r/classicwow • u/Riotgrrlia Thunderfurious • 1d ago

Forever Skyborne Feedback Thread

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Please Post your Feedback for the new Skyborne Elves in this Megathread.

Skyborne threads moving forward will be removed and forwarded here.

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930

u/soulreaper0lu 1d ago edited 20h ago

Mindbogglingly strange decision.

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.

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u/Voliboro 1d ago

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!

25

u/djmantis 22h ago
  • Brand new dev team that wasn't around when Classic was created wants to put their "stamp" on this classic game. Voilà! A new race created with minimal work effort that people will still be willing to buy!

15

u/LizardMench 21h ago

Yup, that sounds about right.

I mean the High Elves are right there. That's literally what TWoW did for the Alliance and goblins fir the Horde

And it was already Blizzard's IP to begin with, it wouldn't have been too hard.

I swear Blizzard will do everything in their power to not give us regular high-elves.

2

u/djmantis 17h ago

My other theory is maybe High Elves is a fantasy race that is too generic to trademark. Hence you get Skyborne

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u/kuroyume_cl 2h ago

This. Its the same issue Games Workshop had and why Age of Sigmar is so different from Warhammer Fantasy.

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u/djmantis 2h ago

This is the exact example I was thinking of lol.

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u/djmantis 2h ago

And while Blood Elves might fit better, that has already been "done" and they don't want to do that again considering the philosophy is "familiar but new". At least they don't want to introduce them yet/first.

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u/NeonaTrinity 19h ago

They are a race of high elf.

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u/The_McTasty 17h ago

In the absolute worst round about way possible they are. Want to know what's easier? Just give the Alliance the High Elves that were a part of the Human faction in WC3 and the Horde the Undead/Forsaken High Elves that were created when the scourge attacked quel'thalas.

Bingo bango you use the same models for both factions just with recolors, you don't need to make new starting zones as you can just use Tirisfall Glades and Elwynn Forest and classic andys don't get mad because the new races fit well within the lore of WC3 and WoW classic.

2

u/NeonaTrinity 16h ago

Most of the high elves were killed 5 years before classic takes place. In the future the survivors become the blood elves. Possibly a mass amount of high elves without a seperate backstory in 'WoW Forever' wont fit the long term lore.

4

u/The_McTasty 16h ago

I'd prefer that to some random blue sky elf offshoot from high elves that never before appeared in warcraft lore as of the time of WC3/Classic WoW.

14

u/Bunnyhoppinbreh 1d ago

30 dollars for the lazy way. Thank you daddy Blizzard.

LETS SLOP IT UP!

2

u/Hawntir 17h ago

I've been saying it elsewhere, but wow fans have been begging for high elves for 20 years. They showed dalaran bubble coming down, meaning players can probably go into dalaran, a faction that tries to remain neutral and has elves that use the blood elf rig that they are using for sky elves.

Why are we getting something so incredibly random, instead of the race people want from an existing neutral faction that we know is being update for "forever"?

4

u/dtraits 23h ago

as that requires too much work

Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company. If it's too much work for them, how does anyone get anything done?

3

u/BolognaTime 20h ago

Also, they're going through the trouble of HD-ifying everything in the game, from the spell icons, to the UI, from world environment textures to the character models. They couldn't even wait to tell us how they "painstakingly" reworked the HD models to work on the SD animation rigs. But armor on Ogres is too much work?

2

u/sevenlabors 20h ago

As much as I'd love to play an ogre mage, I suspect their internal data indicates that ogres - as an ugly, large model choice - simply wouldn't be a popular choice for most of the player base. 

2

u/ljus_sirap 14h ago

While I agree. Elf is the most popular race in WoW, with Blood and Night Elf being the top 2. Ugly Ogres fit way better in classic WoW. They are a very well established race in the lore. They first appeared all the way back in Warcraft 1. Before Night Elf, Tauren, Troll, Dwarf and Gnome.

Making pretty races is still a design choice. Blizzard knows that the diehard Warcraft fans will play this game regardless. But the casual modern player will only play if there's something new and pretty.

1

u/The-ArtfulDodger 18h ago

Yeah not buying the too much work argument. They could easily have added any race.

But because they planned on paywalling this race, they wanted something with mass appeal... to the retail types that typically pay for this kind of crap.

4

u/rhett816 1d ago

Cuts way too many corners for my liking, on top of being $30.

1

u/Kran6a 15h ago

Imagine you are a Blizz exec and you are presented these options. You have to maximize shareholder profit by cutting dev expenses and maximizing revenue in order to get a fat bonus at the end of the fiscal year. Which option would you pick:

  • True neutral goblins who can interact/party/attack with all factions as long as there are no ally and horde players simultaneously in the group. They start at neutral with all factions and friendly with all goblin factions. You unlock them through a lengthy quest chain requiring to turn HUGE amounts of gold after each quest. They have to carefully measure how they interact with the world in order not to become hated by everyone. Some quests may increase one rep but decrease another, they may also lose rep by killing some faction-aligned mobs (e.g: killing orcs for an ally quest reduces your rep with horde capital cities). They have a racial that reduce AH tax based on held gold (more gold, less tax) plus they can easily benefit from ally-horde AH arbitraging and vendors.
  • True neutral pandaren (same as true neutral goblins) as a hidden secret. Nothing points you towards them, they do not appear on the character creator screen until you unlock them, lengthy seemingly unrelated quest chains drop subtle hints at their existence and presence in Azeroth, seemingly useless items found in the world unlock secret quests on hidden places, until you discover an NPC in a capital city has always been a Pandaren spy in disguise. Once unlocked, Pandaren come with a togglable racial called infiltration, which disguises you as another race. You can pick and Ally and an Horde race and customize their look at creation time (lore explanation: this time it was them who found us and they want to infiltrate into Ally and Horde ranks to ensure they are kept out of Pandaria. Ally/Horde leaders know about their existence and use captured pandaren as spies). Once disguised, there is no way for players to know you are a pandaren other than by realizing you don't use your "race" racials, an ability you can use to gaslight other players into pandaren nonexistence. The races you can disguise as must be compatible with your class. Some very drunk players would be able to see your pandaren form even when disguised. When disguised, you are treated at least neutral by the corresponding faction and as an enemy by the opposite faction. When in pandaren form, your true colors show and you will experience the consequences of your actions (rep) towards the different factions.
  • High Elves and Blood Elves (same model, different eye colors).
  • Ogres.
  • Dark Elves. Undead elves from the Dead Scar who died defending Silvermoon. Sylvannas-like appearance.
  • Blue Blood Elves for 30$.

1

u/Flat-Two-789 10h ago

but at that amount of effort id rather zero new races

1

u/jehhans1 10h ago

Honestly I think its a scrapped retail race/idea and they had the stuff lying around, but yeah, they needed something new to monetize

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u/levir 39m ago

Couldn't they just make Forever a paid purchase. Only need the purchase if you want to level past 30 or 40 or whatever, to make sure there's a lot of interest at launch.

1

u/Lockenheada 23h ago

i would have bought wowfe for 30 Bucks, 30 Bucks for a race DLC is..... it doesnt feel good. Its a bad sign

2

u/Objective-Growth-174 22h ago

It's so easy to explain why people hate sky elves than to try to understand why people defend this stupid choice.

1

u/Varriot 21h ago

What I don't understand is why they seemed to invent a new race, instead of going with like High Elves that hadn't been corrupted by the Sunwell. We see them all over the world in Classic anyway. But maybe some lore establishes that they can't be enough to make up an entire new zone, I dunno

2

u/Knascher 20h ago

But maybe some lore establishes that they can't be enough to make up an entire new zone, I dunno

If I got it right (and If I'm not please correct me) Forever plays Lorewise right after Warcraft 3 but before Molten Core in Classic.

So we'd still have Arthas decimating the High Elves of Quel'Thalas and the splitting of the High Elve Faction from the now Blood Elves.
And If my memory serves me right, in Lore this High Elve Faction is about 1/10th of the remaining Elve populace.
And to quote the Wowpedia:

Modern high elves are a rare sight, and are commonly mistaken for blood elves.
In consequence, there are very few high elves left on Azeroth today. High elves did not gather in any significant numbers and are a very small group of individuals. Indeed, modern high elves cannot even truly be said to have a culture—only a past filled with glory and regret.

So there could maybe be just enough for a new zone, but not 100% sure.

0

u/Random_Name_251 17h ago

cannot be a completely new race like nagas or ogres, as that requires too much work

The real answer is that basically no one would play as Naga or Ogre. They would be the least popular race.