Shadow Priest flavor: "Domain of the Old Gods" Why not just Void Lords or the Void?

[KrakHed]

OK,

After reading many if not all of the replies I suppose I will elaborate more where my head is at about the original post:

( 1. ) I simply find it curiously frustrating that, with Blizzard knowing ahead of time that the Old Gods would not be the original source of evil and they are simply extensions of a force greater than themselves, they would base an entire spec's theme off of them.
( a. ) However, I am not complaining. I personally love the Lovecraftian-esque theme of the OGs but I realize the distinct difference between OGs and the Void/Void Lords. I does not make sense to NOT base the theme of spec around purely the Void/Void Lords being that they ARE the true source of that power.

...

( 4. ) So if Shadow Priests have to "go thru" the Old Gods to weild shadow/void magic - and that is Blizzard's intention for explanation, not wanting the biggest force of evil threatening our existence to be directly influencing just 1 class/spec - then I suppose that makes sense.
( a. ) However, with the same argument with warlocks. Would that mean that demons are merely the conduit in which Warlocks draw their power? How does that explain Affliction or even Destruction warlocks? Genuine question, not trying to misdirect.

Well, ( 1. ) is only valid to a certain degree. Void Lords are also associated with madness and dark magic has long been associated with tendrils. As such, Shadow Priests actually aren't particularly Old God themed. Of course our Artifact unquestionably is, but a claw of an Old God would make an excellent channel for Void powers by its very nature.

Aside from a few talents, and reminding everyone that one talent is actually called "Void Lord", very little of it is exclusively Old God in nature.

And no. Shadow Priests don't have to go through the Old Gods to wield Void magic. Void magic is omnipresent and within everyone, so you only need to go through yourself. I'm sure you could bargain with more powerful entities for a boost, but it's far from necessary. However, the powers of the Void have long been shown to have the power to madden and corrupt if not handled with care, so there's that.

EDIT: Hell, the current "Surrender to Madness" text doesn't even mention the Old Gods anymore!
http://legion.wowhead.com/spell=1932...der-to-madness

They outright removed the bit about selling your soul to the Old Gods. They even took away Xal'Atath's ability to summon Faceless Ones!

[Oneirophobia]

I'm totally fine with the direction the class theme went, in fact when it was revealed I was immensely hyped. I had been waiting a long time for a unifying theme. Previously, we had a bit of an identity crisis. Were we shadow vampires? Mana fiends? Psychic horrors? Old one manipulators? Dark mages? Disease and curse spreaders? Anti-magic wizards? Debuffer/Aggressive buffer? Void beings?

Now we're a little clearer.


However, after playing a priest since Vanilla, I finally quit the class. It didn't have anything to do with theme, but Blizzard's continued insistence on keeping our damage several leaps and bounds below other classes... "because utility."

I'd be totally okay with that if we actually had utility, but every passing expansion they strip the utility and keep the damage sub-par.

This expansion we've now lost:

- Vamp embrace as a useful cooldown, it now only effects a very limited amount of players and for hardly anything
- Psychic horror
- Most of our off healing (which was awful regardless by this point but at least it wasn't temporary)

In addition, the loss of shadow form as a permanent state bothers me, we're unflashy with 12 year old particles for most abilities as it is. We've also lost the choice we had in going dot spec, Clarity of Power spec, and dot weaving. Now we've got a mindspike that literally just an unchanneled mindflay or regluar mindflay and no real nuance beyond that.

So yeah, now I'm en elemental Shaman with twice the damage and twice the utility.

[Golden Yak]

I sincerely doubt they have no Light at all. The problem the Void Lords have is a matter of purity. Even Voidwalkers presumably have some Light in their composition. Just as Naaru are merely the purest beings of Light who can exist in our reality, suggesting that there are purer beings who cannot.

The Old Gods are definitely more Void than Light, but it's impossible for them to be entirely pure and maintain a stable presence.

In my opinion, they're more like the opposite of most forms of life which are said to have originated from shards of Light, which is why it's said "they do not live". Their state of existence is closer to the reverse of traditional life, like a form of "Anti-Life" if you will.

As aroused as any concept of Anti-Life gets me, I think that there must be things of pure Light and pure Void in the Warcraft universe. Naaru are an interesting case - they are capable of collapsing into beings of Void. But they are also capable of being redeemed out of that state and returning to a state of Light. This may be an indication of how Light and Void are intertwined and one cannot exist without the other, though I think Chronicles contradicts this since the universe began as Light and Void emerged afterwards in cases where Light grew cold. It may mean that anything can fall into the Void, but there is nothing that cannot also be redeemed from the Void. The Void itself may also not be eternal, since there was a time when it did not exist. But there still must be such a thing as pure Void.

Now, it may be debatable whether the Old Gods are pure Void - I'm only speculating that they are. Chronicles implies that pure void beings must consume huge amounts of energy and matter to maintain their existence. Since matter and energy contain Light and Void in the Warcraft universe, pure Void beings may only contain Light temporarily, 'digesting' it to maintain their cohesion. This may be what the Old Gods do when they corrupt a world and turn it 'withered' as they did to ancient Azeroth - they are feeding off the 'Light of life' in all things to maintain their power. They repel pure Light, at least in small amounts - the saronite blood of Yogg-Saron was immune to it.

I largely propose the idea that their physical forms are matter (physical material, atoms, etc.) rather than energy to explain why they are so different in appearance from pure Void beings. Voidwalkers et al. have no material components and are pure energy, while the Old Gods have physical mass and substance because they are made of matter. Perhaps the matter they are composed of does have Light in it, if only because they haven't been able to completely consume it yet. Perhaps the Old Gods' hideous appearance is simply the Void Lords' best guess at what material creatures are like.

[KrakHed]

As aroused as any concept of Anti-Life gets me, I think that there must be things of pure Light and pure Void in the Warcraft universe. Naaru are an interesting case - they are capable of collapsing into beings of Void. But they are also capable of being redeemed out of that state and returning to a state of Light.

Well, I'm actually paraphrasing Chronicles when I say the Naaru are called the purest Light beings able to occupy our reality. It suggests that purer beings of Light cannot, and that the Naaru therefor are not entirely pure. I don't think there are any truly pure Light or Void entities in the universe. It's not even clear if the Void Lords themselves are 100% pure, just that they're too pure to maintain a stable presence in the physical world.

However, Old Gods are probably mostly Void to a very significant degree just as the Naaru are mostly Light, even if that Void or Light is obtained through its diluted state as the building blocks of other forms of energy or matter.

As for the thing about the Light growing cold, that whole thing confuses me. If Light was all there was, how could any patches grow cold? In a closed system like that, where there is only Light, there shouldn't be empty spots appearing. The Light shouldn't be able to stretch itself thin, because there would be no empty spots to stretch into.

For things to go as they did, there needed to have been some medium that could be filled or emptied. That's a basic requirement for motion, or even lessening the amount of a substance that is contained in any one area. If there's no emptiness, then everything can only be filled equally with no potential for a shift.

My hypothesis is that initially, this emptiness was entirely dormant and unthreatening and only "awakened" to its identity and hunger as the Void after being filled and emptied of Light. Before it was just empty regions which the Light could move through, and it was only after the Light left it that it truly became the Void.

[MechaCThun]

EDIT: Hell, the current "Surrender to Madness" text doesn't even mention the Old Gods anymore!
http://legion.wowhead.com/spell=1932...der-to-madness

They outright removed the bit about selling your soul to the Old Gods. They even took away Xal'Atath's ability to summon Faceless Ones!

First, WHAT???

Unsure if too OP on alpha, but during these conversations I wonder what the true intention is. Speaking to your back and forth about true nature of Void and Light...

It would even make MORE sense to base Shadow more-so off the Void/Void Lords - if anything for it being the antithesis of what the Light is. Why not add some naaru-esque flavor thru cosmetics to Holy, Void Lord-esque flavor to Shadow, and Discpline be a blend of both?

[KrakHed]

First, WHAT???

Unsure if too OP on alpha, but during these conversations I wonder what the true intention is. Speaking to your back and forth about true nature of Void and Light...

It would even make MORE sense to base Shadow more-so off the Void/Void Lords - if anything for it being the antithesis of what the Light is. Why not add some naaru-esque flavor thru cosmetics to Holy, Void Lord-esque flavor to Shadow, and Discpline be a blend of both?

You can check the Changelog on WoWhead. The reference to the Old Gods is gone.

Shadow is very much based off the Void, but we don't really know what the Void Lords actually look like. So far Shadow Priest effects are mostly pretty much just Void-y, rather than anything being especially Old God in theme.

The current Sphere of Insanity really just looks like a ball of outer space, which you can see on the right.

[MechaCThun]

You can check the Changelog on WoWhead. The reference to the Old Gods is gone.

Shadow is very much based off the Void, but we don't really know what the Void Lords actually look like. So far Shadow Priest effects are mostly pretty much just Void-y, rather than anything being especially Old God in theme.

The current Sphere of Insanity really just looks like a ball of outer space, which you can see on the right.

I suppose where this is getting at now is, should have Blizzard released Chronicle earlier (with the revelation of the Void Lords existence) and THEN shown the class previews? So then Shadow's new theme/fantasy reflected on the real source of their power?

Understanding that we do not know what the Void looks like nor what the VLs look like, it makes sense to use the Old Gods as a visual in their place -- but what I'm seeing now is a move towards making Shadow Priests fit more-so in the realm of the Void with references to to it more than the OGs...

[KrakHed]

I suppose where this is getting at now is, should have Blizzard released Chronicle earlier (with the revelation of the Void Lords existence) and THEN shown the class previews? So then Shadow's new theme/fantasy reflected on the real source of their power?

Understanding that we do not know what the Void looks like nor what the VLs look like, it makes sense to use the Old Gods as a visual in their place -- but what I'm seeing now is a move towards making Shadow Priests fit more-so in the realm of the Void with references to to it more than the OGs...

Well, the Old Gods were used because the Old Gods are closely related to the Void. However, Void stuff has some variety. It includes everything from Shadowfiends, Voidwalkers, and Void Tendrils to Old Gods.

It's the most basic form of dark magic, and the Old God bits don't really contradict anything else.

EDIT: Technically, the Void Lords aren't the source of the Void or the powers of the Void either. The Church of the Holy Light and Cult of Forgotten Shadow practice a philosophy of Divine Humanism. The power doesn't come from some outside benefactor, but from your own inner divinity and connection to the universe.

[Deleted]

I would go with the very simple solution, that we can only learn so much from what has been manifested in the real world. The Void Lords cannot manifest in the real world, and only very recently it was possible to study the Void God Sakara that has been captured in Netherlight's temple. Though Velen sais they were able to study it, it is not really clear what we actually learned from it other than turning it back into a Naaru.

But what we could observe in Azeroth for thousands of years was the magic of the Old Gods. This is basically Void magic, but with the twist how the OGs use it. So not being able to study the void itself but only what we can learn from the OGs, it just comes natural that this is how we adapt to and use Void magic. It is the difference between a comprehensive understanding and the application of what we understand so far.

[KrakHed]

I would go with the very simple solution, that we can only learn so much from what has been manifested in the real world. The Void Lords cannot manifest in the real world, and only very recently it was possible to study the Void God Sakara that has been captured in Netherlight's temple. Though Velen sais they were able to study it, it is not really clear what we actually learned from it other than turning it back into a Naaru.

But what we could observe in Azeroth for thousands of years was the magic of the Old Gods. This is basically Void magic, but with the twist how the OGs use it. So not being able to study the void itself but only what we can learn from the OGs, it just comes natural that this is how we adapt to and use Void magic. It is the difference between a comprehensive understanding and the application of what we understand so far.

While I might quibble on a few details, that sounds about right. While the Old Gods might not be the only source to learn Void Magics from, the Black Empire's traditions and knowledge of Void Magic are probably a good deal more advanced than any other accessible source.

The Old Gods and their Black Empire were literally dedicated to the Void. There's simply no one else who would know it better than they, except the nigh-inaccessible Void Lords who are their masters. As such, it's probably not the worst idea to steal whatever bits of their lore that might be buried or whatever tidbits they were feeding the Twilight Cultists.

[KrakHed]

Seems Twilight Cultists and your friendly neighborhood Shadow Priests actually don't get along at all, since the Twilight murdered their founder and stole her belongings. Makes me wonder how far back Benedictus goes with them, since he had a lot of Natalie's stuff.

Oh, and all the balance stuff is still in there.

[Cwimge]

"in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction"

Nothing about not being in control there. Sure, maybe you won't be capable of normal perception, behavior, or social interaction when you have a tentacle growing out of your ass, but it doesn't mean you're praying to C'thulhu for the end of the world or are a mere whim away from eating your friends.


Why not?

I'm not arguing that they aren't in a significantly altered mental state, but ultimately the Shadow Priest is still directing their own actions.

Demon Hunters literally have Demons inside of them who constantly tell them to go eat people and join the Legion, even going so far as to murder people while sleepwalking, and people are singling out Shadow Priests as Old God worshipers because they regularly get very weird in combat.

People SHOULD distrust the twitching, clearly demonic figures. Who shamble, stricken with ticks and revolting compulsions. Or the mumbling priests who howl and scream in tongues that set your teeth on edge even as your mind recoils from the sound. Shadow priests and demon huntards are by their very nature the kind of active evils people love accusing warlocks of being.

Warlocks steal their power. We don't chain unwilling demons to our souls and walk a tightrope for control, or commune with powers even less willing to part with their might then demons, and whose touch is infinity more cruel and insidious.

[KrakHed]

People SHOULD distrust the twitching, clearly demonic figures. Who shamble, stricken with ticks and revolting compulsions. Or the mumbling priests who howl and scream in tongues that set your teeth on edge even as your mind recoils from the sound. Shadow priests and demon huntards are by their very nature the kind of active evils people love accusing warlocks of being.

Warlocks steal their power. We don't chain unwilling demons to our souls and walk a tightrope for control, or commune with powers even less willing to part with their might then demons, and whose touch is infinity more cruel and insidious.

Ah, but Shadow Priests don't technically need to get their power from anyone but themselves, since everyone is already naturally connected to the forces of Light and Void. The Shadow Priest might commune with dark entities to learn their secrets, but ultimately their power is their own.

Of course, that's not saying they shouldn't be distrusted. Many societies tend to frown upon their shadowy practices and beliefs, labeling them as heresy. However, the beliefs of the Cult of Forgotten Shadow are relatively benign, preaching balance and understanding of a force that is just as natural and integral to reality as the Light itself.

It's been made clear that they're not doomsday cultists or anything nasty like that, and they're certainly not on friendly terms with the most prominent Old God worshiping cult.

It's true that their magic is dangerous, but fel magic is every bit as corruptive. It'd be more accurate to put them on a more even level with Warlocks, or place them even a bit above. I hear the Priest Hall refuses to allow Warlocks onto their Holy ground, but Draenei temples regularly feature a wing devoted to the Void.

[JTHMRulez1]

Some people should understeand that

Shadow Priest =/= Twilight Cultist.

[KrakHed]

Some people should understeand that

Shadow Priest =/= Twilight Cultist.

Well, that's one of the main reasons I post in these sorts of threads. A few people have managed to blow things way out of proportion, and I'd like to do my part to get the facts out. The way the lore is building up, the friendly Shadow Priest factions probably outright despise the Twilight's Hammer for murdering their leaders and stealing their implements and research.

I don't doubt that they share a deep interest in the Old Gods and their magic, but their perspectives on the matter are clearly at odds.

[Deleted]

Old Gods = lovecraftian style horror, tentacles, blobs of acid, flesh, madness, insanity
Void Lords = complete shadow, darkness, swirling energies of black and purple, nothingness

While I still adore the current shadow priest thematic. I have to admit I much prefer the lovecraftian horror style of the Old Gods to the whole Void Lord business. Its just far more appealing to me and far more genuinely creepy than any concept of the void could possibly be in my opinion. I mean, lovecraftian entities encompass all kinds of monstrous traits such as amalgamations of flesh, quivering tentacles and - as you yourself mentioned - insanity and as a result are just inherently dark.

Void Lords and the Void are to me just... darkness for darkness sake. The most baseline shadow element present in near enough EVERY fictional world in the fantasy genre, only there to oppose the 'light' side.

Two Questions:
1) Would you personally rather have a spec based on lovecraftian horror or the Void? (Your OP implies you are pro-void)
2) Do the Void Lords represent 'darkness, shadow etc' or do they represent pure nothingness. Because maybe I've misunderstood but I feel like beings advocating pure nothingness (no light, no dark) are far more interesting than beings of darkness (What I understand the Void Lords to be)

[Deleted]

Shadow Priests don't worship the Old Gods, with the exception of actual Twilight Cultists, so stop spreading that piece of hyperbole. That's like saying Warlocks are all a bunch of demon worshipers for using Fel magic. However, Shadow Priests are very much connected to the same sort of omnipresent power as the Old Gods.

Aside from that, the Cult of Forgotten Shadow has its origins in a Priest who studied Xal'atath and the traditions of the Talonpriests originate from Anzu, who was said to converse regularly with the "Gods of the Abyss".

The Auchenai Soulpriests might stand out, but dark magic has often been described as manifesting in the form of tendrils and always been shown to be a dangerous path in which your mind and soul are put at risk if you're not careful.

The Light in which many priests bathe is brilliant and effervescent, granting them immense divine power. But the brightest light casts the darkest shadow—and from within this blackness, a rival power dwells. Shadow priests fully embrace this opposing polarity, their faith equally resolute as their holy counterparts—but focused on shadowy magics and mental manipulation. Like all priests, they dedicate much of their lives to worship—but they derive their power from the Void, straying dangerously close to the domain of the Old Gods. To truly understand such ancient, corruptive influence is to be driven mad. This is the state in which these dark priests thrive, embracing insanity and feeding off of the minds of their opponents to reach terrifying new limits.

Sounds pretty much like they worship the Void and the old Gods. After all, you get the power of Void or Light through faith, while everyone can be a Warlock, even if he hates the Burning Legion. You can'T worship something you hate.

[Raetary]

the twillight cultists serve the old gods.

the shadow priests merely tap into the shadow to draw power from it and seek balance between light and shadow.
stop calling shadow priests worshippers.

[Deleted]

the twillight cultists serve the old gods.

the shadow priests merely tap into the shadow to draw power from it and seek balance between light and shadow.
stop calling shadow priests worshippers.

hadow priests fully embrace this opposing polarity, their faith equally resolute as their holy counterparts—but focused on shadowy magics and mental manipulation. Like all priests, they dedicate much of their lives to worship—but they derive their power from the Void, straying dangerously close to the domain of the Old Gods.

Sounds pretty much like Void and old God Worshippers.

[Al Gorefiend]

I find it somewhat weird that they developed both Auchenai Soulpriests and Arakkoa Talonpriests in WoD and then just made all shadow priests old god worshipers when we had 3 different groups of shadow priests(Cult of Forgotten Shadow being the 3rd). Feels kind of lazy and generic to just make them all be the same thing, but lazy and generic seems to be the predominate theme of class fantasy.

Welcome to the problem almost every class has in Legion. They dehomogenized abilities and homogenized flavor.

There used to be 4 separate sects of Paladins too. Silver Hand, Sunwalkers, Blood Knights and Vindicators, now it's only Silver Hand and their vaguely human friends + livestock.