What makes people so sure that the pantheon will be hostile towards players? To me the titans seem similar to gods who put out sandboxes into the wow universe and are more or less neutral.

As the Legion is chaotic, the pantheon will most likely represent another aspect - at least i'd be greatly delusioned if we have to fight the pantheon.

Indeed. Loken betrayed the Pantheon by allying (either voluntary or not) with the baddies, so I don't think the Pantheon will care if some guys killed him. Also, the pantheon arne't like Sargeras, or Malygos. They shaped Azeroth, and created its original denizens. I don't think they would want to just purge it.

Having said that, the warcraft story (chapter 1) says that the titans go around shaping/maintaining a hundred million worlds. Would they really care about Azeroth?

(A hundred million worlds? Warcraft can go on forever!)

Well, are the Pantheon even aware of Loken's betrayal? If they aren't, they would probably be hostile to the people who killed the prime designate.

The general idea is that the original version of Azeroth the Titans created, has since been pissed on so badly they would rather just purge everything and start anew - than deal with the current mess. This might have seemed like a far-fetched idea years ago, but the Curse of the Flesh has since delivered the news that we ourselves are twisted aberrations (Old God taint) of Titan creations. It's equally reasonable to ask , "So what makes people think the pantheon will not be hostile to us?" given that information.

The game could really use another major faction that is friendly to us for once, but knowing Blizzard they will be hostile to give us something to raid.

World of Warcraft #14(Comic) came out. Was basically a retelling of the Onyxia encounter with Varian, his friends and Jaina Proudmore(Right down to somebody getting knocked into eggs hatching more whelps, and complaining about not killing whelps fast enough). The twin kings of Stormwind are merged and become one and the young prince is saved. I thought this series was only 2 7 issue arcs, but it appears there will be more!

World of Warcraft: Ashbringer #3 also came out, and was much more interesting. In the previous issue Darion learned from a troll priest that perhaps his father still lives and is inside the heart of Naxxramas. Darion requests volunteers from the newly formed Argent Dawn to assist him in finding his father, he gets 4 volunteers, a Dwarf, Blood Elf, Orc, and mysterious mage.

The party makes their way into Naxxramas and into the spider wing, they confront Anub'Rekhan and easily kill him, and make their way over to the construct quarter. They confront Grobbulus who kills the Blood Elf(That plague injector thing looks far scarier in the comic O_o), and Thaddius awakens, they finish off both Grob and Thaddius and their mage transports them to the 4 Horsemen's chamber. A battle breaks out. Lady Blaumeux is dispatched first by the Orc, and the Dwarf proceeds to fight with Thane(A battle between 2 trash talking Dwarves is pretty funny) The Elder Mograine appears and instantly kills the Orc who's guard was down from killing Blaumeux, Zeliek kills the Dwarf who was distracted by Thane, and Darion is forced to kill his father, afterwards he picks up the Ashbringer and instantly slices Thane in half. Zeliek, still alive, laments over being forced to kill repeatedly, the Ashbringer whispers to Darion to flee Naxxramas and head toward Renault. Darion feels a glimmer of hope that perhaps a small part of his father is still within the sword. As he heads towards the Scarlet Monastery he asks his father, the sword, if they are going to help his brother, the sword simply replies "Yes....help."

Renault's sanity is hanging by a thread elsewhere, he awakens to dreams of his mother informing him that he's been a "bad boy", and is haunted by his betrayal of his father. He destroys his mother's grave stone and orders that Brill be burned to the ground. Reports from Whitemane come in that the Scourge is starting an offensive that will head toward Hearthglenn soon. Renault decides that the Forsaken are the lesser threat of the two and tells his forces to head toward Hearthglenn. Darion arrives with the Ashbringer in hand, attempting to tell his brother about their father. Upon seeing the Ashbringer and his brother, Renault goes into a fit of rage declaring that he has cast off his ties to his old life and family and starts to mercilessly attack his brother declaring him a betrayer for joining the Argent Dawn over the Crusade. The Ashbringer channels an image of the elder Mograine, and after some dialog about betrayal he kills his son by loping off his head(It's similar to the Ashbringer event if you've ever seen it). Overcome by grief Darion falls to his knees feeling that his father may never be redeemed.

Geez, what horrible raid tactics! Not rezzing their party members when they die, trying to fight 2 bosses at once, jumping into strange mage portals, killing Blameux first of the 4 horsemen... and a pally AGAIN not resurrecting his party once the fight's over...

My raid leader would rightly rip out my spleen if I tried any of that!

It's pretty ambiguous if Darion is a Paladin or not, it's clear that he respects the light and has lived his life as such but in the short series I've never seen him wield it.

What you mean "we", puny human?

And I don't know what their feelings are on cross-world contamination, but they might be sort of irked to know a Legion tainted race has come to inhabit Azeroth as well . . .

I thought the only races that can be traced to former titan creations afflicted with the curse of flesh were Dwarf, Gnome and Vyrkrul. Though I could have missed something.

Loken's death was defiantly the precursor to the titans return, I get the impression that as far as they are concerned everything is fine on Azeroth as they haven't reappeared in 2 invasion of the burning legion, and an Old God being partially released (C'thun). Lokens beacon can be seen as the failsafe that everything is gone loco and they have to come clean it up. Upon arrival they will see; at least 2 extraterrestrial races thriving, A massive change to the landscape when the well of eternity exploded. Minions of Sargeras have infested areas of Azeroth. One of the aspects will be dead, one is MIA. And various 'lesser races' are swarming through their old labs, data storehouse and cities. Yes I think they will not be very happy to see the world in the state it is in.

Not quite. Vykrul are what you had before the curse took effect.

Vykrul -> Humans
Earthen -> Dwarves
Servant bots -> Gnomes

In the various Halls (I think I've seen them in both dungeons), you see rooms with rows of inactivated Vrykuls, who are clearly as "mechanical" as their other Titan-designed counterparts. The Vrykuls we see outdoor are fleshy ones.

That is what I thought as well, you had Mechanical Creation > Curse of Flesh > Living Being. It would seem that the fleshy Vrykrul producing humans is a different phenomenon not directly related to the curse of flesh.

So given all this information the only playable races that are native to Azeroth are Trolls, Elves, Tauran? Unless we see a mechanical troll sometime in the future (I'm not counting out the possibility either).

There's always that theory Night Elves descended from Trolls as well(Boy did we get the better deal in sexiness).

Hrm, so it's like the way that Earthen gave rise to dwarves and also to troggs, as different variants induced by the same curse. So we can amend as follows:

Iron Vrykul -> Fleshy Vrykul (and Humans)
Earthen -> Dwarves (and Troggs)
Servant bots -> Gnomes

Gnomes/Goblins? That would fit well.

Not really. Elune is probably the vaguest character in the WoW canon at the moment....

Don't some of the constellations in Ulduar depict Night Elves and Taurens and whatnot? I thought that was pretty interesting.

I've been wondering about the evolution of races of Azeroth a lot myself and with WotLK things have become more clear.

Vrykul, Earthen and Servant Bots seem to be the only races the Titans created, the rest being native to Azeroth or of alien origin (orc, draenei). The giants also might be created by Titans or at least altered. The curse of flesh turned Vrykul into.. well Vrykul who later evolved into humans. The Earthen evolved into dwarves and some mutations caused some dwarves to underdevelop into troggs. Bots of course evolved into gnomes. It seems dwarves and gnomes evolved at the same time and were propably shunned by the Earthen and thus they moved together to Khaz Modan. The giants also propably were affected by the Curse of Flesh seeing as we have both giants of stone and giants of flesh. It's also possible the Vryukul evolved from giants.

With the current lore and what information we have it seems the elementals were one of the first "races" of Azeroth who ruled Azeroth (under the command of Old Gods). Other early native races seem to have included trolls and the qiraji, who created great empires after the Titan's first visit and the banishment of elementals.

Eventually we get to the point the trolls and qiraji go into war and trolls find the Well of Eternity which gives them magic, but as it's been proven nether energies have mutative qualities also. After the defeat of the Qiraji some of the trolls must have stayed near the Well of Eternity and slowly evolved into Night Elves. Night Elves then most likely used their power to destroy the troll empire(s). At this point I believe most of the modern native races (murlocs, furbolg, tauren, quilboar etc.) started to really evolve into sentient beings, propably due to the Well of Eternity.

Even more eventually we reach the War of the Ancients and the explosion of Well of Eternity. This explosion causes futher mutations and evolution, especially to Night Elves who lived near the Well. The Night Elves then evolve into Satyrs and Naga. Goblins also might have mutated from trolls at this point (or earlier?).

After the destruction of the Well the Night Elves stopped using arcane energies, except for the Highborne who evolved into High Elves due to the continued use of arcane energies (and having a new Well might have helped too). The Night Elves did have a new Well too but it was "sealed" under a world tree, thus not having any effect on the evolution.

At this point we have pretty much every race seen in game so far and no further evolution has happened. In the grand scale of things, most of the current (playable) races are actually rather young except for trolls. Of the alien species there's not much info about evolution of Orcs but the Draenei/Eredar seem to be rather ancient species.

A guildy of mine made this image which shows the connections of the races of Azeroth. I think most of the info was mined from WoW wiki so I can't vouch for it's accuracy but it seems pretty spot on.

I can't find any problems with that chart, except Goblins evolving from Trolls, which seem a bit unconfirmed. I still think it's more likely that Gnomes evolved from the mechagnomes and then Goblins spurred off from that, given that the races are a mirror of one another in terms of intelligence, height, interests, etc, yet obviously different on many other fronts.

Waaaaaaait. So Harpy's are former Nightelves? I'll take that for what it's worth; but what's more interesting is... there are Harpies in Northrend and in Eastern Kingdoms.

Goblins and trolls linked? Or gnomes? Sounds like gross speculation to me.