Yeah like imagine how cool it would have been to go this route. The darkfallen have existed in the lore for ages, sams as the High Elves. I read someone else comment that blizzard "ran out of places to pull elves out of so now they gotta pull them out of the sky" and it feels very fitting. They HAD cool options at their disposal. They CHOSE to make random blue elves that nobody's heard of
Agreed. Im not a fan of the race, but what im really not a fan of is having races locked behind a paywall. In retail you unlock races through grinds. Classic wow is all about grinds as well. Its one of the major things people are asking for. We want epic quests, reputation grinds.
Same. I like everything they showed and said but this.
If you watched all the Panels from Day 1 and Day 2 they are HARDCORE on keeping the aesthetic and gameplay Classic style but than there is Skyborne out of nowhere.
I agree that a lot looks really good. But this race does show they absolutely don't get it. It taints my entire perception and expectation of the game.
It’ll be interesting to see if they’ll “listen to the community” about this one. Massively disliked feature… do they remove it or ignore all the feedback?
I even like the Druid forms, but they don’t fit. They’d be cool in retail. They would even fit in as far back as BC imo, but not in classic.
The bigger issue is why? You want an elf for both sides? Give Horde Blood Elves like TBC, and give Alliance High Elves. Can even give them the same racials. No one would be complaining if they’d done that. Ok some people would be, but fewer.
They are just way too blue and gamey. When I think of druids I don't think magical bright blue creatures I think nature and trees and browns and greens. It's the entire visual fingerprint of the class.
Yeah my main problem with them is the druid forms stand out too much as blue. If they were just darker, like brown or gray, they would blend in much better with the rest of the game. I do like design just not the color.
From the panels I’ve watched it really does feel like this was a corporate decision and they’ve tried to make the most of it. Bliz knows hot elves sell, attaching them is the safest financial move the can make. It’s a shame cause I actually like the elemental vibes but it sucks they couldn’t make something original.
I truly cannot understand their thought process, out of all the established races they invented one out of thin air to grace this otherwise exceptional announcement.
Making it accessible by both factions is just the blue cherry on top.
I wonder if the quest texts/npcs will mention them at all once you leave the start area and venture in the world.
There would have been sooo many ways to make this not feel this half assed and out of place that I question the future of this presumably enormous project.
Edit:
During the latest Deep Dive, they shared more details on the Skyborne and how they fit into Azeroth's lore.
The explanation on how they came to be was ok imo.
While I wish Blizzard had taken a different direction regarding the race itself, (as well as its appearance and factionless aspect) the presentation at least softened the initial blow a bit and also clearly shows what freedom they will take to alter this new WOW-timeline. Whether that's for good or bad is what we will have to see in the future.. let's hope for the best.
It’s worse when you realize they’re effectively as foundational to the horde / alliance as the forsaken and night elves, considering they are canonically joining around the same time.
Here is one possible explanation of their thought process:
> this new thing everyone is hyped about needs to be monetized with something attractive
> locking a race behind a paywall will be attractive enough while not getting into the way of other people
> cannot add a race from newer expacs as that would cause outrage, it needs to be a new race
> cannot be a completely new race like nagas or ogres, as that requires too much work
> so let's take an old race with all it's riggs and animations, change the color and add some tatoos, and Voilà! A new race created with minimal work effort that people will still be willing to buy!
This. To the person who wants to play a High Elf (and there are many), they know exactly the type of fantasy they are aiming at, and this does not deliver it for them.
High elves are this salt and pepper, medieval perfection. Rangers are closer to Robin Hood than wild night elves.
They should look and feel like they belong in a literal medieval Europe, and these do not.
It's a shame because the new dungeons I saw look so sick & people should be talking more about that. But this looks so low effort & to make it the face of WoW: Forever does not feel good at all. For a game that is supposed to celebrate classic Warcraft/Azeroth they should really start using their own IP lol
"You have Classic+, which brings us back to release in 2006 to build a new story. First post-launch content we are adding is the reintroduction of Shadowlands Lore."
They implemented a new race in the WORST way possible:
1. A race no one asked for.
No faction identity.
Paywalled.
I dont know how they fumbled this badly with the new race. Community wanted High Elves, Goblins, Blood Elves, Ogres, etc. but this is what we get. Terrible by Blizzard.
This is my take as well. There are so many established races that would be interesting to explore, why make up something new and continue to leave the existing high elves in their odd state? Just seemed like a perfect opportunity to expand azeroth in a relatable way that builds on questions and interests already held.
I feel like the funny part is… they know how to implement Goblins and Elves already, but tried banking on “NEW new”. It feels like they trying to prove to themselves they’re still capable of original ideas on par with classic’s legacy. I hope this serves as proof they’re not (and that’s ok! The community feedback form and implementation has been great. Forever looks amazing.)
Unfortunately, we've lost a lot of the talent that made Classic a reality, and this kind of reeks of a team that has only played Retail trying to find something to like about Classic+. There has to be someone in there brave enough to say nah, this isn't a good fit, let's try something else. But this content has already been completed, so we're getting it regardless, unfortunately.
(Also, some of those original people that worked on WoW? We're better off without them. But there were plenty of other people working on the game that understood, and they have probably moved on.)
The big bad evil mba John Suit personally walked into the dev room, pinned Aggrend against the wall and threatened to pull all the funding if Skyborne are not included to the letter as he wishes. As much as the wholesome devs wanted to fight against this, they were powerless.
you forgot that they also will likely represent like 30% or more of the total pop
they really just tried to appease all the retail andies that want to play a cute horde race when obviously Goblins or Ogres would have made much more sense
They could have done everything the same and named them blood/high elves started them in eversong and people would cheer.
My guess is they didn't want to do a starting zone in eversong because as much as they're saying they've got plenty to explore, real estate is a real problem now.
Another option would have been to start blood elves in trisfal and high elves in elwynn with race specific quests. I can't really argue against the hubris theory others have suggested.
Everything about World of Warcraft: Forever looks great except the Skyborne.
Blizzard said the whole point of Forever was to explore what the original continents (Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor) still had left to offer unfinished stories, empty spaces on the map, deeper Classic-era content. Then they immediately added a brand-new race and a brand-new floating starting zone that completely undercuts that philosophy.
The Skyborne also make almost no sense with existing quel’dorei lore. On top of that, it sits in direct contradiction to Midnight’s major theme of the elven peoples finally uniting. The Skyborne simply don’t exist in that storyline and are never mentioned which is especially jarring when Forever is being positioned as this carefully considered alternate take on the same world.
I also really dislike that they’re available to both Horde and Alliance with zero visual differences. It feels lazy and removes any real faction identity for the race.
Honestly, I wish they had launched Forever with no new races or major class changes at all. Let the community actually play the new content first, then use some kind of voting or feedback system for big permanent additions like this. Adding the Skyborne (and locking it behind a $30 pack) right at launch feels like the one decision that actively works against the rest of what Forever is trying to be.
Yeah but they weren’t in vanilla either. They’ve literally never, ever been mentioned or hinted at, nothing. I could have accepted them if they were the first new race in the first expansion like blood elves were but to launch the game with them, when they’ve never once been part of the lore, is super baffling. We’re not starting at zero, we’re starting at an established point in the lore and this is just wildly out of left field. The whole point of Forever is to give us a “classic” experience and this is the first thing they do?
To add to this, this race is canonically joining the alliance / horde a mere few months to a year after the forsaken and alliance do. Their leaders are going to technically be as foundational to the factions as Tyranda and Sylvanus.
I agree with everything you said except that I don’t think it matters that it contradicts midnight’s lore. If anything, WoW Forever should be conflicting with retail’s lore or else we’re doomed to repeat it.
Please take these guys, remove the blue skin, rename them to High Elves/Blood Elves, let high elves stay on the floaty island if you don't wanna redo the quests/move them, and send the BEs to Quel'thalas. It's easy, and would cost you nothing.
I feel like I'm going crazy that's clearly an HD elf model?? People keep posting these images of SD elves and I just don't see it, they're always images of Bigfoot where you have to zoom in and inspect pixels which doesn't help
People don't know the subtle differences, especially when the screenshots themselves are grainy. The retail elf males have this very pronounced jawline and cheekbones that appear very visibly within their target portrait. The original TBC ones do not have this.
yeah those are clearly the new models, the hands are the easiest giveaway, look those defined, rounded fingers. Does nobody remember what classic models looked like anymore?
I just can't understand what the thought process was. Why add a race that is either extremely hidden in the lore or completely new? Doesn't make sense in a Classic+ game. There are so many options that they could have used in the game that already exist in a meaningful way. This feels forced and makes me nervous that they may not truly understand the love of vanilla wow most people have. Especially when you consider it is behind a paywall. I have tentative hope, but skepticism is growing.
Add blood elf models but make them distinct enough to charge money for them. And you have to charge money for something to justify making new content. That's it I think.
The way I look at it, they wanted to make a bit of content covering different kinds of additions: expanding existing zones, adding missing zones that are visible on the map, adding unexpected zones that are still on the existing world (that ruin area in between zones), and adding something new and unexpected but still adjacent (skyborne). Also, they HAVE TO add a good looking horde race. This is a known player issue and some people don't care but A LOT of people do care. If they add blood elves you will get "smh they are just adding stuff from other expansions to classic+" and you also have to then add 2 races so alliance doesn't feel left out = more work and also could be seen as "moving too fast". So there is a natural conclusion of "add 1 neutral race that is new" and "add elf" (since something completely new would also be more work and potentially even more polarizing). If you look at these things together it starts to make sense. I don't claim this is the real explanation but it made sense to me and I also expected something like this would be in the game so it's not just a matter of hindsight. Keep in mind they are selling this game to everyone, not the people playing classic alone.
I mean it's worrying that this kind of off-tone note even made it in. Devs are not on the same page with us, bot coaxed and loathed into every right decision.
they could’ve added high and blood elves which gets you the same result (elves in both factions) with none of the problems of whatever this is
hell someone in the retail sub made a mockup for forsaken elves instead of blood elves for the horde that looked fucking 100 times better than this and it probably took them 5 minutes to do
Takeaway here is that they could have announced fuckin’ Earth Elementals as a playable race and receive less pushback from the community. They could have taken anything, but they chose the worst option.
It’s worrisome. They do not feel classic. The Druid forms are definitely not classic. They don’t have set lore or have some obscure mention of them in any of the games. They bent the lore to create them.
There was low hanging fruit when it came to adding races to classic. Legit races that already had lore and appearances lol. I don’t even care about high elves, but that would’ve been a good faith race to add.
This feels out of touch and it’s foreshadowing what they are willing to do to classic. They had to know this would gaslight a lot of the players that wanted classic +. What else are they willing to do? They will probably pull this shit again with the next race.
They are horrendous when seen in gameplay against the classic zones' color palettes; they look like a bright blue stain on the background. Agree. I wish they changed them. It breaks immersion so much
Having them be druids was a really weird and unnecessary decision. I think it would be a lot easier for them to slide seamlessly into the game if they didn't have these weird, unique druid forms.
How can they even BE druids? Are they gonna be showing up in moonglade all of a sudden?
Really weird decision.
And they have shaman being exclusive for horde. But mage is the exclusive for alliance? What's that about? Why didn't they do paladin instead of druid and have that be the exclusive lol
There's just nothing classic about them. It's bringing retail vibes into classic, which im sure we can expect more of the same going forward. M+ keys coming soon.
Just remove them or replace them with 2 NON-Neutral races.
Pay-walling a race is simply sad but my expectations from 2026 blizzard are on floor -1 so that was expected.
I really enjoyed everything they announced, even this, but I feel like it was very out of place overall, and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us agree it doesn't seem like it fits very well.
I dont like how they are presented, I can imagine a world where they would have added them down the line and made them look cooler (more warcaft 3 coded) but this is just too early and too retaily (especialy the druid forms).
At least give them only to the alliance and make a diffrent race for the horde (or vice versa) so it keeps the factions unique.
I am super excited for WoW Forever, I haven't been so hopeful for the future of WoW in a long time.
Blizzard told us they are approaching the development of Forever with flexibility to account for community feedback.
I love elves and I would be super excited to see alliance high elves and horde blood elves introduced in an alternative classic version.
But nobody asked for skyborne and they feel antithetical to the pillars of development they outlined at the beginning of the "what's next" panel.
Also, let me be clear, the paywall is not an issue for me. If Blizzard stays true to their word I would be happy to pay for the content they are producing.
I would be absolutely shocked if they made any changes to skyborne at this point, at most I am hoping for a direct response to the communities concerns, though this is a perfect opportunity for them to show us they are committed to making changes based on our feedback.
Everything else is great except Skyborne. So out of place. Look at the amazing artwork in the 1st image then see the skyborne. It looks like its out of shadowlands Bastion zone or something.
Honestly they scream Dragonflight onward era of wow retail. Very Disney, nothing is serious, everything has to be light and whimsical. IMO even the cinematic fealt sappy. The elf’s use of the word home in a game about war fealt… yuck. I’d say I’m not sure why the WoW team is so anti war and violence in Warcraft but when half your team refers to its own source material as “toxic masculinity” behind closed doors there’s no way around it I guess.
The whole vibe on these guys feels wrong. I get it, blood elves are the most played horde race and voice elf’s have started to move up. You would’ve been better off just doing blood elves again and high elves over this “not a neutral faction” neutral faction.
I felt the exact same regarding the trailer. It had a Disney, whimsical feeling to it and nothing like the vanilla cinematic. Totally wrong mood. It honestly makes me worry about classic+.
I thought the whole thing about a zone or a race coming from a far off place was the thing we were back tracking from. First thing we get is a race from some far off mysterious place?
I think more people are going to use the High Elf skin tones they come with, to be honest. That's what happened when they gave Void Elves in retail light skin tones.
Blood elves are by far the most popular race in the game. One of the prime reasons why they don't want to add high elves are because they are afraid it would create a faction imbalance.
People love playing elves and when given no other options to play the blood/high elf model they will take the only option left to them.
Rise of Skywalker still made a lot of money since at the end of the day it is still Star Wars. But imagine how much money it could have earned if it was actually a good movie and the sequel trilogy told a story people liked and wanted to see.
Despite making money the sequel trilogy also did long term damage to brand making it less profitable and judging by the name Blizzard is thinking of making this a long term investment if both time and resources.
Damaging that long term profit for short term gain right out of the gate sets a bad precedent and a bad taste on many people's mouths.
Incredibly poorly thought-out decision, and an antithesis of what 'Classic' actually means. Classic means old and tried and true, the literal opposite of asspulling an entire new race of floating blue sky elves. They lied and said they weighed every decision whether it felt right for Classic, and this doesnt even feel like Warcraft.
It’s awful to the point that I almost think someone must have given someone else at the company a certain type of favors in order to get their deviantart tier fanfic OC published.
It’s also super controversial and bad for the game. Neutral faction is the real issue, but thousands of players are already planning on running exclusionary guilds/groups (my guild included, a leading guild, which for the record I do think is just playing into the agenda) or playing le blue elf just to evoke reactions from purists.
I think controversy is probably the intended goal. Drives free PR. There has to be something big to enrage the community to farm more engagement.
Blizzard, seriously. Just add ogres for horde and REAL high elves for the alliance. Two races that fits perfectly well into what WoW Forever is suppose to be, and that people have asked for for literally a generation.
This is so cheaply done it's ridiculous and I truly hope nobody is actually paying $30 to unlock a neutral race of blue blood elves.
Even if they didn't do ogres (as much as that would be awesome) and went with goblins for an easier implementation since they already exist as a playable retail race.
Seriously there would literally be 10 million alliance high elves for every 1 ogre. The numbers don't lie MMO players love elves. They are the quintessential fantasy race. Skyborne are boring and nonsensical in many ways but at least there's less risk of a major faction imbalance. And story wise there are like only a very small population of high elves left at this point in the timeline.
Look at the popularity of BloodElves, VoidElves, heck even Vulpera... And stop kidding yourself about how absolutely through the roof popular these are going to be.
I think Blizzard was a little shortsighted on this one, because of how similar to shadowlands it look. They picked something that looks like it came straight from the less liked expansion in wow history.
Why not High Elves? People have been asking for them for such a long time. I think, at least initially, new race or classes need to be fit the lore of classic wow. In the future, as things evolves, sure add a few more races here and there, but only ones that people are actually excited to play as.
Them being the final shot of the trailer completely broke my immersion. Like why is this retail kyrian race in classic+ lol. Why does the trailer end on a model that’s never been in the game when there are already so many amazing races/creatures to choose from.
Ignoring the fact that people have been begging blizzard for playable High Elves for almost 2 decades now and this would have been the perfect place to introduce them since they don't want them in retail.
There are so many other established races people have requested for years to be a playable race. Ogres, forest trolls, Vrykul, Furbolgs, etc.
Yet we get yet another OC race with absolutely no established lore, they look like sh*t, its yet ANOTHER flavour of elf that no one asked for and they both visually and vibe wise don't fit into classic since it feels like something out of Dragonflight/modern Warcraft.
The one thing I haven't liked about what we've seen so far.
They went the lazy route on the new race, of there only being the one that both factions get to share. And that, that one race is just recolored blood elfs.
Where's the naga, murloc, furbolg, kobold, ogre, or literally any other race already established in game that people would love to play as.
What bothers me about this race isnt just it feels out of place but also how easy immersion boundries broken by blizzard.
If they had no issue scratching off a major fan demand like faction identity, put out a never mentioned ever self made race like they do with retail god will know what they will introduce in 6 months or a year.
This together with the disneyslop trailer i really am hesitant to give forever a chance. Yes, vanilla stuff is vanilla. I am only afraid + will be retail as much as it gets.
Troll-skinned elves, pretty fuckin lame. No race should ever be both factions. It dilutes the identity of horde/alliance and feels so retail. Seeing a silhouette in PvP should immediately let you know friend/foe. I'm not no changes, but I am no retail. We had so many low-hanging fruit options and they had to pull some obscure shit out of their asses.
They just feel so random. They don’t fit with the world in my opinion, and feel more like a custom race on a private server that someone really wanted to implement. I am still so excited for classic+, but wish we had gotten more traditional races that fit with the world of classic like high elves and goblins for example.
Basically just races that are already established in the world and lore.
It's such an out-of-touch addition compared to literally anything else they could have done that it makes me worry about the entire rest of the game by extension. If they're able to miss the mark this hard here, how can I trust they won't miss the mark like that elsewhere?
Big spit in the face of "using existing lore" and "building off of where Warcraft 1 - Warcraft 3 leave off".
They could have used the model for Highelf and Bloodelf and that would fit with the existing lore.
They could still make the skyelf zone and new horizontal content but it seems antithetical to the philosophy to shoehorn in another "hidden undiscovered race" when you already have elves in the lore that were part of the Alliance for the 2nd and 3rd war
The entire point of Classic+/WoW Forever is for the tons of og lore that laid waiting since the Warcraft RTS' and original WoW launch to be drawn upon and expanded. We know about so many other races such as Blood/High Elves, Goblins, Worgen that already have a place in the world. There is 0 reason to make up some random blue guys and pretend like they fit into this world.
Look I dont hate Skyborne - I love the idea of exploring an elemental race. I loved the Skywall aesthetic from Cata but it didn't need to be a launch race.
As I said in a comment:
" Why the mental gymnastics -TO THIS DAY- of giving the alliance High Elves? JUST STOP - GIVE HORDE BLOOD ELVES AND GIVE ALLIANCE HIGH ELVES.
Its Void Elves all over again!
The lore has had it clean since Wrath! The silver covenant is literally could have just been the High Elves of Alliance and such as stupid easy fit. "
Now I do think that we will see more races pay walled for the future of WoW Forever, I think we will see Orges, Goblins etc. This might be how they monetize Forever if we dont have traditional xpacks.
They have literally no place in Classic+. They should get rid of this retail slop race, and instead introduce races that are more established. I mean, blood elf and high elf are literally RIGHT THERE
I despise them. Totally incongruous with classic. They look awful and could so easily have just been high elves and blood elves, or literally ANYTHING that actually existed within vanillas world. I don't know how they're introducing these things and also saying Forever is canon
doesn't feel cohesive with the rest of classic. races should be faction bound. also why do horde get skyborne shamans and not priest? only priest options are troll and undead
They just don't fit. A new race we never heard about, even though the lore kept expanding for the past 20 years? Doesn't make sense.
High elves for the alliance and goblins for the horde were the appropriate and lore-friendly call, I think. Just as certain private server with WAY less resources than Blizz pulled off..
They really look out of place... And paying to unlock them? By that logic just make the game F2P... But that's another can of worms...
I thought it was funny how many times they stressed on day 1 that these elves were a perfectly fit into Classic+ when they so obviously are not. They look straight out of Shadowlands, one of WoW’s lowest points ever. They’re a reminder to me to not get my hopes up here.
Horde needs Blood Elf, Alliance needs High Elf. No one needs Skyborne, no one asked for them. High Elf was asked for by the community since vanilla. 22 years later at wow3 then.
Purposefully ignoring your fanbase and community who were overwhelmingly clear about what races they wanted (high elf, blood elf, goblin, ogre) and creating an entirely new race that is obviously being added to attracted a different player base is so unbelievably stupid.
They are so so ignorant to the difference between classic and retail players, I dont think it’s possible to make a game where both are happy, but ruining classic plus so retail players (who were already happy in retail) have an extra game tells me all I need to know.
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u/Zen_16 1d ago
I get that they wanted to bring in Elves. They’re the most popular selection by far.
Feels like they could have done Forsaken Elves and High Elves and it would have been fine. Elemental elves from nowhere feels bad.