He does look pretty badass and yes he is a lot stronger than he has ever been so yes he has potential to be the big bad in later games.

Well the reveal trailer mentions that his grand designs finally come to fruition so I'd say Quan Chi is definitely at his prime during the events of MKX.

Gameplay wise, he's going to be top tier. And that is without the addition of his variations. The variations are just icing on the cake for this beast. I can't wait.

"Sorcerer" is a wonderfully nebulous term, isn't it? They could give him (or Shang) pretty much any magical ability and have it be covered under that title.

Indeed.

The term "Sorcerer" originally brings to mind mastery over the elements, but you can say Quan Chi and Shang have mastery over dark elements, or black magic.

Exlain what you mean by those terms.

Elements being fire, water/ice, ect. Whereas black magic requires tapping into other realms. (pertaining to the power of souls in this case)

General misconceptions perpetualized by video games, but otherwise I get what you say. Elements according to Greeks: the known four. Chinese: fire, wind, wood, metal, water.

Depends entirely on how you create your world. I just like to make these things clear as there are fictional fantasy worlds where those things do not hold up.

That's a bit too early to say. This is not even close to being the game released at launch, a lot is going to change.

If he's a sub-boss and gets all of his styles at the same time for that fight to make it harder, we could witness the ultimate enhanced move if the AI can do this:

Enhanced bat attack (1 meter) done by a enhanced summoned bat (2 meter) while standing on an enhanced (3 meter) damage increase field (an enhancing move by itself).

Probably an X-Ray would be a better use for those 3 meter bars, but just thinking about how much you can enhance the same move makes it worth trying :P

Eye of the beholder and all that jazz. And I should of included in my original post that there's multiple ways to dice it since Sorcerers can exist on various different planes of magic depending on perception.