Indeed. Imagine if after taking down the minions, players could then be tasked with fighting Umbric, or Gonk for Alliance, to the point that they were forced to retreat. That would have made it interesting.
EDIT: Retreat or be knocked out. Hell, even killed. Death isn’t permanent in WoW anymore. /shrug
I’ve spent recently more than 2 days playing through the suramar questline, learning about leylines, hearing something’s not quite right, learning about nighborne culture like arcwine and time magic, building a rebellion, seeing Kaldorei, Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei coming together, 2 dungeons and a raid, and that is somehow less meaningful than the presence of Umbric in the war campaign?
Umbric even shows extreme disappointment he lets Galywix or whether his name is get away. It was pretty humanizing
Umbric seems to pull his weight when he is in the field.
i have more expected, too
He may have been slightly preoccupied with reanimating dinosaur skeletons to demoralize the Zandalari forces. The big ones, I mean.
I think this is more that issue Blizzard sometimes has with making something crazy powerful, and then not really knowing what to do with it.
I was talking about this with someone else. Canonically, Void Elves are crazy powerful, using that same magic and abilities that corrupts everything from players to dragons to Titans. There’s no real defense against it.
How do you use that and still actually have, y’know, compelling gameplay? It’s the same issue you always run into with magic, but they have magic that seems to be able to do, well…anything.
Umbric, though, was amazing, and had possibly one of my favorite quest lines of all time, during Void Vacation
Magister Umbric: Take this orb. It will create a void portal above the target and pull them… somewhere else.
Haha. Ah. So unimaginably ghoulish.
(Commentary): By being creative. I’ve seen suggestions that I quite honestly think should’ve been implemented. The most impressive thing Umbric did was animating the corpse of a T-Rex, and it wasn’t the magic that was impressive, but the logic behind it; psychological warfare. THAT should have been the foundation of Ren’dorei combat, in my opinion. We should’ve seen Void Elf mentalists rewiring the minds of captives, making them send routine reports at safe locations to the Alliance without being aware of it, or having triggers to attempt to assassinate their leaders or other individuals in power at the drop of a pin. Seeing the Void Elves literally and metaphorically waging a Shadow War would’ve been the best direction to take them in, by inundating the Horde with sleeper agents.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t disagree with you at all.
There was someone else on another thread (I think, actually, on the EU forums, which I ended up in after taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque Aldrassil that suggested just that. Things like void elves extracting information but potentially leaving a mindless shell, and the whole psychic power thing.
But that leads back to that same problem. How do you counter something like that? They’ve effectively created a race of psychic combatants that can all - all - do the whole Jedi mind trick thing…but are still elves, accomplished warriors and rangers and mages.
It starts being the whole Superman thing. Why not just use those Jedi? Although…playing Devil’s Advocate to my own point, they could potentially have that come at increasing costs: The more Jedi stuff they do, the more they fall victim to the power of the Dark Side. That could work.
…
…I probably shouldn’t write this while watching a commercial about Star Wars.
(Observation): The factor which keeps the power of the Ren’dorei in check is their minimal numbers and inability to procreate. So, yes, while they can inundate the Horde with sleeper agents through their void powers, there are only so many Void Elves, so there can only be so many of these sleeper agents. Not only that, but once the Horde experiences this sort of thing once, you can imagine returning soldiers would be under strict observation, and that some would get caught before doing much harm.
(Speculative): It could’ve even been a chance to underline the conflict between Blood Elves and Void Elves if the Blood Elves found a way to reverse this conditioning in about half of the afflicted using the power of the Light to fortify and bolster the mind.
in 8. 3 the Voidelves could have worked together with Wrathion, and made a pact with the Empty Wings to free them from the grip of N’zoth.
in Nazjatar I would have wished for an intervention of the voidelves as they destroy the eggs of the Naga there to effectively hinder the Naga and to hinder or decimate their void troops with targeted attacks.
His involvement merits him a unique model, or at the very least some unique armor pieces like Taelia.
Zappy Boi?
What about him? What do we know about him?
He’s a good guy and his father died.
What do we know about Umbric? He does some stuff in the War Campaign. We still know barely anything at all about him. I think he might get just as much, if not less, screen time as Zappy Boi does throughout the entire expansion.
As a blood elf, Umbric was a magister of Quel’Thalas and a dedicated scholar with a tenacious interest in the power of the Void. He believed the void to be a force that could be harnessed for the protection of Silvermoon and the sin’dorei people. His research was opposed by Quel’Thalas’s Grand Magister, Rommath, who clashed with Umbric and his followers over their research. Rommath eventually succeeded in demanding they be exiled, reasoning that those who treat with the void pose a direct threat to the Sunwell.[2]
Despite their banishment, Umbric and his followers persisted in their research, viewing the Grand Magister’s admonitions as small-minded. Umbric would lead his group south, out of Eversong Woods and into the Ghostlands, seeking to prove the validity of their beliefs regarding the void. There, Umbric and the Silvermoon exiles would make a breakthrough upon discovering the long-buried research of the infamous necromancer Dar’Khan Drathir from many years ago. They would learn that Drathir had attempted to personally enter a void-corrupted world and seize an object of incredible power from within, ultimately meeting failure. Umbric, building upon Drathir’s findings, was able succeed where the necromancer had not, and opened the way to the fragmented world known as the Telogrus Rift. The magister then led his followers into the rift to hunt down the powerful item in question, believing it to be the key to controlling the shadows.[3]
At the same time, the high elf hero Alleria Windrunner, who had become aware of the existence of Umbric and his group during her recent disastrous pilgrimage to the Sunwell, set out to locate her similarly-exiled kin, hoping both to aid them in their journey and add their strength to the Alliance. Umbric himself had learned of, and was deeply intrigued by, Alleria’s own link to the void and the darkened naaru she had absorbed during the campaign on Argus.
When Umbric shows up in the War Campaign, we know he’s going to do something impressive.*
Zekhan’s appearances were less impressive and more Blizzard putting up a huge sign waving “Don’t worry people who like the Horde. We haven’t forgotten you exist. See? This NPC represents YOU.”
*Not accounting for the invasion of Zul’Dazar’s zone in warmode where he just stands on the hill and gives out quests as his people die. But hey, Gonk suffers the same issue.
I can copy and paste WoWwiki as well!
(Observation): Zekhan will also be playing a role in the upcoming novel. Umbric has not been confirmed to be playing a role in it. Between the two, Zekhan is going to be far more fleshed out and in short order.
(Commentary): Mind you, I don’t mind necessarily. The Horde is hurting for developed characters.
You can also observe there is less there than what is given for Umbric.
Yep. It’s a damned shame they want to expand him in a book and not in game.
My favorite lore character is super minor in game and has his development mostly in books, is not that baf actually.
Anecdotal, but I’ll bite.
If even 50% of the playerbase doesn’t buy the book, 50% of the playerbase won’t know what character growth Zekhan has gotten.