Thinking about K’aresh and then the upcoming Midnight has me a little confused about the allegiance of these two creatures.
Are they demons, and allied with the Legion or are they Void beings and allied with the Void itself?
With the Observers, where they’re fleshy, I can see them coming from an original homeworld and them being drawn or summoned to different forces or groups but I don’t know if that’s ever explained anywhere.
But why are Voidwalkers summoned by Warlocks and traditionally considered Demons in the tooltips? This could of course just be gameplay reasons and not related to the lore, but either way they seem to serve the Legion in some capacity or act like Demons in Outland. But in Midnight they appear to be serving the Void, or at least Xalatath, directly. Are the “demon” ones just enslaved by the Legion? But how? They’re not physical beings like so many other mortal races turned demons in the Legion.
This made sense back in Vanilla through Wrath. There was a class quest where Warlocks would go trap a void walker, defeat it in battle and then they could force it to come when it was called.
Around the time of Cataclysm they did away with class halls, class trainers, etc and now you just have a void walker without an explanation.
Right, I vaguely remember that. So in that case they are Void beings enslaved by the individual warlocks on Azeroth (and likely beyond). That sort of makes sense.
Yup.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Voidwalker
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Observer
Voidwalkers sure are a thing, no real explanation exists are far as I know as they’re void creatures but work for the legion except for when they dont
Observer’s are a demonic species whos smart enough that they aren’t just a group of monsters, various groups would join different factions, including the legion or void
We have an explanation from Exile’s Reach.
It’s a contract.
Our bargain has been struck.
Call upon me from the Void, and I will answer.
<The voidwalker looks at the worgen’s corpse.>
Let us see if you are stronger than those who came before you.
Voidwalkers are void entities. I’ve never really liked them being counted as demons, I wish we could get an actual demon to replace them.
Observers were cosmic wanderer demons with a more neutral personality type, wanting to observe and consume different types of magic. They were NOT void beings. I hate that they’ve seemingly been turned into void entities.
The Fel/Wrath Guard replaces them nicely, but for some reason are locked behind one spec. Not that it should matter, that spec has access to even more exclusive demons at their disposal. I do however miss the Portal that could randomly summon the Prince from Karazhan.
They’re technically Aberrations and not Demons, only classified as such for gameplay purposes like the Forsaken who are classified as Humanoids.
Voidwalkers used to be part of the Outland critter group from warcraft 3, so they kind of got mixed together with other demons like succubi, felguards and felstakers. When vanilla launched it made sense to categorize them as Legion demons, but that label has been slowly chaging since TBC to align them with some void force.
Observers were retconed hard, since I’m pretty sure the green fire quest hints at them being a race of magic tracking beings that were conquered and absorbed by the Legion.
I don’t have really anything cogent to add, but in the spirit of star wars, I vote that Void Walkers - given that they’re made of, well, nothing, right? - be renamed with the following designation, aligned with other walkers:
MT-MT
Actually the Green Fire Quest merely states that it is odd that Observers decided to stay at the Black Temple after Illidan was gone(dragged away by Maiev) while also stating they served Illidan not the Legion.
It also describes them liking the taste of Magic. This doesn’t disagree with the idea of Observers being Void Entities just that Illidan managed to draw them to Black Temple with Arcane Energies and they refused to leave even after he had gone.
The Green Fire Quest reveals the Doomguard were Sargeras’s Hounds before he turned Demon and created the Burning Legion.
I never really got the impression that they ARE void entities. I always assumed that they were just being bound/enslaved by the shadowguard. the same way voidwalkers aren’t demons, but they end up getting bound/enslaved to them pretty often anyways.
in fact from the “heirarchy of the void” screenshot from gamescom observers don’t even show up on it.
IMO, the most likely answer, is that they are simply some form of extradimensional lifeform, that just happen to be numerous enough, useful enough, and easy enough to bind that lots of different factions make use of em.
Maybe, but they’re tagged as aberrations now, like void entities.
I don’t know, hard to tell what Blizz’s actual intention is with them.
Void beings in general are entropic in nature, so they just go wherever there’s energy for them to consume. I like one of the previous poster’s statement that they may be just numerous enough for anyone to entice one to serve them by offering them energy.
The Legion captured them and bound them with their bracers, feeding them fel and the souls of their enemies, the void is just where they’re naturally at (found with no braces on their wrists), and Warlocks make contracts so they serve in exchange for the lifeforce of the Warlock’s enemies much like the Legion, but in a more mutualistic way.
Observers are demons who search the cosmos for magic to study and devour.