What do people find in the void lords? (Or rather, hope to find in them)

Lore Story
1

As the title says. There seems to be a good portion of lore-fans eager to get the “Void Lord Expansion”, or at least have them take the stage in one form or another. Yet whenever i read these threads or posts, i realize: i don’t care. I just really don’t care about the Void Lords, as it stands right now. When i think about what we know so far, all i see is another pretty generic force of pure evil, with a personality that really doesn’t go beyond the cliche " KILL ALL, CONSUME ALL, ENSLAVE ALL, DEFILE ALL!". Which is, for me at least, pretty flat and one dimensional. And we kinda already had that in the Scourge, the Legion, and the Old Gods. Or, if some of you played Starcraft 2, we in fact already had the Void with #NotAnOldGod Amon. Who was, again, just plain one dimensional and kinda boring, compared to, say, Mengst and the Dominion as an Antagonist. (Who where able to show fare more nuanced, grey or relatable motivations, being a dictatorship made up of humans, who are capable of more than just pure evil)

So im wondering: Am i just too negative? Is there some potentially really interesting aspect to the Void Lords, i have failed to see? What is it, that interests all the folks who want to see the void lords expansion?

3 Likes
2

Are there? I don’t think there are many among the usual crowd here… I personally don’t see much of interet in them, either. They are really not that different from Old Gods, just another ridiculous power level. I personally do quite like the lovecraftian stuff, but adding more power doesn’t really make it any better.

It’s most often really about the villain’s personality - or lack thereof that makes or breaks the villain. And as you observed… the world destroying threats most often have about none.

2 Likes
3

Perhaps there really arent. I dont know. Might have just been some bad wording on my part. Maybe i overestimated the threads about the void lords expansion, that pops up from time to time here, in the us forums, on mmo champion or other places.

Speaking of lovecraftian stuff, i found that i liked the whole old god stuff the most, when it is vague and ambiguos (As it is supposed to be, i guess). But the moment the eldritch evil takes center stage and starts its open invasion, it just becomes another run of the mill bad guy force, devoid of any personality. (Just a bit uglier and more tentacly than your usual foes) May it be Nzoth in 8.3 (what we can see on the ptr), the Twilight Hammer in Cata or the Reapers in Mass Effect 3.

4

I do not see much in them but perhaps on the forces that will oppose them as well as in what they represent. The void has been states to be a force of infinite hunger, true, but I think is much more dimensional than you make it sound. Perhaps there are different branches to the Void (as there are to the light) and at least one of them (xal’atath) has stated that the void is different from the light as it shows “many truths” instead of just one, shows many paths, instead of a single one and though it is dangerous, it provides clearance if well interpreted. The light on the other hand shows but one path to the truth. I think that “kill and destroy all” or the “end of everything” is represented by Death and the Jailer and it is something the Void fears as they don’t want the end: they want every truth all over the place aka madness.
I hope my take on things provides some helpful insight in what perhaps others think!
Have fun :slight_smile::slight_smile::slight_smile:

5

I would rather have to deal with economical crisis from being at war for so long, some parts of the population uprising against their leaders for being unable to solve the issues, rise of criminality caused by poverty, lack of food from all the destructions and corruptions, eventually some epidemic disease, for Humans have some political scheming from the nobility, the huge drop in population with all the casualties from the war, deal with the political and sociological changes since the allied races and events (like the gnome leader being frozen, the son of Moira growing up, Anduin not being married, Sylvanas leaving the Horde and Forsaken leadership, …).

Spread the themes so each race is affected differently. They could use the opportunity to include new NPC, and more downsized threats as a de-escalation from the world ending apocalyptic threat of doom. Have some opponents that you can’t just straight up murder as a solution (because it would tarnish the reputation of your side, turn them into martyrs, get the population to join their side and uprise, …). All these new NPC could be hooks for future plots.
And when they introduce a new world ending apocalyptic threat of doom, it would feel more important because we would feel more connected to the world.

Feeling connected to the world, as if it was a real place with real people we know and whom we care that they survive, does great as making the big bad threatening.

1 Like
6

As much as it pains me to say so, the Void Lords are just Old Gods 2.0, now that they have completely killed any hype for the latter by overexplaining and nerf-retconing the censored out of them.

Am I hyped for them? Depending on their presentation, I guess I might be. They have another chance to do Lovecraftian Entities right, but given not only Blizzard’s, but gaming’s other attempts at the concept (RIP Eldrazi Titans), I am not optimistic in the least.

My only hope that they will not end up as run-of-the-mill raidbosses is the fact that Sargeras as well didn’t, so the current lore team might have a modicum of sense of scale, so to speak.

3 Likes
7

Blizzard is shooting themselves in the foot by removing whatever struggle factions may have in a more grounded level.

Pushing for an absolute “End All Struggle” between factions, and having the likes of Anduin being validated with zero drawbacks, leaves them to rely exclusively on the sort of basic Cosmic Threat trope that bores people more easily. Turning the faction war into Good vs Bad (and making the “bads” lose to the point they are removed from the story) was a grave mistake.

Players are more engaged when the conflict goes on a lower level scale, and with/against characters that strike closer to home. Fighting Galactic Space Monsters and becoming the hero of the cosmos that fells Eldritch Horrors on a daily basis, grows stale rather quickly.

There’s a reason as to why people care more about Sylvanas than they do about Nzoth in the current setting (and throughout the past expansion).

4 Likes
8

Probably, yes, but not necessarily. There is nothing keeping them from giving us mortal threats on par with the factions. They already attempted it with the Iron Horde, they just thoroughly messed it up in the execution. Even the Mongrel Horde concept could be fun, if well thought out. Apart from that Yrel’s Lightbound seem like another threat on a more comprehensible level that’s out there. And they have an infinite number of dimensions, time travel, and planets, where they can always draw stuff of a “reasonable” threat level from.

9

The issue is that below Cosmic Threat delivery is always messed up with not enough depth and consistency.

I would add that it’s more “relatable” to fight down to earth threat like political opponents, crazy cultists, crime lords, …

10

Sure. But isn’t that the same with cosmic threats and even the faction wars? Doesn’t seem special to “below cosmic” threats to me.

11

Cosmic Threat works better with a lack depth. Depth add to it, but is not as much a necessity.

12

I don’t think I agree with that. I think that only works, if the story isn’t really about the external threat at all, but about the internal problems that it provokes.

1 Like
13

I’d agree with this, there is a hook somewhere in the whole cosmos story.
Because if I was an omnipotent void lord, I’d devour Azeroth ages ago, so no I don’t really think they are about that. What I would do, is to create a self replenishing soul or life farm, capable of governing itself with me only reaping the rewards, aka what Azeroth is technically. Something tells me that curse of flesh is directly related to this.

14

Given how thoroughly explored the setting has been, and how almost everyone of note has been forced to pick a side, there is little chance for Blizzard to lean on the world itself without either having a relevant overhaul of the place (an update that creates entirely new assets all over the planet), or having to turn to its factions (something that they seem rather unwilling to do, given the non-stop validation of the likes of Anduin and the constant moderating of the sharp edges in the “warlike Horde” bits).

Oh, we could have another Iron Horde. Or the Lightbound.
Still, those are scenarios that required of Blizzard to pull the time-travel Multiverse theme, or create a “Legion with a Light Twist” for the latter.

In all, still relying on hyperbolic narrative devices, to create artificial and inorganic replicas of the sort of “natural” and “relatable” threats that they have already wasted with unsatisfying stories.

Pulling the “lets create another universe to leech our plot from” cheapens the experience.
It’s the kind of issue many players grasped at, and the sort of eyeroll-inducing circumstance that made many of WoDs assets lose many points.

15

Has it? Backside of Azeroth and the unending number of islands that can pop up at any point seem like they can pretty much continue on adding stuff from Azeroths for a few more addons, if they care to in the least. There could be well-functioning empires out there that we haven’t ever heard of, considering we seem to have no exploratory curiosity at all and didn’t find a continent in naval range in 10k years… Let’s get into problems with a formerly isolationist continent with a big, beautiful wall, or something like that. :wink:

And you don’t need to remake the old world for that, as long as they are willing to pull the same “oh, yes, the world is at war, but we can’t show that, and it doesn’t really matter, because the player character is focused on < insert new area> anyway”, like they always do.

That said, especially with “Chromie time” coming, putting old zones to new uses after the base leveling isn’t really that out there of an idea, either.

There are more factions than the player factions. I wasn’t joking when I brought up the Mongrel Horde concept, for example. And if you play with the idea of the faction armies being quite depleted, an alliance of “minor races” against their “oppressors” could be build up to a threat that sounds more interesting to me than the blander cosmic stuff, for example.

So what? That genie is out of the bottle, and we weren’t talking about the strangeness of the setting, but the relatability of the opponents, weren’t we? I was, at least.

It always was cheap, hasn’t stopped anyone. And really…after bringing in one, bringing in another doesn’t make it cheaper in my eyes. Indeed, it at least makes it a kind of consistent feature of the setting.

1 Like
16

VOID LORDS

Same as Old Gods - overgrown glorified Warlock’s pets. Whos supposed “scary-ness” is blow waayyyy out proportion. Pretty sure that they are also dumb as rock.

17

If I were to hazard a guess, it’s that Blizzard generally shines when they’re tackling seemingly insurmountable foes. Legion and Wrath are both good examples in my books. It has less to do with the Void Lords themselves, and more to do with the quality of story that their introduction would hopefully bring to the table.

18

You seriously think Blizzard writes better when they’re writing loot pinatas?

Legion’s a fine example of how bad they are at this, they turned them into a joke. We stomped them into the ground starting as soon as the Broken Shore was done with.

I for one struggle to look forward to an expansion of one-line boss barks like: “CRUSH!” “DIE MORTAL!” “WE ARE ENDLESS” “THE SECRETS OF THE VOID ARE BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!”. Because that’s the extent of their ‘story’ when big bads are the focus of an expansion.

1 Like
19

Yes. Compared to the absolute character assassinations we saw in BFA, I will take an unambiguously evil baddy to kill any day.

20

You are comparing two piles of crap, and claiming one is better.

1 Like