To put it simply, I think if you ask 99% of players to describe what the aesthetic of the void is they’re just going to say dark purple and dark blue and MAYBE a few tentacles, and while maybe that’s a little reductive I don’t think you can blame people for feeling that way. The previous two huge villain groups, being the Scourge and Legion, had a much bigger diversity of enemies and themes, even the “underlings” of the void lords, the old gods, were wildly diverse and exciting in their themes and enemy variety. Right now my gut instinct for the void lords or void based enemies is just going to be a lot of shadow priest cultists and void walkers and those skinnier void walkers, obviously this isn’t going to be the case but Blizz should show their hand a bit and lay the ground work to create some hype around these enemies as opposed to only revealing it in the xpac and very briefly prior to release and not generating any hype.
I think it’s really noticable how little hype there is to fight the void lords or any void lord associated enemy and I’ve never met someone who was a huge void lord fan, especially someone who thought they were cooler than the old gods.
I think the main reason is because we haven’t really encountered the Void lords directly to see any variance.
Most of our exposure to the ‘Void’ has been through the Old Gods who I personally see quite a bit of variety from. The Aqir, Nerubian, Faceless Ones, Cultists, G’huun, The Shaa… etc. have quite a bit of differences and have kept our exposure to anything ‘Void’ related fairly varied.
While I definitely agree that anything not Old God related and just ‘Void’ themed is a bit homogenous, We’re only just now with TWW being exposed to actual Void Lord territory so I think the variety in the overall aesthetic remains to be seen.
The Old Gods were far more terrifying and mysterious in Vanilla, when we knew virtually nothing about them, and all we knew was that they existed and were chained deep beneath azeroth.
The moment they got fleshed out is the moment they became your generic evil insane blabbering giant monsters, kinda lost a lot of people than. They’re still interesting to me, just not as interesting anymore.
The Void Lords are fascinating because we know so little about them. Other than they want to corrupt a world soul into a void titan. I think they’re cool in that regard
I think in terms of biodiversity, the void is perfectly fine compared to say, fel/disorder.
What does concern me is the idea of void burnout. It seems to be the writers’ favorite antagonistic force to throw against us. And I absolutely understand why. Like anyone else who discovered Lovecraftian/cosmic horror, I thought it was the coolest and creepiest thing. It’s delicious having characters being corrupted or going insane. Cryptic whisper systems like the Puzzle Box of Yogg’saron, the Fathom Dweller chain, the whispers of Il’gynoth, and the like are all extremely tantalizing and get you wondering, especially in an interactive medium.
The problem is that cosmic horror works best when used sparsely because the more exposure and information you have, the less creepy and unknowable it becomes. Now I’m not a purist that thinks you aren’t allowed to use tentacles in more in-your-face ways, but it is ironic that the void is literally the cosmic force we go up against the most often (debatable with disorder, I suppose).
The void was prominent in Vanilla, Wrath, Cata, MoP, BfA, TWW, and assuredly Midnight. One could also argue Legion due to the nightmare. Chronicles also made sure to credit the void with a ton of things. So even though I love the void, I think the story would benefit massively from focusing more on the Light, Life, and Order instead of just teasing them. Or just more of terrestrial threats and less of the comic war in general.
I would not expect much Old God styled body horror Void going forward, and a lot more cosmic planet consuming eldritch Void stuff. We have never actually seen many native denizens of the Void, when you consider it. The Old God stuff is not really true Void.
Again, posting suggestions of what Blizzard should do regarding gameplay, which includes things such as aesthetics, or story development for that matter, IS AN UTTRLY POINTLESS THING TO DO IN THIS FORUM.
Anything that involves changing game code in the slightest should be brought up in General Discussion. This includes changes in any story dialog. The creative folks don’t go here.
I do recall warlocks for the mag’har was discussed in this forum (closest offered was Shadowmoon Clan or something new) so there are some eyes and ears.
You heard wrong. Doing so would open them up to liability suits on infringement. It’s why professional authors NEVER read their fanfic unless they’ve hung up their pens for good.
Death used to just be Green and Purple now it has Cyan-Black, Cyan-White, Blue, Blue-Black, Azure, Red, Yellow, Rainbow-Black, Purple-Black and White.
The Void might end up the same way. It already has the Black-White Sha, the Dark-Blue and the Dark Purple so it only needs more Colors that are different from that.
