World of Warcraft’s fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor, offered players disappointingly little content when compared to its contemporaries. The overall experience isn’t remembered very fondly by fans, but the content and lore it introduced does stand out. One of the expansion’s most influential features givingWorld of Warcraftfans the opportunity to truly explore the wild world that the orcs used to call home.
In the currentWorld of Warcrafttimeline, Draenor is a shattered, broken world known as Outland.Warlords of Draenor allowed players to go back in timeand experience the orcs’ home world as it used to be, saturated with life and - most importantly - alien dangers the likes of which Azeroth’s heroes had never seen. That includes reliving horrors that existed to terrorize the inhabitants of Draenor all those years ago, namely the Primals.
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World of Warcraft’s Draenor Has Unstoppable Sentient Plant Life
The Primals are sapient plant-based organisms that dominate various parts of Draenor. They are made up of a number of races, but the most dangerous are the genesaur: huge centaur-like creatures made of plant matter. They cultivate their kind’s unchecked expansion, determined to reclaim Draenor for the Evergrowth, and at one point they nearly succeeded before theTitan Aggramar personally intervenedto save the planet from being consumed.
Many eons ago, three immense creatures called Sporemounds, made entirely of flora, had emerged from the planet’s abundant life energies. They took over everything, strangling the land with roots and vines and consuming all other living things. Aggramar used his own creations, the Colossals, to wage an eternal war against the Primals, keeping them in check. Over time, the mightiest of both sides fell, andDraenor was saved from the Evergrowth.
When Azeroth’s players set foot on Draenor, they encountered the leftover forces of the Evergrowth in Gorgrond, where the genesaur managed to rally other plant-based creatures and launch a new invasion. They had endured a long stalemate with their war onDraenor, but if they were able to reach Azeroth, there would be no Colossals to stop them.
The Primals managed to achieve this, with spores from the Evergrowth able to infest and control the minds of other creatures akin to theCordyceps fungus inThe Last of Us. The Primals infected mages who had come from Azeroth, and used their skills to open a portal on Stormwind’s doorstep. If players hadn’t swooped in at the last moment to cut down the genesaur, Azeroth might have been lost to unstoppable plant growth.
The worming roots and choking thorns of the Evergrowth are eerilyreminiscent of Azeroth’s Old Godsand their unrelenting corruption, but the Evergrowth has an even creepier power of turning other creatures into horrifying plant zombies bent to the will of the Primals. That being said, aside from featuring in a handful of quests and a single dungeon called the Everbloom, there have been no mentions of the Primals inWorld of Warcraftsince Warlords of Draenor.
Given that the Old Gods crop up in practically every expansion, it seems odd that another relentless and unstoppable villain like the Evergrowth was brushed aside. It’s likely Old Gods are more popular because of their Lovecraftian appearance and ancient, all-knowing mannerisms, but the Evergrowth is also an eons-old, hive-minded organism.World of Warcraftwasted a huge opportunityin condemning the Primals to be forgotten, and one can only hope they’ll be seen again in the future.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflightis available now for PC.
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