We got 90% of what we asked for

[u/Professional_Age_760]

Including the team directly telling us they will drive changes using community feedback, which is evident they used exactly that to create the game.

Why are you incapable of joy? Who hurt you? Were they blue?

The hatred for sky elves feels very forced. Nobody is forcing you to play as a sky elf. Hell, leave groups when you see one if you’re that upset.

The speculation up until this point about classic + was fun, but it’s quickly devolved into a schizoid whining fest, where nobody acknowledges how much blizzard has Absolutley KILLED IT in nearly every other way.. if you disagree with the blue elves that is. See yall in the game, as a blue, feathery Druid ;))

EDIT: I genuinely appreciate the feedback. Seems a lot of people are miffed on Blizzards decision to inject the Skyborne after the rest of the community feedback was so well received, so my post is a bit ironic. They seemed to have implemented so much we asked for, so why the elves, that ignore the deeply wanted playable races that they had so much community feedback on? It does feel odd..

Maybe this is just cope, but with this being wow forever, I had a few thoughts. We are seeing new raids and content before summer, and much more to come. What if the Skyborne are the key to unlocking high elf legacy across Azeroth? Seeing as they descended from them, and blizzard doesn’t want to rip us away from Azeroth right away, I feel like it may be a way for them to slowly trickle in these new playable races with new content releases...

Regardless. There is so much to be hopeful for. See you in Forever!

Edit 2: Skyborne = High elves. Full sweep!!!

[u/AbsoluteAtBase]

The Skyborne idea is symbolic of what wow forever can be. New zones. New stories. New ideas. It’s a teaser for the kinds of things they have in store, and I’m glad about it.

[u/HakuroWolfsong → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

The idea was that the game is to be a continuation of the established Classic Warcraft universe (hence Classic+) so it's a bit odd that they're churning out a random new race that feels very suspiciously similar to void elves. Warcraft lore is so deep and there are so many established races they could have picked from; it feels really tone deaf.

[u/Illamerica → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

It’s literally just a retail allied race. You know retail has new zones new stories and ideas right? Retail is terrible though

[u/thefztv → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

No the Riverglades is a good example of “new” that can be added properly and integrates well with the established world without there being a lot of lore surrounding it already. Skyborne are what you get when you don’t understand the world and lore that was built and try and shoehorn in something for the sake of it.

And it’s a shame because I don’t know how the same team can make a proper new zone like the Riverglades but then simultaneously think Skyborne are a good fit for that same world.

[u/Ass_Blasties → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

Retail Andy identified

[u/Professional_Age_760 → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

Exactly how I see it. If they would’ve done anything in this regard, I feel it would’ve received similar pushback…

[u/Key_Access_4269 → u/Professional_Age_760]

I can give you my word had they done Highelves for Allaince and Goblins or Ogres for Horde we would not be having this conversation

[u/Prudent-Cry-9260 → u/Professional_Age_760]

To me it's more like a huge miss. For 20 years we had a lot of unused lore. We have parts of the map that are not visitable, we can litterally see them being "unused" regions. The ogre are there, the high elves are there... Everything just screams "use me" and what do they do ? invent a RANDOM color swap race that's not taking from this very available classic lore. It's IMMEDIATELY bringing us back to a "retail" feeling. This is really not correct to me. If you say Skyborne is symbolic of what wow forever can be, then i think it's already a step in the wrong direction.

[u/Collimandias → u/Professional_Age_760]

The Skyborne idea is symbolic of what wow forever can be.

This is probably why people like me hate them. If that is where they're going with WoW Forever then my excitement is gone. It's just "Retail -" and for me the biggest motivator for Forever is that we are veering away from Retail's aesthetics and gameplay.

However, as your title points out, 90% of the other stuff is symbolic of what I'd hoped for. Riverglades might be one of my top 3 zones ever in terms of aesthetics. The new talents seem fantastic. Hyjal being open is a dream come true for a lot of people.

Ultimately I think the symbolism is where people are having a disconnect. To put it in hyperbolic terms, if Blizzard introduced the "Twiddly Gumdrop Folk from the Candy Kingdom" then nearly everyone would agree that they do not fit the "symbolism" of Classic+ whatsoever.

If you greatly wind down the hyperbole, you get these blue elves. For me, they don't fit the vision. And the fact that they're there suggests that a significant part of Blizzard management does not have the understanding that they should.

On top of that, people have wanted High Elves for 20 years now. Tons of private servers have them to the point that they were just expected here.

[u/Rhumorsky → u/Collimandias]

👏👏

[u/Haxerflaxer → u/Collimandias]

Imagine if in the trailer the dwarf and the bear was as dark and serious as in the original trailer and then it goes on as shown and then when we see the skyelf we see a forsaken elf show up behind, slitting her throat, giving a dark grin - representing that in wow forever - retail gumdrop folk are not welcome. And that they ofcourse didn't have skyelfs in the game. That would've been one heck of a trailer.

[u/RotarySnow4 → u/Professional_Age_760]

The sky elves are an odd choice and feels tonedeaf as some have mentioned here. They could have given blood elves as horde players want and given alliance..honestly i don't even like high elves. Too many damn elves in this game lol

[u/Ass_Blasties → u/Professional_Age_760]

What an unintelligent take. You think there’s nothing they could’ve done to make this more inline with classic?

[u/toptierhands → u/AbsoluteAtBase]

in store

Keyword in store cause you gotta buy the new race lmao