elemental forces, we know little about this time. I find the period to be a fascinating subject. The things I want to know about is if the Animal life existed in some measure, or trolls. Personally I think that Animal life is Titanic in origin as systems in place for the Ordering of a world, which is why theres Ancients and they exist tied to the Emerald Dream. This is also why it seems Ancients manifest as systems, IE embody an aspect or trait of life. But I could be wrong, personally I still believe that Trolls were likely related to an Oldgod's faceless one species, removed long ago, which explains their early existence as they don't seem Elemental.

is there anyone alive on azeroth besides the old gods who could answer such questions about the origination of the universe or how the beginning of azeroth looked like and how it evolved?

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Naruu, Draenei, Titan Facilities and the Elemental Lords (although I doubt they remember much, they likely just manifested and existed in an infantile state focused on their own little worlds.)

I suppose that depends on how old Old Blanchy was...

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Old Blanchy was N'Zoth! It all makes sense now!

good point with the naaru.
the draeneis on the other hand weren't anywhere near azeroth in its origination/development stage.
the titan facilities need to be explored and interpreted but might result in answers.

so if old blanchy isn't a old god this doesn't leave a lot of options.

why hasn't brann (or anyone else for that matter, lets say some other historian) try to consult the naarus? does he considers this cheating?

"so you guys exist since eons and have seen about every shit happening in the universe, how about you tell us what exactly those old gods are, what species comes from where, what is magic, what dangers do we have to prepare for? what is the light? did you guys give Tirion SuperSayin Mode atop of IceCrown? and what the fuck is up with trolls that they are EVERYWHERE? are they descends of cockroaches?"

and the naarus would be like: "dude, oldgods are this and that so try to hit that certain weak point, or just leave them the fuck alone and seal of any entrance and keep atleast 1000km distance, the light is whatever your heart desire but yes its us, we are the magical santa and everyone defines us differently. we don't care aslong as they fight the BL eventually. Btw BURNING LEGION. get your shit together. it shouldn't be a black dragon brat that would have to warn you...."

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they're giant crabs?

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giant turtoise, you have to flip them over.

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It's not that the Draenei were near Azeroth, it has to do with their knowledge of the Physical universe across distant stars and raw mastery of the forces of creation. Their time exposed to the Naaru likely further enhances this pool. So while their knowledge of Azeroth specifically might not be the best, the similarities between it and Draenor (the only worlds we have seen) can't be denied. To further this we have Prophet Velen, in who's short story we saw has the vision to out right see the past and future of distant worlds and to explore with his vision alone. The physical laws that make up worlds are universal.

The Oldgod of Beating a Dead Horse.

Brann is a curious example, jerk doesn't share a lot of his knowledge it seems. The society he works for doesn't seem to either. It's mostly gameplay and lack of physical media related. So the only explanation I can provide is that he might not be sure how to access all the disks, or disks have been lost to time, or even that his knowledge of the Titan "OS" holds him back. It seems like there's tiered access to the databanks, and certainly he seems to fumble through them. He did begin a "data purge" in Ulduar pressing buttons with his stubby fingers.

We assume that memory is perfect, unfortunately even in humans it's not so. Memory and knowledge over thousands of years likely is even worse. Naaru also seem to have the "religion" aspect to account for to, so their willingness to impart aspects of those things might be filtered. Bunch of useless floating chandeliers if you ask me. Certainly their knowledge and possession of the Ata'mal crystals from the Dawn of the Universe makes them some what credible on the topic, but can they be entirely trusted as they have an agenda...

Even in the real world look how much disagreement we have on the subject of the basic principals of this world let alone the universe. Now think of the Nightelves, they have some WACKY idea's about the world, but given their ages you would think they would be Azeroth's truthsayers on the subject. Same for the Dragons, but even they don't seem willing to chat/know about events that occured directly to them. Again this is more an issue with our access to the lore than the existence to the logic of the lore being accessible.

I always figured trolls were Azeroth's natural sentient species, like humans are on Earth.

ah ok, i misunderstood your comment.

its most likely what you said, but still, why hasn't he or anyone else consulted the naarus. maybe they have and we just don't know. well i'd like to know how a conversation between a naaru and brann would go.

the other stuff wasn't meant to be taken serious

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Just to toss in a source, even though the conversation has moved on a bit:

From the dungeon journal. It implies that the original elementals were born "with" the worlds they inhabit.

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"Winter Wolves" has earned the achievement [Classy Worgen]!
[Guild] [Odok]: wtf we're horde
[Guild] <GM>: doesn't matter. All worgen are classy.

Horde Bias!

Theres no evidence to support traditional evolution in the Warcraft universe, infact theres even more refuting it at this point as unpopular as this may be. If trolls DID naturally occur, one must wonder at what period they arose and what from. It's unlikely they came into existance outside of the Elementals, meaning it was during a period of Oldgod infestation, as they predate the Titans. Titans, Oldgods or something else might have altered them from their state. They cant have just "come into being" if its through natural origins, so a larger question becomes how they held out against the forces of the massive raging Elemental wars, Titans, Ordering, Oldgod Invasion, Titans and remain untouched and uneffected by these landscapes and events.

I'm really hoping we get some Troll origin stuff in Zandalar, after Uldum I have my doubts we will though.

We're getting Zandalar?

Possibly, thats pure speculation. One would hope that we get to go there at some point. Or atleast the Zaldalari priest caste's information/legends about their people. It seems more than likely that plot line will be finished this expansion or the next one.

Well assuming the process that planets are created in this universe is the same as our own, fire elementals would probably be the first to form since the accretion of solid materials in a nebula would be very very hot. Then once the planet cools down you'd get earth elementals, and after that, probably air elementals once volcanic processes begin to generate an atmosphere. Water elementals would probably only come last since it's such a delicate and specific substance, and they'd also probably be very very rare.

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