In my mailbag this past week, I received a note from Gamon asking why people seem to keep attacking him. I really didn’t have any good explanation for him – he always seemed like a nice enough dude to me, so I’m not sure why so many people want to start shit with him – so I offered a mostly joking answer that maybe it’s because of the Old Gods.

Thing is, while I was mostly kidding, it wasn’t a coincidence that I came up with the Old Gods as an explanation. A couple days before on Twitter, @justanna was asking about an oddity, and I offered the best explanation I could think of:

(For those of you not up to date on your internet lingo, “WoW” is the current trendy online abbreviation for “Whole of World,” as in “frigging everywhere.”)

Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned the last few years, it’s that when in doubt about why something happened, “the Old Gods” is never a bad guess. And so, when I saw Gamon’s letter, I already had the Old Gods on the brain.

By the way, what the hell are “ducks”?

Anyhow, since I’ve been mulling this over the last few days anyway, I thought I’d take some time to share a few other little-known facts about everyone’s favorite Big and Tentacly Dudes from Someplace Unspecified Down Below. Hold the presses, kids, here’s a partial list of other things that are actually the Old Gods’ fault:

• Ever notice how there are runic symbols carved into weapons and buildings and floors and a zillion other things, all over Azeroth…and yet there only seems to be like six symbols? What kind of lazy-ass runic alphabet only has six symbols, right? Well, true fact: there were originally 37 rune symbols. The Old Gods ate the other 31.

• Who the hell had the bright idea, back in the day, to have Annora, the one and only artisan-level enchanting trainer at the time, move into THE MIDDLE OF ULDAMAN, where you could only reach her by getting a bunch of your friends to help you fight your way in? Doesn’t get much more corrupted and insane than that. Old Gods strike again. Hell, she even felt compelled to go hide underground – could there be a bigger giveaway than that?

• If you go to the Orgrimmar library, and look for the classic novel Mobus-Dick, you’ll find it’s not shelved in the fiction section, but instead, mistakenly, in the cetology section. How did it get misshelved?

  Old Gods.

• Ever notice how elevators always seem to start to drop at JUST the right moment, where it’s too late for you to stop running toward the ledge, but it’s enough time for them go descend enough for you to be left with a nice long splat-producing drop? Yeah, well, the magic controlling those elevator platforms was corrupted…so for all intents and purposes, all elevators are minions of the Old Gods. Specifically, one of the Old Gods – I believe his name is Goin’down’ethar. How much you want to bet that when we finally discover where he’s hidden, there won’t be any stairs?

• Mankrik’s first wife? Everybody – Mankrik included – assumes the quillboar killed her. Nope.

  Old Gods.

• You know when you’re traveling from one region of the world to another, and you cross a border and all of a sudden there’s this REALLY abrupt change in the terrain? Like you’re running through snow, and then you go three yards up the road and suddenly everything is green? Or you look to your left and it’s daylight, and look to your right and you see twilight? Or, hell, you’re hovering over a mountain, and one side is all black, and one side is green, and another side is orange? And you’re sitting there wondering what the fuck happened to this schizophrenic-ass mountain?

  Yep. Old Gods.

• The producers of Earth Online recently announced that the upcoming Land Down Under expansion would include less demanding instance content. There’s been a lot of nerdraging over this online, no surprise. Was this decision caused by a transparent attempt to antagonize the veteran hardcore player base by currying favor with the casuals who’ve come along in recent years and didn’t have the common decency to swing by the Caverns of Time to travel back to the halcyon days when the game was still good and start playing then so they might possibly not suck?

  No, you elitist prick, get your head out of your ass. Two words: Old Gods.

• Jaina Proudmoore used to be a prim, reserved, innocent young lass. Then one day…Well…picture most of the Old Gods’ minions.

  You do the math.