Darkstalker Sentinel glares up from the hell Flam's shelf sent him down to
Jokes aside, i don't think that undead will ever be more than the occassional pest or something for people to expect stubling into town. Necromancers? Maybe. But darkstalkers or ghouls are stuck. No matter if one's to play a for some reason peaceful darkstalker or a hostile one, due to how LOTC is, everyone wants to be a hero. Let a wyvern into a city, people won't flee but charge at it. Same goes for the undead, most of the time they're forever stuck existing for the entertainment of others as some sort of player-ran event and little else.
Even necromancers themselves don't exactly do much other than either create more undead, teach a friend or two the magic or make gigantic schemes that mirrior necromancy's origin that never go anywhere. Ascended are gone for lesser reasons despite being awfully similiar in OOC origin. To sum it up, from a IC standpoint, you'd see more voidal horrors be tollerated than any type of undead, rendering what they can do quite limited when it comes to roleplay. I've played only my darkstalker up until flam's shelf, while my character was rather bloodthirsty, more often than not he fought in self defence because someone wanted the bragging rights of taking down a darkstalker.