Is the void still lovecraftian horror or were the old gods essentially a mistaken offshoot and the void is now a purple fel or nature alpha predator consuming thing.
Is light protective and compassionate still or was that a ruse to mask it’s authoritarian goals ?
The void isn’t.
Old gods are.
Old gods were made by the void but appear markedly changed by the experience of being made real. We’ve seen scenes of Old gods fighting void minions.
No…but kind of. It is not purely Lovecraftian. But it still has elements of it. It was always going to have to move beyond Lovecraft inspirations. Part of Lovecraft is the unknowable nature. That worked for the Old Gods. But it had to become…well, knowable as Blizzard told stories about it. There are still aspects and themes in there, but the Void is not Lovecraftian monsters.
It should also be noted, Old Gods were never really true creatures of the Void. They were created by the Void Lords to serve a purpose outside of the Void. They can be full Lovecraftian inspiration without the Void being full Lovecratian.
Not a ruse. It is still protective and compassionate. It is just those traits to an extreme. And it believes the light is THE answer to protecting. It is basically preservation on overdrive, with no balance. So, it doesn’t care about choice and will force what it believes will preserve and protect regardless of what people want. It is the ultimate ‘I know what is best for you’ group.
I’d say lovecraftian horror cannot survive being something you can defeat, What’s so horrifying about lovecraft is that there is nothing you can do to stop it. The universe is simply beyond you.
Even the Old Gods failed to be truly Lovecraftian other than in aesthetic. But even still, I think distinguishing the Void from the Old Gods is a mistake. In fact, making either of them something that can be defeated is a mistake.
I do not think there is a shortage of Raid Bosses for us. Keeping that door open for some real Cosmic horror would have been better for the IP as a whole imo.
The story written by Lovecraft himself The Horror in the Museum has Rhan-Tegoth shot dead(despite the Curator mocking the notion that a Bullet could kill the Eldritch God) by the Museum’s Curator’s Assistant(who found Rhan-Tegoth himself leading the Curator to the God’s location) right while it was eating the Curator himself.
Said Assistant promptly puts the Curator and the last of the Great Old Ones up on display after turning them into a Wax Sculpture.
The Protagonist who visited the Museum in the Story faints at the sight of the Wax Sculpture.
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hm.aspx
Lovecraft himself making Eldritch Gods killable means that the Fans are pretty much like the Cultists not Lovecraft himself.
We throw around the term Lovecraftian and think it’s all Shadow over Innsmouth with the broad strokes of turning things into deep-sea fish monsters, but that’s really only part of it. Lovecraft’s themes, at their core, were about learning things about the universe that are largely indescribable and intolerable to the human mind, and then having to contend with going back to living a normal life while knowing that you’re just algae in the wake of leviathans. It’s about having horrible knowledge but having to try to go on with your normal life or go mad about it. So in that sense we haven’t really seen that theming since Sargeras apparently learned whatever he did about the Void and built the Legion to combat it, eventually maybe going mad(?). Maybe Star Augur Etraeus, too?
But as far as the broad strokes of tentacles and aberrant forms? That does seem to be kind of gone, except for in the case of Shadow Priests.
Yeah, I suspect it’s a product of the Void needing to piggyback on other Forces to manifest. Probably via the Emerald Dream/Nightmare/Life magic + Void/Shadow = nasty forms of life.
The Old Gods were only superficially Lovecraftian. Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror as a subgenre has less to do with amorphous flesh-blobs with tentacles and more to do with the insignificance of man on the cosmic scale of the universe.
Humans are not important. We were not made by a loving god in his image. We were created by the elder things as chattle and livestock. Our creators themselves were mortals lost to the endless aeons of eternity.
The Great entities of the universe do not bestur themselves to destroy us. Our destruction is entierly incidental to them as they pursue goals we can not comprehend. They exist in cycles of infinity.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance amidst vast seas of infinity and it was not meant that we voyage far.”
The Void isn’t lovecraftian at all. It’s FFXIV’s demons. Gotta eat, super hungry, the more I eat the more powerful I become etc, etc, etc.
I’d say sort of but not quite.
Some Naaru are capable of compromise and do have balance – such as was seen with A’dal and the Sha’tar. 
There’s also the one in Shadowlands Z’rali, who recognises that their kind will likely shun them for being ‘stained’ by the realm of the Shadowlands, so decides to make Revendreth their home.
Not all naaru necessarily have the same motives, and they have their own personalities and own goals 
I think that’s pretty great too, given they’re sentient beings.
It ultimately gives them a sense of unpredictability and character, rather than all being witnessed like mere interchangeable robots all holding the same value.
I’d love if we got a light conflict — Yet had Naaru on OUR side, who disagreed with the faction of their more brethren who had more radical ideologies and extreme methods.
At this point of the story, with the changes they’ve made, they need to just make Shadow and Void separate but connected powers.
Make Shadow a more elemental expression, while Void is a cosmic overarching power. Though you’d also have to make Light both an elemental expression and cosmic idea I guess.
Yes, that is correct. But the Naaru are not exactly the same as the Light. And they are not what I was specifically talking about. While the Naaru to trend towards the nature of the light, they are sapient beings and can choose differently. Perhaps being ‘stained’ by mortals.
They are. Shadow is really just a catch all for ‘dark magic.’ For example, death uses a form of shadow, but it is not void. Even the Legion uses shadow that is not void or death.
No, its just bad generic modern fantasy and an excuse to keep overusing bisexual lighting.
Old gods are the lovecraftian. The void itself is not old gods.
C’thun was pretty decent at fitting the Lovecraftian theme.
It went down hill with Yogg’saron laughing like an idiot and having an ego bigger than Ulduar about being “The God of Death”. The moment you start to give them human traits you fail at making Lovecraftian Horror Entities. The whole point is that they’re something you can’t possibly understand or relate to. That’s what makes them scary.
I feel like if they hadn’t let us kill him permanently his boasting about being the God of Death and continuing to come back over and over again would have made him an actual horror because as far as us mortals know he might well be some kind of death god since it seems to hold no sway over him.
But that would have been ruined by Shadowlands so maybe not.
Not really. It would more take the threat out of him. Think about all the ‘merely a setback’ memes. Dying over and over would just make him feel like a joke more than a horror.
I think Ny’alotha was conceptually in the ballpark, but still ended up being just a portal we take to punch more things until they die. This game doesn’t really do “beyond our ken” though. In order for an Old God to really sell being an Old God, killing one should sound about as stupid as declaring you’re going to kill curiosity, or kill tomorrow, or kill the collapsing weight of a million festering worlds that never existed with a wooden spoon.
There is also the fact that HP lovecraft was scared of just about everything so in a away it could be considered lovecraftian.
They kinda are. I prefer to think of it as levels of concentration of a particular cosmic power. As you tap further into one, it becomes more like that power. For example shadow magic is low concentration of void magic. The more void you pump into your spells, the closer you get to the cosmic power. Or take Fel magic as another example. Low levels it is akin to Hellfire (think orange flame warlock spells), more fel magic into the spell, it becomes green fire.